you won't know unless you try

there aren't very many foods that i'm afraid of. for the most part, my experience has been that if you can get over the fear and dig in you'll be pleasantly surprised... or at least not totally disgusted. there are obvious exceptions, most of them in the organ meat family.

then there are the foods that you can't bring yourself to enjoy, even if everyone else can. in my case, these almost all fall into the stinky cheese variety. as it turns out, this impairment is a bit crippling socially. if you don't eat goat, blue, or feta cheese some menus can be pretty limited. plus everyone assumes that everyone else loves goat, blue, or feta cheese and as such tends to incorporate one of them into foods that i otherwise love as some kind of special treat. i've tried, i really have. it's not that want to turn down the delicious looking pork chop or salad. but i can't do it. at least my friends all know me well enough to anticipate my unpopular hangup.

aside from smelly cheese and a few other things i'm willing to try almost anything, especially if it's dessert. so imagine my excitement when nb's brother mailed him a bottle of what looked like some caramel version of hershey's syrup along with a yummy sounding recipe that involved roasted plaintains and nuts, all to be topped with this new discovery.

for the last few weeks we've been tearing through a few pints a week of haagen dazs dulce de leche frozen yogurt (for those of you who don't know, it's low enough in fat and calories that you can eat half the container in a sitting without hating yourself that much and it's quite tasty - i can only imagine what the full fat version tastes like). it seemed to us like cajeta would be right up our alley.

maybe anybody who is anybody knows that cajeta is basically caramelized goat milk and sugar. i had never heard of it before, and was a little surprised about the goat milk part, but once i examined the bottle and figured that if it was marketed in the united states by hershey's it was probably pasteurized i felt better about it. plus, if nb's brother loved the stuff so much that he had bothered to mail it across the country to us it was probably pretty good.

the dessert was beautiful. pretty roasted plantains with bits of walnuts sprinkled on top, capped off with pretty swirls of gooey, delicious looking caramel stuff. i dove in without restraint, uber pleased nb for presenting me with something so marvelous. but the warm sweetness was almost instantly washed away by the distinct vomity flavor that makes me hate all those stinky cheeses so very much.

i tried. i really did. it was so pretty and promisingly exotic... but so very disgusting. even with a good forkful of plantains and walnuts i couldn't get around the barfy back flavor. nb managed to put down a good bit of it, but in the end conceded that it was at very least a bit off-putting.

the experience wasn't a total loss. we laughed about it for a good long time, and, with the help of wikipedia i've since learned some rather amusing things about cajeta. i won't repeat them here. you'll have to see for yourself.

the return of jo-na

there's no way around it. when it comes to the blog i've been woefully neglectful over the last few months. and while i can assure you that i hang my head in shame every time i think about it, i really can't come up with a compelling explanation.

i'd blame nb (who has shown enough staying power to drop the n and just be b, except that it's weird like that), but he's actually given me plenty of stuff to blog about. and i'd say i've been busy, which is true, but no busier than usual, actually. and it's not like i haven't found myself in any amusing or otherwise blog-worthy situations. so i guess it's just blog-block.

so it goes.

anyway, it seems fitting to come back to the old theme that my blogmate and i rehash again and again - that of being fancy but not.

i was feeling especially cranky leaving work post-call the other morning and was happy to find my good blogmate still at home in her pajamas, seemingly willing to pour me a cup of coffee (or three) and listen to what had to have been a long, rambling monologue of things i'd been saving up to tell her over the last couple of days. by the time i was done with my rant we were both ready for food and shopping... although if you know us at all you'll realize that we're almost always up for food and shopping.

we made our way over to the big new ritzy whole foods market that just opened up down the street and over organic salads and sparkling water we marveled over what yuppies we have become. it seems like we've resisted long enough. we've rolled our eyes about the way "sustainable" has insidiously made its way into the popular lexicon and groaned about free-range chicken, but deep down we know we've given in... enough so that after we'd finished our salads and sparkling water we went across the street to home depot to stock up on herbs, flowers, and potting soil to get our spring gardens going.

i'll admit it; i love occupying the space between loving and hating that sort of thing. what's not to love? i can run up $150 worth of tofu, vegetables and granola at trader jo's and still get offended when the check-out lady insinuates that i shouldn't be buying bacon (she argued that it has no nutritional value which, in my opinion is completely beside the point). and while i ruthlessly mock nb for his love of whole wheat pasta and flax it, i actually find his hippy tendencies to be pretty endearing. apparently i've met my match, as the guy who reads me the riot act for not buying organic milk also makes biscuits and gravy for breakfast and suggested that we blow off lollapalooza this year to go a poison concert.

basking in your own contradictions is really fun - you should try it sometime.