Unstink the "Tupperware"

Sure, this blog is MOSTLY just here to help link the traditional definition of the word "geek" (a sideshow performer paid to eat anything), with the sexier, modern definition of the word "geek." (An adult who owns at least one dinosaur t-shirt, and who boasts about high school unpopularity while going out for drinks.)

However!!!

On this occasion, I've figured out something useful, and a-here it will a-go-go.

My husband and I cook with garlic and other strong-smelling foods, and our "Tupperware" (sometimes actually "Gladware" or "Snap Ware" or "leftover tubs that used to have yogurt in them") will sometimes become haunted by the smell of garlic long after it's been washed.

(I love this stuff. Thanks, Dad! Thanks, Costco!)

LUCKILY, I've discovered that letting a heap of a nice slurry of water and baking soda settle at the bottom of one'o these beauties for a while will exorcise the lingering garlic smell effectively enough to store sensitive foods like vanilla pudding later, without unsavory, savory, unsavory consequences.

The more you know!

If you put glasses on it, my kitchen looks like a duck.

Well, this silicone oven mitt does, anyway. Particularly when I put my sweet new glasses on it. I'm especially pleased with how the paper towels enhanced the whole scene, too.

I don't mean to quack myself up, but I think this is pretty ducking fabulous.

I know, right?!? Buttered noodles, broccoli, and shaved sharp white cheddar

Why yes! Thank you for noticing. I did make a tablecloth out of black duct tape. It's absolutely perfect, too. Very tailored.

I also boiled some penne noodles in oiled, salted water until al dente. I tossed them with steamed broccoli florets, a big pile of shaved vintage white cheddar (Tilamook, of course), and a couple of tablespoons of melted butter.

The flavor's mild, because I really want to taste every ingredient. Even the pasta. (Pasta tastes good!) But I could definitely picture somebody adding cracked pepper to this, if doing that helped 'em out. In fact, I might do that halfway through eating this, if I start to get bored. I'm not above doing that, sometimes.

There, I already did it. Halfway through the dish, and I added a little pepper. I'm ambivalent about that decision, though.

A note about the cheese:

Because I'm eating this as an entrée, not as a side dish, I've opted to go pretty heavy with the cheese. However, this dish might also go really well alongside a medium rare steak. In fact, now I'm hungry for steak while I'm typing this. Fuck! What was I saying? Oh, yeah.

So if you're pairing this dish with another big pile of delicious animal fats... LOOK OUT!!! Like, dine at your own risk, man.

Holy Christ send help, I made too much rice.

No, seriously. That pot in the last entry, filled to the top with rice, is a fucking 3.5 quart soup pot. BEFORE most of the rice was fluffed.

I don't have children. I'm not expecting guests. My husband is not participating in my Americanized Versions Of Indian Food phase, for reasons I accept without comprehending, so I'm going to have to eat, eat, eat, or concede defeat.

Dear Lord, what in the crazy madness go nuts Hell did I do?!?

... And what's with the blasphemy, here? Jesus.

There it goes again!!!

Well, I'm listening to The Beatles' Abby Road, so it's obviously their fucking fault, fucking English creeps.

I accidentally cooked perfect rice.

Right?!? How did I do this?!? I never do this!!!

This rice does not only look perfectly cooked on camera, either. It's as fluffy and chewy as the stuff in restaurants. And I made a FREAKISHLY HUGE quantity of it.

So, what happened? I Googled rice cooking like I do every time, and this time, I found this link:

How to Cook Rice - Jasmine Rice

I liked the idea of just eyeballin' the ratios, so I decided to pick this recipe. I started with what I thought was too much water, but I wandered away while waiting for it to boil, and when I wandered back something like 40 to 400 seconds later, it was not only boiling, but that inch-y quantity of water over the rice was gone. I panicked, scraped the bottom of the pot with a metal spoon (no browned or burned bits! Must've caught it early), added a bunch of cold water from the kettle to the rice, panicked because it was supposed to be cooking, not cold- ing, tasted the rice, found it halfway cooked, and decided to keep cooking it. And keep adding water. And keep cooking it.

For the most part, if/when it was cooking, it was just simmering. And because I had no idea how much rice or water I'd used, or even how long it had truly been cooking, I kept tasting it. And when it was somehow freakishly perfect, I took it off the burner. The rice wasn't even damp! Or burnt! 

I made a huge pile of it, so I'll have rice to do all kinds of stuff with for the next while. I'll probably make rice pudding, later.

For today, I pan-fried little dice-sized cubes of the firmest tofu I could nab, and then simmered it in some stuff from Safeway. Best decision ever? Or just the best decision I've made in the past hour? Maybe both. But probably just the latter, because I've also been doing academic homework today, because FUCKIN' A THAT'S RIGHT, I'M IN GRAD SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!! And I'm eating a lunch that I really like:

Here's a photo of my bag of rice (a gift from a relative who was cleaning bulk stuff from her pantry), and a photo of the empty butter chicken sauce jar, and a photo of the ripped up container that the tofu cubes came in. (THEY WERE ALREADY CUBED, RIGHT THERE IN THE PACKAGE!!!!!!!)

(Eew, that is a messy-looking, discarded package that once held tofu. What kind of jackass would put that in a food blog?!? Ugh. It's like, " only show food- grade food, or don't show anything, man.")

This guy!

Don't worry, it's not cheese, it's squash.

350 F, 40 minutes.

Brown sugar soda

I'm still exploring new ways to augment plain seltzer water, and I've found another one that I like.

Cane sugar soda's all the rage with the kids these days, right? 

But it's hard to bother with adding flavor to ANYTHING, let alone bother to make proper infused simple syrups from scratch, when I'm tiiiiiiiiiiired. It's also hard to justify BUYING flavored syrups when I don't want to spend $5. Especially when I really DON'T want to have to leave the couch to go to the store. I'm not home sick today because I'm in great health, okay?!? Okay?!? Okay. 

... Okay.

So instead of spending time and effort on much of anything, I decided to just try using  brown sugar instead, to make myself an Italian cream soda.

And I liked it! Brown sugar is delicious.

Here's what I did:

Seltzer water.

Brown sugar.

Maybe a little half & half.

Whipped cream, I guess.

Now, the sugar and water's enough right there. You can just stop and it will be fine.

But the half & half helps give that Italian Cream Soda taste, and gives it an extra boost against heartburn. Useful, right? And I figured that if I was going there already, I might as well top it with whipped cream. I probably shouldn't have, because it overpowered the light molasses flavor in the sugar. But it's what I did.

And I will do it again.

WATER YOUR CATS

Seattle had a little heat wave this summer. It reached temperatures as high as "maybe a little cold for summertime in Maryland." Like 78-85F. 

But as a region where most people (including me) don't own an air conditioner, this was still pretty freakishly hot. Hot enough that I had to actually start thinking about hydration.

My two cats, like many cats, just aren't very "into" water. They're still pretty healthy in spite of this. They eat wet canned food twice a day, so they do get at least a little moisture regularly, and they do have fresh water available in case they actually want it.

But I worry anyway.

So I decided to start mixing extra water in with their meals, so that the quantity of water is maybe about equal in volume with the actual food. This mix gets stirred up before serving enough that the cats have no choice but to treat it like stew, and down the water with the food. (My husband has backed this play, and also adds water to their food when he feeds them.) They lick their dishes clean every time, and in the process they end up drinking considerably more water than they used to.

The upside is that they've looked significantly more spry and comfortable than they did during Seattle's last heat wave.

The downside is that now they both drool a little when they're happy. 

I'd worry that maybe we've overwatered them, but they otherwise seem to be in much better condition than they did before we started this. Still. If I'd known that they'd blossom into droolers, once they became hydrated enough to spare the moisture...

Cornbread-Roasted (Almost Chicken-Fried?) Tofu

This was the best idea ever. I know I say that a lot, but I really mean it this time. This was the Best. Idea. Ever.

I was roasting a sweet potato, obviously (like people do), and I was like, "Hey, you know what? I could roast more than one thing! This is a pretty big oven!"

So I got out a little baking dish, made a runny paste of canola oil and white flour in the bottom (about 1/5" deep), arranged slices of extra firm tofu in it, sprinkled cornbread and Penzey's Ozark Seasoning (dude) on top, and just threw it on another rack while the sweet potato did its thing. Probably at 425F for an hour.

I took the tofu out when it was as browned an awesome as it is in the photo, and after it had cooled enough to eat, I ate it faster than I could actually photograph it. But there's still enough left in the picture that you should "get the picture."

I could stand to swap out cheese for something that's reminiscent of cheese, at least some of the time, to help slow down my consumption of animal fats a little. Cholesterol, whaaat? (Ugh.) But I still require oily, squishy foods that are high in protein. This one raises the stakes by being quasi-breaded in cornmeal, and by being as oily as a roux that substituted liquid for extra oil. Oh, heaven.

Round 1: Infused Whiskey

My fa-vo-rite baaaaars do it. (Ahem, The Shakedown and Knee High Stocking Company.) Beeeeeees do it. Even educated fleeeeeeas do it! Let's do it! Let's put stuff in whiskey!

PAX Prime is just around the corner, and for those of us in Seattle within the video game community, that means that it's time to start entertaining the notion of entertaining some house guests, in fancier-than-usual style. Puttin' on the Ritz, and all that jazz.

So.

I am attempting to infuse whiskey with non-whiskey flavors, to see what will happen. Because it's soooooooooo fashionable.

Tonight's contenders INCLUDE!

Pickling spice
I'm actively rooting for this one. It smells better than it sounds.

Cloves
Already proven popular by pros, but I'm not overly confident. I may still steep it for too long, or select the wrong clove-to-booze ratio.

Penzeys Dried Orange Peel
Effin' SMART! I have no doubts or worries about this decision, apart from the nonspecific dread that I've learned to pair with this kind of blind optimism. But otherwise? Chipper.

Peet's Irish Breakfast Tea
All the bars anymore already have an Earl Grey infused whiskey, so going for another strong black tea seems like a solid choice. However, I am worried about steeping time here, because I prefer to steep black teas in water for about 3.5 minutes. If I want especially strong tea, I normally add more leaves instead of adding more steeping time, because an overlong steep creates a bitterness that I don't much like. This tea is just sitting in the fridge, in some whiskey overnight. I have my concerns.

Herbes de Provence
I... ah... erm... impulsivity is a perfectly normal symptom of ADHD, and curiosity just HAPPENS to be a necessary component of any fine scientific mind. Which is to say that I'm painfully curious about this one, and I know that I'll still drink it later, even if it sucks. And it very likely will suck. And that's okay.

And there you have it! Everything gets to steep overnight in the fridge, and I'll see what happens in the morning.

I regret not having any vanilla beans to work with, but I've added them to the shopping list.

And not to get further off-topic, but look what else I found when searching YouTube for clips from All That Jazz. That's something else, isn't it? Look at them go!

10 Food Priorities

I am genuinely trying to sort out the variables that I prioritize, when deciding what to eat. So far, the list is as follows:

1. Food must be comfortable to eat.

I'm not a fan of heartburn, unpleasant flavors, unpleasant temperatures, unpleasant textures, unpleasant associations, or of foods that are too spicy, too bland, too salty. (I assure you, "too salty" actually can happen, as hard as it might be to believe.) Food must be sufficiently delicious, or I fail to see the point.

I'm sure that you feel the same way.

2. Food must be within my budget.

This is intuitive. I can't eat what I can't obtain.

3. Food must either contain good nutrition, or be an act of defiance against societal rules.

Sometimes, having a breakfast of potato chips, candy, and beer is a completely necessary act of feminism. We can't let The Establishment win, man. Ma'am. Man. Ma'am. Man Man. Ma'am? Ma'am.

However, operating a human body is like operating any piece of complicated machinery. If they're not maintained well, they will not run well.

I will therefore feel run down, irritable, excessively hungry, and nonspecifically "off" if I get dehydrated and/or go for more than a few days without eating serious quantities of nutrient-relevant things. Raw or mildly cooked produce, served with little to no accompaniment is a big deal here, guys.

Eating too little is absolutely horrible. Don't be that guy. Talk to your doctor about it. If you can't afford food, contact your local food banks, poverty assistance programs, gleaners, and charities. Google "food stamps." The body might not need much fuel to run, but it still needs something.

Eating too much will put calories into bodily storage in a way that can slow down the metabolism, make one's joints hurt more, likely mess with hormone production, and prompt bullying from horrible dickweeds. While cultivating and maintaining obesity as a way to stick it to the man is totally fucking kickass, I can't hate people for needing a more comfortable body to ride around in. Everybody's got to sort this one out, individually. I'm more comfortable since I shrunk my way out of obesity, but I try not to be a dick about it or chalk my decision up to bully-related cowardice.

4. Food must be easy to prepare and easy to clean up after, with exceptions made for special occasions.

I have a job and I have a lot of video games, but I DON'T have a dishwasher or much patience.

I also have a metabolism that requires only about 60% of the calories that my husband's metabolism requires, AND I have a sweet tooth, so I tend to snack on candy.

So when cooking meals for myself, an easy, lazy minimalism suits me very well.

5. Food must be as ethically-created as budget will allow.

This one's pretty straightforward.

Anybody who's taken a college class in an animal-model research lab (at least in the US) is familiar with how strict regulations are when it comes to animal safety and health in an academic research setting. I WISH that food production regulations were so kind and so carefully controlled, but even grain harvest has something of an ugly, gory side to it.

Hell. Even the HUMANS involved in food production aren't guaranteed all of the positive rights that lab rats are granted, like the right to quality medical care whenever ill or injured, the right to temperature-controlled and safe housing, or guaranteed access to nutrient-rich, balanced meals.

And while I'm soapboxing, I also want to eat food that wastes as little fuel energy as possible in its production and distribution. Food created nearby takes less gasoline to get into my stomach, and that's a good thing. Food that wasn't processed in a factory, wasn't processed in a factory. We gotta go hippie if we want to lower our consumption of foreign oil, and even people who hate hearing about environmental pollution are probably not literally, if they're honest, actually in favor of polluting unnecessarily.

Still.

I am never, ever, ever, ever a perfectionist. Ever. Except for when I'm doing math. But when doing whatever else? Standards must be relaxed. Perfectionism can breed interpersonal cruelty, and I loathe that.

So while I firmly believe in the importance of voting with one's dollar for minimally processed (or unprocessed) local foods that take animal safety, workers' rights, and ecological concerns into account, my belief system is typically compromised by the actual contents of my wallet. But my husband's planning a vegetable garden in our yard, even though we live in a city, and I'm helping him work towards that goal. So THERE.

6. Food must be purchased in quantities small enough to consume before it expires.

Buying quickly-spoiled produce in bulk, when I'm too busy or lazy to process it for long-term storage via drying, canning, freezing, or whatever, is a terrible idea. It took me a while to unlearn this bad habit, but I'm alright now.

7. Food must be... um... did I already say that it should be comfortable to eat? Shit. That was item #1.

Still. As long as eggs and dairy hold their spell over me, I'll never go vegan. I can go "bumming eggs off of friends who own happy, healthy chickens," but that's as good as I'm getting. And I will fight you in the face if you try to make me give up whipped cream. I just feel better when I eat certain foods, and dairy products really do suit my body well.

8. Eight! Eight! I forget what eight is for.

I like that song.

9. Food should be fun.

I thought of another one! I wonder if I can actually make this a ten-item list?

Anyway.

Pretty much every "rule" on this list can be disregarded, when there's curiosity or playfulness to satisfy. Bam! Just like that. Cultural values.

10. Make your own food, whenever reasonably possible. Or be gracious about it when eating food made by other people.

Get yourself some knives. Get yourself some spoons. Get yourself some ingredients, and pans, and bowls, and supplies, just supplies.

Everybody should know how to cook, just like everybody should know basic first aid. So get to it!

And if somebody else cooked, help clean up, volunteer to make the next meal, tip well, or do whatever gratefully collaborative act is most appropriate for the occasion. Again, don't be a dick about it.

And that's it! I came up with a 10-item list!

To celebrate, I'm linking to the IMDB page for the Beastie Boys' music video for Sabotage..

Pizza Dough: Feed a Family for, like, $0.25

This is one of my crucial go-to recipes. I make pizza dough and use as pretty much whatever flatbread whatever.

It's easy to do, it's filling, it costs almost $0 to make, the basic ingredients are all pretty shelf-stable pantry items, and it's damned tasty. It is therefore ABSOLUTELY the right thing to make tonight, after spending our whole grocery budget on beer 1 1/2 weeks ago.

Sure, it's not a particularly HEALTHY food. It will wreak an ugly and in no way uncertain havoc on anybody who has issues with wheat, gluten, or blood sugar stability. And I have no useful knowledge to share for people who want to adapt this recipe into something medically advisable. Except "make zucchini latkes or something."

But it's cheap. God help me, it's cheap. And it's very, very tasty.

Because my professors in school taught me to cite my sources, I feel obligated to mention that my recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Because most things I do can be traced back to that book in one way or another.

To do what I do, you will need:

A bowl big enough to mix the dough in.
Plastic wrap.
Probably a stirring-style spoon, like a wooden spoon or a plastic imitation of a wooden spoon. Makes things easier.
A "cup" sized measuring cup.
A teaspoon. (Measuring device.)
A tablespoon. (Measuring device.)
Some kinda thing to roll dough out with, like a rolling pin or a thoroughly cleaned and sterilized, chilled beer bottle.
A CLEAN surface to knead and roll out the dough on.
Access to clean water, at least 1 cup, plus more for hand washing.
3 cups white flour, minimum.
1 teaspoon of fast yeast.
2 teaspoons of salt.
2 tablespoons of olive oil, or whatever. (Olive oil is the only fat I've used in this dough so far.)
Additional fats, your choice, to make them greasy when cooking.
Additional stuff, your choice.

Start by locating your bowl. Place it on a counter, or another stable surface.

Put two cups of flour into the bowl, with the salt and yeast. Stir it, using the stirring spoon, or whatever else you are using in place of a spoon. Add one cup of water to the bowl of dry ingredients, and stir until everything's, like, sticky dough. Then, stir in the last cup of flour pretty slowly, and once kneading it by hand starts to seem easier than stirring, then clean your hands thoroughly and just dive in there.

It will become dough, real dough. If it's too sticky, add more flour. If it's too dry, add more flour. Whatever.

After it's sufficiently a wad of dough, cover the bowl--dough inside--and ignore it for 1-2 hours. I'll sometimes go a little over 2 hours, but it's important to keep an eye out. If it stays at room temperature for too long, it's going to get GROSS. And unfit for human consumption. (The cookbook says 1-2hrs room temp, or 6-8hrs in the fridge.)

Once the dough is bigger--"doubled in size?"--rip some chunks off of it, put those chunks, one at a time, on a sterile food prep surface that's powdery with flour, and roll 'em out flat. Once you've made as many flat dough things as you want, put 'em somewhere flat and ignore 'me for 20 minutes.

When the time's up, freeze them or cook them somehow:

LIKE: In the oven, on a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper if you hate making an effort when washing up), with oil and toppings on top and oil below. Cook at 500 F for somewhere like 4 to 12 minutes, checking often for burning.

LIKE: On a grill. However that works.

LIKE: In a freezer, wrapped up to prevent freezer burn. Thaw and cook before eating. (No idea if it should be thawed to room temperature before cooking or not. That one's on you to look up.)

And that's it!

Last night, I made two types, both in the oven.

One savory batch, with tomato slices, fresh rosemary bits, feta cheese, lumpy salt (some sea salt something), fresh-cracked pepper, and probably other stuff. I SHOULD have sautéed some garlic and sliced shallots and added them, but I was tired and did nothing that required the stove.

I also made a sweet batch with turbinado sugar, pumpkin pie spice mix, more of those largeish salt crystals, and cranberries disguised as blueberries.

The feta cheese toasted better than the cranberries did, but the tomatoes bested all other toppings and should have been used more liberally. But everything was tasty and worth the effort needed to make, and then eat.

Just do yourself a favor and eat it warm, fresh from the oven. It's GOOD the next day, but not great.

No, seriously. Pork rinds.

So my sister was all, "Just trust me dude, pork rinds are like if potato chips were really puffy and made out of bacon."

And she was right.

Ingredients: fried pork rinds, salt.

They taste more like caramelized fat than they do like smoked meat--likely because they ARE caramelized pork fat?--so pork rinds most closely resemble the white stripes in bacon than they taste like the pink stripes.

The texture is kinda weird. Reminiscent of those packing peanuts that I ate a few months ago. But these pork rinds are salty, and I feel like I need salt today.

Plus the calorie content seeeeeeems lower than that of traditional chips, so I get to feel superior to... myself... during potato chip eating sessions. Eating 0.5 ounces of pork rinds (or about 2/15ths of a bag) carries only 80 calories. Eating the whole bag could be daunting because these things really, really taste like greasy, salted, caramelized pork fat. But the whole bag only contains about 600 calories, so it's still lighter fare than a lot of junk food is.

Pork rinds!

Lime Oatmeal: The Saga of an Empty Kitchen

Right, so you already know from before that I ran out of bread this week, and instead of buying more bread, I made a frittata. Today, I continued to improvise with whatever I have on hand, and ended up making fresh lime oatmeal. And I'll tell you why.

If you're anything like me, then you ALSO blew pretty much the entire grocery budget on beer last Sunday. An understandable choice, given that it's July, and Seattle is a beer playground full of beers for evbeeryone.

And if you're like me, then you started to panic about malnutrition just a couple of days AFTER that. Especially once your husband brought the whole box of raisins to work with him, along with half of the raw oatmeal. Hey! raisins are fruit! And, while panicked about malnutrition, you decided that the only way to win at life was to eat the only fresh fruit left in the house--limes.

(Of course, if you're EXACTLY me, then you're revisiting the great existential angst known as "I could make the best Stockholm Syndrome joke, if I was a background character in Battlestar Galactica, except that there IS no Stockholm to name that disorder after." And it breaks my sketchy heart.)

Before work today, I cut a deep spiral into a clean, washed lime, and I squished that bastard over my oatmeal, hardcore. I put the remaining fruit spiral in my water glass and brought it to work with me, because I'M NOT GETTING SCURVY ON YOUR WATCH, YOU SMELLY BASTARDS!!!!!!!

Um.

The oatmeal itself I made using old-fashioned oats, by pouring water over them, letting them soak for 10 minutes, and then microwaving them for 2 minutes, for heat. I didn't make this part up, I swear. It's totally a thing to do.

Then I added the lime--so much lime, like big chunks of it--and some salt (hot damn, never let oatmeal go unsalted), some butter, and some milk, and a lot of honey.

While I'd braced myself for a horrible experience, it was actually refreshing, delicious, and even tasted seasonally appropriate.

Even though my first go of doing this was just a cynical act of being too lazy to get blueberries out of the freezer, yet too afraid of malnutrition to just season my oatmeal with a Snickers(TM) bar, I will probably do this a few more times this week. At least until we run out of limes, right?!?!? Then, it's beer-flavored oatmeal until payday.

Here's a photograph:

Frittata? Frit-TA-DAH!!!

Who stayed up until almost 2 am making a frittata, to be easy-to-eat-on-the-go breakfast tomorrow?!? Because I ran out of bread and so couldn't just make pb&j?!?

ME!!!!!! ALL ME!!!!!!! ALL FOR ME!!!!!

(... All for me and my husband, I mean.)

As usual, I followed Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything.

I'll describe the recipe well enough, but I still want to encourage everybody to actually buy the book, and to buy other books. Buy this book too. You'll thank me later.

Anyway!

So, get an ovenproof skillet. If you know what's good for ya, you'll use a seasoned cast iron skillet. Then get that skillet warmed over medium heat, and brown a little butter in there. Beat some eggs up, and cheese. I added about 1/4 cup of sliced red onion (I used scallions, I did) fresh, chopped garden herbs, and about 3/4 cup of feta cheese to five eggs. Mix'em, put'em in the skillet, cook'em until the bottom's firm, then bake 'em in the 350F oven--WITHOUT FLIPPING IT--right still in the skillet.

Aww yeah.

Now, if you're me from the past, traveling to the future to read this blog before going back to your original time to make the frittata, please make no changes, because we cannot afford a paradox. However, if there IS some paradox work-around, then I can safely advise you/me to go a little easier on the fresh cracked pepper, and back off a little bit on the feta. The 1/2 cup the recipe called for was probably a little bit closer to what I/we should have done/will do/could/will/can/won't do, in the future. (The future.)

Still, the imperfections aren't bad, the frittata is fucking DELICIOUS, and my whole house smells like awesome food.

Photos:

Guest Photography Model!!! With Stephen Wood.

Sometimes, people get to enjoy friendship. This is one of those times.

So let's take some time for some sometimes!

Here is a beautiful series of photographs, featuring my fwiend Stephen Wood, as he drinks a box of pumpkin pie filling.

He knows what's up. Boxed foods. Boxed foods are up.

Pack a Lunch For Work: Peanut Butter

Yeah, I did.

This is shelf-stable peanut butter, which is kind-of like actual peanut butter.

But it's full of semi-sweet chocolate chips and "white chocolate" chips. I am eating it with a spoon, and I have been nibbling at it all day long. That's breakfast, lunch, something, something, and maybe dinner, depending on whether or not I think I've already eaten dinner.

I packed other foods, but I'll save them for tomorrow, because my blood sugar level feels freakishly stable today and my hunger is pretty minimal. Like, what? ...Unh, what? ...Unh, what? I... Um... Okay, I think I was just poltergeisted by the Beastie Boys, but I don't remember... That song... It was probably "Long Burn the Fire?" I'm not going to actually check before posting this, though.


So, there you go.

Lemon Bars Replenish the Electrolytes Lost While Making Lemon Bars

Let's take a moment to really let this title sink in. To bask in the goodness and truthiness* of its claim:

Lemon Bars Replenish the Electrolytes Lost While Making Lemon Bars

Now, I know what you're thinking. "What the Hell is an electrolyte, and what does it have to do with me?!?" Well, here jackass, get some NIH science in you.

Can I guarantee that these lemon bars have electrolytes in them? Uh, yeah, probably, I think. I mean, I figure it's got baking soda, which is supposed to count. It's got, like, lemon juice. And it has two of the essential sugars--granulated AND powdered. It even has eggs, and those probably do something cool. Right? I mean, they're eggs. Nature's... Nature's Powerbar or nature's ovum or something. Dinosaurs and weasels eat them. Eggs are fucking good for you.

I made lemon bars today because it's summer and it's hot out and as an exercise buff I needed the electrolytes because I walked about a whopping 2 1/2 miles at a nice, leisurely pace today. I know, right?!? All the way to AND FROM the bus stop.

The recipe I used is a good one, too. It's the "Gabrielle's Lemon Squares" recipe from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, which I'm very glad to have in my kitchen.

In fact, I'm such a fan of pressuring people into buying books that I'm not going to provide the recipe in this post. Go to a bookstore and buy yourself the book. There's an app, but don't buy that until you've bought at least two copies of the actual book, in hard copy. Buy a few extra books while you're at it. I'm pretty sure that books are full of electrolytes. I mean, all that ink has to do SOMETHING if you chew it into a bolus and hold it under your tongue like a sublingual medication. Not that I endorse eating books. Unless you buy a second or third copy to read, in which case just knock yourself out, you fuckin' freak. Really. Just buy from a little local book shop if you can. One of the good ones. Vote with those fucking dollars.

Right.

Here's a picture of the lemon bars that I made about an hour ago. A friend once complimented me on how bold it is to take unflattering photos of food for this blog, and I've opted to believe that this really WAS a compliment. So please, enjoy the totally authentic shadow of my phone, as I took this phone photo of the dish of lemon bars. Aww yeah.

*The word "truthiness" was used here in homage to Stephen Colbert.

Pears Are Better Than Apples

That's right. I'm using phrasing which I vowed to the gods of impartial statistics that I would never use.

To state that something is better than something else, without providing some kind--any kind--of testable, measurable variables with which to quantify and explain the statement creates a terrible black hole in my head where I'd want the science to be. I once had a TERRIBLE fight with an AMAZING friend, over the semantics of the phrase "better than." Because I am an asshat. I have a bizarre little blood vendetta that links me, to the death, with the undefined phrase "better than."

Plenty of people have the cognitive sophistication to infer from context exactly which variables are being weighed when "better than" is being proclaimed. But I can't guarantee that I have that ability, at least not in every situation. And I certainly can't guarantee that I'm able to imply the specifics in my own speech, so effectively that other folks will be able to correctly infer what "better than" means to me, in whichever sentence the phrase is used in. It's troubling for me, at best.

Therefore!

I am right here, right now, making my stand. A fruit stand.

Here is WHY I feel entitled to claim that pears are better than apples, until such a time as I get sick of pears and decide that I like apples better. Or until I decide that they're both equally good. Or whatever.

1. I'm not sick of pears. My household has gone through a LOT of apples this winter, but we've only recently started to buy pears. Pears are novel right now, and I like that, right now.

2. Pears are easier to eat. I have eaten two pears today, and both took nearly zero effort to consume. Because they were appropriately ripe, I really just had to kind of hold them in front of my face, and wait for them to naturally absorb. Yeah, I ate them, but it took virtually no effort at all.

Apples, on the other hand... Don't get me started!!! Apples require actual biting. In fact, I have to pay attention to where I bite an apple, so that I'm left with other, conveniently-placed spots to bite next. I have to remember that I have teeth and gums. I may have to floss. And if I want to forego the strategic steps of selecting bites and just chop it into wedges... Well... That requires finding a knife and it requires using that knife, and that requires that I stay awake long enough to complete the task. Now, I'm open to being awake at work, no question. But on my own time?!? Schyeah RIGHT!!!!!

3. Pears are soft, cooling, and their automatically purée-like consistency is great for soothing a hot, sore throat.

Now, the Pacific Northwest is famous for lots of things. We have Sasquatch, scary trees, whales, guitarists, coffee, and people with fluffy beards. But most importantly, we have head colds. Everybody, every day of every year, has a head cold out here. Or, if we're "between head colds," we still have a sore throat, some sinus congestion, and probably stinging eyes and fatigue. Always. ALWAYS.

Always.

This is why it's important to have beverages! The Pacific Northwest is a beverage paradise. We're pro-beverage, out here. We have the coffee, we have the tea, we have the fancy-fancy local beer, we have the fancy-fancy local juices.

Pears are as close to a beverage as any non-citrus, non-melon fruit I've tried so far. They kick apples' ASS in this arena.

I mean, you can bake apples until they're soft, but they're traditionally served warm. You can make applesauce as a way to kind of engineer an artificial pear, but it's a lot of work to do, and also a lot of work to eat, because applesauce requires a greater familiarity with which direction gravity is pointing, at any given moment. And you can make apple juice, but drinking it requires even MORE gravity-awareness than applesauce does. Nice TRY, apple juice. (Fuck, I could really go for a glass of apple juice, now. That sounds delicious.)

Anyway.

Pears are like a glass of juice that you can hold sideways or upside-down, without the risk of spilling. It's like they transport you to a special zero-gravity dining room, but without the intense nausea associated with trying to eat in zero-g.

Sure, some apples are juicy, cooling, and sweet. Some are every bit as delicious as a ripe pear, and some are (rarely) legitimately MORE delicious than some pears are. But they require more actual EATING to eat, and that's just not good enough for me today.

4. Pears rhyme with bears. Yes, I'm afraid of bears. But the word sounds nice.

SO, IN CONCLUSION...

Pears require less effort to eat, they cool my throat, they have the right relationship with gravity, and I think they're great because I haven't had many of them, lately.

PEARS RULE!!!

Fashion Eggs!

Following one of the GRANDEST "What was I thinking?!?" moments, I present to you...

FASHION EGGS

No explanation is being provided.

Are Pills Food? Because This Pillbox is TASTY!!!

Even though vitamins are FULL of vitamins, it might be a little bit of a stretch to review a pillbox in a food blog. But this blog is flippant, I am flippant, and goddammit if I don't eat my medicinals like a health fiend. Because that's what adults do.

So!

If you're like me, then you love tidy little containers, and you hate trying to remember what you just did.

Fear not! This sweet little number has different compartments for the days of the week, and one extra compartment for whatever. Because it is a pill box! So, when using it, you just need to remember what day of the week it is, and once you have that sorted out, you can tell whether or not you have already eaten the contents of today's compartment. It's like an advent calendar, except... Well... Except for so many things, technically speaking, if we're really going to go there. Unless you stuff it with chocolate? But anyway.

This pill box is ALSO the customized product of an unspeakably cool Etsy shop, stellarcustomimages. I cannot endorse this shop enough:

1. I love supporting Etsy shops!!! And the proprietor/artisan's customer service was ultra-friendly, and impressively fast. I wish that every Etsy shop could be so pleasantly and professionally run.

2. I love practical items that don't break when I tote them around clumsily. I'm on my second pair of earbuds this season, and looking for a third, but this pillbox is still reliable and a pleasure to look at. Really, if I haven't broken it by now, then it has earned its place among the legends. (The original Gameboy being another legend of "stuff I didn't break." This thing is, like, GAMEBOY sturdy.)

3. The graphic itself is really ON THERE. I don't think that I could remove it if I wanted to. Not that I've intended to try, but things happen, and even some curious prodding did no damage. The graphic is also well-placed, and shows no signs of the asymmetry and "quirkily homemade" flaws that are often present in one-artist productions. This is a genuinely nicer product than the fancypants pillboxes that I see in pharmacies.

4. The picture on the lid is totally up to the customer to decide.

No, really. Really. No, really. Really! It really is. It really, really is. Just let that soak in. That's freedom, baby. The flavor of freedom. Tastes unfamiliar, doesn't it? Well, just take it slow, ease into it, so that you don't get a brain freeze. It's almost too much freedom, but if you keep a cautious mind and a bold heart, you'll be well on your way toward making the right decision.

For mine, I chose a gorgeously ethereal, cloudy, blue phone photograph that I took several months ago.

At the time of its creation, I was trying to take a photograph of my cat Leonard, when my phone's camera flash started to go off. Thinking only of the convenience of my darling little animal, I tucked the camera into my right armpit, to muffle the flash of light. But when I retrieved it, something magical had happened! My navy blue sweater and the camera flash had inadvertently birthed a lovely series of increasingly pale blue circles. (Sweaters are RAD, eh?)

After having a very, very serious laugh about this, I decided to use the image in a number of aesthetically-inclined settings. The picture really turned out inappropriately attractive, given its origins.

So, when the opportunity to make it the "cover" of a go-to pillbox presented itself, I simply couldn't resist.

This pillbox is one of my all-time favorite objects, and I dare you to get one of your own, with your own favorite picture on it.

Like, I extra, extra dare you, really.

...

...

Because I love this thing!!!!!!!!

Melting Cheddar Cheese on Baby Spinach

"I get it."

"I get it!"

"No, really, Lindsay. I get it."

"All you eat are found art objects, desserts, green vegetables to prevent total annihilation, and melted cheddar cheese. A typical day consists of a breakfast of candy and Ritalin, green beans and coffee for lunch, and a hot bowl of melted cheese and Oreos for supper. God, just stop... JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!!! Please! There are CHILDREN on the internet, for cryin' out loud!"

"Stop making me look at your food! Just stop it! Please, please, PLEASE knock it off."

"I just... I... I give up. Let's just get this one over with."

Depicted in the photo below is tonight's main course for dinner:

A bowl of baby spinach, tossed with homemade raspberry vinegar from a wonderful aunt on my husband's side of the family, with Tillamook mild cheddar cheese melted on top to serve as the oil, salt, and protein of the dish.

It was lovely. This is the second night in a row that I've had this for dinner. I plan to eat the whole Costco tub of baby spinach before it wilts, because I have an antagonistic relationship with our compost bin, and don't want to give it any handouts. It is lazy and full of discarded things.

Why Always Eat the Food? Putting Cooking Oil In Your Hair & Almond Extract on Your Person

Now, I'm a big fan of eating food. Like, hands-down, in favor of it.

But sometimes, it can be useful to use traditionally food items in non-food ways! Like using eggs in place of snowballs, when there isn't any snow. Or mixing baking soda and lemon juice, and then putting the foaming mass of organic drain cleaner on my face. Because I did.

Today, I did two similar things, with mixed results:

#1. I put on almond extract like perfume

This should be a great idea, right? I get to smell like some non-human stuff, but I don't have to make anybody sneeze or complain. Seriously, if you even CLAIM that something in the world smells better than almond extract, then I will fight you. Or love you, if you introduce me to some game-changing new smell. I'm not really sure. (For example, my sister claims that there is a beautiful type of centipede that smells just like almond extract. So, if you have one, and we are close friends, please invite me over, so that I can smell it.)

So!

I dabbed a bit of almond extract behind my ears and on my wrists today, in the standard perfume ritual, and it smelled great. In fact, the smell was perfect. It was a perfect smell.

Maybe five seconds later, the smell vanished completely.

Sure, I've heard it said that a truly compatible perfume will mix with the wearer's own scent so subtly that it no longer becomes overtly noticeable. And I HOPE that this is the case. I would love to learn that I was simply made to wear almond extract. But my instincts tell me that it probably just evaporated into nothing.

#2. I mashed canola oil into the non-scalp part of my hair, knotting it up in a bun, and just letting it soak up the oil like a baseball mitt.

Luckily for me, I already KNOW that this one works, because I've done it before.

As a ginger, I have a handful of oddly specific vanity "issues."

One is that my eyebrows and eyelashes are as invisible as Tilda Swinton's, so if I want them to show up on my Cyndi-Lauper-round-not-Ziggie-Stardust-gaunt face, I'd better do my best to remember art school. Gotta draw within the lines, that kind of thing.

Another "issue" is that I don't get along with direct sunlight. I burn fast, and I hate the look of it. Did you know that Bram Stoker was a ginger? A ginger from Dublin, even! Are you surprised? Me neither. (I am not from Dublin, but when I was there I found the weather comparable to Seattle's, and I felt pretty comfortable.)

And ANOTHER thing is my hair.

Without the shiny mutant hair, I'd just have the coloring of a super-pale, eyeless fish from a sunless cave. But WITH the hair, complete strangers have an excuse to walk up to me and ask me if I use hair dye. Thanks for asking, strangers! I also have one more excuse to secretly pretend to be the Dark Phoenix from the 1970s X-Men comic books. And that's a good thing. ("Oh, X-Men, I must kick your asses severely, for no real reason, because I discovered some bad habits at the discotheque where we picked up The Dazzler last week. Also, I ate a solar system for the kicks.")

Sure, I might pretend to take my hair for granted. I've let it grow out in such a way that, when brushed fluffy and vigorously nodded to heavy metal music (we call this form of dance "headbanging") the appearance is oddly masculine, in an old-timely Metallica way. I can style it like Drew Barrymore's hair in that Charlie's Angels movie, but that requires art supplies and forethought, so I tend to just round it up to "pre-haircut James Hatfield with a sassy ponytail." It works out well enough.

But nonetheless, I secretly take intensely dedicated care of my hair, like it's a private little victory garden to tend in times of strife. It... Well, to quote some not-quite-metal, we could say that my hair reminds me of a warm, safe place, where as a child I'd hi-de-yide, and pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by. In fact, in middle school and early high school, I DID hide in my hair. But as a child, I hid in the fur of a collie that looked just like Lassie. The experience was roughly the same.

So!

Even as I type this, the non-scalp parts of my hair are carefully organized into a "super-cool," top-of-the-head ponytail, and that ponytail is THOROUGHLY saturated in canola oil. I seriously just mashed about 1/3rd of a cup of cooking oil in there, until it was ridiculously oily. Today was a sick day spent hanging around the house, so I've had the opportunity to just leave my hair like this for hours.

Because I've done this before, I know that once I've showered my hair into something clean, the previously dry ends of my hair will be much, much softer, and less frizzy. I've tried a wide assortment of different hair moisturizing masks, and cooking oil actually produces the best results. Yay for my wallet!!!

I know that many people have already done cooking oil hair masks for ages and ages, so while I can proclaim awesomeness, I can't claim discovery.

It's a trick that I'd originally picked up when reading about how to maintain gorgeous, curly, natural, African-style hair. (A girl can dream, eh? The grass being greener on the other side, and so on. I like to read about what I don't have.) The results in the how-to articles were always so lush-sounding that I wanted to try it on my own hair, just to see. And while my hair is a different texture, I can report that the results are still amazing. Huzzah!

Typically, I read about this being done with olive oil, but I use standard cooking oil instead, for a couple of reasons. One is that I don't want to smell like olive oil. I want to smell like almond extract!!! The other reason is that olive oil is CONSIDERABLY more expensive, and the results that I get with cheapo cooking oil are definitely good enough for me.

And that concludes today's report on using food in non-food ways! I hope you had fun, because I sure did.

See you later, everyone! Bye bye! Good night! Have a nice weekend! So long! Until we meet again! Take care, now! Say hello to your mother for me! Bon voyage! Godspeed! Let's do this again sometime! Well, look at the time. It sure is getting late. But drive safely, okay! Don't forget that you can always just call a taxi, and then get a ride back to your car in the morning. Alright, see you around, pardner! Goodbye!

What, real food?!? Attractively plated, real food?!?

I'll bet you didn't think that this Duchamp(ion) had it in her, did you? Actual, edible, proper food. Not inedible craft supplies, not candy, not even "cheese on top of whatever." But I got the stuff, cats. The stuffed cats. Wait, no. No cats were involved.

But I did a good job!

Tonight, I roasted chicken parts in olive oil, generously coated in Penzeys' Ozark seasoning.

I also boiled fresh kale and fresh beet greens in water seasoned with Old Bay seasoning, a little more of the Ozark seasoning, a bit of Johnny's Salt, some fresh salsa, some Cholula hot sauce, some vegetable oil, and some apple cider vinegar. Instead of browning mild Italian sausage on the bottom of the pan before adding the water, I tried to get a meaty, smoky effect in a vegetarian way, by using liquid smoke. The greens still came out nicely, but I should have used a bit less of the liquid smoke, because it overpowered some of the other seasonings. Live and learn, eh? Still, my greens were, as usual, a feather in my cap. A damp, green feather.

I also boiled whole, fresh beets until sweet and tender, to be peeled before eating at the diner's discretion.

And dessert? Dessert's easy. Like assembling a five-part children's puzzle.

Two wafer "cigars," three rounded, truffle-sized scoops of vanilla bean gelato separated from the rest of the dish by a small moat of slivered almonds. Across the almonds were chocolate chips to the right (a good kind with a short ingredient list), and frozen blueberries to the left. The left side of each dish, from the berries to the gelato, was drizzled with stripes of Torani caramel sauce. Whipped cream was also at the ready, to be applied as a condiment by each individual diner, as the dish is consumed.

But more than that, more than the quality, more than the range of temperatures and textures--berries colder than gelato, gelato colder than chocolate chips, chocolate chips colder than almonds, almonds colder than caramel, with a much more easily predicted "soft to crunchy" texture spectrum--more than the range of sweet to savory, even... was the plating.

I may be something of a sideshow geek when I'm showing off, but I'm still the daughter of a rowdy, retired chef, and even my plating can "bring it." At least, I, uh, I mean, that's not my BEST dessert plating EVER, and the photo's blurry and poorly lit, and the caramel didn't look like clean stripes when I took the picture, but, uh, uh, uh, it's still alright. And in PERSON, it looked awesome.

(I only paused to photograph dessert, but you can probably imagine what the rest of it looked like.)

ALSO too cowardly to buy THIS

Right?!?

The experimental marketing crossover is so dada that I'm actually a little pissed at my own penny-pinching and cowardice, because my curiosity about this commercial product is ALMOST unbearable. But, like the title of this piece broadcasts, I was too chicken to buy it during today's grocery run.

Cocoa Puffs Muffin Mix, brought to you by Betty Crocker.

I... Uh...

If memory serves, Cocoa Puffs cut the roof of my mouth. But normally I'll eat anything doused in sugar.

So...

Jury's still out. But I haven't had the will, strength, or personal power needed to leap into this particular experiment. Not yet.

Oh, and the blurriness? That's a scratch on the phone camera, not a cool filter effect. So we're clear about that.

"Grilled cheese?" More like Grilled! Cheese!

I can't EVEN articulately express how game-changing this discovery was. In one of her recent visits, my sister showed me that cheddar cheese--all by itself--can get toasted in a skillet without sticking, and that it turns into these amazing, crispy sheets that look like potato chips. It is absolutely the right choice for a number of occasions, and if you're able to do it (no lactose issues, no veganism, etc.), then you HAVE to do it.

Now, I consider cheese to be a legitimate food.

Right now I'm having a light dinner of apples and cheese, in which cheese--again, ALL BY ITSELF--is the main source of protein and fat. Right?!? Awesome!

Now, I like different cheeses at different temperatures and textures, but typically I like cheese to be served warm. Warm enough for the fats to liquefy.

Not only do I love the illusion of increased richness created by altering the texture, but I also love that heated cheese stops having what's typically one single texture (often like modeling clay), and splits into two or three textures (gooey, oil, and sometimes crisped).

Sure, some cheeses have multiple textures even when chilled, but let's pretend that I'm not including rinds, extra ingredients like dried fruits, or veins of mold in this discussion. Today's food project was specifically a deconstructed grilled cheese sandwich, for the "let's not bother with bread this time" crowd, so I used a Tillamook medium cheddar, and I stand by that choice.

In fact, I love that choice. By liquefying the already-present fats, this cheese ABSOLUTELY felt like a richer food, EVEN THOUGH the actual fat content decreased as the oil ran off. I wouldn't say that the decrease in fat content was enough to be medically significant, but it's absolutely enough to be MATHEMATICALLY interesting.

Alchemy, right?!?

The cheese even tastes noticeably saltier once it's been heated, despite no actual changes in the salt content. I love this alteration, as well, because I like salt. If I'm going to have a bit of the ol' NaCl anyway, then I want to taste it.

Sure, it might get a little tough when it cools, but it's easy enough to avoid that mistake. You just eat it before that happens.

So?

Again, our bottom line here is that heating up cheddar cheese directly in the skillet until it's just toasty enough to flip like a pancake is a brilliant idea.

Here's a photo:
(I put part of the skillet on the burner, and let part of it hover in the air, to help make the cheese heat unevenly. This helped diversify the cheese's textures in a more overt way, and was absolutely the right decision for the situation.)

Easy as easy-pie, easy peasy

What? You think writing a food blog is EASY?!?

You think that FOOD is easy?!?

You think I was just BORN knowing which end of the fork is too pointy to stick in my ear?!?

Yeah, well you know WHAT?!? Maybe it IS easy. Is that what you want me to say? Is it? IS IT?!?

Well FINE. Maybe it is.

As easy as PIE, more like!!!

...

So, I made a blueberry pie this week, because my dad brought a homemade blueberry pie to Easter dinner (this past Sunday), and it was amazing, and when my husband and I got home from dinner we both looked at each other and went, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, we should own a pie for ourselves." So that's ultimately what had to happen, about two days later.

Recipe!

Step 1. Buy two 15oz cans of blueberries. The ones from the photo.

Step 2. Carefully peel the label off of the can. The recipe is on the inside lining of the paper label.

Step 3. Read the recipe BEFORE you open the can. I made that mistake, and had to seal the opened can back up with cling wrap to make an emergency run to the grocery store for corn starch.

Step 4. Have some pie crust ready.

I'm lazy and undiscerning, so I bought pie crust from the grocery store, too. I didn't buy frozen, because I'm not patient like that. I bought dough from the dough part of the store, never looking back... Except for right now... Because I am looking back... Through the lenses of time.

5. Do what the instructions on the inner lining of the paper label from the berry can says. Do WHATEVER IT SAYS!!! FOLLOW THE RULES AND NOBODY GETS HURT!!!

6. ... Congratulations! You have pie!

Remember, the pie that I photographed looks like it has freckles because I sprinkled the whole thing with, like, a LOT of turbinado sugar crystals.

It's delicious, but the photo makes the pie look like it has a rash. Ignore this.

Just appreciate that it's pie.

Even green beans can't save you now!!!

I know that this blog looks a "certain way."

It implies that I hold myself to a strict dietary regimen of biodegradable packing peanuts and astronaut foods, with an occasional gourmet toothpaste for desert.

And it would be right.

(I mean, prove me wrong! Are YOU watching me eat all the time?!? Even my husband doesn't do that.)

However, sometimes it's important to eat a huge quantity of actual food all in one sitting, so that the next two days of all-candy feel justified. Something dark green, because that's where the vitamins live.

MOREOVER, sometimes it's important to try to lose another 15 vanity pounds, to prepare for a summer's worth of nerd conventions. Gotta start now, while it's barely springtime!!!

(Jealous moment of jealousy, being jealous of the women whose bone structure lets them carry whatever BMI they want, without losing their facial symmetry or nice jawline. But I am what I am, and I do what I do with what I can, regarding what I am.)

And so, in the spirit of vitamin deficiency and halfhearted vanity that I bring to you... GREEN BEANS!!!

Everybody knows that frozen vegetables are more nutrient-dense than their room-temperature grocery store counterparts, because they're picked and Han Soloed when they're actually ripe, not when they're underripe and travel-ready.

I also like frozen vegetables because I don't have to remember what day it is. I don't have to remember when I purchased them. I don't EVEN have to remember to wash them! (Is this correct?)

So, here's what I do with frozen green beans:

1. Fill a pot with water, add a generous amount of salt and a good drizzle of the cooking oil of your choice, and get that to boiling on the stovetop. Like you do with pasta!

2. Once it's boiling, throw all the frozen green beans that you want in there, as long as there's enough water to make it work. Like you do with pasta!

3. Wait for everything to resume boiling, like you'd do with pasta.

4. Boil the green beans for around 8-11 minutes, or whatever, also like you'd do with pasta.

5. In a manner identical to handling pasta, you drain that stuff through a colander, and figure out what you want to do next.

...

Lately, I've been keeping the water both salty and greasy enough that the green beans are downright alright as-is, once they've been drained and have also cooled enough to eat.

But if you skimped on the salt or oil, go for it now!!! Add some butter, add some spices, do whatever it is that you do.

Today, I tossed in some slivered almonds. Just like that! It's that easy! It really is. You just own some almonds and then you eat them, it's true. And you can too! Unless you are allergic. In which case, don't do that. Don't do things that you are allergic to. Please.

Anyway

I made the food, then I ate it, and then I resumed getting ready for work.

EXCELLENT!!!

I'm Eating Packing Peanuts

God-fucking-dammit. Really?!?

Fuck.

REALLY?!?!?!

So, I ordered something online, and it was from a really cool little eco-friendly-type company.

And when I was opening and unpacking the box, there were a few packing peanuts. So, of course, I put one in my mouth while reviewing the shipping invoice. I was curious! What do YOU do, anyway?!? Who are YOU to pass judgment?!? That's right. I'll bet you've done worse, whoever you are, who's reading this.

Anyway!

It started to release a mild Cheetos flavor as it dissolved. (Something like that.) And I was like, "Well, fuck. These most be those biodegradable potato starch packing peanuts. Let's see how far I can go with this experiment."

So, I finished eating that packing peanut. The second one I ate, I ate because I'd already had one, so I might as well eat another. I mean, they're not BAD. The third, fourth, fifth... ah, hell, I've lost track at this point. I'm nibbling on one as I type this.

I KNOW that they can't possibly be food-grade. They just CAN'T.

God.

Fuck!!!

What am I doing?!?!?

Suck it, juice!

I know what you might be thinking. That the expression "suck it," when used in a taunting or otherwise derogatory capacity, is subliminally anti-female, as well as subliminally homophobic, because it implies that performing fellatio is exclusively the domain of those who are trapped within a gender-based second-class citizenship.

And yes, if you want to take all of the intended innocence out of the taunt written into the title of this blog post, then I must acknowledge that your point is correct. Moreover, I must now apologize to everyone--including myself--who was, or who will be, in one way or another, born into a category of "well, you don't want to be THAT guy" butt-of-cruel-jokesmanship.

(I say this as someone who was once the lone girl at middle school baseball camp, whom coaches and colleagues alike would joke "out of earshot" about, by accusing one another of throwing, not merely like A girl, but indeed, of throwing like THE girl. I won the most improved player award that year, and brought two more middle school girls with me the next year. And not just ANY sort of middle school girls. The sort of sassy, giggling, sports-ambivalent "don't give a fuck" kind of middle school girls who just made everybody feel a little weird about baseball camp, in general. Because I could.)

Still.

Before we get into any Hillary Clinton-themed quoteables about NASA, I want to try to steal a little moment, to adopt a tone of childlike ignorance. The sort of "the world is kinda safe" naïveté needed to use whatever language might pop into my head, without making any real effort to apply critical thinking skills, or even basic adult courtesy, to the situation which I have decided to describe.

And it is with this "safe space to express myself" approach, and self-permission to indulge in lowered boundaries, which prompts me to easily and blithely write the following:

FUCK YEAH, STUPID!!! WHO'S TOO EXPENSIVE, NOW!!! Juice? You think I can afford fruit juice? Fruit juice that either comes in boxes too tiny to be affordable, or frozen tubes that require me to fit a carafe into my fridge like some fucking mathemagician. FUCK NO!!! Not medium-sized bottles of fruit juice, that require figuring out which objects in my yard are the recycle bin. Fruit juice is too much of a hassle.

And it is too fatty. Yeah, there's no fat in it. What's up with that, man?

But it is still full of sugar. That's sugar that could be spent on CANDY!!! I could be eating candy RIGHT NOW!!!!! I might!!! I might just do that!!! Because I keep candy around!!! Because I have a JOB!!! And that is the kind of proactive, assertive living that a steady income can provide. The finer things in life, like always having a fresh stash of bitchin' candy. Yeah, that's right, fruit juice. Taking my money. Not today. Not now. It's whatever the opposite of payback is, time. It's no-payment time. Wallet got left at home accidentally, oh God I hope, time.

Now, fruit juice is one of my husband's favorites, but when I pick it up at the store, I look at it with the same mistrust that I give... um... huh... yeah... sliced cheese? Theme yogurt? Quality ingredients? Foods that are still too fresh for the bargain shelf? I CANNOT SPEND MY CANDY MONEY ON SUCH EXTRAVAGANCES!!!!!!

So.

So what do I do?

I buy some shelf-stable, fruit-inspired, crystallized water-alteration powder. And I buy it for mothafuckin astronauts. How do I eat my ice cream? ASTRONAUT ICE CREAM!!!!! How do I try to transition out of buying real fruit juice so often? I BUY TANG AND DRINK TANG AND WAIT FOR MY HUSBAND TO STEAL MY GLASS OF TANG EVEN THOUGH HE ORIGINALLY SAID THAT HE WAS JUST FINE WITH BEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SPACE TRAVEL!!!!!!!!! GAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHHHBBBBBBTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blurry phone photo, featuring a gorgeously retro washing machine dial.

Why does the positioning of my hand imply that I'm shorter than the washing machine? For that matter, why AM I shorter than the washing machine? Those weren't special effects. No camera tricks here. It is a monolithic tower of soap and garment rehabilitation.

Right. Always right. Always right, over here.