Survival Burger

On its face, "Survival Burger" seems like a recipe you would only want to make in pretty dire circumstances. It has a real "literally the only option" sound to it.

When you actually check out the ingredients, though, you will find that it's...hmm, no, that's also some pretty last-resort stuff.

And, unlike fiddlehead ferns which are a real thing, we have finally come to what seems to be a fictional ingredient.

You would think "this recipe includes a non-existent item" would be a deal-breaker, but this is not a blog where deals are broken, my friends. My solution was to scour the produce section for the plant that most closely resembled said non-existent item, which on that particular day at HEB was a malanga root.

Much like the flush of accomplishment I felt upon discovering fiddleheads in the real world, I was surprisingly excited to procure a plant I had never heard of and immediately shred it like a potato.

Turns out you can make hash browns out of exotic starchy roots and have them turn out just as good as

if not better than

potatoes! I actually felt like the crispy root was a little bit wasted on the eggplant burger it was accenting. Roasted eggplant and beans mushed up together taste exactly like you would think roasted eggplant and beans mushed up together would, except slightly messier to eat.

They were fine.

ASSESSMENT: I'm sure if I were actually in a cave and starving this would seem like manna from heaven, but I still can't imagine a planet on which this is considered a "convenient snack." No way to eat this without giant gobs of eggplant mush ending up all over the cave floor.

PROJECT STATUS: As long as it knows how to love I know it'll stay alive

Salad and Bean Hotpot

Okay, the birds outside my window are singing very aggressively, like I'm almost sure they're just reading off a printout of my Twitter TL but in actual tweets, which means it's time to knock a couple of SPRINGTIME ITEMS off the list.

"Salad" is a thing that you look at and say "well obviously I have made salad many times, this is very easy," and then you see that the specific ingredients listed are a leek, a dandelion, and a bottle of vinegar and you realize you have to maybe reconsider your strategy. In my case, that strategy was finding a recipe that utilized the three ingredients listed plus maple syrup, bacon, and poached eggs.

Going to try adding maple syrup, bacon, and poached eggs to a lot more things going forward

Here are the girls either welcoming spring or re-enacting the final scene of The Breakfast Club But With Cows

Here I am updating my spring wardrobe to be everything Michelle Pfeiffer wore in What Lies Beneath

"Bean Hotpot" involves exactly one ingredient, which is green beans, and one strong implication, which is that they should be served hot. I tried to rationalize giving this dish its own post but I could only stretch "so I served the green beans hot" to like two paragraphs max.

The wiki claims that Bean Hotpot is supposed to include an energy buff in the game but it does not actually work. In the real-life application I found that our max energy was unaffected but curiously the beans did cause my children to forget how utensils work. So I guess that's like a +3 Fork Amnesia buff, and I would say it lasted about five minutes.

ASSESSMENT: The salad was really good. The green beans were fine, probably because I added butter and garlic to them. Man, I probably could have eked out three paragraphs now that I think about it.

PROJECT STATUS: Don't you/ forget about beans

Fiddlehead Risotto

My primary reason for wanting to make all of the Stardew recipes was that I love lists of things I was intrigued by a handful of dishes I had never tried before. Not only had I never eaten fiddlehead ferns before, I had never heard of fiddlehead ferns before, and in fact had to research whether they were a real plant or an invention of the game. Turns out--real plant! And what a plant it is.

The reaction of my children when I opened a paper bag full of these and informed them it was dinner was worth this entire project, and possibly this entire blogging endeavor

I will say, it was surprisingly delightful to track down an item that for 30-something years I had no inkling of and for six months or so kind of thought was made up. Seeing that weird green wormy pile right there in the middle of Central Market gave me the same sense of accomplishment as finding an elusive item in the game, so my ultimate plan of turning my real life into Stardew Valley is inching forward promisingly.

It was...slightly less delightful to see how many search results for fiddlehead ferns included terms such as "toxic" "food poisoning" "your whole family will definitely vomit if you feed them this plant" etc. But what's an adventure without unnecessary risk? I pressed forward, boiling them for a few minutes before following a basic Asparagus Risotto recipe with the ferns swapped in for the asparagus.

Good news: my children love risotto so much that you can put any ol' slightly toxic, snake-looking items on top of it and they will still be on board.

Even better news: here they are a full 36 hours later, foot-loose and vomit-free.

ASSESSMENT: Pleased to say that my version was not in fact "a little bland," but rather tasted very much like garlic and butter, which is to say, 100% perfect.

PROJECT STATUS: Ferntatstic

Cheese Cauliflower and Omelet

I decided to pair up Cheese Cauliflower and Omelet because neither dish really makes a meal on its own and they are both very easy and neither are abhorrent to children also their Stardew sprites are nearly identical, and that's fun. It's like a matching game!

Okay, I did...not do a good job matching them in real life, but everything else stands

Seriously, look how alike they look in-game:

*SQUINTS*

Beautiful. 

ASSESSMENT: My omelet was fluffy and my cheese cauliflower smelled great. Everything checks out. This is also the closest my in-game ingredients and real-life ingredients have come to matching up, since neither dish requires very much more than the game version.

PROJECT STATUS: Fluffy and great-smelling

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well, I picked up some on-sale Easter candy for you:

Trout Soup

I know the news that everyone is waiting for today is: did Erica conquer another Stardew seafood dish? BREAKING: Relax, relax, I did and I have the pictures to prove it. Now we can all move on with our lives.

I felt like I already covered all the important bits in the press conference, but whatever

For my Trout Soup entry I used this recipe for Rainbow Trout Chowder because "chowder" is usually a pretty safe bet. Anna agrees:

Ivy declined to comment, but I like believe this digital project she was working on later was secretly about her appreciation for my chowder:

YEAH!

ASSESMENT: My version was not in fact "pretty salty,"and in retrospect I probably could've salted it up a bit. It did make me better at fishing for four minutes and 39 seconds, although I sadly failed to capitalize on that boost. One drawback of a nice potatoey chowder is that I suspect I would have liked it just as much without any (expensive!) trout in it at all.

PROJECT STATUS: *redacted*

Poppyseed Muffins

Having started right in the center of my complex maze of recipe challenges, it seemed like the most logical place to go next was directly to the highly appealing/low difficulty section of the map. In fact, Poppyseed Muffins exist so far over on the pleasant edge of things that I made not one, but two versions, just to be thorough and also to have more muffins.

First up: Bakery Style Lemon Poppyseed Muffins. As far as I can tell, "bakery style" usually means "very dense," and they actually run a little dry for my taste, but they are still good, and aren't they lovely? 

After consulting with my in-game muffins, however, I noted that they seemed to be a little darker and more...wholesome-looking.

Also more torso-sized

So I went in an Almond Poppyseed direction, and substituted all whole wheat flour. They are less picturesque, but a little closer to the look I was after and had a softer texture that I prefer.

Just pretend that these are 15x larger, for accuracy

ASSESMENT: Did it have a soothing effect? Yes, absolutely, both versions soothed me. I suspect it was less to do with any narcotic properties of the poppyseeds and more to do with the fact that I am calmed by carbohydrates in general.

Me, post-muffins

PROJECT STATUS: Already pretty nervous that I will not be able to generate 70 different adjectives here.

Salmon Dinner

I wasn't sure how exactly to approach the Stardew recipes; there are 71 dishes that vary dramatically on both an Effort scale and a How Much They Appeal To Me scale, so immediately we are introducing x and y axes into this situation when, again, all I really wanted was to try my hand at Tom Kha Soup. But this isn't Try My Hand At Things Blog! This is Erica's Blog. There are secret three-dimensional mind spreadsheets. The recipes are introduced in the game in a certain order, but not a certain set order, because obtaining recipes depends on gameplay. Some ingredients only become available in certain in-game seasons. Some ingredients, I'm finding out now, only become available in certain real-world seasons as well, which is a more pressing issue for me personally. The recipes appear listed in your inventory in a specific order. They are also able to be alphabetized, one presumes. So many options.

Taking all of the above factors into account, I used a highly scientific process to determine the exact center of the Effort/Appeal scales, and plan to work my way out and around and over and through based on the availability of seasonal ingredients, how I am feeling when it's time to get groceries, and the rate at which I am able to convince myself to endure new seafood experiences. I am also now considering that 71 recipes is probably enough to stretch this out for almost a full year if I don't get in a hurry about it.

So here it is, the absolute middlest of dishes: 

Okay, there may have been one other deciding factor in my jumping off point, and that was my confidence that I could cook all three elements (salmon, amaranth, and kale) without looking up a recipe, which will probably only happen a handful of times. And I was right! But only because I have memorized the slow-roasted salmon technique from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which is to cook the salmon for about 50 minutes at 225 degrees. I also use her soy sauce/brown sugar glaze and everyone loves it and I am a hero at this dinner table. A HERO.

The kale I just braised for a bit with a carton of miso broth from Trader Joe's, and the amaranth I...cooked in water, as per the instructions on the package. (The package itself brought me significantly more delight than I believe was intended, but "Nature's Earthly Choice" is honestly the funniest combination of words I have ever read in my life.)

Like, it's not Nature's first choice, necessarily

Salmon: delicious as always; kale: acceptable; amaranth: strange! Mild flavor, but very gooey and gelatinous. Guess who was extremely into that?

These weirdos

ASSESSMENT: Did I feel 125 more energetic and 56 healthier? Sure. Did the lemon spritz make it special? You betcha.

PROJECT STATUS: Auspicious

The Stardew Valley project

Okay, listen, at this point I have given you more than enough time to miss me here–for over nine months I have just been quietly cooking unpublicized food and raising unpublicized children. Very generous stretch. For all you know I could have produced an entirely new human being in that amount of time! I didn't do that, at all, but I did get a new couch in December, so, you know. I've been pretty busy what with breaking that in and everything.

Anyway...where was I? When I left off we were 6, 8, 38, and 38, and now we are 7, 9, 38, and 39, because I alone have escaped the ravages of time and mortality not had a birthday since June.

Speaking of my eternal and uncorrupted youth, I've been growing out my natural hair color since late September and I think my Targaryen ancestry is finally asserting itself. 

I feel like the salt-and-pepper club can be a little bit lonely for women, but fortunately I have plenty of strong, gloriously striped role models in my life.

Villain hair, don't care

But I didn't return just to brag about my increasing decrepitude (ask me about my lower back!), I returned because spring is in the air and I'm ready for another cooking project in my life. I have spent most of my time away--and the game keeps track of hours, so I know for a fact that "most" is only a slight exaggeration--playing a game called Stardew Valley, which is about farming. And fishing. And mining. And sometimes there are monsters and treasures and caves full of fruit or mushrooms and secret woods and festivals and a wizard and you can romance the townspeople and

Uh, anyway, at a certain point you can upgrade your house and gather ingredients and cook some recipes in the game. So I'm going to cook those recipes in the real world, seeing as how I already have a house that includes a kitchen and everything. At first I thought "I'll just do the appealing things and think of fun alternatives for the unappealing things" but my friend and co-farmer Alex said that no, I must do all the things, and very thoroughly, and it soon went from me vaguely fantasizing about cranberry-hazelnut stuffing and rhubarb pie to a list of tasks I'm very much dreading and kind of a rock in my stomach when I think about it. So...a regular blog project. Of course, Alex also said I couldn't change the name of this blog to Erica's Blog but I sure did that anyway because Alex is not the boss of me, she's just very tall which can make it seem that way sometimes. So we'll see.

My advice to you now is to go buy this game on your phone or computer or gaming system, it costs $15 and will potentially give you literal hundreds of hours of joy and something to talk enthusiastically with me about, and then we can explore the food of Stardew together. Or else you can just...watch me flail about with seafood again, for old times' sake.