Strange Bun

There are only a few recipes left rattling around at the bottom of the Stardew bucket at this point, some of which include fictional ingredients. I note this only so that you will be aware of how much heavy lifting the “Well I tried” tag is going to be doing here in the home stretch. This week, truly a foodstuff for our current times: Strange Bun.

Not only does it involve bread-baking, very hot right now, it’s also confusing, slightly unsettling and can potentially serve as any meal/snack/dessert. What’s inside these buns? Let’s just say I also could have written King Lear in quarantine with the amount of time I spent trying to figure out what to do with “periwinkle” and “void mayonnaise” as ingredients until I realized that the point of Strange Buns is that they owe you no explanation. They are strange, they are buns, they have fulfilled their destiny.

Mysterious wink

Mysterious time of day to be wearing pajamas

ASSESSMENT:  The void mayonnaise I ended up using was from a pressurized can and comprised of cream and sugar and also mixed with chocolate syrup, so...it was good.

PROJECT STATUS: Enigmatic

Baked Fish

No one in our house spent any time in a hospital this week! So right there, already, things are going pretty well. Our broken furniture is still broken, but nothing *else* has broken in the interim. Overall a solid B+ of a week once you factor in global situations and whatnot.

I'm very close to running out of Stardew recipes, although I noticed that I have made Eggplant Parmesan twice and no one mentioned it, so most likely I could just repeat recipes ad infinitum and be like "boy this Stardew Valley project is going great, I am very productive." Ad infinitum is kind of...the current vibe anyhow.

I think this is the first time I've made Baked Fish.

For a minute I though that quarantine had broken down our agreeable system of giving everything a thumbs up and was strangely thrilled by the dissent:

Until I clarified that only the fish part was under review, and the Brussels sprouts could be ignored:

Anna gave it a thumbs mostly-up but eyes firmly closed. These ratings systems are complex, and I admit I haven't not fully cracked the codes. All I can say with certainty is that this resulted in the fish being eaten.

ASSESSMENT: Fine. It will be fine again when I make it in a couple months and then a couple months after that.

PROJECT STATUS: We have always lived in the castle.

Dish O' The Sea

First the good news: I got flour in my grocery order this week! Yay! What a treat. In ~these times~ it's really the little things that bring a lot of comfort.

The bad news: I realize now that I should not have muttered something about how I was kind of bored in quarantine in such close proximity to our curséd monkey's paw--truly a rookie mistake, in retrospect--because almost immediately, my living room collapsed and my child was hospitalized with pneumonia.

The predictable news, if you know me in real life or have been reading this blog for a long time: I still made everyone eat sardines, for the blog.

(The child in question is okay now, tested negative for the virus, was discharged this morning and did not have to take home her pet oxygen tank.)

American Pandemic

It didn't even affect the outrageous ratings inflation we have going on around here, as evidenced by her assessment of overnight hospitalization:

Slightly more enthusiasm than for beets

And, okay, the living room bit was an exaggeration, it was only the bookshelf that fell apart. But I felt like I underplayed 48 hours in the ICU enough to earn throwing a little rhetorical spice on the crumbling infrastructure part of my week.

It was still very loud and not...you know...great

Anyway, we are here to talk about Dish O' The Sea, which is sardines on top of hash browns. It tasted like fish. Ivy asked for extras.

ASSESSMENT: It is intended to "keep you warm in the cold sea air," which is a thing I do not currently have access to, but I guess it did fortify me against my own air conditioning.

PROJECT STATUS: Honestly after this week it's pretty hard to imagine anything derailing it You know what probably better not to speculate

Vegetable Medley

Back in early March, when going to the grocery store was still normal and easy, I speculated that I should not have wasted this privilege by buying eggplant. Anyway, grocery procurement is now highly fraught and every need/desire must be carefully vetted for worthiness and this week I bought...beets.

Compulsive blog project completionism is a need/desire

I loosely based my Vegetable Medley on this lovely salad. Mine does not look like the lovely salad in question. Mine looks like the shower scene from Psycho.

Honestly, makes me slightly prouder of it

Really thought I would finally get a definitive thumbs down, as beets taste like sweetened dirt, but no. Overly generous ratings abound. 

ASSESSMENT: I like that the Stardew version of this promises nothing beyond "very nutritious." No mention of "will make your kitchen look like a crime scene."

PROJECT STATUS: Currently wearing the same clothes I slept in, as we hurtle towards noon here. I also wasted yet another precious grocery space on an ingredient that Dan eyeballed warily and asked "Is this...for something?" So you have that to look forward to!

Stir Fry

As you know, now is the time for resourcefulness. Is it also the time for dumb blog projects? Per...haps. The time for resourcefulness within dumb blog projects though? Yes, absolutely.

I am pleased to report that I am using every part of this buffalo by remembering that I made and rejected a Stardew recipe last May, intending to retry it at some point. But that was when I lived in a world that involved easily going to the grocery store for more kale and mushrooms and seeing humans outside of my immediate family and putting my bare hands just all over everything, I mean every surface you got, I'm gonna touch it, etc. This is, clearly, no longer that world, and thus I present: my Stir Fry failure of 11 months ago.

Did I follow a recipe? Dunno. Did I make the children eat it? No evidence either way. Was the only thing wrong with it the fact that I personally do not like mushrooms? 85% chance. 

Here is the next picture of the girls in order after the picture of the stir fry. They're at a bus stop. That's going to take them away. To school. 

For an entire day. 

ASSESSMENT: Stir Fry: C-, living in a grocery store and bus stop world: A++++++++++++++

PROJECT STATUS: Might just have several weeks of trying to perfect that Triple Shot Espresso recipe ahead of us