Technical Difficulties

Hello one and all,

This started out as a fun adventure, and it is so exciting to see that lots of you are reading, and hopefully going out and trying some of these foods I would have passed over once before! I have really enjoyed the feedback so far, and please feel free to comment on the post your ideas for foods i should try in the future. I have adjusted the settings and you do not need a google email account to comment now, so bring 'em on!

However, I am in between places at the moment, flooded out, without a stove and with plenty of woes, so there will not be any new food blogs until after the New Year.

In the event of this unlikely delay, I am going to leave a list of seasonal items you should ALL try to taste, and instead of avoid at the buffet tables this holiday season:

1) Marzipan. Unless you are allergic to almonds, then I promise you will really really like this. Marzipan desserts are not ancient like the shaped fruits your grandmothers used to eat. It's made of a sweetened almond paste, and has a nice smooth finish to it. Try rolling marzipan balls in chocolate and gifting them as truffles. I personally like to use it rolled out in a black forest cake, the almond compliments the kirsch beautifully. It's about as festive a food as you can try.

2) Try adding Brandy to mulled wine. It tastes even better, and gets you even drunker, there is no discussion here!

3) Antipasto. It looks like old Italian salsa, but really it is everything delicious about the cheese and olive plate all in one convenient scoop. If you are really lucky like myself you will have some homemade available to you it's extra MMM!!!

4) the outside of the brie: now some people just don't like this by nature, however if you are at an open house, the very good quality bries have an incredible tasting rind, much more complex and flavorful than any other cheese you will find

Those are my four legitimate seasonal enjoyments, I hope you try one of them yourself, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Stephanie

Kiwano Horned Melon

Well this was an interesting one folks..

I tried a horned melon, related to both the cucumber and melons, I thought this can't be too bad!

If you are curious as to how this little orange weapon looks on the inside...

 I'm sure you weren't expecting it to be green slime! As I was cutting the melon in half it started gushing liquid and I thought, oh no, here we go..

 The fruit itself was nothing to write home about, it tasted like a very very watered down kiwi fruit, and was sort of slimy but pleasant textured. It would make sense that this is a traditional staple food in really hot climates, because it was incredibly juicy, and easy to eat.

   

However, after my adventures with the delicious surprise that was the jackfruit and kumquats, I wouldn't put this at the top of my list of recommendations for new and exciting foods. 

However, if you are interested in tasting a cucumber kiwi melon hybrid, the horned melon is the way for you to go!

  

Cotton Candy Really Does Grow on Trees...

Today I tried jackfruit! The largest tree-bourne fruit in the world!

it has an incredible sweet taste without being sugary, and a crazy texture, but let me start from the beginning..

I bought it at the market in a small chunk, because a whole jackfruit is massive, and incredibly expensive per pound. it's got giant nobby bumps on it.

The fruit is not hard although it appears that way, even the rind under the skin is sort of soft and stringy.

When unripe, it can be cooked in desserts or curried dishes, but when ripe it's delicious alone. There are also lobes in this fruit, with a soft stringy rind in between them.

Jackfruit was delicious! it tasted like a very ripe banana without the pasty dairy-ish banana aftertaste i dislike, with a dash of cotton candy in the mix! Sort of juicy, but still a pretty solid fruit.

It was really sweet, and my dishes and hands smell so good! Mmmm, I want to go somewhere hot on a beach and eat this all day long :) Hurray for successful food adventures!

Kumquats

What is sweet on the outside and sour on the inside? ....No, not me, but that is a good guess...

Let's try again: What's sweet on the outside, sour on the inside, is a fruit, and rhymes with bum squats?

KUMQUATS!

This fine evening I finally got around to trying these crazy little guys! This food is for my cousin Becca, who found it to be the most amusing sounding food name to suggest to me. (It is a fun word to say over and over again fast, just try it!)

So here we go, "I ate a kumquat!"

Okay well these kumquats look like little oranges

Some varieties are sweet on the inside and sour on the outside, and others are the other way around.

I think I had one of the sour on the inside varieties. Regardless, they started out with a sharp lemony taste, but shockingly ended without any bitter aftertaste. They were yummy enough, but not something I would want to go chomping on over and over again. To boot, they had lots of seeds in them.

Thinking they would be really tasty with some other chopped fruit I added them to some mango. This was great, but what was even better was mango kumquat salsa! Be sure to cut the kumquats into quarters, and scrape all of the little seeds out. You can even add just the peels and scrape the filling out instead, the outside is the tasty part.

How much more delicious could this be!? (I promise, not much more delicious)


For those of you who were wondering what the heck is in here:
1 cubed haden mango
1/4 lb of kumquats,
juice from a large half of a VERY very ripe and juicy lime (you should use a whole one) 
about a cup of cubed cucumber
about 2 tablespoons of diced red onion
and lots of cilantro. 

Tastes great with a little sea salt, but be sure to eat within a day after adding the salt, because it draws the juices out and it gets watery!