Rice Pudding

When I mentally categorized rice pudding as a "maybe for lockdown" recipe it was based on the rice and brown sugar being pantry staples that I have in plenty. Somehow I fully overlooked the TWO AND A HALF CUPS OF MILK involved to make four tiny servings. This is...an outrageous amount of milk. It is hard to get milk right now. I own no cows at this time. Did I still make rice pudding? Of course. I am trying to preserve a small degree of normalcy and "pursuing blog projects to my own detriment" is my normal state.

Status quo

The girls liked this, probably because I did not tell them what's about to happen to their morning cereal.

Did we always wear bathrobes to dinner? ....probably, right?

ASSESSMENT: At this point this section just has to be about whether a recipe is worth the ingredients used, and...no. But this would have been a success in the Before Times.

PROJECT STATUS: Sheltering-in-place until at least April 13th

Some things to do if you are also sheltering-in-place:

• "Mindful coloring" with relaxing classical music
• Free books on Audible for all ages
• Educational shows for kids available on streaming
• Keep playing Animal Crossing even though you find it more frustrating than relaxing solely so you can understand the Animal Crossing references on Twitter; lie to yourself that this is not the only reason you do most of the things you do
• Wonder at what point in the apocalypse you get to shave your head and perhaps more enticingly the heads of your children 
• Duolingo, I guess, although between this and Animal Crossing you are starting to feel a surprising resentment toward cartoon owls
• Do one random stretch in the kitchen just to see if your body still...like, works
• Run the dishwasher again
• Spend your allotted 45 minutes per afternoon convinced that you have it, you definitely have it, you can't breathe and you feel terrible 
• Check the Austin allergy report and determine that the lung-squeezing culprit is actually oak pollen, as it has been for like eight days in a row
• Note that you hit an all-time record high temperature for this week in March because your enemy, the sun, has seized its chance to run wild much like the various animals taking over mostly-empty cities
• Check to make sure the local ice cream place is still doing home delivery, just in case
• Look out the window for a very long time
• Crafts!

Miner's Treat

Haha, well. I guess we'll see how long maintaining this keeps up! It's only been a few days of ~all this~ and I'm already having a liiiiiiiiittle trouble remembering what day of the week it is. Probably because each day is about three weeks long. So maybe blogging will drop off entirely along with my access to weird Stardew-specific ingredients or maybe I will go hard the other direction and post like three times a day. Literally no way to know. Not knowing what will happen! It's all the rage.

How are you? Are you okay? Do you normally spend a lot of time outside your house? Because one thing I've noticed is that my personal schedule has actually not changed very much except that there are now people constantly underfoot, creating dirty dishes in an amount that seem...out of proportion to their numbers. So as someone who was apparently already self-isolating: try to wash your face in the morning and wear daytime pants vs. nighttime pants, even if daytime pants are very stretchy. Or don't! Don't wear pants at all, I'm not your mom. I'm not even enforcing this amongst people whomst mom I am. But, you know, if you like having a whisper of structure. A soupçon of stability. Daytime pants.

I hesitate to even post these pictures because I can already envision Me A Month From Now grimacing at the bright colors and smiling children and make-the-best-of-it art project quality of this moment as I survey the abandonment of daytime pants and crumbling moods of my family members who have finally come to realize exactly how many beans I intend to serve them through this ordeal. On the other hand, maybe we won't even have internet a month from now, so:

I did not use "cave carrots" because that is a made up thing and I don't have time for nonsense right now, Stardew Valley. Only for Rainbow Cookie Lollipops.

ASSESSMENT: This is the most I have veered away from the actual game recipe, but it looks pretty good and it was in fact fun to play with the different colors of cookie dough.

PROJECT STATUS: Uuuuuhhhhhhh I guess grimly determined? I don't know. Tell me what TV shows to watch.

Eggplant Parmesan

A few days ago I was eyeing Rice Pudding as this week's recipe, but when I realized it's mostly pantry staples I immediately shifted it over to the "potential quarantine recipe" pile, which was not a joke to myself exactly, but still had a sort of haha, you know, maybe, just in case quality. As of today though it's just on a "potential quarantine recipe" pile without any qualifiers.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway.

It's been a while since I did a Stardew recipe that I knew would taste good but would also be a pain to make, so Eggplant Parmesan it is:

I'm not sure the girls even consider whether they like a thing before they give it a thumbs up anymore, I think they have just trained themselves to give the camera a thumbs up. At any rate, it gives me some leverage in the "finish your dinner" battle if they approved of it at the outset, so it's win-win for me.

ASSESSMENT: It's far too much work to make eggplant taste good. Dredging it through flour AND milk AND breadcrumbs THEN cooking it THEN assembling it into the main dish? This is where my extreme aversion to dirtying more cookware/dishes than necessary really rears its head.

PROJECT STATUS: Lol I mean what is the status of literally anything right now honestly

Pale Broth

You know how last week I was complaining about how hard it is to take decent pictures of dinner in the winter darkness? And how soup absolutely suffers the most in the absence of natural lighting? And how I literally only need to wait three more days for that situation to resolve itself? Anyway, I made soup this week.

This might be my worst "eh, close enough" offender of the project so far--when I looked up "white algae" 100% of my results were about removing it from your fish tank. And no offense Marnie, but "a hint of sulfur" is not a huge incentive to go for authenticity on this one. Thus I feel no compunction about my substitution, a pale broth that is both easy to make and very delicious and comforting: miso soup.

Soup is a category of food that I generally find pretty magical, but miso soup is in the special subcategory of "oh, I can actually feel this fixing some of my problems as I eat it." 

Not sure it resolved any of life's problems for my children, and I feel like they asked "what is this part?" about the tofu at least three times each, but in the end they liked it okay.

ASSESSMENT: This was great but the actual dish sounds pretty terrible. Scraping your fish tank for dinner is some sad Depression-era stuff like making cake out of apples and sawdust or whatever.

PROJECT STATUS: ON THE VERGE OF BEING FLATTERINGLY LIT AGAIN

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: 

Cranberry Candy

For Christmas I made myself a batch of the most confusingly named Stardew recipe: Cranberry Candy. Why is it candy when the picture is clearly a beverage, with a straw? I believe this joins the ranks of unanswerable Stardew Valley mysteries, such as: Why does it seem like Abigail likes to eat rocks? Who hid those weird secret statues? Why am I not allowed to date Krobus? What is Mayor Lewis'...deal?

Anyway, given the choice between candy and drink, and the ingredients cranberries, apple, and sugar, I went with a very festive Cranberry Shrub.

"Sweet enough to mask the bitter fruit" you say, hmm, interesting tip

I thought it was delicious. The girls were...surprised by the vinegar.

ASSESSMENT: I mean, nothing like candy, frankly.

PROJECT STATUS: ON HIATUS until mid-January at which point perhaps I will tackle the Christmas Plum Pudding that got away from me this week. Drab Winter Plum Pudding is JUST AS VALID.

Fried Mushrooms, Artichoke Dip, Pepper Poppers

I had a social event! So I made some social event recipes! Honestly, what is the point of being in a book club if not to foist the fried mushrooms that you don't want to eat but are making anyway for a meaningless blog project upon them? 

Mmmm, crispy pointlessness

Was it wise to bring a dish that increases Attack by +2 to a book discussion? DEBATE ME, YOU COWARDS

My testers were surprised to find that they liked fried mushrooms. I was surprised to find that I also did not hate them. The key, I believe, is to accidentally buy the garlic-flavored panko at the grocery store, thereby making everything crispy and garlicky.

The miracle of serendipitous garlic

Did I need to make more than one appetizer for book club? No. Am I at the stage of busy right now wherein I get stuck on turbo mode and only know how to function by working as quickly as possible every second I am awake? Let's just see what this artichoke dip has to say about that:

The artichoke dip says "trying to out-productive your anxiety isn't a sustainable solution" wait, what? Must have added too much mayonnaise

I guess that honestly was pretty refreshing?

I also remembered that I had made pepper poppers for a book club that ended up getting rescheduled back in...uh, May. But I made the dish. And it counts.

Sadly, both the recipe I used and the reactions to it have been lost to time

ASSESSMENT: I love appetizers and I am very tired

PROJECT STATUS: Fine, it's fine

Lobster Bisque

If you have been here for a while you may know that this is a deeply lobster-wary space. As I have already slain crustaceans for your enjoyment once, I decided to take the shortcut of buying lobster tails at the grocery store this time around, although as it turns out that is also pretty gross? And I still had to look up how to get the meat out? And I feel like the legs moved while I was messing with it and I had to drop it on the counter and back up against the wall for a few seconds?

Anyway, I muddled through and made a bisque.

Ivy, who watched the process from start to finish and was also very concerned about the legs and the moving and the alien nature etc. was pleased with the result.

Here is Anna's take, before and after I described it as "hot fish ice cream."

ASSESSMENT: I wasn't saying that hot fish ice cream was a bad thing. It's funny that in-game this increases your available energy because all it did was make me sleepy. Like some thick warm maritime milk okay I'm done.

PROJECT STATUS: Realizing that anything in the "holiday treat" category needs to happen uhhhhhhhhhhhh very soon. Hmm.

Cranberry Sauce, Mental Adjustments

After my last cranberry experience I figured it was best to go with the simplest, most sugar-including recipe for cranberry sauce rather than take any chances.

Note that Gus's recipe does specifically include sugar, an instruction I apparently require, thank you Gus

I believe this was the correct move.

ASSESMENT: Cranberries do in fact become "A festive treat" if you cook them with sugar for 20 minutes, although now I am wondering if unsweetened cranberries are the kind of thing I could develop a taste for, like black coffee. Just walk around popping raw cranberries in my mouth like some weird nutritional power move? 2020 is full of exciting possibilities.

PROJECT STATUS: IN SLIGHT UPHEAVAL! When I went to grab the screenshot of the Cranberry Sauce entry, I was GOBSMACKED to find BRAND NEW RECIPES in the Stardew wiki. UPDATES! HAVE ARRIVED! 

They bring with them some good news for me:

And some slightly terrifying news:

So now I'm just trying to incorporate this exciting new world into my plans. My later plans. Much later. Later enough to be thwarted by climate apocalypse, maybe? Maybe! *nervously nibbles on a raw cranberry*