Author: Kristen

Julia Child Dies – Age 91. Apparently, she didn’t start cooking until she was 32! And she wanted her last meal to be “Red meat and a bottle of gin.” – I hope she got her wish.

This is a TAD offtopic here, but I think it still relates: Promising Thai fuel cell converts carbohydrates to generate electricity – “Cellennium Thailand, a small research and development company, has successfully developed and commercialised a sugar fuel cell that uses carbohydrates from sugar or tapioca to generate electricity. The vanadium-based fuel cell works by electrochemically converting the chemical energy bound in carbohydrates into electricity. Cellennium chairman Krisada Kampanatsanyakorn said the fuel cell, which has already been patented in Sweden, was able to store electricity for up to 15 to 20 years, or up to five times the life cycle of normal batteries….”

There are some restaurants which seem to do things really well, but other things really poorly, so you only end up going there if you’re in the mood for the ‘good’ things. For instance, there’s a local diner-type place that makes what they call the ‘colossal burger’ – it’s a huge hand-made burger that’s fire-seared and just completely tasty. And their natural cut fries are just plain GOOD. This same place serves breakfasts (all day) as well, but most of what we’ve had there has been disappointing. Flat, thin, and tasteless scrambled eggs, pancake syrup that’s bland and runny… all the breakfast foods just seem to have no flavor at all. Before we stopped trying that place for the occasional breakfast out, we’d always leave feeling like none of the food actually made physical contact with our taste buds.

There’s also another local eatery within a store that we’ve dropped by a few times. They, too, had good burgers and fries, so we thought we’d go back and order their burritos. (It’s a limited menu kind of place.) I’ve never HAD such a horrible meal in my life. The chicken was on the edge of being either spoiled or doused in so much MSG that it tasted like salt gone bad – if that’s even possible. There was no cheese at all, the drop of sour cream had been placed inside the burrito and you couldn’t tell it was there.

Is it who’s cooking? What the cook knows how to do? What the cook LIKES themselves? Do cooks generally TASTE their own food? I guess I’m suspicious that the food that doesn’t taste good was made by those who consider cooking just another job and who don’t really have passion or joy for it. I guess those who aren’t in it for the taste tend to judge it by other critera, such as what the full plate looks like when ‘dressed’, etc. (John had a fellow cook tell him one day that if the food LOOKED good, the customer’s imaginations would fill in the rest. Both of us wondered, why not just make the food taste good in the first place? You don’t eat food with your EYES, right?) Anyway – that’s my rant for today – LOL.

John and I went to a local, inexpensive eatery today to get some Italian pasta dinners – manicotti and lasagna, specifically. We quickly discovered that they had purchased some new (and cheaper, plasticky, reusable) plates to replace the old, white, ceramic ramekins that they used to use. We certainly liked the old ramekins better overall, but the new dishes would have been at least tolerable, except that they were trimmed with a large border of purple and pink flowers. Have you ever SEEN red-orange colored tomato sauce next to pink and purple? Of course, it may just be me, as I tend to be very attentive to colors in the first place, but let’s just say that this particular combination doesn’t necessarily ENCOURAGE the appetite. (All they were missing was a unicorn in the middle that you discovered upon clearing the plate.)

I AM hoping these cheap plates are just a stop-gap measure before they get new ramekins. I’m guessing they aren’t meant to last very long with commercial use. Hmmmm – maybe the pink and purple border will scrub off in the dishwashers! Well, one can HOPE!