Thursday, July 31, 2014

Ms. Balderdash & Mr. Blatherskite

As I assume you know, since you're here, I periodically decide to give the blog a new chance, and repeatedly claim that I will lower the bar for what I write about and how I write about it, so as to make it easier to actually write something, and thereby raise the frequency of posts. You are hereby warned that this is a lowering. I don't really have anything particularly interesting to share, but, in the spirit of age, I will write anyway, giving my personal and unique contribution to the great ocean of uninteresting information that is the world wide web.

It's 14:14 on a Thursday, I'm too restless to do anything useful in the apartment, and too bored and shiftless to leave the apartment. I've just had a rather decent lunch/dinner (lunch sort of is dinner here, one of the cultural differences I have come to appreciate and consider bringing back to Norway with me) of wholegrain arepa, my favourite kind of avocado (sadly not found in Norway - another thing I'd like to bring back. How much trouble do you think I'd be in if US airport security found avocado seeds in my baggage?), a bit on the green side, but the other half will be perfect tomorrow, tuna and kepa onion in almond milk with garam masala, and a mixture of barley with undefined vegetables and spices, dug out from the dying freezer. For dessert: papaya with almond milk and cinnamon. 
I have probably not been in possession of a fridge containing fewer ingredients than at this moment since my first months of living alone as a student. Because of the wildly fluctuating temperatures in this most basic of kitchen aids, we can't really buy large amounts of anything perishable, and are working on finishing the contents of the freezer before they turn into a health risk. Consequently, the fridge still holds a rather respectable collection of vinegar, mustards, sauces and pickles, but otherwise the shelves are occupied by the leftovers of today's lunch, a pot of chocolate icing, a few drying cloves of garlic, a couple of eggs, half a papaya, half an avocado, half an onion, and, languishing at the bottom of the vegetable drawer, one lonely carrot. (The carrot was meant to be part of a juice or a stew, but during the weekend, the licuadora (also known as a blender, I believe, an absolutely ubiquitous appliance here, and yet another thing to adopt) decided to stop working, and the vegetable grater I had finally remembered to purchase was left at the checkout at the supermarket, so the carrot stays where it is for now.)
Anyway, given my limited options, I was quite happy with my own cooking, which, to be quite honest, I usually am. After all, I rarely cook something I'm not going to eat myself, and if I'm going to eat it, why would I use ingredients, combinations or methods I don't like. Besides, I generally love food. I love eating food, cooking food, thinking about food, and reading about food. My latest food-related reading project, It Must Have Been Something I Ate, is proving to be of above average entertainment value, and has led me to decide that gourmand is a nicer label than food snob. And also, that I need to go to Italy again. To eat.

On a related (at least in my mind) note, I bring you the revolutionary news - serendipitously discovered whilst conducting some highly complex and rigorously scientific online research - that you have very likely been eating mandarins - or rather, I assume, clementines - in the wrong manner your whole life:


And with that, I think I have just about run out of flapdoodle for today. I will do my utmost to keep you in the loop whenever I discover some fact that might revolutionize your eating habits (or lives in general) and there might be more coming on the food reading theme, but I refuse to make any promises.