china, we need to talk, you’re being weird again

i don’t even

there are eyeballs in this

what

would only posting photos of the stuff I make while I’m eating it be a good gimmick? real basic pasta, sauteed some onion + spinach w/ cumin, fennel seed, and (just a little bit!) of celery seed. made a roux w/ whole wheat and chickpea flour, whole milk + a little water for the main part of the sauce, added a ladle of the pasta water for extra thickening, finished the spaghetti in the sauce. I guess you could garnish it with some fresh rosemary if you were trying to show off

(holy fuck this is so rad I am gonna die of stomach exploding)

I had a weirder dinner than you

EDIT: haha gross I can see the nerves and stuff, this is fucking weird

the “add non-flour stuff to bread” experiments are going well, this one has steel-cut oats in it. it firmed up really well, I hardly had to knead it and I feel this would be ideal for shaped breads. the last one, with a half cup of chickpea flour in the dough, was really dense but moist, good for sandwich rolls I would bet

I made some lentils & brown rice but that’s not why we’re here so WHATEVER

These are (what’s left of the) fried flowers.  They’re pretty good, I ate most of them while I was cooking everything else, but anything that’s been battered, fried, and salted is going to taste okay, no?

VERDICT: a courteous handshake

These are the greens, cooked to hell & back with hot pepper and homemade yogurt, served on top of some pancakes I made out of the leftover flower batter (waste not want not). I’m not gonna lie, dandelions are an acquired taste, but if you’ve acquired it (and mellow them out w/ yogurt and pancakes) then hoo boy they’re good.

VERDICT: a cordial hug and honest, truly curious asking of “how are you?”

Japanese Knotweed has a very sour, lemony flavor that suits it well to very simple preparation.  Here I sauteed it with just some salt and pepper, allowing the flavor of the plant itself to be the main focus of the dish.

VERDICT: immediate marriage proposal

I put the unopened flower buds in brine like my little manual instructed so uh we’ll see I guess!

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to eat dinner.

I like to eat stuff from outside.

There is a LOT of stuff to eat outside. So let’s talk about it!

Today I was an idiot and forgot to bring a knife with me, so I had to improvise a little bit.

Here we see a stick that I honed into a chisel point for digging roots, and a sharp rock that I found in the creek. Both of these were honed by another rock (not pictured). I recommend a grainy rock for stick-sharpening, as the grit makes the most effective filing surface.  The knife rock is sandstone or something I dunno (it’s not flint)

BUT ONTO THE FOOD!

who doesn’t know what a goddamn dandelion is

Seriously, though, these are some useful dang plants. The leaves are edible - a little bitter (especially on big ones like this), but alright when cooked down like other greens. The flowers can be eaten straight or battered/dredged and fried. These next two are new on me, but I guess you can pickle the immature flowerbuds sorta like capers? Apparently you can also roast the roots to make a coffee substitute (they did this in the civil war). I will try to do all of these things. Also rich in vitamin A!

(NO BRAINER: don’t eat anything that’s been growing in a place with pesticides/other funky stuff in it, dumbass)

This little dude is called a Spring-beauty. They have pinkish-white flowers and a single pair of leaves (there are multiple stalks on this one). You can eat the corm after boiling it for 10-15 minutes! HOWEVER, they are pretty scarce around here and sort of a pain in the ass to harvest (they don’t get much bigger than the one above), so I don’t recommend eating them unless you’re starving.

This is the goddamn jam right here. The king of stuff I eat in the woods that isn’t a mushroom or berry. It is Japanese Knotweed. It’s basically a relative of bamboo (I _think_) that is shitty for building things and fucking delicious for eating. I like to pick them when they’re about this big and cook them like asparagus. I guess you can peel the bigger stalks and cook the peels rhubarb-style, but I haven’t tried it (yet).

Pics of the cooked versions of stuff incoming!

I found this really good stick on campus so i honed it into a chisel point on the sidewalk and now I’m gonna go harvest dandelions w/ it

(dandelions are a versatile dang plant and people will thank you for picking them)

edit: what the fuck kind of person sees a stick and the first thing they think is “man i bet i can harvest roots with that!”

so wtf is the big deal about dal, why do people buy it at restaurants it takes like no effort to create delicious stuff like this

(eat brown rice everyday)

but it sorta just looks like a bowl of undefined stuff, it’s got red lentils and red bell pepper and onion and spices and such, just trust me it is p. choice

edit: yeah i know presentation is pretty important but when it’s 8:30 and you’ve had a few and just got stomped at like three consecutive rounds of othello you just wanna eat some dang lentils