pebblerocker

Followed a link today to an article on the ubiquitous tastelessness of the Red Delicious apple. My Nana used to buy three Red Delicious apples every week to put in her fruit bowl, then throw away and replace them. She didn't eat them and I had to be pretty desperate for an apple to chew through the bitter skin of an apple at her house.

But fandom-relevantly, from the article: the Red Delicious was brought to prominence by the Stark Brothers' Nursery, and they called it the Stark Delicious. But before it got famous, it was called the Hawkeye.

Oh, also, the Stark Delicious was striped red and gold. The solid deep red was selected for later on.

There is a surprising amount of Avengers fanfic involving bananas (and not even in a dirty way). Iron Man and Hawkeye having their own apple varieties calls for fic too, don't you think?

Partner and I got bored with having the same old food every day. Potatoes, rice and split peas feature heavily and we end up rotating the same meal every 3 days instead of once a week -- that's if we feel interested enough in food to make something instead of just having toast. He also wanted to start taking lunch to work so he doesn't end up buying chocolate bars for lunch every day, which is hard on the bank account as well as on his health.

I looked up meal plans online and got this one (link via Wayback Machine because it went 404 a day after I found it) and we're working from that pretty closely this week. It's going well. Partner is remembering to take sandwiches or leftover dinner to work for lunch; I think the external authority, this LIST that orders him to take a certain packed lunch, is working better than his internal "suppose I should but I'd rather watch cat videos" or my "I would pack lunch if I was you". Dinners are not all that different from what we'd have normally -- stir fry, bean stew, pasta -- but not having to do the thinking is a big help, and working from a recipe means we get new flavours, different spice combinations than I'd think up myself, and that makes things so much more interesting.

We put hoisin sauce on the shopping list since the stir fry recipe wanted it, and it's a new favourite. I can't stop sticking my finger in the bottle for a taste. And pickled gherkins is another new food: partner bought some for sandwiches because he likes it when they give him some on his sandwich at a chain of sandwich shops. (They always just say "pickles" on the menu but it's always pickled gherkins, not pickled something else.) He bought the gherkins to try and I had some and liked them a lot and accidentally ate them all in a week. And there was a recipe that said cilantro, so we bought a bunch of coriander, which has had a mixed reception. I never ate it growing up because my mother can't stand the taste, but I think I like it; partner tasted it and is very wary of having any in his dinner.

I'm going to have to make sure I try new foods regularly so I don't get bored with food. I only discovered olives and eggplant a couple of years ago; it's well past time to add a few new tastes to my repertoire.

New season apples are in the shops, hooray! It's hard to get through early summer when even the Granny Smiths are unappealing. I feel decidedly odd when I can't eat an apple every day. Now the lean time is over and apples are back, and as well the plums, peaches and nectarines are in season and smelling nice. It can't be long now until Golden Queen peaches come in...

Apricots, however, are still not worth buying. I sniff them every time I go shopping and they're never ripe and nice-smelling. They never became nice-smelling last year at all. I suspect that all apricot orchards have now replaced their trees with a new variety with very commercially-appealing yield and disease resistance properties and no flavour at all. Maybe next time I visit the city I can try the organics shop. There must be good apricot varieties around somewhere; dried apricots have a smell, after all.

Chilli chocolate, wow. This stuff is amazing. What an experience!

I didn't have any preconceived ideas about whether the two would go together, although it does sound unusual. But wow. My mouth is happy.

Here's where I plan to start my investigations. Looks like we're going to have to experiment with a commercial egg replacer, but luckily I know where to get some.

I've always been happy with the denser types of cake (carrot cakes and fruit cakes) that I usually bake. We have our few recipes that work well and I don't often go looking for new ones. But the boy has now had the chance to become re-acquanted with his mother's baking, and he wants to do similar things at home; fluffy sponge cakes inspire the most urgency, but he wants to make them so I can eat them too, bless him.

Angel food cake: never heard of it, but I assume it's the US name for sponge cake. Good good, another search term to use.