Nebulous Mooch

Some people love to cook. I’ve seen them on TV or have maybe even met a few in real life, even though I can’t think of anyone specific right now. I’m not one of those cooking people. While I love to watch cooking shows, I don’t necessarily want to prepare any of the dishes at home.

My problem is that I love to eat. Standing in a kitchen in front of a hot stove is just a means to an end as they say. If I’m going to eat I need to cook. We can’t afford to eat out every night. and if I let the men I live with do the cooking we’d be eating eggs for every meal. There is nothing wrong with eggs, but if you eat too many of them you might just turn into an animal that survives primarily on eggs. What would that animal be? A mongoose maybe, or a fox? As usual my confusion about animals has gotten the better of me because I’m not quite sure what a mongoose is. Is it similar to a hedgehog? Should I be too embarrassed to ask that question? Are there too many questions in this paragraph? … I should probably move on.

Just in case you are as misinformed as me, this is a mongoose.

Though my husband and stepson would be fine eating the same meal everyday for the rest of their lives, I need a bit of variety. When it comes to food I’m lacking in the creativity department. I find myself rotating through a couple of recipes. That’s not because I can’t cook anything else. It has more to do with laziness. That’s why I think I need to have a personal chef.

I have sophisticated tastes so I couldn’t just hire any old person off the street to cook for my family. I need a world class chef who will make food so good that it will make me slap somebody. I’ve thought about this long and hard and I’ve been able to narrow the list down to Rick Stein, Nigella Lawson, and Jamie Oliver. It’s just a coincidence that all of these people are British. The United Kingdom isn’t necessarily the country one thinks of when they think of good food, but I wouldn’t hire someone like Rachel Ray or Paula Deen. No offense to their fans, but if I have to eat Southern fried anything, I’d rather not eat.

I’ve have to audition the chefs of course. The competition would be stiff, but I’m sure one of them would have what it takes to cook for the Bettisons.

Photo by a.ali.himu

Sometimes I wonder why they even bother making light colored clothing. Is it just me or do other people end up spilling spaghetti sauce all over themselves every time they wear a white shirt? I have several white shirts in my closet that rarely see the light of day because I don’t want to spill anything on them. The unfortunate thing is that I look good in white. You don’t know that though because it’s a color you’ll probably never see me wearing.

An outfit doesn’t have to be white for me to mess it up. Any article of clothing lighter than black is in danger when I’m wearing it. Yesterday, I wore an orange shirt with some pale khaki pants. The ensemble narrowly escaped a major staining incident during my lunch of spicy, bright orange, Vietnamese soup. Getting through lunch stain free must have made me a bit cocky because later that day I decided to make roasted beets for dinner–without an apron.

Needless to say that went badly. The very first cut of the very first beet resulted in a splattering of red beet juice on my right hip. Isn’t it just like beet juice to be attracted to the palest article of clothing you have on? I was annoyed, but I wasn’t done yet. I should’ve just changed my clothes, but I’m a Taurus which means I’m stubborn–and I have a taste for luxury, but that’s a different story all together.

A few minutes later, I dropped a couple beet cubes and caught them on my right leg before they hit the floor. After that all bets were off. Sometimes you are just destined to sacrifice a perfectly good pair of pants to the beet gods. By the time I was done cooking my pants looked like they should be hanging in The Tate Gallery. I considered framing them and selling them to a billionaire with money to burn, but in the end I decided to see if I could get the stain out.

The point of this whole post is that I used the Astonish Stain Remover Bar on my pants that night. The next morning when I threw them in the wash they came out completely clean. There was no evidence of the beet travesty that had occurred the night before. It was like a miracle–a miracle that no one seems to care about but me. If you don’t have one of these stain remover bars get one. It will change your life. I might even start wearing my white shirts for events other than closings.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with Astonish Stain Removers and get nothing from mentioning them except the satisfaction of helping someone else avoid ruining a perfectly good article of clothing with an unfortunate stain.

Another Note: I was featured on Black Girl Nerds today. Check out the post here.

Photo by La Grande Farmers’ Market.

There are a lot of things that America does well, but grow a delicious apple is not one of them. I am consistently disappointed by the quality of the apples here. They are all mushy and powdery inside. Even the ones that seem like they might be wonderful are mush in your mouth.

An English apple on the other hand is like heaven. It’s a frothy delight. When I bite into one I swear I hear angels singing. If you are wondering what could be so great about an apple, you’ve obviously never tasted an English apple. If you had you’d know exactly what I mean.

I often wonder what the English secret is to growing such delicious apples. Maybe it’s the thick layer of clouds covering the country. Maybe it’s the constant supply of cold rain. Maybe it’s the Wellington boots worn by the English farmers or the ability to complain about the weather no matter what it is. Or maybe apple trees thrive on dry, cynical humor. Whatever it is American farmers need to get up to speed.

For now I’m considering starting an English apple import company. My English apples will blow American taste buds away. That’s my big idea for the day.

Photo by A Guy Taking Pictures

I love olives. Whether black or green or brown or purplish, they all tastes delicious. That’s why I thought I was the perfect person to be in an olive tasting focus group. Getting paid to eat olives sounded like a no brainer to me and it would’ve been if not for my big mouth.

Sensing that I would be a problem the group supervisor tried to send me and my sister home after only tasting two of the three olives. Once the problem was rectified, we were able to taste the third controversial olive. A worker set the olive before me in a white Styrofoam bowl. I started by smelling the olive just as I had the other two olives I’d tasted. As soon as the smell entered my nostrils I knew something was amiss.

The olive that was supposed to be Swiss cheese favored smelled so sweet that I recoiled in horror. Was it in fact an olive or was it an olive shaped piece of Halloween candy? I pushed aside my natural instinct and tasted the olive anyway. I was getting paid twenty-five dollars to taste three olives. If I left the third olive untasted maybe I wouldn’t get my money.

I put the abomination in my mouth and my fears were confirmed. This was the dreaded caramel flavored olive from the olive list. This was the olive that I was so glad I wouldn’t be made to taste. This was the olive that would be stoned to death if we lived in Old Testament times. Even though we had been clearly instructed not to say anything during the tasting, and even though I am normally the quietest of quiet people, the words, “This is wrong,” erupted from my mouth.

Following my lead, my sister also expressed the wrongness that was the caramel olive and the supervisor came into the room and told us to just be quiet and fill out the forms. Then he pulled the workers into the hall and told them off for letting us speak. When the workers came back in I wanted to apologize, but I was instructed not to talk. Instead, I just wrote a scathing review for my caramel Swiss cheese olive.

General Observations After Being in an Olive Focus Group:

1. Those one-way mirrors aren’t very good. Every time anyone behind the mirror did anything with their phone I could clearly see them on the other side of the glass.

2. It shouldn’t take ten minutes to put an olive in a properly marked bowl and bring it into a room. The time between olives was so frustrating. Apparently, ten minutes wasn’t long enough for the olive people because they still got it all wrong.

3. The ten minutes between olives gave me plenty of time to make faces at the people behind the one-way mirror.

4. How much can you really write about an olive? I’m a writer and all, but come on, it’s an olive. If I were a lawyer maybe I would’ve done a better job at reviewing the olives. I noticed that my sister certainly did seem to have tons to write.

5. The best thing about the focus group, besides finishing first because I love feeling like I’m winning, was the envelope of cash I got at the end.

Photo by jurvetson

Everyone has a favorite food. Here’s a video about mine.

I had a busy morning so here’s a fast post. It’s another episode of name that vegetable. I used to think I was well versed in veggies, but when I moved to the UK I saw a few that were new to me. This is one of them.

My husband ate the worst salad in the world in the Madrid airport. It most have been pretty bad, because it seems to have left more of an impression on him than the salad with a German cockroach in it that he ate in the Canary Islands. He brought the napkin from the Madrid airport restaurant home with him because he thought the name of it was so funny. The napkin sits on our dining table and every time we eat he picks it up and asks me if I’ve written a post about it yet.

My husband tends to have lots of ideas about posts for this blog. Usually if I stall long enough he forgets about them, but this napkin thing just won’t go away. So here’s the napkin.

He says that if he had noticed the name of the resturant before he bought the salad he would’ve gone somewhere else.

The reason I was reluctant to post this is because before I moved to the UK that would’ve meant anything to me. My husband says that I’m in the minority and that most people know what that means. So if anyone else out there is completely unaware of how the English pronounce certain words here’s an explanation. Ars which I think should have an e on the end so it is spelled arse is how the English pronounce the word ass. (I’m pretty sure that’s a run on sentence, but I so don’t care.)

You shouldn’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. I think I remember Richard Simmons or Oprah or some such person saying that once or twice. I consider myself a responsible shopper and try my best to always follow this rule, but whether I’m hungry or not sometimes I can’t resist certain foods.

My latest impulse buy was a package of venison sausages. It’s not a bag of chips (crisps to my British homies) or a box of doughnuts, but this package of sausages does cause a bit of an eating dilemma in our home. My husband doesn’t eat gluten. He says that avoiding it makes him stronger. While I admit that he is stronger than he looks, I’m not sure that his strength has increased any since going on a gluten-free diet. Wheat flour is the last item on the sausages’ short list of ingredients, but it is still there.

Now I have a pack of six venison sausages and–here’s were things get a bit tricky–no freezer. Looks like I’m going to be eating sausage for most of my meals this week.

My in-laws spent their last day in town at our flat. I planned to cook a chicken with roasted potatoes for them. I thought that was a good safe meal that most people would eat. My usually fair is curry and I know they don’t eat curry. The day before they were to come to our house my father-in-law suddenly starts talking about how he doesn’t eat chicken.

My husband: Oh no. We were going to make a chicken for you tomorrow.

My father-in-law: Don’t worry about us we’re easy to feed.

My husband: What do you want to eat then?

My father-in-law: It doesn’t matter. We’ll eat whatever you give us, but I don’t eat chicken or lamb. I don’t like any chunks of meat.

My mother-in-law: He’ll eat mince.

My husband: Do you eat fish?

My father-in-law: I like cod.

So I ended up making chilli. That’s an easy dish made with mince. I grew up just calling it chilli, but here they call it chilli con carne. I guess that’s the dishes full name. The problem is that I’d never seen it written, I’ve only heard it said. All this time I thought it was chilli con cardy. So I’ve been saying chilli con cardy to people and either no one has noticed or people here are too polite to point out my mistake. I only learned I was saying it wrong when my husband pointed it out the other day.

Anyway, if we lived near my in-laws I’m pretty sure that my father-in-law would provide an endless amount of material for this blog. I could probably get a week’s worth of blogging material from one two-hour visit.

Airline food has never been good. I think the the best food I’ve eaten on a plane was on Korean Air. They used to serve bi bim bap (a traditional Korea rice dish) and it was always quite delicious.

We usually fly on Delta, because they love to fly and it shows. Really it’s just because we usually find the best prices on Delta. My anti-jet lag fasting regime is made easier by the fact that the food is so bad. They always seem to serve a piece of rubbery chicken that tastes like it’s been rubbed in someone’s sweaty armpit. The chicken is usually service with odd tasting rice and vegetable cooked beyond recognition. If you don’t want the chicken and you’re not avoiding gluten you can have the pasta that’s been cooked so much that you don’t have to bother with the inconvenience of chewing. It just dissolves in your mouth like pasta should.

Recently, we flew United and I have to say that after dealing with Delta’s disgusting food so often United’s meals seemed luxurious. The vegetables were recognizable. The chicken was still rubbery, but didn’t have the armpit aftertaste. For a snack before landing we were served a chickpea and eggplant salad that was actually nice.

Flying with United isn’t all sunshine and sausages though. They do have a bit of a bad reputation for their treatment of musical instruments that they live up too. While my husband’s bass was still in working order, his bass case was all busted up when we claimed our baggage after the flight. Flying with United is too much of a risk for us. We’ll just have to suffer with Delta’s disgusting meals.

Picture by Like_the_Grand_Canyon.