food

Someone I know makes delicious sriracha

kgb

I’ve been working a parttime job since July, and it’s been an interesting learning experience into the world of food production. The simplest description of my position is researcher; I spend my time looking up food products and assigning ratings based on a carefully devised “great product” matrix. Some companies and their products are better than others, and there are some that are so dreadfully awful you’d be better off chewing on styrofoam for a while. (Though part of me is loathe to say, PopTarts™ are hovering around this standard of food goodness; but don’t worry, Snickers™ are way way better.)

Anyhow, the point this job has really driven home for me is that ultimately making things yourself is the ideal. Of course we don’t always have access to the ideal, so we can make do with great stuff from the grocery store, but I’ll go ahead and say you won’t find sriracha this fresh and delicious off the shelf.

So go find yourself a sriracha-making friend, or dig up a recipe and whip some up yourself. Plus the way my friend makes it, you cook exactly zero things–just throw ingredients in a jar and let the magic happen. Then all you have to do is eat it and let the euphoric tears flow.

a weekend excursion does wonders for the restless

kgb

This weekend I took myself away on a mini respite to visit with a friend. It’s amazing how even just getting a few miles afield of my everyday experience rejuvenates a wearied spirit. Not that I have recently (or ever, really) had a tremendously taxing set of responsibilities that weighs me down. At any rate, seeing those lovely Appalachians from a slightly different angle does remind me of what a really splendid part of the world I’ve found myself settled by the powers that be, and that just fills me up with a sense of ease.

So, on this little weekend tour, my dear friend and I went out to see the sites of her more metropolitan residence, which included to our greatest pleasure a cereal bar. It was a really cozy little spot, especially for the faintly inebriated folks such as my friend and myself who wandered in at a progressed hour to discover an unrivaled selection of all the best breakfast cereals (I say unrivaled because I’ve yet only heard of this single cereal bar, though that may be on account of my limited experience in such a field). I’d actually had Kellogg’s Corn Pops on my mind for a better part of the evening, then in a splendid twist of fate, on the shelf directly below the Pops was yet another of Kellogg’s steadfast: Honey Smacks. So, I married the two in a delightful sugar coated dream, barely able to contain my excitement as I prepared to take the bowl. As it was this bowl was near perfect, but the genius man behind the counter asked me, almost as an afterthought, “Would you like whipped cream on that?” and as a person with even half a brain knows, there is never any thoroughly good reason to forego a whipped cream flourish, so I watched as he skillfully garnished my Pops and Smacks with the stuff that to my half-dormant child’s memories was the signifier of a true dessert.

I can’t describe well the experience of eating such a thing, because I was really too caught up in the moment to worry over memorizing every single spoonful, but now as a general memory of the experience I would simply say it was delectable.