Weekend update, August 4, 2013

With any recovery from morbidity 

there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

G.K. Chesterton

A slippery word, recovery. A slippery word that flopped about in my mind last week like a verbal eel, as I rested from a recent (most excellent) trip, and tried to deal with a self-induced surplus of cilantro. To recover can mean rest, or the regaining of something lost, or a return to a former state of being, or any number of things, except what seems to me to be the most obvious meaning:  

to return to bed, re-cover up and hide there
until the whatever-it-is is over.

Wednesday morning the definition of the word twisted again, and the week became a tutorial in the truth of Chesterton's observation that  recovery (whatever it is) involves humility. The week's uberclever menu plan was designed to use the beautiful cilantro we'd brought home from Farmer's Market. Cilantro that had traveled home in an opaque plastic bag, in the back of the rolling oven we Texans like to call a car.  On Wednesday, humming a productive little tune, I tipped the bag into the rinsing bowl, but instead of bunches of fresh leafey goodness, out slimed

a gross and horrifying wad of rotted swamp cilantro-
without this guy's winning personality
and obvious intelligence.

So. The sublime cilantro-lime Rodrigo sauce for the Fish Rodrigo style? Okay-ish, though the sauce was little more than a squeeze of lime flecked with salvaged cilantro. Supplies were on hand for the Maple Bourbon Chicken and the kale apple slaw, but what to do about tomorrow, and the rest of the cilantro-centric week? Humbly admit my mistake, drive to Kroger and buy more cilantro?

 Never! 

The shrimp, tomato and cilantro salad would be fine without cilantro. Probably.

 So on Friday afternoon, I thawed the shrimp and noticed that they smelled kinda funny. On second sniff,  they were actually quite...whiffy. On third sniff, I realized that the shrimp's dying words to each other were probably  "Hey! Let's send a whiffy-shrimp attack to the back of an unsuspecting nose! Our smell will linger there for days, and we shall be remembered long after our prawny deaths!" 

Rotten groceries- 2

Me-0

A favorite quote came once again to my rescue, with words that called out a stubborn determination to try again. Words that reminded me that though things may have gone badly, next time, if I worked hard, they might go slightly less badly. Words that may form my epitaph: 

Hmmm. How to rearrange the groceries I'd bought into the dinners I needed... Let's see...

 The Maple Bourbon Chicken was really good. And there were leftovers. Maybe the chicken stuffed avocados with cilantro cream would be okay without cilantro. The coconut milk was in the pantry, the avocados ripening in a bag- so what if they were still as hard as green river rocks? If they ripen faster in a paper bag, I reasoned, then surely they'll ripen by dinner time if that paper bag rests in direct sunlight for a few hours....

Do you want to know what happens to unripe avocados that spend a summer afternoon sunbathing on the back patio?

This.
Squishy, brown, smelly.
And it's not even as if the unbrown bits were ripe.

You may well ask "The temperature outdoors was 103. On the pavers of the patio, perhaps 110! Really, would you have put a bag of avocados in a 110 degree oven for 4 hours and expected them to ripen?"

I'd reply "Good question" 

And in explaination, give you the words I muttered over those ruined avocados. Words which may someday prove  a more suitable epitaph.

Rotten groceries- 3

me-1 (the bourbon chicken counting as a not loss)

Fed up with the whole rotten dinner thing, I focused my energies on conquering another area of frequent frustration- this blog's interface, and how to modify it to make learning from the people who share these culinary triumphs and disasters with me possible.

You'll see the results of those efforts to the right-

First, a tab that provides a means of email (for reasons I've yet to unravel, it sends those who click on it to an Outlook interface. If you know how to expand that, could you please, errr, email me?)

Second, a tab that links directly to the menumuse facebook page, where I hope, on Fridays, to post a kitchen tip or technique. My own personal supply of effective tips will be depleted sometime in mid September, so if you have a gee-whiz tipnique of the week that you'd like to share with the menuverse, say, a tip on speed-ripening avocados, perhaps you could, you know, email me?

and include if you wish, stories about the discovery your tipnique. 

I love stories.

And pictures.

Stories with pictures are my favorite kind.

Late last night I finally surrendered, and with an ironically bemused smile on my face, the Chesterton quote in my mind, and 42 cents, I bought a bunch of cilantro, with which we tried the cucumbers with ginger  and sesame and cilantro vermicelli salad,  It was served with little fried tofu, so that it would maybe come close to the excellent vermicelli salad at the best Vietnamese place for miles around,  Pho Garden.

Did it come close?

Well, it was tasty, but nowhere near as tasty as Pho Garden's:

But that's okay. 

I'll try again someday, and next time,

I'll fail better.

And that's what I hope for you-

No, not failure!

(on the contrary!)

For you, I hope for a week of stepping confidently from one brilliant success to another.

But mine is a real kitchen,

and this is a real world.

So I can only hope

that this week, if you're knocked down, or if you fail,

 or if you fall,

you'll get back up every time.

That you'll square those shoulders, set that chin,

gather up all the love and courage you can find,

and show yourself and the world

what recovery means.