Sun, Salvaging Breakfast with Lunch, First Nasty Comment--Advice?

See how this little cabin floor is bathed in light and shadow? And those are my down booties, cast off for the first time in months, my feet anomalously toasty, and there are my sweaters too! Yes, I was down to a tank top--still below freezing and snow-bound outside, but with all our south-facing windows, it gets brightly warm in here when old Sol blazes.

I even made it out for a beach hike yesterday, and even better, with a writer friend. So beautiful, the beach, and different each time, constantly rearranging and being rearranged..

Speaking of in-person contact, thank you so much for the wonderful comments on my last post and my musings about the ease of communicating 'from behind the screen.' I don't know why, but that post also garnered the first "nasty" comment I've ever received. I'm not going to reproduce it: it's still up there if you want to see, and is basically a bunch of hateful obscenity that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Since it refers to my "wife" and "kids," it's hard for me to take personally--I have neither of those. On the other hand, some person came over to my blog and typed all that in there for me (and all my readers) to see--that seems somewhat personal.

So, should I delete that comment? I don't want to be the enforcer blogger who doesn't allow people to express themselves. On the other hand, that comment is so offensive and so...random that I'm not sure what's to be gained by leaving it up. I'd be so grateful for your experience and advice. Edit: thank you, everyone, for your fine and unanimous advice. I'm taking the comment down right now. Much love.

Time to Talk Breakfast again--or Ela Discovers that Texture Matters Too
Since I posted my carrot 'slaw recipe, I've been pretty obsessed with it, and with different permutations of dried fruit and protein powders, I've often eaten it for lunch and dinner too. However, as that post relates, I seem to need to vary my breakfasts. It's definitely an important meal--even more so with my tendency of late to skimp or skip dinner--but it's also the meal from which I'm most likely to feel uncomfortable even from normally "safe" foods. So, the 'slaw has undergone various avatars, featuring shredded parsnip or zucchini in place of carrot, and even shredded apple, thawed green beans, and spirulina, as here!

Ordinarily, I don't ever try a 'new' recipe at breakfast. I always feel like I'm in a rush, and I need something that'll work guaranteed. But for some reason, yesterday I got the idea that I wanted "pudding" instead of 'slaw, and that I wanted to make it with agar. I was a little tired of irish moss, and wanted to broaden the variety of sea veggies I consume, for their beneficial minerals and soothing polysaccharides.

So, I took

1.5 cups water

1 cup flax milk

2 tablespoons agar powder,

and a little vanilla extract, and simmered the whole thing together on the stove, stirring sporadically as I rushed around fixing Phil's breakfast and preparing food for him to take on his trip. 

The resulting slurry was a little runnier than I thought ideal, but I was ok with that. I put half a cup of it in my usual bowl, stirred in some slippery elm, spirulina, and mint extract, sprinkled a few goji berries on top.

And then, it set!

It really set, with white lumps of agar where I hadn't stirred well enough. It was so set, the part I didn't take for my breakfast popped out of the measuring cup in one piece, with the parts that were stuck to the side peeling off like latex.

I couldn't eat it. Just couldn't! And I'm the person who always claims I don't care too much about texture so long as something tastes good. Well, this was beyond gross, especially the isolated agar lumps staring white from the green. And between prepping goodies for Phil's trip and making this new food, it was already so late, I couldn't justify going and whizzing the whole thing in the blender with a little extra liquid, which is all it would have taken to fix it. I just picked, and ate fruit on the side.

But come lunchtime, it got a second turn, and became a very nice pudding.

I took the picked-at contents of the original bowl, goji berries and all, and put them in the blender.
I added 1/4 cup more flax milk, 1/3 cup frozen peas, a little slice of avocado, some stevia, and a couple drops of medicine flower chocolate extract. Sprinkled with mulberries and cacao nibs, with a carrot on the side as always, it was really a pleasant lunch.

I think the "set" agar mix is great as a base, but it needs blending and smoothing out before I can enjoy it. I've enjoyed it for two meals today too, in different forms that I'll share soon.
There's all kinds of metaphors for my writing for me to ponder in this. So you think you like all textures? Try this one for size!...

Have you snatched success out of what seemed like a failure many times?
I'd love your thoughts on the mean comment too.

Recipe Fail; Eating My Mistakes

I'm not the sort of person who prefaces lots of remarks with 'I'm the sort of person who...'--I don't pretend to know that much! But I am not the sort of person who throws out failed food experiments: I'm pretty comfortable eating my mistakes. As an inveterate recipe-tweaker, I have experienced that many of my more intriguing creations come about through improvisation, sometimes in the interests of salvage.

In the juggling act of life, between work, play, homestead-work, internet time (is that a whole new category?) and culinary artistry, I'm very apt to succumb to the temptation to multitask. If I get the cuisinart out to make a cake crust, I'll probably do something else with it too. If I'm melting coconut oil or cacao butter for one thing, I'll melt extra and think of something else to do with the rest of it.

I did both these 'add-ons' this morning, when creating another cheesecake (or a pair of smaller ones): this time white chocolate-raspberry (from the recipe in Sweet Gratitude, as near as I ever follow a recipe...) and the potential for inattention and mistiming, and just lack of thinking through, provided me with perhaps the most spectacular 'recipe fail' I can remember making, thanks to those extra ground nuts and melted cacao butter!

Thankfully, the cheesecake was not a 'fail.' I know, because I had extra of everything and made a mini-cheesecake in a half-pint mason jar and served it to Phil. I think that might be a great marketing idea, if I ever take these to the farmer's market!

His verdict: "delicious."

I should have known to stick to familiar tracks when multitasking, but I couldn't resist trying a slightly different spin on the usual energy bars I make for Phil, using the nuts that I'd pulsed in the cuisinart before make the crust for the cheesecake. I left out the peanut butter I normally include, and used less protein powder than usual, creating a more diffuse, loose, potentially caramelly and crinkly mixture. And if I'd had my head on, I would have spread the mixture as thin as possible before baking, to encourage this diffuse tendency. But instead, I crammed it all into the two little pans that are all that fit in our tiny toaster oven, and even with careful stewarding in my 20-20 hindsight, I almost ended up with a big, crumbly mess.

I shaped things up as best I could, but nice, regular bars these are not. And who knows whether the texture will be palatable so glommed together? I eat my mistakes: Phil has higher standards (and these are not his mistakes, after all). Texture and appearance matter as much to him, if not more than, flavor. We'll just have to see (he hasn't yet tried them).

However, that wasn't the biggest fail of the day! Remember my white chocolate experiment? It was so delicious, and is now running low (I've been hoarding it), so I melted a little extra cacao butter to try another idea. Now, I only ended up with about two tablespoons of cacao butter, so what could possibly be so bad? Well, it's a matter of scale, and evidently I didn't scale down nearly enough!

I'd been thinking that white chocolate tends to be so sweet, and that I'd love to make a white chocolate that had some of the alluring bitterness of cacao. I was trying to think of a good superfood ingredient that would allow the chocolate to be white but impart some of that bitterness.  What I didn't remind myself was that the easiest way to completely ruin a recipe is to overemphasize the bitter flavor.

I added almost a tablespoon of MSM powder! For two tablespoons of cacao butter, I only needed about four tablespoons of solid ingredient. What on earth was I thinking? MSM is soooo bitter...

I had also added a little peppermint oil, coconut milk powder, stevia and vanilla. It's delicious, except for the overwhelming bitterness that coats all those good flavors. And it doesn't taste any more chocolatey for the added bitterness.

I'm still not going to throw it out, though, even though this may be one of the harder mistakes to eat straight (although my tolerance for bitter is pretty high). I can throw little chunks of it into my smoothies. For months...

Do you eat your mistakes?

I showed the view from our window in my last post: here it is again this morning--

Yep--snow again! I keep telling myself not to assume that winter's finished, but I was pretty much fooled after two weeks of daytime thawing. The ground definitely has the thawing habit now, though, so much of that beautiful gilding of snow is already gone.