No, that does not mean I am offering to serve you up Clint Eastwood films with your dinner. If you have any, though, and live nearby, maybe we could make an arrangement!
Just a wee few minutes ago, I put together a new dish, which answered, for me, a very old question "Why don't people use cucumbers in hot dishes?"
The dish involved, not surprisingly, a cucumber. This one had its ends cut off, then it was drawn (cut in half), quartered, and chopped into wedges.
The rest of the dish was comprised of leftover pork roast, two roma tomatoes, the usable bits off the end of a bok choy remnant, some green onions, asparagus tips and middles all chopped up, lemon pepper, sea salt, garlic powder, a little Italian Seasoning and some olive oil to sautee most of that in. Oh, yes: and some peach pineapple chipotle salsa purchased from Walmart.
I specifically mention Walmart, not because I am getting paid for it, but, because it is their store brand that puts out this salsa, from what I can tell, and, Walmart happens to sell a great many delicious salsas that are enjoyed by more than one member of my family. I like to use most of them, in the same way that I used this one, as an addition to a dish just to give it that added and unexpected kick of flavor - without a lot of effort.
The dish was cooked fairly quickly and I find it rather tasty, in fact; but, the cucumbers would be ever so much better if they were made out of zucchini or eggplant. They aren't bad! They just aren't good.
My son will probably come home and promptly not eat any of it at all. This used to worry me and I used to go out of my way to cook to please other people first and me second. I have too many allergies and too much food has been wasted, and I have eaten too many meals that had a disappointing lack of something I want or too much of something I don't, to keep living life on those terms.
Now, when I make a meal, I do, of course, take whomever else might eat it into consideration, to a certain extent. As in, I don't put things into it that I know will make them ill. That's more consideration than most people ever gave me.
I'll even consider certain things, such as if I am making spaghetti and the person hates mushrooms, I might go out of my way to make chicken noodle soup, instead. Hahaha! I will leave out the egg plant chunks, if I want to put those in, and they hate it. Usually. I will not leave out mushrooms or onions, unless I just want to. Nor will I leave out tomatoes, as a general rule, no matter how they feel about them.
Blah blah blah ....
Okay, let me tell you a little of my history with food and what I learned from it.
Many foods I grew up eating and so did not think about much. I learned how to cook some very simple things, by the age of four. Steak, jello, rice and something else I can no longer remember. That's on top of helping mom with the bread, to whatever extent I could, helping other people with preparation of meals, accurately making powdered milk and tang and a few other simple things that, later in life, I was always shocked to discover that teenage and adult friends had no clue how to do.
A few things I had no experience with, or only limited experience, so I remember my reaction to them.
I first tasted sour cream on some nachos at the Pizza Ria Delphi. This is unusual for more reasons than one, since Pizza Ria Delphi is an Italian restaurant, owned by Greek brothers, in Alaska and it did not, at the time, have nachos on the menu. It is also the restaurant at which I first tasted good quality black olives.
Now, I first tasted butter at Safeways, way back in time when they had a really great bakery department that they had every right to brag about. However, I did not know that, at the time. All I knew was that I bit into a butter cookie and it tasted really freaking weird. That's because it had butter on it, and I had never, in my life, eaten butter before.
The fact that I had not eaten butter, because my family did not buy butter, all of my childhood years and that I didn't start using butter, at all, in my cooking, until the government started handing out butter in our area around 1992, and that I only used it, up until fairly recently, for less than a year of my life, makes me uniquely qualified to point a big raspberry directly at anyone who dares to say that changing from butter to margarine will help you lose weight.
See, I grew up with margarine, skim milk, eating beans and rice, eating vegetables with most every meal, and while we would sometimes have huge desserts, we mostly had no desserts at all. Yet, everyone in my family, minus my brother, was overweight. Obviously, then, there is more to losing weight than eating less fat.
In the case of both butter and sour cream, I had a reaction to them. Different reactions to each, though, and it is the difference in those reactions which gives clue to whether or not to include or exclude something.
See, with the butter, in the butter cookie, I bit into it and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I considered it, tried another one, and decided that, yes, it's good. It's so good that sometimes I want it with a roll or a baked potato. I don't generally crave it, though, and I don't like it when people put it on spaghetti, use it as sandwich spread, or otherwise use it in ways that just seem to be overkill.
With sour cream, I tasted it and I flinched in horror and wanted to spit it out. I hated it! Yet, something made me want to eat more. I couldn't stop myself, and I finally learned to like it. It took me years of using it on tacos, where I would have a small dollop and just sort of do my best to cut the taste by getting ground beef, tomatoes, and whatnot over it. In other words, I wanted the sour cream and I somewhat, sort of, got used to the taste.
Down the road, many years later, I started to like it. That's also around the time I realized I have an allergy to milk. It's only in recent years that I have come anywhere close to kicking my addiction to milk, cheese and sour cream.
Close, I say, because, let's face it, cheeseburgers, lasagna, pizza, ice cream, milk chocolate, bread, cake .. all sorts of food has milk in their make up. I love many of those foods and there are no substitutes for some and only very expensive substitutes for others and, even then, most of the substitutes are soy-based. I am allergic to soy. (sigh)
Wait? But, is not butter also made from milk? Right? Is that what you want to ask? Well, as I said, I use it very sparingly. Like, I might use it for a baked potato or a roll, which I seldom eat. I might use it for tuna and rice, which is one of my favorite dishes, but, I sometimes use sesame, safflower or olive oil for that, instead and I can't afford tuna most of the time, now, so I don't often eat that dish, either. That's why I can still have butter. It doesn't give me as strong of a reaction as cheese or milk does, and I hardly ever am near it.
The black olives, in case you were wondering, were things that I didn't really either like or hate, at first, until I got to the buttery aftertaste. They went very well with the salad I was eating, at the time, too. I do not crave them, most of the time, and I cannot afford the high quality ones. If canned black olives are on sale for a good price, I will buy several cans and occasionally use them in spaghetti or as part of a vegetable tray if there is a family gathering, but, I don't need them. Sometimes I want them.
There is a green and leafy weirdness, that looks like a cross between romaine lettuce and celery, called bok choy. Did you see me mention it, above? Yeah .. that was the second time in my life that I used bok choy in cooking and this is the second time in my life that I had ever purchased bok choy. The first time, I didn't use it. It stayed in the drawer and rotted.
Bok choy annoyed me. I would read about how great it was to use and how trendy it was and just want to find the bok choy fields and burn them down. I avoided it like the preppy plague that it appeared to be.
Then, one day, I was with someone I thought I liked, who ordered me a chicken noodle soup from the Sweet Pink Pepper in Anchorage. This greatly affected my thoughts on whether or not I liked him, because, he knew what the ingredients were and he went ahead and ordered it anyway, because it was the cheapest thing on the menu that could be considered a meal.
The thing is, though, I was quite ill and that was also affecting my thoughts on whether I liked him, and, it affected my thoughts on whether I liked the soup. Oh my, did I like the soup!
Oh, not on the first day. The first day, even though it tasted moderately okay, I fairly well hated it. It was too hot, there were weird green things floating in it which I suspected of being bok choy related, the chicken was in huge chunks and the noodles were big and unruly. It was weird. I was not happy. The base, however, tasted a lot like won ton soup with a lot of garlic and that thrilled me a bit.
Later on, I loved the soup, because I felt so much better the next day. I would only order the soup when I was ill, though. I suspected that green crap was part of what was helping, but, I still wanted nothing to do with bok choy, more than could be helped.
Now, I miss the soup and wish I could have access to it. Still, even feeling that way, it took me until last week, from 1996 when the soup was first bought for me or back in 1986 or thereabouts when people first started trying to force bok choy on me, to purchase and use some to make my own chicken noodle soup.
That chicken noodle soup that I made was very spicy and I shared it with my sister. We both felt better afterward. I enjoyed the bok choy. It must be a fungus, because, despite my probable oppositional defiance disorder, that makes me want to hate whatever you tell me I HAVE to love, it has grown on me.
Okay, bok choy! I give up! You got me. I shall buy you again, if God is willing. Now, I know you taste good with spinach noodles and chicken, or pork and cous cous. Darn you!
Chicken is one of those things that I was forced to think about, even though it was a fairly normal part of our lives, because, people would tell me "I just love chicken!" and beef was something I was forced to think about because, while beef had been a fairly normal part of our lives, it became a rarity.
It was all that chicken loving going on. The price of beef went up, everyone wanted to be healthy and chicken, chicken, chicken was all around.
Here is what I learned. I love chicken. I just don't love the way you cook it. Haahaha! Well, I might, but, my point is, I love it the way I cook it and sometimes the way my sister and my nephew's girlfriend cook it. Chicken is very boring when wrongly spiced and fantastic when the spicing is done well.
Beef is not awful when wrongly spiced. At least, not to the same degree. I mean, do you know what chicken with no season tastes like? It tastes like a giant mouthful of boring! Beef without spices tastes like boring beef.
Nectarines I considered, because, I was trying to figure out why the peaches were more pleasant, that day, and were not burning my face off with their fuzz. I do not love them more than peaches, though. In truth, I love the taste of peaches more than the taste of nectarines. At least, when they are both ripe, I do. An unripe nectarine is more tasty than an unripe peach.
Now, here is what I have not told you about the bok choy. See, I would wonder about it and consider it, and once I had access to the internet, I would occasionally look it up to determine if that's what is in the chicken soup, indeed. Along the way, I learned a great deal about how good it is for the human body. That's why I started ordering the soup on purpose.
Over the years, I have looked up other foods and learned about them, as well. Some of that is directly linked to my curiosity regarding bok choy. For instance, watercress, which is something else where a majority of women went through bouts of trying to force into everyone else's lives and which I often heard men ask about "How can women stand that stuff? I hate it and my wife says she loves it! How can she love it?"
Watercress is amazingly good for you. Specifically, it has high iron content and that is why women, who tend to have low iron content, love it.
This all ties in, because, by observation, consideration and occasionally blundering into, or being forced into, trying new things, I have come to a point in my life where I not only think about experimenting with food, but, I do it.
Oh, there were brief times I did it, before, but, it's not the same. This is more open and joyful and about broadening my horizons, where, before, it was about having to make do and sneaking changes in, more.
There is a world of spices, veggies, meats, fruits and herbs out there, waiting to be tested, tasted, combined and consumed.
The celebration of life needs color and a buffet, to tease and please the palate Let's keep it to the left of the dance floor and visit it when we need refreshment, instead of celebrating at a sit down dinner, though!
No comments:
Post a Comment