Still came out better than the last time I made duck..........
Hello, my name is ben, and I have a problem..........I'm a cook. (no, not for the army, I'm a linguist, silly........or a silly linguist.......) I got started eight years back, after my wife and I got hitched, and were slowly losing weight on a regular diet of mac and cheese, and the occasional burnt pork steaks.
After a little while of this, my sister got me Cooking for Dummies as a gag. Muhahaha!!!! I shall take this seriously, thunk I, and the joke was on her! Eight years later, I'm pretty damned good. I worked my way through that, Better Homes and Gardens, the Joy of Cooking, (well, chunks of it anyway.....) and a few other classics.
You want home cooked food? Done. Gourmet? Done. Thai? You got it. Desserts? No problem. I can whip up a nice mixed green salad, with roma tomatos, sweet onions, and herbs and nasturtium blossoms for garnish out of my own garden. Leek soup?
Beef braised slow in a nice boujoulais and stock(homemade) with rosemary, bay leaves, cloves, and veggies? Garlic mashed potatoes? BBQ? Red Thai Curry? Tollhouse Cookies? I got em all. But I think my problem goes back to the macaroni and cheese.
Cooking knowledge aside, in college, you've only got as much money as you've got. So we ate a lot of mac and cheese at 25 to 33 cents a box. Out of boredom, I came up with more ways to fix macaroni than Bubba's got shrimp. Plain macaroni, Macaroni with sausage, macaroni with sausage and bbq, macaroni with nutmeg(my favorite), macaroni with tuna.......et cetera ad nauseum, macaroni without end, amen.
Yet the habit's stuck with me. So today, when I made a comment about baking a cobbler to psuedosoldier, and he asked what kind, I made a joke about tomato cobbler........and it stuck. Once I'd thought of it, I had to try it.
So I went right home, made Joy of Cooking style filling ( with extra sugar, because of the acidity of the tomatoes), and better homes and garden style biscuit topping..........Only I ran out of tomatoes. So my solution? Finish with avocadoes!!!!!!!!! Does it get any sicker than that, or what?
I then fearlessly spooned it all in the casserole dish, popped it in the oven.............waited.........waited..........waited...........took it out...........waited........waited.......waited.......and then, with one eye closed for dramatic effect, tasted it. YUUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!
HOLY CRAP THAT'S GOOD!!! I polished off a huge bowl, with a side of Bluebell Homemade Vanilla Bean ice cream (the finest ice cream in the world, thank you for bringing it home, love.) WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Other strange dishes I've made and enjoyed, include a chocolate chip bagel club sandwich (w/ thousand island dressing), omelettes of all varieties, sweet onions in miracle whip (okay, that one's pretty gross), peanut butter bannana cheese sandwiches, and frittatas (somewhere beyond an omlette, but not quite a quiche) that aren't illegal in most states, but probably ought to be.
Tomato and avocado cobbler may not be dharma's carmel apple pie, but damn it's good. Who knew? Generally I'm a success in the kitchen, but a few of my experiments ended in spectacular failure(did you know that fresh carrot soup will stain the ceiling permenantly?)
What's some of the weird ones you've made?