Which got me to thinking about another cool website I know about: Falling Fruit is a database that lists places in your area that has free forage, from wild herbs to fruiting trees and other crops that are available around your community! There's also RipeNear.Me and likely a dozen others -- a little Google Fu could give you not only a way to cut down on your grocery bill, but also add some fresh, local fruit and produce to your diet, and an adventure through your neighborhood! And maybe you might even meet some interesting new neighbors along the way.
Today, we're heading to a birthday party, and we were asked to pick some wild mint from the PLETHORA of it growing in the empty lot next to our house. Not only is this a great way to find a wonderfully useful herb for free (mint can be made into teas, tonics, as an herb in roasting, cooking, or oiled for scent, and helps with concentration, breathing, upset stomachs, and indigestion), but also... Mojitos.
Which got me to thinking about another cool website I know about: Falling Fruit is a database that lists places in your area that has free forage, from wild herbs to fruiting trees and other crops that are available around your community! There's also RipeNear.Me and likely a dozen others -- a little Google Fu could give you not only a way to cut down on your grocery bill, but also add some fresh, local fruit and produce to your diet, and an adventure through your neighborhood! And maybe you might even meet some interesting new neighbors along the way.
0 Comments
Also. I love this little cup. I've had it for years now -- it's covered in sashimi and sushi, and I picked it up at a Japanese import shop back in my hometown.
Do you have a favorite sushi roll? Favorite sashimi? I love masago, but I think unagi is my favorite, although I've really come to love salmon lately. Growing up, we ate spaghetti A LOT. Like, the red sauce I put in all my pasta is forever engrained in my brain as "spaghetti sauce", even though I've tried to teach it the new trick of "red gravy" to limited success. Even when my dad put it in manicotti, lasagna, what have you, it was always spaghetti sauce. The only other big pasta dish I had was my godmother's goulasch, which she made exclusively with macaroni, and I always make it the same way she did.
Velveeta "shells" with cheese was something introduced to me by a room mate. And when I finally started buying groceries for myself... I wondered at why fun bowtie noodles (as I'd always called them as a kid) and corkscrews were so neglected. Especially when they were the same price! What was the point between angel hair and spaghetti? Were lasagna noodles just for casseroles? Feeling adventurous and rebellious (and really, they're the same price! You aren't going out of your way or anything) I started buying farfalle and rotini (especially when they had the multicoloured ones) for my own sport and amusement. There's nothing quite so fun as being at the end of a paycheck and dropping the last bits of three different kinds of pasta into a bowl. Long snakes of spaghetti dancing with a vegetable garden of rotini and the happy bowtie of farfalle... You forget how sad you are that you're broke and have more fun with your dinner than is absolutely necessary. But that smile is wonderful. What about you? What's your favourite kind of pasta? Can I challenge you to buy an odd noodle next time you go grocery shopping? And don't limit yourself to Italian pastas, either! Get some egg noodles or pancit or rice noodles from the Asian aisle! Discover the joys of udon at your local Japanese restaurant, or try pho for the first time. You'll thank me later! It's #NationalDonutDay! Celebrating at Krispy Kreme for a classic glazed and a cuppa joe...
So named because you just throw ALL THE THINGS in a pot! I will say, my chili game was stepped up a huge notch when I first attempted as much of Captain Robert's Infamous Pyrate's Blood Sauce as I could reasonably accomplish (given a limit of his loooong list of ingredients), and I've since made worchestershire sauce a fairly mandatory ingredient in most of my stews, soups, broths, chilis and general other savories. Another person boasted that her fantastic meatballs were made with grape jelly, so I started putting barbecue sauce and a jam or jelly into my chilis for a sweet balance. I wasn't much of one for beans growing up (my father scowled when I insisted on bean-less Hormel chili for Frito Pie night when given the opportunity to pick it out myself, or I'd sit there and spoon the beans out of my chili like an ingrate), but as I've gotten older (and eaten poor) I've grown to LOVE black beans in my chili (although pintos are hardly any good for a quesadilla, and even then only just to make them pallatable). So here's the question. How do you do your chili? Comment below!All the geeky swag... And yes, a Bobby Flay cookbook. Because I fucking love Brunch @ Bobby's (which may or may not have been the inspiration for "Brunch With the Golds", won't lie...) and brunch in general. SO OMG, BRUNCH @ BOBBY'S COOKBOOK, SOMEONE LOVES ME, AND I AM LOVED. Doctor Who, Star Wars, 90's animation, all of my fandoms are represented here... BUT ALSO, THE FOOD FOR TODAY!
No, I don't usually mention this (because it doesn't really come up in conversation all that much, to be honest), but I'm a bit of a cocoa snob. When I think fondly of the (GRAND AND GLORIOUS) week I worked at Maker House as a barista, I remember a particular moment.
I was wondering how one made hot cocoa in the traditional cafe fashion. It's not terribly hard -- a dose of chocolate syrup (which was actually made by the baker who brought in our breakfast pastries: he left plastic containers like you get your soup in from Chinese take out - the BIG ones - of chocolate syrup and vanilla that were the SAME syrup he used to top his goodies, so it was HEAVENLY), add steamed milk, and stir. ...And I made a face. It needed more chocolate. I am an unabashed chocoholic, and I realised I'd spoiled myself. Unless it's Land O Lakes' gourmet cocoa mix (and really, I never actually buy it, I seem to find some in my Christmas gifts every year...), one bag is never enough for me. And it has me wondering. How do you take your cocoa? Taco night!!! Can't go wrong with homemade taco fixin's, because you can DO YOU, BABY. Meat? Beans? Green chiles? Enchilada sauce? Jack In the Box taco sauce? Diced onions? Guac? Sour cream? It's way cheaper than going out and it STRETCHES (especially since you can always make tacos tomorrow, or use the broken ones for a taco salad tomorrow, or a taco omelette for breakfast in the morning...).
So how do you do tacos? Soft shell, hard shell? Tell us below! I'm not sure if Hot Dogs are a terribly popular thing outside of America, but here they're kind of a big deal. If it's pork or chicken franks, or beef or Kosher or otherwise... We've a lot of dogs. And we serve them a lot of different ways depending on where you're from.
While I personally didn't cook (perk of being a lesbian husband in a traditional Filipina household -- they don't know what to do with me), my beautiful wife did the taters. Sweet potato casserole (one of my FAVORITES), green bean casserole (I once ate an entire plate of green bean casserole one year at Thanksgiving. #NoRegrets), stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, roll, and a homemade cranberry sauce that I actually got the recipe for from my father-in-law. I won't share it now, because I want pictures to show you, but it is TASTY! Will do it another time. Now, me, I was raised with ham AND turkey, and it upsets me that in this family, ham is only a Christmas thing. But yesterday, I went to a friend's place for early Turkey Day (I know, shame on me, no pictures...) that had my ham (and I shamelessly took a few slabs home, as well as more GBC and an entire pie of varying flavors), but also... homemade sushi. And their 'cracker tray' was actually a 'relish tray' with olives and pickles on it as well. Different strokes! When I was a kid, my dad would make a cracker tray for Thanksgiving (and/or Christmas dinner) that had six kinds of crackers, four kinds of sausage, seven kinds of cheese and usually a cheese ball in the middle of it! We would sit there and watch him slice cheese and meat by hand (and wait for opportunities to steal some) and he would cover the trays, and NO ONE TOUCHES THEM UNTIL GUESTS ARRIVE, and we would wait until someone finally showed up, and we would oh-so-discreetly sweep them into the kitchen and ENCOURAGE them to give it a try so you could get a bite of Club and colby jack and summer sausage that you'd been thinking about for weeks... ...Oh, just me? Sorry. *wipes droop from shirt* Because everyone had the day off, it was also one of those rare days when my dad would pull out the griddle and make Big Breakfast, as he called it (homemade hashbrowns, eggs, pancakes, bacon...) or Eggs Benedict, which is still a taste of the holidays for me, to this day. SO! What are some of your holiday traditions? Comment below! |
Brunch w/ BlakeHalf-boricuan, half-corn fed Indiana hick. Stir in a taste of the southwest and serve in LA, on the rocks. #BrunchWithBlake #FoodPorn #LAFoodie Archives
July 2021
Other ProjectsCategories
All
|