reLent

My sister and I are doing a photo challenge for Lent.  At least I THINK she's doing it with me.  She SAID she was doing it with me, but that was a week ago and as we all know, life interferes sometimes.  I've done photo challenges before and have made it to about...oh....Day 20, so don't expect huge things here, folks.  The hard thing about this one is that it takes place during calving AND winter, so it's not like I have an abundance of garden things to photograph.  It's pretty much dirty snow, black calves, muck boots, and sunsets.  This really WILL be a challenge!  (Did you see that April 15 is "crowd"?  A Cohagen "crowd" would be 3 people at the post office at the same time.  I'll have to really be on the ball.)

I also reserve the right to post a couple of days at a time, if I get a great photo opportunity, and to insert non-challenge posts in the midst of it.   You know; we'll do it our way.  (*happy sigh* The Laverne and Shirley theme song isn't played often enough, in my opinion....)

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Food Fad

It seems that every year the cooking world jumps on a vogue food as though they JUST DISCOVERED IT even though it's been around for ages, lurking in culinary shadows and refrigerators.  I noticed this when I started reading Gourmet and then Bon Appetit magazines.  One year it was kale...we had kale chips, kale in stew, kale salads, kale baked, kale boiled, kale in smoothies, kale pasta (remember Forrest Gump's list of shrimp dishes?  Just like that.), Kale was the "It" ingredient. There was a good run on roasted red peppers for a while, asparagus had her day, bacon never really goes out of style but it got a little tedious, Greek yogurt had pretty good billing for some time, too.  

I think in my mom's day, it was cream cheese. Brilliant. Now THERE'S a food fad I can get behind!

That was before everyone got food religion and started cleaning up their cholesterol, thus prompting the vegetable fads.

This year (and I'm gagging as I type), it's cauliflower.  

People are MAD for it!  

They're making pseudo-mashed potatoes out of the stuff, pizza crusts, crackers, soups, salads, dips...

It's nuts!  

And it makes me throw up.

I'm allergic to cauliflower.

(And no, it doesn't matter how it's prepared...even if you have a super-secret wonderbun recipe from your granny, my body will reject it.)

(No offense to your granny.)

Even the smell...ugh.  

My kids will have to get it from some other mom (preferably across the county from me), because that vegetable is not entering the house. 

I'm getting really nervous about potlucks, now, and even look the jello salads over pretty good before taking any.  EVEN JELLO could be contaminated!  It's so popular on Pinterest that there's almost a cult following..."Look at this fudge! My kids will never know there's cauliflower in it!" and everyone applauds.  It's inescapable. 

I was so happy to get Bon Appetit this month and see my old friend, kale and his sidekick swiss chard!

There were at least four recipes with cabbage in them....perhaps we're moving on to a new food fad.

Oh, please...oh, please...