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.

Peanut butter and berry... Something.

Um.

Yeah.

So...

Okay, so we had this big bag of frozen raspberries left over from a berry-picking excursion back in August. And I am once again making a conscious effort to add at least a little bit of nutrition back into my fried bread lifestyle.

Last week, I was able to make a perfectly fine hippie cobbler (like a regular cobbler, but short on sugar, oil, and white flour) using frozen blackberries, despite those berries' initially horrific acidity. Let's just say that a lot of our berry-picking happened when it was too late in the day to tell ripe from underripe.

So, anyway.

Last week, trying to get good use out of the underripe, frozen-then-cooked blackberries, I tried something that I'd never done before. In a fit of desperation, I dumped several tablespoons of baking powder into the cooked berry mash.

It foamed like a child's volcano experiment. I sampled a spoonful and experienced an intense nausea. While I have no photographic evidence to prove or disprove my guess about what took place inside of my stomach (those cameras are expensive!), it felt like the baking powder had the same reaction to my stomach acid that it did with the berries' acidity.

The experience was fascinating, if a little heavy on the regret.

Still, being a cheapskate, I certainly wasn't going to throw the berries out. So I rinsed them thoroughly, running water and swishing them around in a colander.

And somehow(!) the berry mush that remained was delicious, and did not taste poisonously much like baking powder. I stirred in some cooked-from-frozen blueberries, a little brown sugar, probably a little flour(?), topped it with a mix of oats and applesauce, which also had a little flour and brown sugar mixed in. I sprinkled turbinado sugar on top and baked it in a toaster oven until the oats were golden.

The resulting brick of squishy fruit pulp and cemented oats was actually very edible, especially once served in a shallow bowl of milk.

So it was full of arrogance from that culinary triumph that I decided to force lightning to strike twice today.

I swished cooked-after-freezing raspberries in baking powder and watched the surprisingly dark foam more than double the contents of the bowl.

Because I hadn't decided to write about it at the time, I didn't take a picture. But I definitely want to encourage you (whoever's reading this) to try it at home, because it's truly weird. The foam turns "fell asleep after eating Pepto Bismol" dark. If you are a chemist, and you're reading this (Emily and Caroline, I'm looking at you), please tell me why this acid/base reaction triggers the color change, because I'm too busy wallowing to look it up. Thanks!

Anyway. I thought I'd done everything right. But I'd failed to acceptably neutralize the raspberries' sour, acidic flavor, because the damned things are raspberries, and raspberries are the devil.

Still, I soldiered on, hoping to throw enough things into the berries to save the day.

I threw in some frozen-then-cooked blueberries. I threw in some crushed walnuts, for some reason. I threw in some raisins, because I like throwing things. And in a fit of what I'd assumed had to be genius, I stirred in a few heaping spoonfuls of that eerily shelf-stable, creamy peanut butter that we keep in the pantry for baking with.

"Peanut butter and something-vaguely-like-unsweetened-jelly" was the idea. "Chemically dilute the raspberries profane, deeply evil acidity" was the thought. "Make my gums stop hurting long enough to eat these fucking things." was the bottom line.

Now, a wise person wouldn't have really over-brushed her teeth this morning, scraping up her gums like a toothbrush rookie. A wise person may have just stuck to low-acidity foods while her gums felt raw.

I am, in this context, gloriously unwise.

But I am also stumped.

The peanut butter and whatever slurry is ugly to look at, delicious on the tongue, but murder on the gums.

I know that a sophisticate would use it sparingly, as a sauce. This stuff would be revelatory spooned over custard.

It would also work gloriously well as a layer in a trifle.

But do I have the patience to pick up and cube an angel food cake?!? Do I have the stamina to throw a custard together?!? Do I remember how to buy whipping cream at the grocery store?!?

And HOW will this affect my participation in tonight's "mostly dessert" 100+ person potluck?!?

(My dad's hired a live band, and has asked all of us partygoers to bring snacks to share.)

Because really, I'd planned to just eat the nuts and berries for breakfast, and then bring cookie dough to the potluck.

Haaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.

So much angst over here!

Also, don't the photographs give you Ghostbusters II flashbacks? Because that's what I think of.

I was NOT too cowardly to buy and/or eat THIS, however. Unfortunately?

So, I didn't have the mettle to commit to a pasta-stuffed Hot Pocket, but I decided to indulge my curiosity by trying another highly commercialized food product--pumpkin pie-themed, mass-produced yogurt.

It was okay, I guess?

But it was NOT pumpkin-pie-flavored enough to deserve that title!!! It actually tasted like chai tea, kind of. At least, it tasted like it wouldn't be out-of-place being called "chai tea yogurt."

But there was no pumpkin to be identified in the flavor, which is sad, because I really like pumpkin. In fact, on more than one occasion, a couple of years ago, I'd buy a $5.99 huge pumpkin pie from Costco, and just eat that for breakfast and lunch for a week, to save money. I would typically lose a little weight and experience stabler blood sugar than usual when doing so, which indicates two things:

1. I must have been eating pretty poorly, for my body to react to an all-pie diet with "FINALLY, SOME VEGETABLES!"

2. Pumpkin pie is a truly singular pie. High in fiber, its main ingredient is hearty and nutritious vegetable pulp, and it's eggier than a fruit pie, virtually an egg custard, in its way. Pumpkin pie is a miracle food. More than any other that I've experienced, it is a healing pie

I was therefore hoping to have a proper pumpkin-themed yogurt experience. I know that the yogurt manufacturers have the technology to pull this off. They make foam yogurts! The chemists responsible for designing the flavors and textures in mass-produced yogurt products wield an intimidating power to control the food elements. And they CHOSE to label a passable chai yogurt "pumpkin pie." Perhaps just to spite me, and others like me? No. More likely out of laziness.

I respect laziness, I've been known practice laziness (especially while asleep), and I don't want to resent the Yoplait chemists for taking laziness to the next level. But on this occasion, I kinda do.

I was too cowardly to buy and/or eat this.

Sure, the spouse and I both pointed at this box in unison, with the classic "Wait, wait, wait, what?!?" that certain commercial products deserve.

This item in particular is The Most Dada Hot Pocket Ever. It's filled with pasta?!?

I'm happy about this, and part of me wants to eat it, but I'm just too nervous about what an explicit carb-bomb it is.

Sure, I've eaten (and really loved) my friend Jeff's spaghetti sandwiches, and as a teenager I used to just eat slice after slice of bread the way other kids ate potato chips. So it's not like I can really claim the culinary sainthood needed to cop a holier-than-thou position of condescension, when I approach the subject of pasta-filled Hot Pockets.

However, I know that if I ate one, the sodium would cause my body to retain water like... Well, like the whole rest of the Pacific Northwest. (The puddles, mud, ferns, wetlands, ocean, etc.) I would grow creaky in my joints from the severe puffiness, and would lose the ability to comfortably operate an Xbox 360 controller. Now OBVIOUSLY, I can't risk that.

Therefore, the mystery remains a mystery, and the Limited Edition Four Cheese Garlic Pasta Bake Hot Pockets remain as lonely as an unkissed Blarney Stone, at least in my life. I'm sorry, Hot Pockets. I'm sorry I failed you.

My Favorite Mistake: Falling Asleep With This Gum In My Mouth

As a seeker of culinary enlightenment, where can I go from here? I've already reported on toothpaste, cats, mystery snacks found in my doctor's office... A pretty well-rounded base of culinary experiences too often underreported by food writers. But the wise know that enlightenment can't be aggressively pursued like some corporate takeover or fashion statement. One must cultivate an open heart, and an open mind, and wait patiently for enlightenment to present itself.

It is therefore in the pursuit of true passivity and freedom from ego that I can joyfully report upon my newest discovery.

I fell asleep with a chewed-up piece of gum in my mouth last night. Specifically, Wrigley's Extra Dessert Delights Sugar Free Gum, in the Root Beer Float flavor.

I also fell asleep fully dressed. I basically lugged myself home from work, ate dinner, and passed out.

And rightly so! I'm still paying off the sleep debt that I accrued last weekend, which some people know as Labor Day (or "American Labor Day" in Canada), a weekend also known as "PAX," or as "Heather's Birthday Weekend."

(If you're reading this, HI HEATHER!!!) ... (But if you're not Heather, and you don't know who she is--how did you find my blog, anyway?--isn't it so glamorous and mysterious to refer to some unknown birthday girl right in the middle of a review of chewing gum? Her birthday must be pretty important. Which it is, obviously, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation. No? Not impressed? Well, that's okay. I don't need to impress you, because I've already impressed myself.)

While I did my best to observe the conjunction of PAX and Heather's Birthday in a responsible fashion, staying up until 3am in speakeasies, restaurants, nightclubs, dives, and fancy hotel rooms for a long weekend meant that once the "Everyone from out-of-country is here!" adrenaline finally started to wear off, I developed a most magnificent ability to fall asleep in mere minutes--nay, seconds!--after deciding to. Hence last night's inelegant rush into my own pillow, despite being nearly a week away from my last cocktail.

But back to the subject at hand, which is the act of falling asleep with "Root Beer Float" flavored chewing gum in my mouth.

In the best of times, I can't get a full night's sleep anymore. Our new mattress is extremely firm, and gives me some absolutely royal upper back cramps. And my cats, once they see me wake up at 4am to stretch, assume that it may very well be time for breakfast. Or at least time to run over and sit on me, like little children with a pony. It's very cute, but inconvenient.

I didn't fully realize until last night just how aversive the taste of my natural morning breath is.

Inevitably, my first conscious act upon waking up in the middle of the night to stretch and roll over, was to chew the gum that I discovered was still in my mouth. I'd say to myself "Huh! There's a little flavor left! It tastes WAY better than the rest of my mouth!" I'd chew a little, go back to sleep, wake up, be pleasantly surprised by the gum, chew a little, go back to sleep, wash, rinse, repeat.

I also noticed, whenever rediscovering the gum, that my teeth felt gently cushioned by it. This was more of a relief than I'd expected it to be. Normally, I chew on the sides of my tongue a little bit when I sleep, and clench my jaws together, because my subconscious mind loves chewing. But this time? My tongue was way passé. Gum all the way! In fact, I might even invest in a bite guard, assuming that they come in root beer flavor.

Now, you might want to ask me why I could consider such a good decision as falling asleep with this gum in my mouth to be a "mistake." After all, the experience itself was obviously a total success.

Three factors must be kept in mind:

1. Choking Hazard. Only a fool or a misanthrope would seriously endorse sleeping with gum in the mouth. Because I am both a fool AND a misanthrope, the two qualities cancel each other out, and I'm left with a genuine desire to avoid choking people, by giving bad advice over the internet. Including myself, because I am also people.

2. My Teeth. Sure, the gum is sugar-free. And sure, I brush my teeth when I wake up. But can I guarantee that sleeping with gum in my mouth is safe for my teeth? That its bite guard properties are with the unknown risks? I simply don't have the dental background to make such a claim. I just don't know.

3. The Gum Itself. It's true that I not only love this gum, but I love all of the flavors in this Willy Wonka surrealist line of "Pretend it's food, fatso!" gums. It's already well-established that I love "pretend it's food" items, pretty much across the board.

And the first flavor when mawing down on this stuff is a pretty root-beery effort. I'm impressed by what the Wrigley's chemists were able to accomplish. However, as I continue to chew, the next flavor I experience is just a hint of artificial banana. It's still well-rendered and sweet enough that I'm into it, but I can't consider the gum to be an exclusively root beer float product.

In addition, when I AM awake, the flavor doesn't last as long, and the gum becomes as tough as a wad of celery strings after a couple of hours. It simply wouldn't fly as a bubble gum, which would need to retain its elastic properties and flavor much longer.

Essentially, if I were assigning the Wrigley's chemists a grade, like it was a final project in an art class, this is how I would break it down:

A+++ for creativity
B for initial flavor
C for chewiness and flavor retention, long-term

Still, it was an experience worthy of documentation.