Successes & Failures

Call me a little weird, but I'm always on the look out for something new to eat.  I get bored easily & I've always been taught that a healthy diet embraces wide variety.  And I don't think I'm too awful picky.  There are just a few things I don't like.  For example, I am not a fan of coconut, bananas, papaya, ham (or essentially all pork products), ground hamburger, peaches...

Ok, so maybe I'm a little picky.

But I have been trying to broaden my palate lately.  Poor Mike gets dragged along.  Most of the time he isn't kicking or screaming.  And most of the time I don't try to coerce him into trying something he doesn't want to.  Most of the time...

Anyway, a couple of successes I have had recently are discovering that I love, love, love pistachios!  I had never had them before when recently a friend shared some with me.  It was love at first bite *grin*  And I like the fact that you have to pop them out of their shells.  Then you have to work to eat a whole fistful at once.  No, I don't usually snack a fistful at a time, do you? *blush*

And they make a good driving snack!

 I love yogurt.  This is something I didn't discover until college because my mom doesn't like yogurt so it never occurred to her to introduce us to it.  Now I eat it almost every day.  It's good stuff.  Recently I tried Greek style yogurt.  It's a little different.  I think the honey helps me like it.  Without the honey, no deal.  But it's packed with protein & those good bacteria bugs so it will probably become a regular resident in our fridgie.

Now for my not so success-full stories.  This past Saturday I dragged my carcass popped out of bed bright & early to hit the farmers market.  I may or may not have shoved a baseball cap over my bedhead.  I may or may not have ducked & hid when I saw some people I know.  But I know that I absolutely did pick up some farm fresh eggs, local honey, a leek, & a baby bok choy. 

Am I weird, because I kind of liked that I had to wash the wet dirt off of my produce.  It made me feel like it had been picked just that morning.

Who knew leeks had such beautiful flowers?

And here are the brief tales (I promise) of my failures:

*I used the honey to make granola bars.  I got local honey with the hopes that it would help relieve some of Mike's allergy symptoms.  This honey tastes totally different than any honey I've ever had.  It's not totally unpleasant but it didn't jive well with the granola bars.  Huh. 

*The baby bok choy was a limp noodle mess by the time I was hoping to use it.  Grrr. 

*The leek was actually kind of fun to chop down & find a recipe for.  I was going to make Garlic & Leek Mashed Potatoes.  Things were going great - I had the potatoes on to cook.  I had the garlic & leek simmering in some chicken broth & I had some milk set aside with just a touch of vinegar to make a substitute for buttermilk.  At just the right time I added the 'buttermilk' & some butter to the leeks & garlic.  What ensued was nothing short of sickening.  The milk curdled & turned into this awful snotty mess & it started to smell bad & all I could do was keep stirring in horror!  Then I checked the date on our milk & it was expired.  Then I checked the smell of our milk & it was definitely spoiled.  Yep, I added vinegar to sour milk so it was double rotted!  Ugh.  It was gross.  Super gross.  Ugh.  La La La La La Laaaa!  It's time for a subject change.

Kudos to Mike for dumping that mess out for me so I could wash the saucepan.  Otherwise the whole deal would have gone into the trash!

I won't be checking out the farmer's market with my bedhead under a baseball cap this weekend because I'll be co-hosting a yard sale with my friends Autumn, Abby, & April (yep, they are sisters!).  If you are local, come by!  We've got lots of great junk valuables to sell!