WHAT?!? Raw cabbage and homemade fudge...OKAY?!?!?!

Yes, those ARE my tooth marks! Thank you for noticing.

For the record: not pregnant. I'm just doing this.

UPDATE: My cats are showing no interest in either of these foods, so it appears that my evening is a success.

DOUBLE UPDATE, PALATE EXPLANATION: The cabbage provides crunch and a weird vegetable flavor. When the cabbage flavor builds up too much on my palate, and starts to get spicy and overwhelming, I switch to nibbling on the fudge. Once the fudge starts to taste a little too one-note (it's my first batch, so no "extras" were thrown in), I switch back to eating the cabbage. Perfect.

Chocolate coconut ice cream update--1/2 pint in

Uhhhhhhgh.

I got booooooorrrrred.

It's like my palate isn't sensing the coconut enough anymore, and it's excessively picking up the chocolate flavor, which, if I'm honest, is imperfect. I mean, it tastes like intermediate-quality chocolate, which is still way above a lot of grades of chocolate that I'll eat. It doesn't taste like wax, so it has most candy bars trumped. But, like, it's "spending an extra four dollars on a chocolate bar at the grocer" or "buying Costco brand 'good chocolate'" good, not "took the bus to Oh! Chocolate good."

(An aside: If you can get anywhere near the Greater Seattle Area, GET YOURSELF TO OH! CHOCOLATES ALREADY. Or go to any small-business chocolatier, in whatever area you're in, really. Support the little guys who put in the hard work, and who make at least a few kinds of truffles that require refrigeration to stay fresh for more than a few days. Expired food is gross, sure, but food that expires quickly is awesome BEFORE its expiration date. Anyway.)

As I keep on tasting the coconut ice cream, as my sensitivity to the coconut is dulling and my sensitivity to the cocoa is getting louder, the whole experience has been getting one-note and flat, like trying to drink a glass of coconut milk always ends up after a while. Stupid palate! Stupid, stupid palate! Moving in the opposite direction of how I tell it to move!!!

So...to make up for what my tongue lacks, I sprinkled a bunch of salt on the second half of the pint of chocolate coconut ice cream. 

(For setting: I'm watching The Royal Tenenbaums now, and sorting the very same academic articles that I'd mentioned planning to pass out into, in my last blog entry. However, since that last post, I took some legal, prescribed-specifically-to-me-for-homework-which-is-good-because-I'm-doing-homework ADHD medication, and it woke me the fuck up. I'm even concentrating, now! Somewhat! Envision that scene as the one in which this ice cream experience is taking place.)

After adding salt, some thoughts ran through my head:

"Do I eat too much salt?"

"Am I so desensitized to the flavor of salt that I need to dump it on everything, just to taste my food?"

"Salt is hipster ketchup, isn't it? Fuck. Probably. Everything cool has fancy salt in the title, anymore. Like salted caramel whatever, or whatever."

"Salt is the new ketchup."

"Ugh. [Blank] is the new [blank] needs to be used sparingly. Like, if you're a writer, instead of removing one fashion accessory before leaving the house--really, you should add, like, a dozen accessories before leaving the house, and most of them should have little flashing blinkie lights on them, and be shaped like electronic devices--but if you're a writer, remove at one piece of '[blank] is the new [blank]' from whatever you just did. It's over. That television show got the last one. So pack it up, ship it away. The joking new adaptation of the expression is more familiar now than the original expression was. And if the parody is more famous than the original, then the parody no longer works as a parody. It's too late."

"I like that I used salt."

"Yeah, the salt definitely helped."

"Shit! I dropped my spoon!"

"I wonder if my cats will try to steal my ice cream while I'm up, getting a paper towel? Do they like vegan food? They like catnip. I'll bet they'll eat anything, at least a few tastes, because they're bored. It's what I would do in their shoes."

"Shit, am I still typing in my food blog? Dammit! Okay, back to homework. Back to homework."

************

ACTION SHOT FOR VISUAL INTEREST:

I title it "Shut Up, Sigmund Freud" or "Yes, That IS A Hairbursh In The Background."

The End.

For Now.

Finally bought some coconut milk ice cream

Why didn't I do this sooner?!? I...literally, I'm like...so, okay, like...

Obviously I love eating and/or drinking milk fat. I'm not looking to live forever. (Unless that's an option?) I've accepted the reality of mortality, such as it is. Moreover, I consider myself attractive enough as-is, to avoid avoiding "the good stuff," when it comes to a sweets emergency. (Having a final paper to finalize tonight constitutes a "sweets emergency," and the sore throat that I've recently developed has made its own contributions to the seriousness of the emergency, as well.)

And while I do care about the lifestyles of livestock, very much so, that wasn't what kept me out of the traditional ice cream today, either.

No. Today's decision to buy coconut ice cream happened because I have found myself increasingly troubled by the fact that coconut milk, while creamy, fatty, and flavorful, does not have enough sugar in it, and in spite of that problem, I haven't bothered to figure out how best to sweeten or otherwise tinker with it myself. 

As it turns out, paying somebody else to do things for me has paid off...AGAIN!

I haven't tried any other commercially-available flavors or brands. The only other coconut ice cream I can remember eating was either brand-unknown servings in Thai restaurants, or my sister's homemade coconut ice cream. So, I can hardly claim to be expert enough to provide any meaningful comparisons between brands or styles, which might otherwise provide grocery shoppers with grocery guidance.

I can say, however, that I am extremely glad that I made this purchase. If/when I eat the whole container in one sitting (I've already started that process), it will be 600 calories only, which is kinda like a small hamburger, but made out of ice cream. 

I am also grateful to FINALLY be consuming coconut milk that somebody else has sweetened. I've been drinking the Trader Joe's coconut milk out of a can lately, and it was just making me antsy. Like, it tasted like an ingredient. I mean, I get that it is an ingredient, and a genius one for things like making homemade ice cream and/or curries. But as a stand-alone beverage? Hard to do. Hard to do. It's really thick, and I experience it as having only one flavor and only one texture, and that's just not enough for long-term consumption, in instances like this.

Instead, coconut ice cream is easily, like, a THOUSAND TIMES more convenient. In fact, I probably will eat the whole carton of it in one sitting. And there's a chance that I will immediately follow that activity by "accidentally" falling asleep on the couch in a pile of academic articles, with The Royal Tenenbaums on. (I'm using that movie as an example of personality development theory reflected in cinema, because graduate school=rad.)

Okay. I have reading and writing and passing-out to do, in whichever order feels right at the time. Lindsay out! *drops mic*