You Ate What...?

I've been planning this for about a month, but it took a couple of weeks to get the ingredients and another couple of weeks to actually make it. I was nervous. My family is from the Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico area and we never ate "traditional Southern cooking" in the least. We ate hamburgers, New Mexican food, spaghetti smothered in sauce, salad, canned soup, roast, stew, pizza, etc. So, I didn't know if I would make Southern food well or that I would like it. Weird thing we ate: Greens with ham hocks It was extremely easy to make and took a really long time to cook, but it was decent. There were 6 ingredients: water, ham hocks, salt, freeze dried garlic, turnip greens, and tatsoi. I don't think we'll use tatsoi again. There's just not enough leaf on them. The turnip greens were huge and worked well. I should have used only one ham hock and more greens, but know I know. The ham hocks provided a good amount of fat which helped quite a bit, I think. There...

After being sick for a couple of weeks and Thanksgiving passing, we finally started getting into our food co-op stuff. We had bought buffalo roast, winesap apples, a bunch of greens, ham hocks, some wheat berries, sandwich meat, and some cheeses. I think it was Thursday I went shopping at the grocery store to round out the rest of my weeks groceries. Now, we've tried before probably about half of the stuff we just bought, but I wanted to try some new meals, or at least some new ways of cooking. Weird thing we ate: Buffalo pot roast with mashed potatoes We didn't actually eat it on Sunday, but this has been a "traditional Sunday dinner" thing, except for the buffalo part. We live in Oklahoma and people raise buffalo like they do cattle, just not as many. We've found ground buffalo at Walmart before, but that's for another discussion. I've never made a pot roast with veggies and stuff cooked in the roast. Normally I just make it in the oven and with a lar...

I wasn't going to put this on here because it is a variation of a pretty normal food. My husband, however, thinks this is crazy and said I should put it on here. He eats many of the crazy things that I do or that I serve, but this one eludes him I think. I have to admit, most of the combinations I think are normal and other people think are strange I got from my dad. From him I learned cheese with pears and pepper on cantaloupe. Odd thing I ate*: canned pears with grated parmesan and romano cheese. Normally when I have canned pears and cheese I eat shredded cheddar. It definitely has more flavor than the parmesan/romano combination. I see recipes that pair cheese and pears (usually with crackers) and the pear plays a much less prominent role. This was just sprinkling a good bit of parmesan/romano on top of the pears. It was "eh." I might do it again if we run out of shredded cheddar. *according to my husband.

We went to the OSU-OKC farmer's market on Saturday with my nieces and picked up some veggies for the week. We enjoy baby spinach salad, and the stall that was selling bags of baby spinach also had kale and radishes that we bought. We've never had kale and the fellow who sold them suggested we try kale chips. So, here we go. Second batch of kale chips Odd thing I ate: Kale chips. I used olive oil and ranch popcorn seasoning (it also said it was good for veggies/fish/meat etc). It had a mineral-y taste I understand is common with greens. The first bite tasted like a potato chip, but a whole batch tasted, well, green. We have enough to make another batch, but I don't know that I'm going to buy kale again anytime soon. The second batch I used olive oil pam on the pan and on the top I used lemon infused olive oil and the ranch seasoning. It was still not my favorite food.

John and I were out last night eating with some friends of ours at a Chinese buffet. This place, China King, has an extensive buffet with much seafood, a hibachi, sushi, and the usual Chinese buffet staples. I wasn't ravenous, but I ate with some gusto. Most of what I got was normal fare: fried shrimp, hot and sour soup, steamed rice, beef and broccoli. But some of it was odd. Odd food of the trip: Fried squid. This was not calamari rings or something, this was the legs cut and fried. Chinese name: Yau Yu Sou. Odd though they may be, they are incredibly yummy. They are really only seasoned with salt and pepper. Mostly they are tender, but occasionally a thick piece will be tough. Odd food I did not eat: Steamed crawfish/crayfish/crawdads. I'm not a big fan of crawfish, especially when they are still whole.