Is this a dagger I see before me? No, a green highlighter. Right. Okay.

[mrissa]

After two scrubbings and a shower, my hands finally no longer look as though I've been rending the flesh of mine enemies without adequate fluid barriers. I love these double chocolate cherry scones -- I wait eagerly for cherry season every year so I can make them -- but getting there is always a bit messy. You can tell I'm getting better at it, though: the year I made up the recipe, the entire kitchen counter was spotted with cherry juice. Now, a few dots, the cutting board, and my hands, oh, my gory hands.

This morning I told someone it looked like a kitcheny day, but I think it looks like a kitcheny week. There are just several things that seem like a good idea even aside from, y'know, regular meals. My freezer runneth over.

The book is booking away. Still merrily, despite being definitively into the [gulp] middle third. I would be happier if my protagonist didn't think she got to have sex every chapter. Well. I will just have to be firm with her, is all. Because this is not that kind of book.

Hmm. Apparently it's only a little bit that kind of book. But the theory of it not being that kind of book remains sound. Sound-ish. Sort of.

Comments

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I use latex free gloves I swipe from my doc now that I'm not in a commercial kitchen. Makes life much nicer when working w/stuff very smelly or staining.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think my standards for smelly hands were set very high the summer I lived in Toledo. We (the physics research students) were cooking communally every weeknight, and, being trained by my mother, I tended to poke my head in and ask if there was anything I could do to help. Invariably the answer was that I could mince garlic. We went swimming several times a week that summer, so my hands smelled of chlorine, garlic, and honeysuckle lotion the whole time. It's a miracle anyone was willing to come near enough to talk to me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Err. Was there lunch?

I didn't get dark chocolate M&Ms for Memorial Day (it is my own private memorial, and it lasts me, because I don't want very many M&Ms at once), so I haven't actually tried them. Should I?

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

SHE-DEVIL!!! Chocolate and cherries. You have made me desire black forest cake now, on top of wondering about your scones; they sound delicious.

(Note to people who don't know me: I don't really think M'ris is a She-Devil. I'm just teasing her.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I dislike most milk-chocolate stuff, too.

I had a friend who was eating a lot of frozen pre-made foods and ended up smelling like nitrates to me. He smelled preserved. I was very glad when that phase of his life ended. But every once in awhile is surely not going to kill you, and getting some protein and veg is all for the best.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think this is the first time someone on lj has actually paid attention to how their comment might look to someone outside their immediate vicinity.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Summer is great for fresh food for people who don't think they're any good at cooking. There are things like peas and tomatoes that you can just wash and eat, and they're so good as they are. Peaches, cherries, stuff like that. It's winter when fresh veg have to be prepared more -- you can't just gnaw on squash, really, or potatoes. You have to do something with them. But if you have good fresh food, very simple preparations are often enough. Roasting green beans with just a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt is extremely easy, but they come out kind of caramelized and wonderful. The taste is so different from canned green beans that you wonder how they even count as the same food.

Right now we have a bowl of fresh peas (sugar snap, which is a distant second to the English kind for me, but I have difficulty finding the English kind fresh here) and a bowl of fresh cherries in the fridge, ready to snack on at a moment's notice, and they're so good that we do snack on them on a moment's notice. I'll bet a bowl of raspberries or cherries or blackberries would mix really well with dark chocolate M&Ms for popping while you're sitting at the computer. Even blueberries.

I like to make it easy for the people who live here or visit here to eat good fresh food. One can't find the energy to prepare complicated meals every day, but the energy to munch raspberries is almost always with us.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Asparagus also roasts very readily. Snap off the woody ends, drizzle with olive oil, and press a couple cloves of garlic over it if you happen to have garlic and a press.

Also green beans are really good if you stick them in some water and nuke the container for a few minutes, then drain off the water and squirt a little lemon juice on them. A knob of butter and some almonds makes them schmancy, but if you have good fresh beans, they're good with just the lemon juice, too.

A cucumber sliced up and doused with rice vinegar and a sprinkle of dried dill, a tiny bit of sugar if you have a sweet tooth, is a favorite here as well.

I mean, I do have Prepared Veg Recipes -- I gave orbitalmechanic one for broccoli with diced red peppers and minced fresh tarragon and a Dijon sauce just the other day. But fresh produce is so good that it can be Right without having to be Very Thoroughly.

If you're like me, walking through the farmer's market is going to overwhelm you with things that look just plain wonderful and are clearly cheap and in season. Between me and panjienlien (and probably some other people on your friendslist), I'll bet we could tell you easy good things to do with most of them, so if something fits the budget and looks good, get some and post an SOS on lj -- people will know what to do with graffiti eggplant or Saturn peaches or whatever, without the patented Moi's Dad Nervous Breakdown.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Graffiti eggplant are the white and purple stripey ones. Saturn peaches are kind of like doughnut peaches -- they're more oblate than spheroids. Very sweet.

I have an addiction to trying new kinds of produce. Clerks will often ask me, "What do you do with this?" And I will say, "I don't know, but we're gonna find out." By now, my own clerk, Rosie, is used to this and just shakes her head and laughs.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to eat more fresh food (and looking at these comments with both eagerness and trepidation). So far, it seems that I will eat almost anything dipped in ranch dressing, and once I've done that, I'm not as afraid of the green. My issue is fear of the unknown more than fear of cooking, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They are streaky gorgeous things.

They taste like normal eggplant, though.