Guac… what?

I’m usually a basic Lay’s potato chip type of person – I like potatos, oil, and salt in my chips, and not much else. But for some ungodly reason I thought I should branch out a bit and try some of the flavors I’d been dismissing for so long now, so during a sale, I bought a bag of Lay’s “Cool Guacamole” flavored chips.

First of all, they are a really weird dusted green color that’s obviously artificial. Second, the major identifiable flavors are jalapeno and lime juice and MSG. (Which always makes me swell up like a balloon, so I have a personal vendetta against it.) Thirdly, there’s absolutely no avocado in it whatsoever. The flavor itself was “okay”, but there are too many other factors running against them at this point. So, as you can tell, I’m going back to my plain Lay’s, thank you very much. If you’re the kind of person that loves flavored chips, then you may like them – just don’t expect anything at all close to guacamole!

Speaking of guacamole, John brought home a couple of lovely, photogenic avocados the other day, which I photographed and then ‘designed’ and made them into t-shirts and cards, and posters and such! (Click on the graphic to see this image on the products in the Food Follies shop.) It’s oddly difficult to photograph food in a way that makes it look like it’s supposed to. I remember taking a photo once of a baked ziti that was fresh out of the oven and looked SO good, but the photo came out looking like beige shiny plastic (melted cheese) slopped over bumpy red stuff. Ahhh, well – it was better to eat than take pictures of anyway – LOL!

Season to taste?

It’s perfectly natural that what your body needs is reflected in what tastes good to you, but it’s still pretty cool when you experience it in action. For the last few days, I’ve been really craving salt, as I think my body was low on this resource. I was out a lot in the strong California sun, but the air was chilly, so I didn’t realize as much what was happening as I might have if it was HOT out. For instance, I was horking down Lay’s potato chips like they were going out of style, but they didn’t taste at ALL salty to me, and my lips never began to shrivel. (And John assures me that the Lay’s taste as they usually do to him, so that’s my ‘proof’ that it’s not the chips themselves.) Usually I eat a handful and have had enough, but not today. I also had a grilled cheese sandwich, and the (salt involved) cheese just really hit the spot.

On the flip side, I haven’t had much interest in sweets at ALL, which is wrong, especially when one has a tin full of chocolates less than an arm’s length away – heh. Even yesterday, what sweets I did have were oddly unsatisfying.

In the general sense, I still find it odd when people insist that, say, a soup is too salty or too bland, without having any clue that it’s THEM or that objectivity isn’t actually POSSIBLE with food, and that it’s not necessarily the cook’s shortcoming, but their own body’s.

Mmmmm Bacteria

Years ago I heard a theory that said if your body needed some particular nutrient, the foods that contained that nutrient would be appealing to you.

I now accept this theory as completely valid. All my life I’ve hated yogurt, the tangy taste would make me want to gag after a couple of spoonfuls. Then I got sick last week, and the doctor prescribed mega-antibiotics.

The antibiotics must have killed every bit of digestive bacteria in my stomach, because it felt like my entire digestive system had just stopped. If I ate something in the late afternoon, I was still trying to digest it the next morning, ugh!

A friend mentioned eating yogurt, which made sense if I could actually keep the stuff down. Amazingly, I found myself enjoying it, the tangy taste which I hated so much suddenly tasted GOOD to me. Of course the real test will be whether or not I go back to hating it in a week or so.

Not Just A Spud

There’s nothing quite as homey, or as easy, as a baked potato. The other day, we just HAPPENED to have all the fixings on hand… potatoes, monterey jack and extra sharp cheese, fresh green onions, and sour cream. After about an hour in the oven, we split them in half, tossed on the grated cheese (which melts almost instantly in the steam) and the chopped green onions, and then the sour cream, either on top or on the side. I guess it’s also just really satisfying when you already have the ingredients on hand and the meal just BEGS to be created – no need to run out to the store for anything, or plan for it another day when you’ve already got the taste for it in your mind. Excluding the hour in the oven, that’s pretty immediate gratification – LOL.