eating new stuff

Now that we are remaking ourselves into country people, we are having to learn to eat things we never ate before, things people grow in their gardens.  I’ve been trying to eat local and ‘in season’ for several years now.  I refuse, for instance, to buy produce from Chili, try not to buy food from California for that matter...too far away.  I will buy produce from Mexico as they are a near neighbor to me.  Eating local is harder than you might think.  If you live up north, eating local for much of the year means no fresh food, but down here you wouldn’t think it would be that hard, it shouldn’t be that hard to find produce grown in Texas.  I know there is lots of food grown in Texas so why don’t we get it, why do they ship it out and then we have to buy produce that is shipped in?  But I digress...

These are the new foods I have eaten in the last year:  kohlrabi, kale, swiss chard, long beans, loquats, different kinds of squash, and duck eggs.

The kohlrabi is a new favorite, cut off the thick skin, cube the (root, fruit?), saute.

I liked the kale also, sort of like spinach only more so.

I haven’t actually eaten the swiss chard yet, it’s waiting in the refrigerator.  It sure is pretty though.

The long beans are good lightly sautéed.

Loquats are OK, don’t dislike them but not crazy about them either.

Squash is squash.  This is cucuzza squash.

The duck eggs were interesting though (see my post 'bounty').  The whites were so thick they came out of the shell in one glob.  The yolks were so thick they were almost solid.  The house being devoid of food as usual, I made fried egg sandwiches for lunch with the two we had.  Trying to break the yolk was an exercise in futility.  Mostly I just chopped it up and spread it around a bit while the egg cooked.  They didn’t taste any different than chicken eggs though, at least not that I could tell, but three hours after eating my lunch my stomach started becoming uncomfortable.  Thirty minutes later, my body totally rejected everything that was left in my stomach.  Ugh.  Bad enough in the comfort of your own home but I was at the gym when the discomfort started.  I was squatting down in the parking lot waiting for my friend to go fetch my keys for me because, in my haste to leave, I left them hanging on the board, and I was wondering if she would get back before I puked in public, in the parking lot.  I had to pass by several restaurants boiling noxious odors into the air and of course caught every single red light on the way home.  I basically parked the car in the middle of the street and yelled at Marc on my way through the house that he needed to move it.  But I digress again...

Curiously enough, after my encounter with the toilet, my sense of smell became very heightened.  Marc, of the cast iron stomach, suffered no ill effects from the duck egg and was eating smoked oysters for dinner while I tried not to smell them.  I will never eat duck eggs again.  They go on the list right under oysters.  Or maybe, they go before.