Tag: food

My palate is crap

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I’ve talked about Importin’ Joe’s Coffee around here at least a couple of times– they are a local small business that is somehow also an Ethiopian coffee company. They first came across my radar when they delivered a bunch of coffee to my school a few years ago, and every so often they send me an email at exactly the right time and I order some more coffee.

This happened last week, and I didn’t realize until after the coffee had been delivered that I’d inadvertently ordered whole bean coffee rather than pre-ground. And since the only way I solve problems nowadays is by throwing money at them, rather than tossing the unusable $15 bag of imported Ethiopian coffee or, God forbid, attempting to return it, I spent $80 on a coffee grinder.

A secret about me, or maybe I just think it’s a secret and it’s been completely obvious to everyone who has ever known me: I would like to be a snob about something. Something. I don’t care what. I want there to be something where my tastes are refined and classy and shit, and I turn my nose up at the lesser versions of, I dunno, whatever that thing might be.

I don’t drink alcohol, so that leaves out whiskey and wine. I don’t smoke, which eliminates cigars. I cannot convince myself that clothes are important enough to start dressing like a fancy person. And I’ve got to admit that part of the attraction about buying a coffee grinder– and not some cheapass $20 coffee grinder, no, it’s mid-range or nothing for this guy– was that fresh-ground coffee beans are supposed to be a lot better than pre-ground. And, like, I thought that was supposed to be an obvious difference? I already know to avoid instant coffee like the plague, but I think everyone kind of knows that already, and the simple fact is that since I became a coffee drinker in 2015 or so, if instant is all the coffee that’s available, fuck it, I’m drinking instant. My tenure at the furniture store proved that. Shit, I already drink my coffee black, and that’s pretentious enough, right? Let’s go to the next level!

Y’all, I absolutely cannot tell the fucking difference between fresh-ground coffee and pre-ground coffee. I can barely tell the difference between the different coffees we have in the house. I mean, I can; the Meijer house brand’s “Michigan Cherry” flavor smells strongly of cherries and I suppose kinda tastes like them, too? I like chicory? But the particular Importin’ Joe’s coffee I ordered claims to have “tasting notes” of fudge, toasted caramel, and cherry “on the back end,” and I literally do not know what the fuck any of that means. It tastes like coffee. It doesn’t taste burned like Starbucks coffee does, which registers in my head as “good coffee.” I ground the beans for the Michigan Cherry for the last couple of mornings and I can’t taste any difference. I happened to be at the grocery tonight and picked up some Colombian coffee, because Colombia. But my wife is going to do a blind taste test on me this weekend, and I’m gonna lose it, and I’m gonna lose it so, so badly.

Is there a way to train yourself for this shit? I don’t smoke, again, which would make me think I’d be able to identify basic flavors, but I’ve got nothing over here, and I wanna be a damn coffee snob. Somebody help me. Surely if I can train myself to like black coffee I can figure out how to identify a “note” of “toasted caramel,” right?

Go ‘way, I’m sleepin

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

My sole accomplishment this weekend, if you want to grant it that status, was taking this spinning bookshelf out of its box (fresh from the TikTok shop!) and putting it together, which means that I now have this little spot for all of my YA books, or at least I have this little spot for all the YA books I have right now, because I’m going to outgrow it in about five more books. It’s pretty and colorful, though, and the fact that every book on there but one is exactly the same size grants it a really pleasing symmetry. I’ve said this before; there is a difference between being a reader and a book collector, and I am very much both of those things.

That’s about all I did. I’m about halfway through R.R. Virdi’s The Doors of Midnight, which is 800 pages long so it’s taking me a while, but I took one pill on Friday night because I was having trouble sleeping and it knocked me on my ass for a day and a half. So there’s not much else of note worth talking about at the moment.

This happened Friday at work, so I can’t count it as an achievement, but I’ve got all of my classes planned out through December 4th, an event so rare that, statistically speaking, it didn’t actually happen. Any number of things can upset my plan (which is why I’m never planned out this far ahead; it’s mostly pointless) but we’re in a sort of autopilot-type unit right now, where C has to follow B which has to follow A, and the only real changes that could happen is delays either due to school closings, further sickness, or my kids just not getting something, and then really all I have to do is back everything up a day, which is no big deal. There are seven instructional days until Thanksgiving; I have no plans for Thanksgiving and we likely won’t make any either, since Bek’s family is the weekend before Thanksgiving and my family is the weekend after Thanksgiving. So that weekend will probably be filled with Lego, reading and video games and not so much massive amounts of food. But I have to survive that long first. We’ll see.

Yay, nuts!

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

It’s official: as of today, my son is no longer allergic to tree nuts or coconuts. Peanuts, unfortunately, are still on the no-go list, and are likely to remain there for the rest of his life, but he’s gone from a kid with a laundry list of allergies as a baby to just peanuts as a nearly-teenager and, even better, he’s managed to do it without ever having any reactions to anything stronger than a mild rash. Every other person I know with a peanut allergy has had to reach for an epipen at least once.

I probably have a similar post back in the archives from the Egg Challenge and the Strawberry Challenge, but the way this works is that they do a skin test first. He passed the skin test for everything but peanuts. So they pick one tree nut– apparently the allergen is common to all of them so it doesn’t really matter what kind you get– and they bring you into the doctor’s office, and they feed you a tiny sliver of the thing, then wait half an hour, then a little more, then half an hour, then a little more, then half an hour, and then a nice mouthful and this time they wait an hour. It takes forever and most of it is spent sitting around hoping to continue to be bored, because if something interesting happens it will be something terrible.

I forgot to bring a book, so I spent the whole morning holding forth on BlueSky. You should join me over there!

Also, speaking of joining me, I’m two minutes away from the White Dudes for Harris kickoff. Are you a white dude? Come on over. I don’t really plan on being there for much more than half an hour or so– from the list of Names they’re expecting, this is going to go on for hours, and I don’t have the stamina– but I’ll show up at the start and donate money again to pump up the numbers.

Tomorrow, Deadpool & Wolverine. For reals this time.

Wait, shit, I wasn’t ready

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Spent the weekend in Michigan visiting my aunt and my cousin, and between the drive and being “on” for family and the first week of school I am officially pre-exhausted for this upcoming week. On the other hand, my cousin had the good sense to marry a Lebanese woman, and Jesus Christ do I love absolutely every single fucking aspect of Lebanese cuisine, so we ate really well yesterday and brought a ton of food home, all of which I will have eaten by tomorrow.

Oh, oh, and I got a flurry of emails over the weekend and I have two new students coming in tomorrow, neither of whom can speak English and one of whom has spina bifida in addition to not speaking English, so that’s gonna be fun. Will I figure it out? Yes. Will I remember to create a sub folder so that I can put the legally-required evacuation order for the the spina bifida kid in it? Uh. Probably. Sure. Let’s stay positive. I have Monday and Tuesday planned out right now; surely that’s enough, right? Wednesday through Friday will take care of themselves.

Oh! Also! It’s going to be in the nineties all week and the high Thursday is supposed to be a hundred and one (101) degrees, after a summer that barely touched the nineties at all. Did I predict this state of affairs? Yes the fuck I did.

At least Kissinger’s going to die and TFG’s going to go to jail to make up for the rest of it, right?

#REVIEW: Venba (Xbox, PS5, Steam)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video games2 Comments

I think this afternoon might have been the first time I’ve really regretted shutting down my YouTube channel, as I played through the entirety of Venba while my son was at camp this afternoon, and I think this would have been a fun little game to livestream. I played it through Game Pass on the Xbox Series X, where it is currently free, and I believe it’s $14.99 on the PS5. I’ll cut to the chase and say that if you have Game Pass access you should absolutely download this delightful little game and give it a chunk of your afternoon, and $15 is fair in a “reward the developers for making something cool” way as opposed to a pure price-for-playtime thing.

Anyway. Venba, which I have just now learned is the word for a form of classical Tamil poetry, is the story of a Tamil immigrant family that has moved to Canada. It’s very story-based, and for a lot of it you’re watching conversations between family members and occasionally choosing a dialogue option from two or three available choices, and this isn’t the kind of game that lets you go back and change your mind if you want to. Having only played it once, I’m not sure if the game changes based on your decisions or not, so that might be a reason to go back through it tomorrow just for the hell of it.

The gameplay comes in during– wait for it– the cooking sections, where you’re attempting to recreate old family recipes based on a poorly preserved recipe book that has pieces missing. Based on the instructions you’re given along with some verbal suggestions and occasional flashback memories, you’re expected to prepare the recipes properly. This sounds absolutely wonderful and for the first time I found myself wishing smell-o-vision was a thing; I’ve also got a serious yen for Indian food right now. If you can already cook, you’ll sail through it; if you don’t know a thing about Indian cuisine specifically or cooking in general there’s probably going to be some fairly simple trial-and-error involved. I’m … in the middle, I suppose? There were a couple things I sailed through on the first try, at least one where my stupid fingers kept messing me up, and another that took me some actual thinking to figure out what the game wanted me to do.

Is it fun? Yeah, but I don’t feel like fun is necessarily the goal here. This game has a story to tell, and something to say about the immigrant experience, and it’s one of the most unique experiences I’ve had with a controller in my hand in a long time. Even just the simple interactivity of being able to choose a dialogue response during a conversation now and again brings you inside the characters in a unique way that you don’t get with novels or television. The generational aspect of the game– at the beginning, it’s just the parents, and it ends with their son as a grown man, trying to read the Tamil in his grandmother’s cookbook– is really neat as well, and it’s really cool how much emotion the game is able to elicit over, again, a very short runtime.

Venba isn’t going to be Game of the Year or anything like that, but it deserves some attention and it’s a great use of the short time you’ll spend with it.

In which I am almost defeated

On By Luther M. SilerIn CookingLeave a comment

We had a training day today, so no kids, and one of my co-workers walked in and handed this to me. It’s his wife’s work, and I’m happy to announce that I am now in a polyamorous relationship, because I absolutely must be married to anyone who is able to produce pecan cheesecake in any capacity, and pecan cheesecake of this unbelievably high quality should be on sale in stores.(*) I told my co-worker that had I paid $30 or $40 for an entire pie I would not feel cheated. It was that good– gooey, caramelly, with absolutely perfect cheesecake and a fucking amazing crust. My mouth is still watering looking at it.

Of course, the sugar level sent me into a coma for the rest of the day– the second piece I had a couple hours later did not help– and it is 9:19 as I’m typing this and I didn’t not get around to posting today so much as I completely forgot the blog existed until just now, so lucky for everyone I had this deliciousness on my phone to make you all jealous of me.

Just don’t have two pieces. You will die. You will die happy, but if you die, you can’t have any more pecan cheesecake.

(*) I did not inform either my co-worker or his wife of this, although I did tell him he should do whatever is necessary for the rest of his life to keep her around. I should probably get around to that. People like to know about it when they’re married to other people, right?

In which I achieve something, maybe, a little

On By Luther M. SilerIn CookingLeave a comment

On the one hand, my dinner just now represents somewhat of a milestone. I wasn’t in the mood for anything we had premade and on hand, and I didn’t want to leave the house to go get something, so I looked in the pantry, found some ingredients, and put together a tasty thing to eat. On the other, what basically amounted to ramen tomato soup doesn’t really scream “creativity,” and it doesn’t look like much either, but here it is:

That’s butter, minced garlic, tomato paste, cream of chicken soup, a little bit of heavy cream, ramen, freshly-grated parmesan, and salt and pepper, and if I’d have been thinking I’d have thrown some Italian seasoning into the sauce as well. Yeah, it looks a little gross; I am not a food photographer, shut up. Yes, I could have achieved very similar results by simply throwing a block of ramen into a half-jar of Ragú, and if I’d done it that way I would have the balance of sauce to ramen much better than this, which had too much sauce. Oh, and next time I definitely need to cook the ramen separately, as the sauce didn’t have enough water in it to cook it with its normal speed. (It wasn’t undercooked, and I added water, but next time I need to just cook it separately.

I’m not going to start writing cookbooks or anything, but this still feels like a step of some sort, as I am very very reliant on and panicky about recipes whenever I actually cook anything. So … yay me? Sure. Yay me.

Soooooouuuuuuuuupppppp

On By Luther M. SilerIn CookingLeave a comment

I think the general feeling is that the first experiment with Pepper Belly Pete’s recipes was a resounding success, although when I make this again I’m going to fiddle with it a little bit. I feel like it wants corn, for some reason, and both my wife and I prefer our soups a little creamier than anything with a chicken broth base is usually going to be, so there might be some experimentation to see what the best way to thicken the broth is. Maybe toss something in there to add a little heat, too. More experienced cooks than myself are welcome to leave suggestions.

The critical part, the “dumplings,” came out more or less exactly how we wanted them to, although next time we might cut them a little smaller than quartering the biscuits. That’s a minor complaint, of course.

This will be my next TikTok-related food creation– this is the same guy as the apple cider cookies from a few weeks ago– and then I’ll probably try something else of Pete’s:

@bdylanhollis

Christmas on another level? #baking #vintage #cooking #christmas

♬ original sound – B. Dylan Hollis