Today I learned I was singing the wrong word - and how to prep an artichoke.

Hi there, readers. :) How's it going?

Things here are good, despite the lack of sleep and general wonkiness that accompanies sleep deprivation. I have that song stuck in my head:

Running onnnn...Running on empty

Running onnnn...Running drrrrrrrry

Running on, Running into the sun

But I'm running behind. . .

This one always pops into my head when I have no energy. Funny thing is that I just looked up the lyrics and found out I was singing it wrong all these years. It's not running "dry" - It's running "blind." Oh. Alright. I guess that makes sense, too. You ever have a song that you were singing with the wrong lyrics? Well, that's just one of the little things I learned today.

Remember this fellow?

I bought him a little while back during my lesson on unfamiliar produce.

One by one, I tackled the strange produce.

For starters, one thing I learned about the weird produce I bought

is that there aren't a lot of recipes that call for

one parsnip or one turnip or one artichoke.

The rutabaga and celery root were sizeable, and so

I had less obstacles figuring out what to do with them.

I chopped up the celery root and boiled it with my mashed potatoes. Aside from adding extra nutrients and visual interest in the potatoes it improved the flavor, too. I put it on my grocery list for my most recent trip to the store, and was so disappointed
when they didn't have any more. Awww, man!

Isn't that just how it goes?

Ah, well. I'll just keep watching for it.

One thing I learned about the rutabaga is that it is HARD to cut. I had bought the largest one I could find, and got my knife stuck in it a few times. Perhaps my mad ninja skills have gone rusty. At any rate, I bought smaller rutabagas at the store last night.
Lesson learned.

I diced the rutabaga up and oven-roasted it with olive oil, garlic salt and parsley.

And I diced and added in that lone parsnip:

Which smelled very much like a carrot when I peeled it, by the way.

It was a huge hit. Both of the kids loved it and Super Hubby had a look of surprise

when he tasted those roasted outcasts and said, "Wow! That's actually good!"

While the inner wanna-be chef in me cringed a little at the "actually" part -

I knew what he meant.  I mean, just look at them.

I think it's time to boost the Produce Section Roots' self-esteem.

Because under those bland exteriors, they are just so mild and sweet.
I mean, at least "wall flowers" are pretty.

These poor things get a bad rap because they're badly wrapped.

And usually hiding in dirt. ;)

I picked up some more turnips at the store to go with the one that I bought.

They are pretty easy to prepare. And since rutabagas are in the turnip family,

I feel a little experienced in handling them.

And that left the artichoke.

I think he's the most intimidating fellow I picked up.

Especially when you consider that he used to be part of a thistle.

I hate letting food waste away in the fridge,

 but I do it more often then I'd prefer to admit.

The one I bought went all wilty in the drawer and so I decided

to share him with the outdoor bunnies in my yard.

 

I bought new ones last night and decided that I would learn how to prepare them
from a nice fellow on YouTube:

 

What a great accent.
He also has a helpful video about choosing artichokes.

I'm making dip with my artichokes, and so we'll see how it turns out...

I am still trying to behave so my wrist has a chance to recover. Between the joint pain of my early onset arthritis and my carpal tunnel tingles at night, the quality of my sleep lately has been somewhat lacking. I'm still searching for my wrist brace and I'll probably have to cave and go to the doctor if it doesn't start improving soon. It's a good thing I have a lot of how-to lessons planned this week because I'll be able to let the pictures speak for themselves. In the meantime...

I'll keep you posted.

This weekened I learned about substitutions and posed with the Wienermobile.

Sorry about the wait. I had a few technical difficulties with this post.
Thanks for your patience! :)
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I have learned A LOT this weekend during my getaway to a conference with some of the ladies from our church. I could share all the lessons I've learned but it would take a few days to write everything, so I'll keep it to the most universal lessons.

Lesson #1 - Sometimes there's no substitute for the Real Thing.

For instance . . .

This is not peanut butter. Tasty. But not peanut butter.

In fact, it has been nowhere near peanuts,

which is why it's allowed to play at our house.

That is to peanut butter as a tuna sandwich is to this:

Mmm. Grilled Tilapia. To perfection.

Tuna is the only fish that's allowed into our house

and although I did just find and learn to make tuna steaks

(with herb-roasted rutabaga that was shockingly tasty)

it's just not the same thing.

With a husband that's allergic to seafood and a daughter that's allergic to peanuts,

I do not get very many chances to indulge in these favorites.

So that was my first order of business at the IHOP after our first meeting.

For those of you who have never heard of IHOP (yes, to the incredulous, those people do exist), it stands for the International House of Pancakes. And they have all sorts of breakfast foods. Of course, there I was searching the menu for fish, and then thanking God profusely that somewhere in the world they have grilled tilapia for breakfast. So I ordered my fish. And asked if I could order a side of peanut butter. The waitress looked at me without batting an eyelash and went on to the next person at the table. This raised all sorts of questions for me. Do other people order peanut butter with their fish? Did she just assume that our orders would be strange after she saw our group come in all grins and goofiness?

Ooh-ooh! Side-note! I have to write this one down to commit it to memory.

I learned that the opposite of eggs over easy is . . . eggs over hard.

I'd never heard of such a thing until one of my pals ordered their eggs that way.

We were all looking at her funny, but she worked as a waitress and is well informed

on the subject matter. You can also order "over well" and "fried eggs, hard" alternately.

I prefer runny eggs, but I'm just getting the information out there for the rest of y'all.

And so you don't look at your buddy like she's getting all creative with the breakfast lingo.

(Short-order lingo! *light bulb* That would be fun to learn!)

Anyway, my food arrived and so did my peanut butter on the side:

Oops, she brought me honey.

I took a picture of the table where my peanut butter was supposed to be.

Funny thing is that I didn't take a picture of the PB when it arrived.

About halfway through my heavenly fish, she brought the peanut butter.

 I opened the little Smuckers packet and just smelled it. Ohh. Nice.

I swirled it on my spoon, put it in my mouth and deposited it on my taste buds.

Right as the waitress began to ask me a question.

You know . . . The alternative is much weaker.

I forgot how thick peanut butter is.

Especially right off the spoon.

Makes it hard to talk.

I smiled dumbly.

There are parallels with hot cocoa.

I usually use the hot cocoa mix:

While the crunchy miniature marshmallows are weirdly charming,

I am usually a little disappointed when the mix settles to the bottom.

This is the hot cocoa I had at the IHOP:

The only thing at the bottom was melted chocolate chip morsels.

I was thinking about all this that night as I was getting ready for bed. We had all congregated in the hotel room where my sis and I stayed and we told stories and laughed and talked into the wee hours. Over the course of the weekend, I had a chance to get to know these ladies, to find out our common interests and share our stories, and just spend some time together. And it was a blast. I just enjoyed their friendship.

I've had times in my life when I've settled on substitutes, and one thing I've learned is that when you are choosing your friends there's no thing like the real thing. Imitation friends seem like the real deal, but when you get to them there's just no substance. Real friends will listen when you have something to say. Imitation friends can't wait until you're finished so they can get to what they have to say. Real friends are there when you need them. Imitation friends are there when they need you. A Real friend will tell you when you get back from the bathroom that the back of your dress is tucked into your panties. An Imitation friend will tell everyone else. Oh, yes. I know it's true. Thankfully not from this weekend.

Just like the hot cocoa, a really good friendship takes a little time and attention to simmer and mix. But if the ingredients are good and you can be patient, the reward is well worth the wait.

Lesson #2 - It's ok to ask.

This might seem like a simple thing, but can you think of a time when you wanted something and never asked? I know I'm not the only one. Just because you ask doesn't guarantee you'll get the answer you want, but at least you'll get an answer. Kind of generic, but I thought I'd toss that in there.

Lesson #3 - The Wienermobile is still seriously cool,
even though I don't like hot dogs.

Shivering in my four layers for a pic with the Wienermobile.

I mean, really. Can you imagine driving this thing around?

I will just say that I really want to learn how to drive this thing.

Just so I can pull up next to someone and ask,

"Pardon Me...do you have any Grey Poupon?"

Lesson #4 - Your old stories have new meaning to someone else.

My sister and I had a story-off at the hotel the first night, telling all the funny and embarrassing stories about each other we could think of. Like the time when we were teenagers and I was teasing her about something during a car trip with our parents and so in retaliation she crammed a blue Sweet-Tart up my nostril. And it got stuck. Hopelessly stuck. And I envisioned my future-photos album. Senior pictures, with a blue nostril. Wedding day, with a blue nostril. Posing with my firstborn child, with a blue nostril. Little old lady at the retirement home with fourteen wiry chin-hairs and a blue nostril. The last one made me laugh so hard that the Sweet-Tart went shooting out of the nostril across the back seat of the car.

I forgot to tell the ladies that one day last year my then three-year-old Waybums came to me in tears because she had crammed a blue bead into her nose. I saw her blue nostril and all those images came flashing back to me, and though she insisted that it was NoT funny, I couldn't help laughing. I told her my story and it made her feel better.

My mom told me once that one of my accomplished uncles once had to go to the hospital when he was a little kid because he had gotten something stuck up his nose. I asked my Gramma about it and she said that indeed he had. I asked what it was and she said that it was either a clover blossom or a sheep poop. This fellow is a brilliant patent-holding engineer, so I take comfort that one can make mistakes and still go on to make great achievements.

As far as my plans for achievements this week...

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned that libraries are still relevant.

Can you remember the last time you set foot in a library?

The last time I visited a Library was when I lived in San Diego. I was a newlywed with a LOT of spare time on my hands because my sailor was gone for long stretches and I didn't know many people out there. My goal was to check out the thickest books in the place and spend my lonely nights trekking across the wilderness with Sacajawea or giving War and Peace yet another chance. Three times I've tried to make it through that book. Three. I own it now, and I still haven't gotten through.

I remember the library program I attended when I was a kid. I devoured books, so it was a piece of cake for me to complete the goals. And there were other kids to do crafts with, and Sonya the Librarian. She was so sweet and relatable and she knew a lot about books. She had pretty blonde hair. And I didn't realize it then, but she was also a little person. It was probably less noticeable because I used to be little then, too. And little kids have this wonderful ability of seeing people as just purely people, regardless of color, size, age, physical ability, or economic status.

And from Pre-K to high school, I loved visiting the library. It was sometime around college and Internet access that I stopped going. And then after I got married we moved around so much that we never settled anywhere long enough for me to get really acquainted with the local library.

I was looking online for new things to learn when I stumbled upon an article asking:

Will libraries become obsolete? It's an article from 1999.

When I read the title, I was a little worried. After all, I loved my library experiences as a kid. And so today I set out to discover if libraries were all that I remembered them to be, and whether or not they'd become an abandoned gas station along the Information Superhighway.

The first thing I noticed when I got to the library was that this place has a really nice building. Three stories, (LoL - Oops, I mean levels... It would be a short article if there were only three stories at the library), comfy chairs to lounge in while you read and very friendly people at the circulation desk. We felt immediately at home.

The first stop was getting our library card. One for me, and one for Waybums.

She was so proud.

I didn't realize what a right of passage it would be to her.

I started looking around for books and the kids were pretty good about keeping quiet and not running around like crazy. Within five minutes I felt like I had won the "learning-things" jackpot. I've already added "vermiculture" and "geocaching" and "dairy farming" to my to-learn list. And I found out that our library has an immense selection of pretty cool-shaped cake pans that you can check out. So, I see cake decorating lesson in my future, as well. :) After perusing around for a bit I decided to take the kids to see the youth area. After five seconds I felt like I had won the "kid-entertainment" jackpot. Wow!

They even had a Lego table so Kodi-Pie would have diversion.

No, wait - what's this? A whole PLAY AREA??

With wooden trains and Dr. Office beads and The Works!

I had been worried that our trip would be short

because Little One would get bored.

With Kodi occupied right there,

Waybums and I start looking around at the books.

There were so many. This is just a tiny section...

It was like a reunion with old friends. Ramona. Barbar. Clifford. She looked around in wide-eyed wonder. "Mother! It's just like when Beast gives Belle a library! There's so many books everywheres!"

But her indecision came to a swift end when we found the dinosaur section. She did a little happy dance and started making a pile. Once she'd selected her books, she brought them over to a plastic playhouse castle where an adorable little girl asked if she wanted to come in. They sat there looking at the books and giggling. Kodi continued playing with the Lego table. I sat down and checked over a few articles in a Parenting magazine. It was delightful and laid-back and I enjoyed it, too!

The only thing I didn't account for was that it would be too fun.

So fun nobody wanted to leave.

Poor kid was heartbroken when I told her we had to go.

She was on the brink of tears when a nice young fellow on staff saw her sadness and reappeared with a special treasure that brightened her day immediately. Her very first bookmark. :) It said, "My heart belongs with books" and he gave it to her because he could tell that she loved books a lot to be so sad to leave the library. She smiled shyly and gave me a huge hug and we went home with our glorious loot.

She read herself to sleep, and cuddled with her bookmark.

The Internet is great and so full of information, but the trip to the library offered one thing that the Internet could not. A connection with real people, in real time. I had a chance to chat with other moms, and the girls had a chance to play with other kids. We got to know the librarians, and one of the staff even made my daughter's day a little brighter. We haven't really been plugged into our community here. My husband goes to college and works in our previous town and I used to commute to get the kiddo in our previous town. We visit family out of town often. I feel like we had a chance to get to know our community better today. And that's a lesson worthy of note.

As far as which cake pan I'm picking out first...

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned how to make bouncy balls, and shared a photo essay.

Put on your lab coats and safety glasses, readers, because we’re about to get scientific. :) After my long evening of Turkish Delighting I decided to stray from cooking for a bit to do an easy science experiment and make a different kind of recipe:

Bouncy Balls ala Borax

Here are the ingredients you'll need:  

1 tbs. white glue

1/2 tsp. borax

1 tbs cornstarch

2 tbs warm water

Food coloring

 2 plastic cups

2 stirring sticks (chopsticks work fine)

A quick note is that borax is an irritant in its powder form and shouldn't be kid-handled.

It's fine for kids to play with it after it's made as long as they're old enough to know

not to eat it, slobber on it or otherwise ingest it. (Which is true of all bouncy balls.)

Step # 1- Put glue into cup and mix in whatever color you like. Waybums picked pink.

Step #2 - Mix the borax and water in the second cup with the other stirring stick.

Step # 3 - Add cornstarch and borax solution into the glue cup

and let it sit for 15 seconds.

We forgot to let it sit but it still turned out ok.

Step #4 - Stir the mixture with one of the sticks until it's hard to stir

and then begin rolling it into a ball.

It's sticky at first and hard to roll,

but give it some time and it'll get going.

Step #5 - Get bouncing!

It's not going to bounce as high as your average superball,

but you can't help but feel a little cool and MacGyver-like to have made it.

And that's how you make bouncy balls from household supplies.

*cricket-cricket*

That's it?

Really?

Hmm.

I thought it would be more difficult.

Uhhh, Something to stretch it out a bit....? Oh! I have just the thing.

 - Photo Essay on The People in the Background-

I've been a lot of touristy places before and when I've looked at the photo afterwards I always seem to notice the people in the background. I don't know these people, but here is a picture of them captured in the same place that I went. It makes me think...

"How many people have photos of me in the background of their pictures?"

Provocative thought, eh?

Well one day when we lived in Japan we took my visiting mom-in-law to Kamakura. It was a particularly busy holiday weekend and there were throngs of people everywhere. Kamakura used to be the capitol of Japan and so the place we took mom-in-law to see used to be the palace.

There were a lot of stairs.

And Waybums was still a baby in a stroller then . . .

 . . . asleep.

So I told Hubby and Mom-in-Law to go ahead. I'd just stay behind.

And I shot pictures of them on the steps and at the top.
And I started thinking about those people in the background.
Why not let them be the focus of a few pictures?

Mom taking pictures of her kids.

Teenagers glad to have a day off from school.

Tired couple.

Dad and daughter.

Ladies and their pups.

Beautiful woman in purple.

Kid in the red hat.

Man left behind at the bottom of the stairs.

There at the steps of Kamakura it was just us. People going through our day.

A lot of people get so caught up in what they're doing that people become part of the background to them. The cashier at the grocery store. The childcare worker at daycare. The person sitting at the next table in a restaurant. Static. Extras in the film of their life. And what I learned that day is that just because someone isn't the focus of my picture, doesn't mean they aren't part of that moment.

Just something I learned...

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned that I've learned a lot in February

Here it is the last day in February and so I’ve decided to review what I’ve learned this month from my Learning Something New Every Day challenge.

I've had fun playing with photos in Elements 8.

Thanks, first of all, to you who take the time to follow this blog. I always have more fun doing something when I know that I can drag someone else along. :)

I feel like I have learned more in the past month than I ever thought possible. I’m not just talking about the posts I’ve made either. I’m talking about the hundred other little things that come and go in the course of the day. Because I’m so focused on learning new things for my blog, it’s like I have my learning radar on. Beep-beep-beep…lesson detected! It’s like when you focus on the color red and suddenly you see all the things in the room that are red. I’ve been focusing on learning new things, so when I learn something new, that lesson blips on the radar. –Oh, cool! You can use a wad of aluminum foil to scour your pans? –Beep!- Hey – I just learned something new. And I’ve had this epiphany that just stopping to notice that you’ve learned something helps you learn it better!

And the same way that my learning radar goes off when I learn something new, it blips when I see something I don’t know about. I feel sometimes like my childhood curiosity has been rebooted. When we were making something with eggs the other day I held an egg in my hand and wondered how it got from the chicken to my house. Do they inspect these on a conveyor belt? If they do, how do they keep them from cracking and rolling around? We drove past a herd of horses the other day and I realized that I don’t know how to put a saddle on a horse. And then I wondered when the first saddles came about and how many different kinds of saddles there are and how much a saddle costs.

And when my four-year-old daughter starts asking me questions, I’m right there with her wondering the same thing. “I don’t know why – let’s go find out.”

Like this stuff.

I’ve passed it a hundred times in the grocery store and never gave it any thought. But recently when I saw it – after I started the blog - I wondered about its purpose and function and origin. What do you do with it?

It turns out that you can do A LOT of things with it. There’s an eight-page pamphlet on the Borax website that tells you about SOME of its household uses. Wash laundry. Clean your garbage disposal. Preserve flowers. Extinguish flames. But a little extra research turned up even more interesting info. Like you can use it to make homemade Super Balls or Silly Putty! (You can bet I’m going to learn how to do that!) This stuff is crazy awesome! My sink is shinier than I’ve ever gotten it before! And I never would have known if my learning mindset hadn’t piqued my interest.

You know, I’m the sort of person who easily gets stuck in a rut. I’m the kind that gets the same thing every time I visit a restaurant because I know I like it. I take the same route to the grocery because I can go there on autopilot. Before this blog I ate either Eight-Grain hot cereal or a granola bar for breakfast pretty much every weekday. I never had to think about it. Recently on a day my husband was home we decided that waffles sounded good for breakfast but we realized we were out of batter mix. It’s so much trouble going to the store just for batter mix, and we probably would have just had our standard breakfast if I hadn’t thought to just look up a recipe for waffles from scratch. Oh my goodness. They were WAY better than the box mix. And breakfast has been completely morphed at our house. Now I eat fresh-cut mango or a poached egg with hollandaise or even scones with flower petals in them. Breaking out of the rut and going off the beaten trail, I’ve realized the scenery here is much more impressive.

A trip to the grocery usually ends up looking more adventurous than it did before.

Tonight I bought these:

Can you tell me what these are?

Because before tonight, the only one I could identify was the artichoke.

This one is a rutabaga.

Did you know that they carve into jack-o-lanterns in Britain and Ireland?

The Recipe I Plan to Try

Hello, Mr. Parsnip.

Did you know that parsnips are related to carrots, and until the discovery of the Americas they were the main starch on the menu? What new starch came from the New World that made everyone ditch their beloved tuber? None other than the potato. The Romans thought parsnips were an aphrodisiac, but how sultry can they be if they were replaced by potatoes?

The Recipe I Plan to Try

This one is a turnip.

The Persians believed it was a remedy for treating the common cold. And that was even before they knew these babies are high in Vitamin C.

The Recipe I Plan to Try

An Artichoke

I knew what this is. Well sort of.

I didn't know it's actually part of a thistle.

The part that the little purple poof grows out of...
I bet Eeyore would like this dip:

The Recipe I Plan to Try

Celeriac –AKA Celery Root
Is it just me, or does it look like it's smiling?

I’ve read that tossing some of this in when you’re boiling potatoes to mash not only increases the nutritional value, but also the flavor. Hmm. Interesting. Health Benefits

The Recipe I Plan to Try

Another thing I’ve learned is that I’m not the only one who doesn’t know these things. I was driving my shopping cart around the store with this surfer-headed looking root and I had about five people stop and ask me what the heck it was and how the heck you use it. (Hi to my fellow midnight grocery shoppers! Thanks for asking about the address to this site. I hope my recipe ideas help...)

OK, and here’s another produce-related Learning Experience I’ll toss in for fun.

The fruit on the left is a pomelo. This is basically what a grapefruit would be like if it were in a good mood. Sweet, and mild-mannered. The one on the right is what happens if Waybums uses her imagination and pretends that the one on the left is a T-Rex egg and hides it away in a nest somewhere in the house until it become petrified.

I will spare you from what happened to the avocado/brachiosaurus egg…

It was not pretty.

What else have I learned this month? Well the most surprising thing I learned this month came from a conversation I had at the store tonight. I had a happenstance meeting with a reader that thanked me for my snowblower post. I'd never met her before but she heard about the site from her friend, a grocery store employee that I shared the site with the day that I bought mangoes. :) It's a small world, after all.

She said that the idea of learning something new every day sounded cool so she went back and started at the beginning and was sucked in by my stories. And she said that when she got to the snowblower story she read the part where I wrote about my husband explaining that the snowblower was supposed to do all the work and that I was pushing it too hard. I wrote that something in life "will either work or it won't, but pushing something harder than it's supposed to go will wear you out," and she said that it hit her like a ton of bricks. You see, she had been in an abusive relationship and she realized that she was working so hard at constantly trying to keep him happy that she was wearing herself to nothingness. So she left him that day and although it's been a challenge stepping out on her own, it's been completely worth it to feel so freed. She said that reading about me doing things that I used to be afraid to do or unmotivated to figure out helps her to think outside of her box, too. She said that her boyfriend always did the engine maintenance on her vehicles and that she figured if I could push past eating moldy cheese, she could figure out how to check her oil. Wow. How humbling!

(Oh, dear reader, how I treasure that you shared that with me, and thank you for allowing me to share that here. I could barely keep myself from becoming a big puddle when you told me your story. You are a very brave person and I am glad to have met you. You single-handedly made those nights that I stay up waaaay too late working on this blog worthwhile.)

So, the greatest thing I've learned from this blog is that we all have something to learn in life. We just have to make sure our radar is on so we can catch the opportunity to learn it.

Thanks for a month of fun and . . .

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned to give moldy cheese and Ugli fruit a chance.

I had plans to learn how to make an origami crane today. It’s something I’ve always wanted to learn how to do, but just never got around to it. But after spending so much time tinkering on the blog yesterday, I had to catch up on some housework and do a little grocery shopping. Ok, a lot of grocery shopping. (I had cheese and crackers for breakfast so the kids could have the last of the milk with their cereal.) The day flew by with all the tidying I had to catch up on, and it was late afternoon before I got to the grocery store. And when we got to the store, today’s lesson was waiting there.

Right inside the store, Waybums shuddered and pointed, making her “blech” face:

“Mother! What is THaT?”

That sticker can’t be good for a fruit’s self-esteem.

It was an interesting find, since I had learned about these during preparations for my mango lesson. I took pity on the fruit and its sticker of shame and came to its defense.

“It’s called an Ugli fruit. But I hear it’s really pretty tasty.”

“It doesn’t look tasty.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving. Just like with people, it’s what’s on the inside that matters.”

Patting myself on the back for my lesson in non-judgment, I went back to the dairy section. I scanned over the various types of cheese, thinking how cool it had been to learn how to make cheese, when I saw The Blue Cheese. I looked at it, warily. It challenged me. Just last week I had posted my lofty standards. "No fuzz." But wasn’t one of the main reasons I started this blog to stretch myself? To learn about and experience new things? I've tried octopus, for goodness sake. Is moldy cheese really that big of a deal? *shudder*

I picked up the cheese and deposited it in the cart next to my Ugli fruit, realizing my new lesson for the evening would be: Learning to give unlovely food a chance.

The Ugli Fruit

This fruit was discovered growing wild in Jamaica, and it's what Bob Ross likes to call a "happy little accident," as a hybridization between a grapefruit, an orange and a tangerine. I've always been fascinated with hybrids. Ligers and Tiglons and  Mules - Oh, my. I have much less knowledge of plant hybrids, though. I remember one summer when my Mom had a garden that accidentally produced a few bizarre cucumelons. They weren't very tasty. The Ugli fruit is another story, though...

Obviously these fellows have some skin problems, and the rind is thick and soft.

They're very easy to peel.

The first thing I noticed was that there was this gaping cavity in the middle.

Look! Another unexpected doughnut for the blog!

Slices, pictured with Skilpad, our trusty mascot, for size reference.

The smell was exceptionally alluring - sweetly citrusy. Very summery and warm. When I took the first bite of one of those big slices, the thing I noticed most was how juicy these are! And the flavor was unique. Sweet, and yet retaining a little of that grapefruit zing in there to keep it interesting. I got Waybums to try a piece. And she came back for another. And another. It's pretty satisfying, and being so large we have leftovers for breakfast in the morning.

The Blue Cheese

So, I shouldn't have done my research BeFoRe I ate the cheese.

Because it did nothing to prompt my desire to try it.

 
The legend behind blue cheese is that a shepherd was hanging out in one of the local caves with his cheese and other lunch staples when he saw a cute girl off in the distance and spent the next few days trying to find her. Supposedly, when he got back to the cave, he saw that his cheese curds had been attacked by mold spores and he decided to eat it anyway. I don't know. I have a problem with that part of the story.
 
One time when I lived in San Diego I accidentally ate some moldy peanut butter toast. Well, I ate the toast on purpose, but not the mold. The worst part was that when I went to put the last two pieces of bread away, I flipped the butt of the loaf over and it was bright green.  I'd just eaten four pieces of that bread. Bleh. I just can't imagine finding that loaf of bread and knowing it was growing with who-knows-what, shrugging and chomping on it anyway.
 

Of course, I did just buy pre-moldy cheese.

Hmm.

 

Ok, but I know it's moldy on purpose and that it's regulated mold that other people have been eating and surviving. Yeah. That makes it ok. But then I found out that the bacteria prompted to grow on this cheese is the same bacteria that causes foot odor. Yum.

So, I trudged on with my lesson, knowing all these things. There were a few crumbles that fell off the end of the cheese and they seemed like a good place to start. I poured a glass of sparkling grape juice so I'd have wash-down capabilities and popped the crumb in my mouth.

I've never tasted anything like it before in my life.

I'm not saying that I loved it right away and was savoring it. I'm just saying that it completely perplexed and dumbfounded my tastebuds. The texture is creamy and crumbly, smooth. It was such a unique flavor, and hard to categorize. It was kind of earthy, and reminded me of the frangrance of morels we'd found mushroom hunting. It had the boldness of "tangy" without the twang. Instead of twanging at the end, it sort of tingled. It was savory, but not really salty. The white part of the cheese was very mild and the moldy part was much more powerful tasting. I kept popping more crumbs in because I was trying to figure out how to define the flavor.

I Did Not Like

Green Fuzz on Cheese

Would not try it

Thank you, please.

But after just a teeny bite

I thought that it

might be alright...

By George! I kind of liked this moldy cheese! So I looked up a recipe for it and tried it out - Blue Cheese and Broccoli Soup. I thought it was really pretty good. I had some heavy whipping cream that I had to use up and I substituted that for one of the cups of milk. And I put more onions and thyme in. The Blue Cheese really made it.

 It's also a little less intimidating when you can't see the fuzz.

My mom was always pretty good about encouraging me to try new things when I was a kid. Even if it was just to take one bite. "You never know until you try it," was the motto I remember. It's led me to some interesting culinary adventures through the years. And now I've had one more.  

Thanks for coming along, and I'll keep you posted about tomorrow's adventure. :)