Greens, and Potato/Sweet Potato Mash. Did I Write This Already?

A friend posted on Facebook, requesting new, healthy recipes, because he'd decided to "step up his game" as a self-feeding home cook.

I posted these two recipes, and was like, "Hey! I just typed two recipes! THAT'S a food blog entry, right there."

Potato/Sweet Potato Mash

I like to roast peeled chunks of sweet potato (brushed with oil) while peeled chunks of regular potatoes boil. Once everything's fully cooked, drain the water from the boiled potatoes, add the sweet potato chunks to the same pot, and mash 'em up however you normally prepare mashed potatoes.

It's simultaneously more nutritious AND more interesting than traditional mashed potatoes, and is a good way to add a little variety to things. (Ed. I stole this idea from a cooking show, I think, but I've seen different recipes for this concept all over the place.)

Greens, How I Do Them

Here's an adaptation of Southern-style greens that I do pretty often, and it turns out a lot tastier than it has any real right to.

1. Prep the greens. Make sure that you have a bunch of edible green leaves that are clean and have been ripped into bite-sized chunks. Kale is rad, but you wanna minimize the amount of stalk in there. You can go totally nuts and prep what looks like an unmanageably huge pile of leaves, because it shrinks a lot.

2. If you like meat, brown a little bit of (usually non-breakfast) ground sausage on the bottom of a big soup pot. Leave the sausage in.

3. Fill the pot with water, scraping any brown meat residue off of the bottom, if appropriate. You can also use any kind of broth. To be traditional, use pork broth made by boiling some smoked ham hock. But I usually just go with water, and it's fine.

4. Put the leaves into the pot with the water, and get the water boiling. Use a spoon or something, if necessary, to keep mashing the leaves down until they fit into the pot. They'll shrink as the water gets hot.

5. Boil 'em as long as you want, and add a bunch of savory things to the water. A few splashes of apple cider vinegar and a bit of decent hot sauce or salsa are mandatory (I was skeptical before trying it, but I'm now a believer). After that, seasonings are "to taste."

I use salt, usually some kind of fat like butter and/or olive oil, this mystery stuff called "seasoning sauce" that I picked up in a store, worstechire(sp?) sauce, soy sauce, maybe some garlic powder, maybe some ground peppercorns, and sometimes just a subliminally little pinch of curry. I recommend tasting the broth pretty often, and having fun with this stage. I also recommend shying away from sweet additions, and leaning more toward sour and spicy additions.

Cook "to death," or until the leaves have seriously wilted, and taste good. (Ed. This is a personalized adaptation of some recipes I've seen elsewhere.)

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*

Everybody Wants To Pretend To Be A Neil Gaiman Character, Sometimes.

And sometimes it's a pretty easy thing to imagine:

(You can see where I'm going with this.)

(I mean, COME ON!)

(That's right, that reminder. That's right.)

(Like you've never gotten bored and slid under the table before! Seriously.)

(I mean, it's not like eavesdropping on Dream and Destruction as they debate their responsibilities is more engrossing than whatever's on the rug.)

(Hair in food: Achievement unlocked.)

These images are shoddy phone photographs of some of the artwork in the graphic novel Brief Lives, in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Which you likely already know, because you are likely Jessica, who first loaned me these books ten years ago, before I accumulated my own copies. (Hello, Jessica!)

Here is a copy of the book's cover, so that if you're NOT Jessica, you'll know what the cover looks like:

You're welcome!

Alert: Beeswax Candles Are Not For Eating

Oh man. Trying so hard to remember that beeswax candles are not food. 

This homemade candle was a Christmas/Hanukah combo gift and it smells really good. It's like, intellectually I know that it's just going to taste like wax. 

I...Eew. Okay, I bit it. Yup. It is a candle. 

Still, it's really hard to write about its smell without really focusing on its smell, and it smells like really good honey.

So. Journalism.

Dammit:

But I told you. At least it was a small bite!

Candles are meant to be consumed by fire, not mouths:

Tonight's Dinner Is Brought To You By The Letter P

That's peanut butter and pizza, in tribute to the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show of my childhood.

Unfortunately, my cat Leonard stole a pizza crust and ran around the house with it while I chased him with a broom, like some kinda Keystone Cops, Benny Hill-type situation. 

I laughed very, very hard and couldn't stay mad, but despite my ability to stay properly in character as "angry at Leonard," he did eventually drop my pizza crust while he was running.

I love you, Leonard. You're a sweet kitty. But in the words of Canadian television (all of which is the Trailer Park Boys), "I'm sorry, but ya know? Fuck off. This is onenna those, like, worst case Ontarios, or whatever."

Fuck you, Leonard. Snuggly little bastard.

UPDATE:

I'm sorry, Letter P. I just couldn't stay faithful. I added a banana to the peanut butter, even though it starts with Letter B.