Red Plate, Parsnip Soup

Okay! I'm back on Stardew. I have RETURNED TO THE VALLEY. I have cooked, for you, the most appetizing possible combination of words: Red. Plate.

Mmm, Red Plate, just the sound of it sends your heart soaring

Okay, so this one feels like maybe the last thing that got named? When everyone was tired? I interpreted red cabbage and radish to be a slaw, which was fine. It tasted like the vegetables therein. Was it as good as the twice-baked mashed potatoes with smoked gouda that I served alongside it? No. Sorry. Beige Plate wins the day.

One of the reasons for my heel-dragging on returning to the blog after my break (aside from my heels' natural shape and density giving them a propensity to drag) is that taking pictures of dinner in the winter is a SUCKER'S GAME. For example, I made this Parsnip Soup in late January and this was the best picture to come out of it:

Grim

Said sad winter lighting also causes the children to look especially haunted.

ASSESSMENT:  Red Plate: as advertised. My hopes for the parsnip soup, as for all soups, were high, and I was disappointed to find it thin and blandly sweet. Not "fresh and hearty" at all! Lies!

PROJECT STATUS:  Spring will be here soon and I am at the point in Breath of the Wild where I have done most things other than fight the Big Boss, which I do not want to do, so looks like everything's coming up Stardew!

Salt-Grilled Meat, Fried Wild Greens, Baked Apple

I wondered how long I could get away with "hiatus until mid-January," given that, in my defense, I never specified January of what year. As is turns out, the only two people on earth who actually care about this content both ran out of patience in the past week, so I guess the answer is...this long.

Here's what happened: one of my children received Breath of the Wild for Christmas. Did you know that Breath of the Wild is a very good and fun game to play? And that it has the power to distract from, say, other games? That you were basing cooking projects on? And that you will probably get back to, probably?

Anyway, here is some Breath of the Wild food:

Salt-grilled meat, fried wild greens, baked apple

No danger of me embarking on a "cook all the Zelda food" challenge, given that 95% of my in-game diet is mushroom skewers and I prefer to keep my real-life mushroom consumption percentage closer to 0.0095%. But we did enjoy this.

Bonus reaction shot, by request, to better show off her newly pierced ears

ASSESSMENT: I hummed Link's little cooking song to myself while I made dinner and I really believe that enhanced the flavors. Dun! Dun! Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuunnnnnn!

PROJECT STATUS: