Mashed Potatoes: An adventure.

Am I an adventurous eater? I don't know. Most people would say no, because there are a lot of things I haven't eaten and don't want to try. Things like Chinese food (sounds like lots of bits and pieces. If I want leftovers I'll just eat leftovers. I also prefer  to be filled up by my meals, and rmor has it that doesn't happen with Chinese.

I don't like soy sauce or teriyaki or other Oriental seasonings, although I'm not always clear on the country of origin.

I just plain don't like seafood. I have yet to taste anything that does not overwhelmingly taste of vast anounts of stale salt water.

I don't eat Mexican food, either. It is way, way too spicy for me. Hot spicy. I've sampled this, while cooking, but not eaten as a meal or part of one. I don't like the ingredients.

I don't like  hot spices. I want to taste the food. I don't want my taste buds burnt out or overloaded to the point where they don't function. I want to enjoy the taste, to savor the flavor, and to be able to take in all that the food item has to offer.

If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

I like food. I like to smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, .and see it. Eating should be a sensual experience. Not all the senses will be used with every offering, of course. Mashed potatoes are pretty quiet.No crisp snap of the fresh potato. No crunch at the first -- or last -- bite.

But they can be cheesy, golden, salty, lightly garlic, smooth, lumpy, snowy white, steamy, dry, peppery, and even food-colored if you have a kid who will only eat green. 

Mashed potatoes are mundane and boring, but they sure can be jazzed up. 

That can be an adventure.

Seasonings and combined ingredients should enhance one another and especially the main ingredient. Too many people  and places do not use balance or moderation. jalapeno flavored should include the taste of jalapeno -- not taste like jalapeno and nothing else. 

So, if my adventures in eating aren't what you expect, I'm sorry.

But let me share with you my cheesy mashed, and maybe you will learn that true adventures start with the familiar.

Making Magic

Today, I made magic for a child.

It was a follow up to the magic I made last night, when I took cookies out of the oven, and promised her that tomorrow we would decorate them. She didn't know what decorate meant, I think, but was willing to take my word for it.
After all, a Mammaw who can get cookies out of an oven instead of a bag must know something.

Today while she was watching tv, I got my powdered sugar and my milk and food coloring and 4 bowls and 1 coffee cup that belonged to my dad and started mixing. When Hailey's show was over, she came out to the kitchen and climbed up in the chair.

"Mammaw, it's purple. And orange."

I showed her how to use the purple plastic knives to spread the frosting on the cookies, but it was still pretty runny, so I reached into my bag of powder and dumped another handful into each bowl. Then I picked one up and started stirring it in.

"Ooooh, Mammaw! You're making magic! I want to help! We can make a RAINBOW!"

So, I told her to pick up a bowl and stir it up. She said she was making green magic, and I was making purple magic, and blue magic, and yellow magic, and she was doing orange magic.

Then we painted the cookies.

I put sprinkles on the cookies after they were painted and she yelled at me that I was "Messing up" her magic paint cookies.
But she was liberal with the sprinkles and the candies herself afterward.

Sadly, we still have paint left, and nothing to paint on. My flour is nearly gone or I'd make a plain cake or something -- then we could indeed make a rainbow. I put the leftover frosting in jars in the refrigeratoe. She keeps telling me the food paint is getting cold. I have no idea if it will keep or if it is safe to keep that way, but if it goes bad, there's always the sink.

I could have a rainbow drain.

The real magic is in the child's simple belief that Mammaw can do magic -- and lets her help.

Surely there's no greater magic than feeding the children -- bodies and imagination both.

I am my Appliances.

I have to say, there seems to be something to the idea that household appliances last ten years before they need replaced. I've finally owned major appliances, purchased new, that have lasted ten years. And, true to statistics, they have started to break down.

My dryer makes a horrible noise. I don't know if it works at all or not (the drum will turn sometimes), because that very strange, very loud noise makes me afraid to find out. I don't want the thing to explode, after all. Or catch on fire. Or put out power for the whole town. Anyway, that's the dryer.

Then the heating element in my oven went out. This has happened before, and isn't really a big deal, except that it happened. It's frustrating. Last night, one of my burners caught on fire. It's a burner I've used infrequently but regularly, and there was no reason for it to ignite. It was not on high heat. Scorched and burned one of my brand new beautiful red pans, too.

That leaves the refrigerator and the washer. The washer has had problems for a long time. Nothing major, nothing unexplainable, nothing impossible. It cleans my clothes, as long as the necessary adjustments are made.
Haven't had too many problems with the fridge. It wants to freeze everything on the top shelf, or nor quite freeze things in the freezer, and there's a shelf in the freezer that is at the wrong level and it wont come out. But other than that, it cools on. (I hope I'm not jinxing it by talking about it.)

This all reminds me, strongly, of what happened to my body once I turned forty. I started having accidents like stepping in a hole and falling up stairs and smacking the back of my hand into bread racks. After the accidents, the remnants -- the places that I had injured -- just started aching, often for no reason.

But, like my appliances, I'm still here.
I'm still doing my job(s).
There have to be adjustments, there has to be timing, and things may be done differently. But the jobs can be done or got around.

We'll all  work on until completely dead, and even that may not be "The End".

We (me and my appliances) can be harvested for parts when our usefulness as ourselves is over.
That's a nice thought.

Cooking and Looking

Cooking shows used to be about cooking. About recipes, and following the directions. Cooking shows were the original reality TV. The smooth blends, the careful combining of dry and wet ingredients, every step demonstrated and shown, step-by-step. Oven temps and burner settings and the right type of pan. They told how to do it all, what it should look like, how it should smell.
Now, there are many, many, MANY variations of cooking shows. They have little connection to the follow-the-recipe shows of old.
Actually, they are not cooking shows. They are eating shows.
You can watch 'chefs' eat their way around a city, the important thing being who can most quickly eat the most. Any cooking or flavor components are there as clues to the next food you have to quickly ingest in spite of flavor, texture, or taste.
You can watch a fat man (how did he get that way?) wander all over the country eating the world's largest hamburger or the great steak of blank. Yeah, just watch that man eat!

Of course, the shows do go into the kitchens. They show you a powdery spice mix and tell you here's the secret ingredients -- not that you know any more about what the ingredients are. They show you how it's put on and how the food is cooked and the way to build the sandwich, if there is a sandwich.

Then there are the 'kitchen' shows. Contestants line up at prep tables and they are all supposed to make something, sometimes the same things, out of identical ingredients.  They show all the cooks doing the same or different things. One contestant uses a skillet, one boils, one broils, another bakes. Sometimes the cook will tell the camera, 'I think broiling will preserve the flavor without destroying the integrity of the selection.'  Huh?
I know I want to try that for supper tonight.

Then they have to be judged. The judges must consider whether the grape leaf should be tilted more to the right or the left, and if the sauce dribbled across the plate is writing in secret code or not. (Points off if they can read it.) Finally, they must decide if the food is edible enough for the prize. It doesn't matter if the idea of the food is appetizing -- that's completely nonessential.
I, for one, do not think fish flavored ice cream is ever edible, no matter how much cream and sugar is mixed in. Because that's a favorite 'strategy'. If you don't know what else to do with it, make it ice cream. YUM!

Why do people watch this? What is the fascination?
Food needs to be tasted. It needs to be smelled. It needs to be felt. One can't know the texture of a blend from looking at it on the screen. One can't inhale the aroma of good things coming together in a skillet or an oven. Most of all, one can't taste the result.

So why watch? If you want to see fat people eat, go to the fair. If you want to watch a circus, go to the circus. If you want to enjoy food, fix it for yourself. That's what appeases the appetite.