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Posts Tagged → basil

August 15th, 2025

seeing is…tasting?

I like to cook. In fact, about 42 years ago I was trained by Andy Zangrilli as a cook and chef, at his Highway Pizza and The Deli restaurants in State College. I am proud of this experience, because Andy took a doofus 18 year old kid and gave him (me) a valuable skill. To this very day, you can put me in a kitchen heretofore unknown to me, with a wide variety of ingredients, spices, herbs, whatever, and, assuming the kitchen has the necessary pots, pans, utensils, gas stove, etc, I will make you a meal that you will at the very least greatly enjoy, if not go crazy for. Spices are a big part of being able to impart certain flavors and nuances to anything we cook, boil, broil, simmer, etc., and thus an essential part of my cooking.

Thank you, Andy.

So as I still greatly enjoy cooking, spices are still my thing, and I use them liberally in almost every dish I make, sweet or savory. Several days ago I made an applesauce from our backyard’s sweet crabapples and granny smith apples. With very little sugar added, it needed something to keep its tartness from making people cry. And so some nutmeg and cinnamon were added, which made it “perfect” according to one shnarfling admirer. She could not stop eating it. Dad added a dollop of real maple syrup. Mom ate it straight.

Somehow over the past year or so, our home’s spice drawer has become ever more populated by bottles with odd, capricious, whimsical names. These names contrast like the Himalayas to the Appalachians, with the staid old “Paprika,” “Garlic Powder,” “Thyme,” “Rosemary,” “Basil” and so on. I do not recognize these things. Other than ketchup and pickle flavored spices, few of these newcomer spice bottle labels describe or even hint at what taste or flavor is expected from their contents.

Green Goddess? Is this a new superheroine? Everything but the Elote stumped me, because despite an A+ English vocabulary, I have no idea what an elote is. Which pisses me off and makes me think I don’t want to know. It must be useless. Aglio Olio? A spiced dry oil in a bottle…not OK, but rather weird and trying too hard to be different.

Multipurpose Umami sounds like a versatile American Indian tribe. And in my friend’s spice drawer in Denver last month, I encountered a huge number of similarly named mystery spices and flavorings that all emoted colors and activities, which in my 100% male brain do not connect to anything related to flavor or aroma. And in fact, it is his wife who has amassed this enormous collection of verbal creativity in a bottle.

I don’t think my friend uses anything but salt and pepper in his foods.

Most or even all of these appear to come from Trader Joe’s, that famous venue for posing, posturing, preening shoppers in tight yoga pants. And I think that is the ticket to understanding what is going on here with these weirdly mis-named bottles of flavorings: Girls/ women/ ladies/ female humans apparently are willing to have a fling with flavor. They are willing to just try something new and unexpected in their food experiences, because apparently the lack of rote routine meeting known expectations is stimulating.

Men, think about this.

Think hard.

If women are sprinkling a bottle called “Green Goddess” on their food, then what does that tell us about these women’s food experience? About how it makes them feel, like a goddess…

I am going to sign off here, stumped as I am. I confess, I am just a man; I can change, I suppose; if I have to (thank you to the Red Green Show).

Gotta go add some more of my home grown basil to the home grown tomato sauce I have simmering away on the stove right now. I know it will end up tasting delicious, because there is a nice linear straight-ass line from the basil to the flavor outcome. No mystery involved here, and I like it that way.

Mystery flavors in a bottle appeal to someone I am not, but I remain intrigued

 

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
June 20th, 2014

Politics…? Nah, let’s talk gardening

Everyone needs a light moment, a break from the heavy stuff of politics.  Me, too.

So let’s talk about gardening, something I really enjoy in the spring and summer.

First, the basil and peppers planted back in early May have not yet sprouted.  I “cheated,” and bought started peppers last night, after procrastinating for weeks, in the hope the seeds would erupt into a profusion of colored peppers, like last year.

Second, the garden is exploding with volunteer tomato plants, from seeds scattered by the kitchen compost we throw into the garden all Fall and Winter.  Maybe forget about the basil and peppers, and just focus on what is working now.  Everyone ready for me dropping off extra tomatoes on your porch?

Third, the heavy-gauge tomato cones really do work, but I am sticking with the re-bar and string construction Patricia encouraged me to try back in April.  The cones exist within the string…

Fourth, as rodents decrease in number, so the targeted garden plants grow.  Never saw chipmunks eat zucchini and cucumber plants before, but they were eating every little shoot and leaf.  Until….

Fifth, the electric fence kind of works.  Once the squirrels learned how to jump up onto the heavy gauge wire and perch there, they only risked me catching them, and a lot of rodent damage was done to the garden, until…..

Gardening can be a metaphor for so many things: Our daily job and work, a career, a relationship, a political effort or campaign…life…yeah, I will bet that Siddhartha was a gardener.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the first day of Summer and the Summer Solstice tomorrow!

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
June 24th, 2013

The garden as metaphor, part deux

Basil is erupting by the bushel. Four types. The pesto I made for my wife today had all kinds of exotic tastes she worked hard to identify, and it was all good.

Tomatoes are laggards, every one of them. Green, small, looking nothing like what Giant provides, they are just takin’ their sweet time.

Where did that dill weed come from? Well do I recall planting a wee sprig. Now it is about to flower, so it must be harvested in order to regenerate.

Showy zucchinis, with their big nodding leaves, they are a bunch of braggarts, with nothing to show underneath. Lots of colorful flowers, sure, but nothing edible or useful. Intrigued by the nipped flowers. Are chipmunks running amok again? Only recently did I trap the last one out of the house. Hopefully the garden isn’t inviting them back….

Not one of the peppers has produced, either, although clearly something has ‘et them but good, leaving bullet holes zooming through all of the young fruits. My pocket is picked!

Finally, the cucumbers are lazily snaking their way into the other plants’ areas, and showing nothing for it. Like the zucchinis, they are all about showmanship. But fellas, we don’t see anything to support your territorialism.

And that run-down right there is the world in a nutshell, with yet another edition of Garden as Metaphor (C)…..

By Josh • Posted in Family, Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment