I responded to another blogger’s comments about being ruined for veggies for many years as a kid eating salads with bad iceberg lettuce, and went off on a rant and just had to share.

Iceberg is but the tip of this iceberg. . .  there are lots of early-exposure problems that cascade into picky/limited eaters later.  Even one typical meal holds numerous traps:
1. stale lettuce with
2. pale flavorless tomatoes flanking
3. anemic carrots underneath
4. fatty yet boring dressing as a precursor to
5. overcooked underseasoned meat alongside
6. baked potato in a coffin of bacon bits and cheese next to
7. brown, mushy green beans or
8. greying soggy broccoli not to mention
9. horridly pale and bland peas & carrots drizzled with rancid butter meant to be the homework before the recess of
10. chocolate cake dark with color yet light on cocoa with its layers of
11. hydrogenated frosting so sweet it makes the scoop of airy vanilla ice cream nearly savory

This is long before you get into the esoterica like liver, lima beans, beets, fish (!!!), eggplant….

Saving the native varieties of chiles is part of the mission of the Chile Pepper Institute in Las Cruces, but particularly I love Chimayo chiles, maybe even more than Hatch.

They are delicious and worth keeping around – even if consumers will need to pay higher prices because they are more difficult to farm and manage.

Saving The Chiles – article posted a few days ago online.  Decent reading if you’re new to the chile preservation subject.

Because you know I loves me some birria.

All the “cool kids” were saying that bacon jumped the shark nearly 2 years ago – the whole “let’s put bacon in everything!!!” is done/over/tired.

Sure, bacon is tasty.  But as a fad it definitely hit hard (even the post-fad engendered some anger) and maybe, just maybe, the shark-jumpage will be accelerated with the whole nasty flu business going on.

Yes, yes, I know you can’t get it by EATING pork.  But who isn’t going to come away from the whole situation without at least associating something big, threatening, and potentially pretty disruptive to those pink carriers of delicious meaty treats?  See what I mean?

. . . and that’s why the phrase “Get your goat” indicates frustration or irritation with a situation.  It comes from either a French or British history and basically means someone took away your only means to get daily milk.

Because “goat is the most widely consumed meat in the world“, it would be an annoyance for much of the planet – not necessarily Americans who are often squeamish about things that don’t taste like burger or chicken.

Luckily I live in a city with barely enough people of Mexican origin to give me a couple of local restaurant options for goat (birria, if you’re reading that menu).

If you do, too, seek it out – you might be suprised that it is delicious and mild.  It does not, however, taste like beef, so don’t expect to not notice any difference.

Dear random white collar office girl,

Despite your admirable effort at curbing your consumption to lose some of the extra winter survival storage, I can see you looking askance as I prepare my mid-day meal.  How could you not?  It’s freakin’ enormous, colorful, and assembled by hand each day.

The only thing you should know - which might make your head explode - is that my mixing-bowl-sized lunch salad has the same number of calories as your Lean Cuisine.  It probably doesn’t even cost that much more, especially if you didn’t stock up while Smith’s had frozen dinners on sale.  Not to mention far fewer amounts of scary additives and processed grains in that teeny tiny little tray that spins around in the microwave defrosting with gusto.

Smug much, me?  Yep.  Sorry.  It’s Monday.