One Local Summer, Redux

Liz at Pocket Farm is once again hosting One Local Summer, an open invitation to prepare one meal a week for the rest of the season based on local ingredients. The rules are flexible. Define local in whatever way suits you best. Make exemptions for spices and coffee if you wish. But try! Once a week, that's all she asks.
A couple of days ago Cranky and I whipped up a dinner of stuffed cabbage rolls.
I fell in love with Savoy cabbage recently, and when we found a crinkly head of it grown by my heart-throb farmers at Full Belly, we grabbed one.
Then I got to thinking. What's so wrong about using sausage instead of plain ground meat as a filling? Marin Sun Farms was selling a nice, gentle sausage of local beef and pork (no clue as to the provenance of the seasonings). I mixed the de-cased sausage meat with a little parboiled rice from Lundberg and some minced Full Belly onion.
And I already had a few bags of local tomato sauce in the freezer, left over from last summer.
Fancied it all up with a few dabs of local sour cream from Clover, and it was a beautiful, lovely plate of summer.
I won't spend much time bragging that we eat locally most of the time anyway. Instead, I want to give a shout out to Stacie at Mommy Mosh Pit for her local endeavors. Stacie lives in farm country, to be sure, but it's a brutal climate. Her first attempt at eating locally, in her words, was "hard work!" But she educated herself. She asked around. She grew a vegetable garden.
And yesterday she prepared a dinner (for company, no less) of food from her (very) local region.
As Stacie tells it, "...[N]ext thing you know, it's a year later, and it's just becoming the way you eat. Once you learn something, you can never look back."

Why I Don't Go to Restaurants

I don't know if this looks like much. It tasted like much, though, so I'm going to tell you about it.
Somehow we got the crazy idea of "Salmon Wellington" in our heads. Only it wasn't going to be made with pastry crust; it would be baked inside scalloped potatoes.
We've been saving this slab of wild local salmon in the freezer for about a month, and today we finally caved. I had bought a huge bag of morels at the market yesterday, and we had all the other fixin's: Yukon Gold potatoes, some cream, butter (of course), shallots, and parsley.
First, Cranky made up a fabulous, fragrant duxelles from the morels and shallots, heightened by a splash of intense, local cabernet. It was the first time in ages that our kitchen has smelled French.
Next, we sliced the peeled potatoes on our little Japanese mandoline. Parboiled them gently for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, I minced some parsley.
OK, assembly time. Butter the baking dish. It's a good idea to use as small a baking dish as your slab of salmon will fit in. Line the bottom with half the drained potato slices, overlapping, and give it a good glug of cream. Sprinkle an area in the center exactly the size of your fish piece with half the parsley. Top that with half the duxelles. Lay the fish on, and then build upwards with the remaining ingredients, in reverse order. One more glug of cream, and into the oven. You should be using salt and pepper here and there.
We might have liked the salmon more rare, but it was so good we weren't in a self-critique mode. Besides, as everybody knows, Wellington means Welldoneington.

A Sweet Finish

Our anniversary feast ended with a store-bought cake and some killer store-bought moscato d'Italia. See that bare-chested Etruscan behind the dessert? That's the label on the bottle.
This sparkling dessert wine tasted like liquid gummi bears, to quote Robert Parker. Not.
Intensely fruity, like dried apricots or pears.
(God, I've got dehydrating on the mind. I'm doing some apricots, peaches and morels this week.)
Anyway, the cake — torta, actually — was a delicious glazed fruit salad atop a custard-covered cookie. It came from Emporio Rulli.
So did the candy wine.

PS: I don't know why this picture is so out of focus. If you click on it, you'll see it's quite OK.
I blame Blogger. Darn you, Blogger.

Happy Anniversary, Chez Crumb

We had a fantastic spread of Fatted Calf charcuterie with olives and pickles today, complemented by a bottle of pink ('scuse me, rosé) bubbly.
It was amazing how well the fruity, spicy champers went with the beautifully seasoned paté de campagne and duck liver mousse.
But, then.
I've been having this conversation in my head — and with actual people — about how much we are allowed to "desecrate" somebody else's creation. Once the mortadella (just for instance) is perfected, is it a crime to smear it with other flavors?
I tend toward purism, which, darn it, is a lot closer to puritanism than I want to be. I am in awe of my artisan purchases. I'm nervous about messing with them. I take them straight, the way the artisan intended them. I think.
And today I realized that makes me a fraidy cat.
A couple of months ago I went to a party where somebody brought not only a Fatted Calf ham, she lugged along some of her homemade tomato chutney... and gooshed it all over the ham. On bread! She made a verrry interesting sandwich from individually sanctified ingredients by putting them all together.
Well, I followed her lead. I made myself one of those sandwiches, and it was damn fine.
The parapets started to weaken.
A few days ago, I was given a jar of homemade strawberry preserves by a friend, who apologized for the slightly loose texture of his concoction. We both wondered aloud what might be done to brilliantly use this trickly jam. Of course, ice cream. Then, I said... Mostarda? My friend assumed a knowing expression but didn't quite conceal his discomfiture over the fact that I was talking about stirring mustard into his fruit preparation.
And perhaps I was being obtuse. You can exhale now, Sean. I didn't do it.
But.
Back to the charcuterie plate. Assume that I am more cavalier about adding tastes to someone's ideal recipe. Watch me search the fridge for... oh, hey, fig chutney!
So, Cranky stirred Dijon mustard into some homemade fig chutney (remember, this was already a highly seasoned mess). And it just got better.
With minor trepidations, we smeared some impromptu fig mostarda on the paté and mousse (over baguette slices), and ohgod, it was divine.
The spell is broken.
Artisan food crafters, rest assured that I will always love your creations for what they are, in and of themselves. But be advised that I might add a layer of spunky.

It is anniversary number 26. I don't know what traditional gift that entails, but around here, it usually entails something good to eat. Pork. Duck. Mostarda... Like that.

You Have to Ask

At the market last Thursday, we came across a table strewn with fresh corn on the cob. The vendor was Full Belly Farm, and I hadn't seen corn there in recent weeks, no.
Quoth the handsome farmer, "It's the first corn of the season!"
Well, duh. No wonder! So we grabbed a few ears.
Oh, then on the way to pay for the corn, we spied little baskets of — no — yes? — edamame!
"I've been living on edamame and corn all week," said the farmer.
Done deal.
Now, I want to explain. I'm a little shy about talking to the farmers. I tend to hover and let other shoppers do the heavy lifting. Fortunately, one of my fellow shoppers asked how to cook the fresh soy beans. She even knew this guy's name, but right now, I don't even remember it.
Fortunately I did assimilate the instructions on the beans. Cook, in the pods, in boiling water for about five minutes. Then shell, and salt or dip in soy sauce.
You're on your own for the corn... Surely you've learned how to cook corn by now.
Here's my lunch today.

A Good Paddling

We came upon some fresh nopalitos — baby cactus paddles — at the store the other day, and had to grab a few. What with the rush of summer produce tumbling into the market, it was somehow refreshing to make a meal out of pedestrian, spindly, succulent cactus.
I don't know if baby cactus paddles have a season. I know I did successfully grow a couple of my own several years ago, by planting mature paddles in dirt and waiting for the babies to "hatch" out of the top of the mother paddle. But I don't remember what time of year it was.
Doesn't cactus grow all the time?
Anyway, it combines beautifully with fresh summer produce.
AND: Today I picked my first homegrown tomato, a pretty little Sungold of the cherry size.
So in its honor, and to celebrate the nopalitos and summer produce, we made a salad. Roasted nopalitos squares (make sure all the spines are trimmed off, then chop and toss with oil and salt), chopped tomatoes, chopped radishes, some minced onion, chopped green pepper of a twisty, mild and unnamed variety, corn off the cob (briefly microwaved in the husk, then shaved), salt, oil, a quick dusting of Mexican oregano, and a topping of crumbled cotija cheese, served over sparkling lettuce leaves.
There was something oddly satisfying about tasting the deepened, cooked flavor of the nopalitos in the presence of all that spectacularly fresh produce.
And, well, you know. It was good.

Solar and Wind Power

These nectarine segments have been outdoors less than 24 hours now, and they are clearly drying, not rotting.
This picture is taken through the mesh of the white garment-washing bag, and I used the "enhance" feature on my photo app to punch up the color and contrast. The fruit is resting on the plastic screen and support shelf of my electric dehydrator, removed from the power-sucking beast for this experiment, and the mesh bag is supported up off the fruit with an overturned wire letter basket. It's all perched on a garden chair with a breezy seat, so there's air underneath too.
I'm so happy. I don't really "need" dehydrated food, because my garden is not producing enough stuff to swamp me. In fact, I bought the nectarines. But I wanted to save some for later, just because now I know I can.
Later on this summer I'll try genuine home-grown sun-dried tomatoes. The only kind I've ever made has been oven dried. Feh!

First Day of Summer

What would you rather do, get all naked and dance the solstice dance, or eat a tomato and cucumber sandwich?
Dessert was an intensely flavored apricot. Cranky started looking at his watch after he took his first bite... Nope, darn, it was already too late to go back to the farmers market and buy another sackful.
(What, you thought I drank fancy beer?)

Try It, Ya Chickens

We had a super-fresh, free-range chicken to roast. So fresh and free-range, the head and feet were still on.
Boy, a couple whacks with a cleaver. Such primitive, physical satisfaction. Everybody should have a cleaver for times like that.
Then, suddenly, I got all mesmerized by Marmite, that jar of brown yeast goo that people either love or hate. I was stuck on toast, but darn it, I needed to eat that chicken.
We had done the proper presalting of the bird, and a quick check in Joy of Cooking confirmed the best oven temperature, time and thigh temperature.
Oh, by the way, Joy added alluringly... rub the skin with butter. M'kay?
Suddenly we knew just what to do. Cranky melted a little butter in a pan, and stirred in the perfect proportion of Marmite. How did he know what the perfect proportion should be? Heck, he's been making Marmite toast and butter for two days now; he's an expert already.
So I slathered that liquid gold all over the chicken skin, with my bare hands (mmm, moan, sigh...). And popped her into the oven for about an hour.
We couldn't resist peeking in there every so often, to see what our experiment might yield. It was looking pretty good: crisp and fragrant and brown.
And what did it taste like? Crisp and fragrant and brown chicken. It tasted like really good roasted chicken, but a little... browner.
I'd wager that I could serve this chicken to a Marmite-averse person and get away with it. No, I'd wager that the Marmite-averse person would be begging me for my recipe.

Oh, My Guinness!

I received a jar pot of limited edition Guinness Marmite through a rather byzantine series of shenanigans. It was delivered to me one night almost surreptitiously, like a dope deal, albeit in a large, public roomful of fellow food bloggers.
This jar pot had traveled over the Atlantic and across the states to find me. What was even more exciting and arcane, the procuring of the jar pot took weeks of searching and miles of scouting. Phone calls. Visits to the manager. Detective work worthy of Inspector Clouseau. (No, even worthier: Mission accomplished! Clouseau couldn't have done it. Bravo, embee.)
I was thrilled to receive my rare stash, and that evening I flashed it several times in the direction of bloggers I thought would appreciate my good fortune.
To a man (and a woman), they went "Ew." "Why?" "Whuh?"
Have they never heard of umami? Marmite is umami in a jar pot.
Knee-jerk jerks. They don't know what they're missing.
I've tasted Vegemite; it's similar but the texture is more like Crisco and the taste is cruder, saltier. Marmite is liquidy, like molten brown liquorice.
I tried my stash for the first time yesterday on toasted Wheat Levain from Brickmaiden Breads. I knew the drill, having observed a French friend decades ago using a similar brew (or maybe it was Marmite) on his toast: butter first, then a stingy, thin scrape of Marmite over that.
It was... heavenly! Oh mommy umami. Umarmalade. (Yes, I know it's not sweet, but there was a candied sensation of hot fudge on vanilla in my mouth.)
I tried it again today on Semifreddi Sweet Batard, and it was... heavenlier. I think white bread really points up the contrast with the Marmite. Wheat bread is already a little caramel-y, a little graham crackery. So I'm on an upward learning curve, and so far, so good.
My questions to those of you more experienced in the joys of Marmite (oh, come on... there must be a few of you):

1. Am I getting this halfway right?
2. Does Guinness Marmite taste different from regular Marmite? Because this jar pot probably isn't going to last long.
3. What else can I do with the stuff?
4. You think it would be terribly wrong of me to rub a (thin) coating all over the chicken I'm planning to roast this evening?

One Potato, Goo Potato

Ew.
There's really no good way to take a picture of this stuff.
Well, maybe there is, but it would be all Hallmark la-la, and it would disguise the fact that this is nothing but a vat of lava lamp food.
Some background: A blog pal from Utah is coming to San Francisco this weekend, and we want to meet face-to-face. So we are. (Go visit her blog if you're interested in crashing the party; you'll be welcome to join us.)
I'm not sure if that was what was whirring away in my brain yesterday, but all of a sudden I wanted french fries. And, by golly, I had a strange, murky memory of a Utah-famous dipping sauce for fries.
I Googled it. "Fry Sauce," it's called. You'd never guess from the name that "fry sauce" is a dunk for taters; at first I assumed it was something to, hmm... boy, I don't know what I thought. I mean, they're called "fries," not "fry."
Well, linguistics probably has something to do with that missing S.
Anyway, fry sauce is nothing more than a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise. Some people use Miracle Whip, surprise, surprise. But there is no pickle relish or any other silly stuff (and keep your Utah Green Jell-O jokes to yourself.) The correct proportions are two mayonnaise to one ketchup.
I wanna say "Ew" again here. Can't help myself. But really, aren't Belgian fries served with mayonnaise instead of ketchup? And in most parts of the USA, Freedom Fries come with ketchup instead of mayonnaise. Why not achieve a happy medium? OK, not so happy, not so medium.
You're dying to hear the verdict, aren't you? (Tap, tap, tap. Hello? This mike still on?)
{{...crickets...}}
It was... OK. It's not that I'm averse to trying new things. I'm more familiar with fries dunked in ketchup, sure, but I think fries in mayo is lux-o-rama — if the fries are good enough.
The fries I experimented on are the best you can buy within a few miles of the average American home on the spur of the moment: McDonald's. I like 'em. Sue me.
But I thought fry sauce smothered the hell out of them.
Eh. Maybe next time I'll try Baltimore-style fries and gravy.

On Aging and Drying

Man, it's dry out there. Hot, dry and breezy.
It's that time of year when the backs of my hands start to peel, even if they haven't had a sunburn. It's been going on the past three years, so I attribute it to age — and the drying of hot, moving, summer air. But I've found a good remedy: Corn Huskers Lotion "heavy duty hand treatment." It's a workaround. I'm getting older, and it's dry out there. Cope, cope, cope.
Aging and drying can be beneficial (she said hopefully, er, rather, copefully). Cranky and I have been snacking on some wondrous bresaola from the Fatted Calf. I've known for some time that bresaola was defined as "paper-thin slices of air-dried beef." What I didn't realize was that the slices are cut after the eye of round is seasoned, whole, and allowed to dry for a couple of months or more. Then sliced. I had mistakenly assumed that paper-thin slices of beef were dried... which would have resulted in meat splinters, I now realize. So this stuff is deep, barnyardy, aromatic — and tender. Good.
Hooray for aging and drying.
You may recall that Cranky and I were on a quest to find a suitable container to set outdoors and let the sun and wind dehydrate the food within, while keeping out the varmints.
We think we found it today. At the hardware store, shopping in the "laundry" aisle for clothespins and clothesline (I mean, we'd be crazy to run the dryer when we have these perfect conditions, right?), we spotted cloth mesh bags for washing delicates. The fabric is white synthetic material, with holes in it small enough to keep a fly out. There's already a soft zipper sewed in, so it seals in a jiffy.
The next question, then, was what to put in there to set the food on, something that would give the sack a little structure and not let it smother (or stick to) the dryables.
We found it at the Container Store. A simple, primitive letter basket for the office desk, made of thin wire. Cheap (but not as cheap as the laundry bag). Durable. Doable.
At the market this morning we had already selected some nectarines to dry, and this was even before we found our laundry-bag/letter-basket jackpots. Oh, and we got a couple of yellow, super-plump, totally globular limes to acidulate the nectarine segments with.
We're all set to let time and desiccation do its bit. Aging and drying are good. Yes (cope), yes (cope), yes.

Girl on Film

Yow!
Can you say "hair product"? I musta had six or seven different hair products holding up that 80s do.
This photo was sent to me recently by an old friend — yes, we go that far back. Thank you, KT, for digging it up. No, really!
The dog (my only excuse for this post is Weekend Dog Blogging) on my shoulders is Chili at about age two or three; he went on to live nearly eighteen years.

Is This Legal?

The kitchen smelled like Christmas today. Yorkshire pudding, roast beef... But it was just bones.
Marrow bones.
Oh. My. Gah.
This is the kind of meal you think you can only get in a restaurant. And here we were, feasting on cholesterol of the highest order.
Thanks to Marin Sun Farms for selling the marrow bones at the Sunday farmers market. I hadn't seen them there before, and when we asked the vendor if they were a common market item, she said, "Oh, no. Usually the restaurants snap them up."
Well.
I had some snapping to do.
Thanks to Fergus Henderson's recipe for roasting marrow bones (450º for 20 minutes), and his tasty parsley-shallot salad, we had an amazingly easy lunch of such high caliber, Cranky and I are still licking animal fat off our wrists, and moaning.
Toast is required. So you know.

My Carbon-Based Lifeform Footprint

It takes energy to consume energy.
I watch the hummingbirds that visit my patio, beating their wings frenetically as they sniff some red decoy, like a plastic bottle cap. Poor things. All that flapping and nary a drop to drink. Still, they beat on, seeking nectar. They seem to spend all day scurrying for sustenance. Energy out, energy in.
I am similarly guilty. I buy food locally as much as possible, reducing the petro-miles of my diet, but I do turn on the oven or stove now and then to cook it.
I refrigerate food. That takes electricity. The refrigerator is never off.
I was all hippie-dippie proud of myself the other day for preserving some highly seasonal Bing cherries. I thought "How cool, I'll have cherries in the off-season. I'm such a provider."
But Sam asked what the carbon footprint on my little project might amount to. True, it took hours and hours to get the cherries dry enough to store in a jar. Hours and hours in my electric food dehydrator. I'm not going to guess how much power it uses, but... it hadn't occurred to me to consider it at all! I just thought I was being smart.
Smack my ass and call me silly.
Food dehydrating is possible without electricity. I know. I've done it. I have a jar of wonderful Thai peppers that I dried simply on a baking sheet in the sun. Didn't take long, and they genuinely dried, without cooking.
So Cranky and I have spent the past couple of days devising ways to use our perfect microclimate for drying. We have a lot of sun and quite a bit of breeze. We're not there yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find a method that will exclude vermin while allowing light and air in. I'm not sure what my first natural project will be.
But today I cranked up the electric dehydrator one more (last?) time to preserve some mushrooms. They dried really fast, honest.
Sheesh.

Rancho Deluxe

I like the taste of ranch dressing, although I hate the taste of commercial, bottled ranch dressing; I've never found one worth buying.
But I do like the taste of fresh ranch dressing. Oh, I probably am reacting happily to some jangly chemicals in the packet of dressing powder mix that gets stirred into buttermilk and mayonnaise, the way I react happily to Doritos orange powder magic. Is powdered ranch dressing even "fresh"?
No.
I looked up some recipes for ranch dressing online today, and learned that MSG is a key ingredient... according to some people. That could be the chemical I react to, but who keeps MSG in their pantry?
I needed to make up some ranch dip last night.
I knew that buttermilk was the backbone of the recipe, but there was none in the fridge. What I did have was yogurt, cottage cheese and sour cream. So I would have to improvise.
I have tasted ranch-like dressings, memorably one made from crème fraîche. I'm sure there was no MSG, or even buttermilk. I just remember it was really nice.
You go to war with the army you have.
So I smoothed out some cottage cheese with a potato masher, and stirred in sour cream and yogurt until I got a nice consistency. No mayonnaise. I forgot about it, actually, but it wasn't needed.
Then it was time to season this mess. Honestly, I had no idea what seasonings go into "Ranch." I winged it. Totally made it up.
I crushed some dried Mexican oregano between my palms. And then a little more. Next, dried dill. I think dried dill is kind of silly, but for some reason I have two jars of it, so it must have seemed like the right thing to do. I did it.
Finally, I dusted this concoction with garlic powder. Yes, there is dried garlic powder chez Crumb, and we have one or two constant and sometimes urgent reasons for that. I will tell you for ten dollars.
That's all. I let it sit for several minutes to develop, and then we devoured it with carrots, cucumbers, celery and tender hearts of baby romaine. Dunkin' snack-style.
It tasted COMPLETELY ranchy. Just a few, mere, simple ingredients — all dried, gosh darn it — stirred into some dairy, and it was ranch.
I am so not ashamed.
I am proud.

Cherries Are the Bomb

Cherry season is barreling toward its conclusion. I always worry that cherries might not even last until the Fourth of July, a time when cherry bombs are required.
Naturally, the thing to do is stuff yourself silly with the juicy, drippy bomblets. Now.
Already there have been many furtive grab'n'gulps straight from the fridge. I'm planning on grazing on a little Fatted Calf bresaola accompaned by cherries and apriums, maybe this evening.
But I got to wondering. What if I saved some cherries for later? No, not until they turn moldy. I mean, try to preserve some.
Here's what got me on the topic. I've recently finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and there was a simple, but intensely telling, little line about dealing with her garden's sudden summer bounty, which needed to be saved for winter: "The dehydrator was running 24/7."
Of course! First of all, if you're going to all the trouble to grow your own food, you're a fool if you let it go to waste. I understand that. Second, though, I hadn't thought about dehydrating food until a little later in the season. You know, when the bounty's out of control.
But.
Cherries. They're in season now. Hate to see them go.
So I saved some.

Take It with a Grain of Rice

Have you seen this thing? Looks like R2D2 went all metrosexual. Man, that is slick. Day spa for robots. Robospa.
Oh, and what is it?
A rice cooker. Just a cool-looking rice cooker.
Wait! It's an $830 Toshiba rice cooker. So it must be special, right?
Yup. It's built with pressure-vacuum technology (and if that doesn't sound like a contradiction to you, you weren't paying attention in physics class).
It gets better. The machine is built from materials that include not only silver, but diamond dust. See, it's all about heat, and absorption, and tenderness, and sweetness.
Of course, I want one.
It just better turn out diamond-dusted rice. Rice is a girl's best friend.

Less Is More

Why do we get interested in cooking?
For me, early on it was the mudpie mentality. "Candy? You can make candy? I'm doin' that." I had made popcorn balls, saltwater taffy, caramel apples, lollipops and peanut brittle all before the age of 16. I loved the chem-lab aspect of it.
Later, cooking was about flavors, and for an untrained hippie cook, that usually meant knocking all the dried-out spices off the shelf and into the pot. Well, that, and actually learning how to get a pot of rice to cook right. Complicate things! Fun!
Then there was the phase of ethnic imitation. Homemade potstickers. Curry. Risotto. Ingredients? Whatever! Make substitutions, go on a scavenger hunt, but just do it.
I still like those foods. I'm not saying I'm any good at making them; they are a little time-consuming.
But this morning, reading Michael Ruhlman's The Reach of a Chef, I came across a quote from Thomas Keller that completely defined my lunch — and my cooking — today: "If I have a better product, I can be a better chef than you."
And today I was a better chef than you.
Lunch was buttered asparagus, previously blogged here. They are simply spears of perfect fresh asparagus rolled around in a buttery cast-iron skillet until they develop brown blisters. Accompanying the asparagus was stunning buttered baby carrots, cooked just the same way in a separate skillet.
The only seasoning was sea salt, applied at the table.
Simplicity.
I think it would be immodest for me to tell you how we swooned and drooled and invoked metaphor after metaphor for the flavors of this simple, simple meal. (Oh, all right: "meat, cookies, butter, pudding, squash, mmmnngggh, unbelievably filling.") And how the house smelled afterward of an unknown, captivating, mingled scent, best described as "really damn fine food."
But the truth is, I did next to nothing to these simple ingredients. True, it was an inspired next-to-nothing, and I recommend the method. The secret, though, was that I had "a better product." Killer ingredients, right, Keller? Nature did most of the work. I just got it all hot and bothered.

Boring You Softly with Random Revelations

So when did this "five random facts" meme get ratcheted up to eight? Next time this one binks back to me it'll probably be nine or ten random facts, and by then, I'll probably have to make stuff up.
But it's fun.
Catherine from Food Musings tagged me, in a charming, if guilty, manner. I get the idea that I'm supposed to tag eight bloggers now, but haven't we all been tagged already? I should be the guilty one, because I'm going to let this chain letter die here today. Please tag yourself if you have fascinating facts to reveal.
Me, I'm short on fascinating. Mundane will have to do.
1) This food obsession of mine must have started early. My first dog, when I was 10, was named Pepper. Much later on I adopted a neurotic, ugly-cute terrier from the pound and named him Chili. About five years later, we got Bean Dip, a little Maltese quite a bit less pretty than our current preoccupation, Bean Sprout. What's next? (My dentist thought Bean Sprout should be named Popcorn; I love that. Maybe next dog.)
2) About the same time I had Pepper the dog, my dad bought me a pogo stick. Yes! One of those goofy things you bounce up and down with. It was a really slick model, made of metal and containing an air-compression device inside to regulate the thump. Black rubber handles and tip on the bottom, excellent treaded foot pedals. I knew how cool it was, but... I just couldn't force myself to go outside and hop on it for the hours at a time it truly deserved. Wonder what ever happened to it.
3) I have frozen beet pulp in my freezer. I have a perfect plan for it, but I can't seem to get started on the project.
4) I do not have flat feet. Au contraire. The arches in my feet run from side to side, all the way across. My wet footprints are in two pieces.
5) I had to take Home-Ec three times. We were a Navy family that moved often, and every new school district had its rules. Sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade. Damn, I can thread a needle.
6) I have never seen a dead person.
7) The ocean scares me. I was a major beach bum all my life, but I'm afraid of sharks and tides. Speaking of beach bum: Wear sunscreen... to quote my friend Mary Schmich.
8) Cell phone? Feh. Got one. Don't use it. Payin' for it. Feh.

I'm Repeating Myself

It hasn't even been a year, and I'm re-creating a dish I dreamed up in a sort of inspired daze last July. Only this time it came out different, and wouldn't you expect that?
It is the epitome of a vegetarian meal: Pea tacos. Ewww, that sounds so gross.
But look. The dreamy mash of cooked peas mixed with peppery olive oil atop corn tortillas, crowned with feta cheese and sautéed sweet onions. A minute under the broiler.
You can't beat this for nutritional value and sheer yumminess. Plus, I'm still stuffed.
Please forgive my cheese sandwich post for the day.