I don’t like wasting food, but not everything I cook is delicious (I know, I know, hard to believe, right?–ask my boyfriend about the Tunisian pumpkin stew). So sometimes I end up eating things I don’t like all that much.
Last night, I made myself a mixed drink that included Coca-Cola as one of the ingredients (London Iced Tea, a variation of Long Island Iced Tea, from one of Dale Degroff’s cocktail books, for those who are curious – 3/4 oz gin, 3/4 oz white rum, 1/2 oz amaretto, 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice, 1/2 oz simple syrup, over ice in a highball or Collins glass, topped with Coke). It didn’t use the whole can, though. But I didn’t want to throw it away, so I drank it, even though I was under the impression that I don’t like Coke (or Pepsi, for that matter).
It was … okay. I would have preferred a nice glass of soy milk, though.
On the other hand, I just had the house-made root beer at the Woodstock Brewing Company in Woodstock, NH. And that was quite nice! (though I liked their brown ale better)
My boyfriend Donald and I are in New Hampshire now for our writing retreat. We haven’t done any writing yet, but it’s still early. We’re staying in a cute little cabin with a private screened porch overlooking a river. The cabin has wi-fi, but not on the porch, only in the living room.
I thought I had you in my feeds but I didn’t. Just added you.
I hate wasting stuff, too, and end up drinking yucky tea or using crap paper towels because I bought something awful and don’t want to be wasteful and toss it.
I’m curious about the Tunisian Pumpkin Stew. Did it have harissa? That’s my new favourite way to add some heat to my dishes.
The Tunisian Pumpkin Stew had something called a “spice swirl” that was part of the recipe (i.e., I made the spice swirl, I didn’t buy it), and it may have been meant to approximate a harissa. It was really not a very good stew. You know how some cookbooks have recipes that sound good on the page, but when you actually make them, the proportions are all wrong and the cooking times don’t make sense, nor do the sizes into which they suggest you cut the vegetables? This was one of those recipes.
The worst part is that I think I’d made this recipe years before, didn’t like it, but forgot that it wasn’t very good, and ended up making it again. (I don’t usually repeat recipes, but I had all this leftover pumpkin to use up after Halloween, so I was scouring all my cookbooks for pumpkin recipes.)
Good harissa sounds like an awesome thing to add to recipes, though!