Tag: food

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Cream Cheese and Honey

203571_350589240124_1545788_nI despise peanut butter. Always have, always will (unless aliens come down and completely rearrange my taste buds). From day one I couldn’t stand the stuff, and even the smell of it now drives me insane. Yet when I was young my mother would routinely pack my school lunch with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I would then pawn off on some other youngster jonesing for PB&J when her mother sent her cheese instead.

Of course I was quiet back then, so I don’t quite blame my mother for not getting it straight for me when it came to peanut butter. And help came from the oddest place. My sister, who I don’t think would have ever stood up for me in any other circumstances at the time, decided to use her bold nature to inform my mother in no uncertain terms that her youngest child was trading in his sandwiches. I think it was meant to be a tattle but instead it helped me break that vicious cycle. I mean, even just carrying around the sandwich in my lunch bag was physically repulsive to me.

So, she came to me and asked me what I would like to take instead, and then it was my turn to think. I hadn’t ever considered it possible that I would get to decide so I hadn’t come up with anything. As I wracked my brains for ideas a bevy of possibilities came to mind. Macaroni and cheese on bread. Some type of applesauce and yogurt combination. I even thought about taking soup in a thermos, but I eventually dismissed all of them out of hand.

Then something even better came into my mind. It was at breakfast one day when I had a plain bagel with cream cheese to eat, and while eating it my mom poured a cup of tea with honey in it. As the honey slid from the honey bear into the mug it hit me. Honey was one of the sweetest things, and cream cheese had a bit of a bite to it. What if I put the two together? So I did, and the infamous cream cheese and honey sandwich was born. Continue reading “Cream Cheese and Honey”

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The Joy of Cooking

I make some mean toast. No, seriously. I actually know where the toaster is, and I can press down the lovely button that engages the heating element and in less than two minutes makes perfectly browned toast. Not too brown, and not too white either, but a great combination of the two, making for a flaky surface that reminds me of good quality biscuits. Yes, I make some mean toast.

When I was young I remember on a particularly interesting Mother’s Day my sister and I deciding we were going to make my mother breakfast in bed. It seemed so cliche we just had to be a part of it, creating a meal for my mother on a day that was not her birthday. It was my sister’s idea, really, but I chipped in with some random ideas that were summarily dismissed by the main chef. We got up early in order to create the masterpiece without my mother’s knowledge, both of us donning aprons that had seen better days, intent on getting the combinations just right.

It started with an omelet, which my sister claimed to be the best at making, and the only thing we made that really turned out okay. From there it got rather dicey, however, especially with what I was responsible for: the spicy fries. Now, my mother loves some spicy fries, like the kind you can get at nice restaurants everywhere, but at home we hardly ever ate fries. So, not only was it going to be a delicacy for her, but they were also designed to be a reminder of times and memories of us eating out at nice restaurants. It ended up being neither, and all because I got a bit heavy-handed with the spices. Continue reading “The Joy of Cooking”