Category Archives: food

food, jello, pineapple

Nectar of the Forgotten Gods

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Do you ever have foods that you forget how good they taste until you have them again? I do.

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The other night I made strawberry Jello (sugar free, of course) with pineapple (ditto) in it. I hadn’t made that in a while and had forgotten how good it is. In fact, it was so good that I had it for breakfast. Strawberry Jello with pineapple and a side of cottage cheese. The breakfast of the gods -Yum!

In any case, it brought to mind several thoughts:

  • Do you have foods that tickle your taste buds but that you forget/fail to make for long periods?
  • Do you eat foods at non-traditional meal times (like Jello for breakfast)?
  • Do you find yourself falling into food ruts (like an apple and a piece of cheese for breakfast everyday)?

Inquiring minds want to know.

food, taste

Do You …

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Do you ever have a particular taste in mind when you decide to fix or order a dish only to have the actual dish not live up (or down) to your imagination? I do.

Sometimes I come across a recipe and think “Boy, that sure sounds good.” But many times the actual taste bears little resemblance to my mental picture of how it should/would taste. The same thing happens from time to time with old favorites. Then I always wonder if I have made the dish wrong. After all, I seldom follow a recipe to the letter. I am more a bit of this and a dash of that type of cook.

The other day the topic came up in a discussion with mom, since it happens to her as well. Her thought was that it might be related to aging and the associated changes in taste abilities and preferences. My thought was that it might be reflective of the different nutritional needs at the time. After all, when I was a teenage football player, every bit of food in the universe in any combination looked good and tasted good. Now? Not so much. We left the topic hanging that so we could go eat. {*grin*}

I was also reminded of how taste and cravings for certain foods can change due to other environmental factors. For example, one of the drugs I took or a couple of years to treat a chronic condition left me with an insane desire for grapefruit. Not citrus fruit, but grapefruit specifically.

I’d peel and eat a couple of grapefruit a day and they tasted absolutely sublime. Then I changed to a different drug regimen and the desire for grapefruit faded. (Not to mention that they taste no where near as good as I remember them from the drug period.)

Now I am left to wonder if my current fascination with scrambled eggs

drizzled with Tabasco Chipotle Sauce

is an artifact of my current drug regimen, a development of aging taste buds, or is just a passing fad for my taste buds. After all, I used to not care for scrambled eggs in any form what-so-ever. That is certainly not the case now.

So what foods do you find you crave? And which ones no longer live up to the taste in your imagination?

food, humor, saturday

Fun and Oddities

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I was visited this afternoon by another member of our Boy Scout committee to do some bookkeeping (I am the treasurer and he is the leader) related to the popcorn sales. Thank heavens the annual popcorn ordeal is about over. Once we completed the business at hand, the conversation began to drift. He and I were both Scouts in the troop some 40+ years ago and his sister was in L and my high school class, so we go back a ways. There is never a shortage of hot air to be exchanged.

The conversation went from hunting (and how neither of us does much of it anymore) to changes in the meat eating patterns of society at large. Sparing you the lean versus fat and wild versus range versus feedlot arguments, we finally landed on meats of our childhood that have become scarce to see in the stores. We both noted that you don’t see the huge displays of cow tongue anymore. (And we both agreed that we neither were big tongue fans.) But then we went on to note that we both love beef liver and onions, but don’t eat it anywhere near as often as we did in our youth. That led naturally to beef heart. He loved it in his youth but seldom finds it on the meat counter now. I am neutral on the topic since I can’t remember eating all that much of it at any time. That in turn led to a whole slew of foods like venison salami and antelope sausage and ….

Which leads me to some questions for you. What cuts of meat from your youth do you no longer find in abundance in the store? And what wild meat concoctions do you remember fondly from your youth?

Now on to the amusement of the day – a story courtesy of the local paper about another Colorado town of similar size to ours about 450 miles from here.

DURANGO (AP) — A person in a chicken costume ruffled the feathers of Durango’s city council as its members discussed rules for backyard fowl.

At a council meeting Tuesday, someone in a chicken costume quietly entered the council chambers just as the mayor was discussing a recently-passed backyard hen ordinance.

The costumed chicken took a few turns, flapped its arms, then took a seat in the nearly empty gallery.

Several minutes later, the big bird left — without identifying itself — after laying an egg on the floor.

Council members told The Durango Herald they were perplexed by the costumed chicken but found the visit humorous. The council voted 3-2 earlier this month to make it easier to keep backyard chickens.

Makes me think I’m leaving the mayor business at the perfect time.

food, party, Super Bowl

Super Bowl Sunday

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L and I spent the afternoon/evening at a Super Bowl party. It was a classic Super Bowl party – food, food, and more food. And of course beer and liquor and pop and coffee. The party started two hours before kick-off with tables of food including everything from cocktail weenies in BBQ sauce to hot wings to cold cuts to cheese platters to chips and dips and cookies and … Basically enough food to feed four times as many people as were at the party.

Then at halftime, the hostess rolled out the tenderloin of beef and pulled pork and baked beans and salads and … But even all that didn’t supply the bite that broke the proverbial camel’s back and led to that absolutely stuffed feeling. For that purpose, there was a chocolate cake with extra rich chocolate frosting covered in shaved chocolate. Rich enough to cause diabetic coma at twenty paces. Of course, I just had to have a piece. It was indeed the proverbial overdoing it. As a result, I still feel stuffed hours later.

Just so you understand, I have been a diabetic for decades. So when a party where there will be an over abundance of food is in my future, I plan ahead both by nature and by necessity. That is why I was out with Molly the wonder dog early this afternoon and put in 7-8 miles walking before getting ready for the party. The extra 3-4 miles meant I could eat later at the party without being overly watchful of what I was eating. Besides, it made Molly happy to stay at home and catch a nap. But even all that preparation will do nothing for that overstuffed feeling.

It was so nice to visit and banter with the acquaintances and  friends at the party. With L and I living so far apart during the week, our joint social life has gone down the tubes. On the weekends when we see each other, we are generally tied up with family and each other to the exclusion of our friends and acquaintances.  Add to that the fact that we are at the age where most of us (L, I, friends, and acquaintances) have already lost our fathers and have mothers that are struggling with various medical issues, and it can be even more daunting to get the crew together. One of our friends at the party could only drop in for a bit since her mother was hospitalized last night and she needed some sleep and to go see her mother again. It all conspires to mean that it can require the phases of the moon and the stars to align just right for us all to be able to get together.

One of the things I enjoyed most at the party was looking across the room and into the the other room and seeing L and some others talking and laughing. It was too far away to have any clue of what they were talking or laughing about, but just the sight of L with her head thrown back laughing is one of my favorite things to see in all the world. It reminds me of the really neat young girl I first met way back when in biology class . Really makes me wish I could make her laugh all the time. And to see her talking with such evident animation and enjoying herself warms my heart. (Can you tell that I really love my wife?)

Time to get some other things done. How was your super Sunday?

Conversation, family, food

Thursday, are you sure?

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You know how some days of the week just have a particular feeling? Somehow today should have been a Sunday or maybe even a Saturday. It just feels that way deep down in the tips of my toes. (And no, it is not due to any vestigial hangover or anything else. I drank and partied not to bring in the New Year.)


Yesterday when I dropped by Mom’s to pick up some Christmas stuff, it was decided it would be nice to have a few people over house for New Year’s Day. (By virtue of being a people I got invited as well.) So Aunt J and Uncle J (Mom’s brother and his wife from 90 miles up the road), Ruth, Marlene, my MIL and Mom were all present at the appointed hour. Of course there was food galore. Just when you thought it was safe to come out from behind the leftovers, here was a whole new feast. (It seems like seasonal denial the way good food keeps appearing in front of my face even as the holidays pass. I think it is a plot by the universe to make sure that I continue to overeat. The universe is a malevolent place!)

The afternoon following the meal was originally planned for Mexican Train, but the conversation got going and we never got around to playing cards. It was a worthy trade off. Just sitting around with family and acquaintances, carrying on good conversation for hours on a variety of topics with no background blare of TV is so rare. It is one of those lost pleasures of Sunday afternoons that I remember from my childhood. That is precisely what we did for hours and hours.

The breadth of topics and viewpoints that can come up in diverse group like today’s is interesting. I was the proverbial spring chicken of the group. Everyone else was between 65 and 95 years of age. There were rabid democrats and colorful republicans and political agnostics. There were conservatives and liberals. I enjoy the give and take and respect of others viewpoints. (Actually, it could just be that we are all going deaf and …)

I also enjoy it because it is a chance to hear stories from the childhood of Mom and her family as well as stories that go back to the times and conditions even before her birth. I also heard some stories from Uncle J about my great grandfather that I hadn’t heard before. I knew my great grandfather only as a figure from early grade school since he died about the time I was in third grade. But Uncle J had a relationship with great grandpa that had elements in common with the relationship I had with my grandfather. It is interesting to see how there is that family continuity through the years. Many of those grandfather/grandson relationships will be very different current generations because of the later ages at which families have kids. It will be interesting to see what develops to replace them.

Well, time to sign off and prepare for the oddness of “one-day week” Friday.