Beignets

I was feeling somewhat nostalgic the other night and began the tedious process of cycling through pictures of the glorious few months where Maine has temperatures that are labelled "warm." During this cycle, I stumbled upon ones taken at this years Folk Festival, you know, the one on the waterfront. If you haven't been, change that this year. It's a great thing. Music, dancing, people, and, yes, food. 

One of the great things is that, with the food, there's a wonderfully gargantuan variety. You have the barbecue, the brick-over pizza, the typical American stuff. But then you get to branch out into other things, like Greek, Korean, and Cajun. And that's where the fun is.

The Cajun food tent/structure/kiosk serves traditional Cajun food. If you've been to Louisiana, you've probably had it. There's the chicken and rice pilaf and gator, and, one of my favorites, the beignets, pronounced, as far as I can tell, "bin-yays," as in "Yay, I finally get beignets!"

A beignet is kind of a fancy dough-boy, I guess. I've never had a dough-boy, so I'm going off what friends have said. Anyway, this delightful cardiac arrest on a plate is a light, puffy pastry thing that's been deep-fried and covered in powdered sugar. That's it. Simplistically jubilant, and joyously messy.  

Everyone should try them, at least once. Even if it's just a bite. Do it. Try the beignet.

Photo by Jamo Frakes

These weren't beignets, but tacos from the Tic Tac Taco stand, along with tea from Specialtea. Oh, and a Lemon Sting hiding in there somewhere.

   

Blooming Tea

So. Did some research. Blooming tea. It's a real thing. Yep. Tea. That blooms.

From what I understand, it's the tea leaves wrapped around an actual flower. It's all rolled up into this little nutmeg like creature, that, when you add boiling water, or probably any water, blooms. The tea leaves unfold and you have the flower thing in the middle. The end result is very lotus like, although there are, apparently, several different styles of blooms, like lotus or sunflower or, you know, other...blooms... It would seem that the flowers inside the tea bundles are usually something fragrant like jasmine or marigolds.

Teavana, my go-to tea site, is only offering one type of the blooming tea. I'm not sure if this means it's a relatively new thing, or if blooming tea isn't that popular. I only heard about it when my grandmother sent me a variety pack. Honestly, I've been too scared to try the suckers, being the somewhat snobbish tea-hog that I am.

If you want to check out blooming tea for yourself, Teavivre has a fairly solid page on them. Or, you know, google-magic.

TEA

I know I said no more tea, at some point, maybe... I lied. I've recently heard about "flowering teas." I'm not entirely sure how fascinating this may or may not be, but I'm going to find out, and report back. From what I've heard it's tea that blooms.

That's right, blooms.

Again, not much research done on this subject, but there will be an update, and the world will know.

Lesson Learned

Banana bread is a staple in any diet. Even if you're deathly allergic to bananas, which is a thing, you eat banana bread. You die, but you die happy. That's why, over the weekend, I made some. The bananas were overly ripe, there was sugar in the cupboard, and I had the kitchen to myself. So, banana bread.

Everything went well enough, no major mishaps with the flour or anything. I left it in the oven a little too long, but no burnage. It came out as a fairly decent loaf of bread. And that's when I decided to go out with a friend.

Assuming it would be safe, I pushed the loaf, now cooling on a small rack, to the back burner of the stove. It was too hot to wrap and put away, and typically, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum don't climb on the stove to eat things. Butter off the island, yes. Bread off the stove, no.

So, adventures with the friend. Fun times. The usual, except for a lack of dinner. That was okay, though, because I had that wonderfully fresh banana bread waiting for me at home. Or, had the two cretinous dogs not jimmied themselves up on the stove, that's what would've been waiting.

Two dogs, one loaf. The whole thing gone. Not even a crumb.

Lesson learned, I guess. Don't leave banana bread, or bread, or any food you've been craving, on the stove, because the dogs will seek and destroy that glorious work of digestible art.

Photo by J.Cust

Still feelings lazy. But, this time, it's something helpful. Or, I guess, I thought it was helpful.

Thanks to @wearPACT for sorting through the PLU code jungle and putting this colorful, easy-to-read graphic on the interwebs.

I'm feeling incredibly lazy, and haven't tackled any remotely interesting food related obstacles lately. So look at the pretty pictures.

This is another unfortunate case where I can't find photo or blog credits, but, let's face it, this is awesome and needs to be shared. So, if anyone stumbles aimlessly upon this and happens to know who did these wonderful little creatures, they should drop a line so legalese and credits can be cleared and given, respectively.

So...

So, this has almost nothing to do with making food.

That's a lie. It has absolutely nothing to do with making food.

Thanks to youtuber Mister Epic Man for this... intersting? video.