Garbage To Gold

or

Mush to Mush

The latest installment in my broke-ass cuisine series (and NO this isn't turning into a food blog. I've just been doing a lot of cooking. Don't look at me like that.) involves two apples waaaayyyy past their prime. We're talking 90 or 95 in apple years. Half-rotten would be more accurate than half-fresh.

They looked kinda like this:

Mmmmmmm. Yummy.

I felt sorry for them, to tell you the truth. I bought them in the peak of their flavor and freshness and then proceeded to neglect them on the counter. For an entire month. Reprehensible.

If I waited one more day, I knew that they would fester before my very eyes. Perhaps I could cook them into something useful, so their counter-top vigil would not have been in vain.

Then it came to me. Applesauce. Hell, they were already mushy. It wouldn't be a far stretch.

So I hacked 'em up, peeled off their wizened skin, and threw the chunks in a pot with a little water. To breathe life back into the decrepit fruits, I performed an Aztec ritual, sacrificing the body and blood of a supple virgin pear into the pot as well. Two sprays of butter flavored Pam. A pinch of salt. A 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Liberal cinnamon. Dashes of allspice and cloves. A tablespoon of vanilla. Then on went the lid.

I simmered the fruit for about 45 minutes, until the pieces mashed effortlessly with a flimsy plastic whisk. I left a few big chunks of fruit for texture.

We ate it while it was still hot, pouring a little milk over it to cool it off.

It was the best damned applesauce Greg and I had ever tasted.

Back To My Roots
or
A Sugar By Any Other Name

I had a root beer float today. (Well, not a whole one. I took a few bites of the one Greg made for himself. Bless his heart for always letting Miss Diet Conscious taste his sweets. But that's beside the point.) The point is that it was simply incredible. I'd never had one like it before.

See, I've never been a huge root beer fan. Back when I used to drink a lot of soda, diet cola was my beverage of choice. Yes, diet. Right from Kindergarten. My mother is addicted (in the literal sense of the word) to Diet Pepsi. She drinks about 4 cans per diem. Sometimes more. As a child, I simply got used to what was always around. To this day, normal Pepsi or Coke tastes filthy and cloying to me. I can feel the syrup swimming on my teeth. *shudder*

I loved diet soda for years, until aspartame started giving me mouth sores. It's not the kindest chemical to one's system, I'll tell you that.

And diet root beer tastes like Pepto Bismol.

Nowadays, I have another reason to avoid soda altogether, particularly the sweetened kind. It contains about 10 tsps of the goddamned High Fructose Corn Syrup.

High Fructose corn syrup is just not cool in my book. First off, it'll probably make you fat, even more so than table sugar, which I absolutely cannot forgive. Also, in my opinion, it tastes like crap. I avoid it every chance I get. You can never eat too little refined sugar.

Back to the root beer float.

While we were at Trader Joe's today, Greg snagged something that gave me pause: a can of Hansen's All Natural root beer made with cane sugar. We bought it, took it home, opened it up, and each took a tiny sip of it.


Wow. I couldn't believe what I had been missing.

Sweet, creamy, herbal flavors filled my mouth. It was nothing at all like the insipid, syrupy national brands or sickening, musky generics. I sipped it drop by drop, letting the soda's multitude components spread across my tongue. Vanilla and anise I could make out distinctly. The can also lists wintergreen, birch, and sassafras extracts as flavoring. I never knew those things went into root beer. Usually the ingredient lists for soft drinks state the catch-all NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORINGS, and leave it at that.

Greg decided that the best way to enjoy this root beer was to make a float out of it. I do believe he was right.

Imagine Hansen's cane-sweetened root beer and Breyer's vanilla bean ice cream (also natural with no HFCS), frosting up the sides of a white porcelain bowl. Think about that. Little specks of vanilla pod riding on the bubbles. Root beer freezing on the scoop of ice cream, giving it a glossy tan shell. And fragrant! The smell of the root beer, spicy-sweet and complex, wafted to my on its effervescence. Wow.

Like I said at the start of the post, I only had a few spoonfuls of the float. A few spoonfuls was all I needed. The flavor was so rich and powerful that eating more than a little at a time was a waste of tastebuds. The sweetness was perfect. It was delicious. After about 8 small tastes of ice cream and root beer, I was completely satisfied. I actually felt full.

The whole experience made me wonder if the obesity epidemic isn't due in large part to artificial sweeteners and flavorings. About 1/3 cup of natural ice cream and root beer made a luscious, satisfying desert. I couldn't have eaten more if I wanted to. Yet, I see people downing 32oz portions of the artificial stuff all the time, chasing an experience they can never truly have and a craving they can never truly fulfill.

At any rate, Hansen's All Nature Cane Sugar Root Beer is wonderful. I highly suggest you try it.