Writing About Food, Knowing Nothing About It: June 2011

As part of our ongoing quest to fool ourselves into thinking we are adults, Marina and I like the notion of eating vegetables, by which I don't mean ketchup. Readers of the blog will remember our earlier escapades with vegetable roulette. Once again, we took part in a guerrilla vegetable purchase from the same farm, although this time, dealers and buyers were so brazen that all the transactions took place in full daylight.

We received a selection similar to our previous endeavor, but with bonus strawberries. Bonus strawberries make any day a good day, in my opinion. This time, it was maybe a little heavier on the greens, some of which did not fare so well while waiting for Marina to return from Mexico; the same fate befell a few carrots.

However, we still had a decent selection. We toyed with the notion of a stir-fry, until we realized the only soy sauce we had was a bit past its prime. In truth, the vegetables we decided to use did not seem totally compatible with the notion of a stir-fry: miniature potatoes, a bright orange cauliflower variant, and broccoli. I suggested the radishes, which I love for their peppery bite, but Marina gave me a look and I thought better of it.

We decided to do a saute of sorts, as a stir-fry substitute. We cooked some rice from Whole Foods in the fancy rice cooker I acquired from Peter and Roni before they sailed into the West--New Zealand, that is. While that was cooking, I melted butter and some vegetable oil in an pan, added pepper and a dash of salt. I would have added some minced garlic, but here we ran into an unexpected obstacle: the most insidiously-impossible-to-open jar I have ever seen. Do not buy this brand:

I say this not just to warn you, but also out of spite, because I really wanted some minced garlic. Oh well.

There was some question as to how well the potatoes would fare in a saute, so I sliced them finely and put them in well before the other vegetables. Then I realized they were almost getting too done, so I had to rush to turn down the heat and add the other vegetables.

It actually looked quite colorful at this stage:

This dish turned out surprisingly well, and by surprisingly, I mean that I was surprised by two things: the potatoes took on the texture and appearance of the chicken apple sausage that we love so well, and the cauliflower turned yellowish and looked like scrambled eggs. It even fooled my taste buds to an extent.