Input Junkie

Cooked a pleasant thing.

I've soaked some flax seeds to make them into food. Unsoaked flax seeds are edible, but not very nutritious. Soaked flax seeds keep for a surprisingly long time in the refrigerator. They're also very low carb, but seem carb-like to eat. They aren't that great if they're just cooked a little.

I fried a moderate quantity of soaked flax seeds in olive oil for a while at medium heat. Probably 15 minutes or more. I needed to scrape them off the pan a few times.

I added chopped cauliflower, salt, and various spices. I forget all of them, but there was Penzey's Justice mix, which is mostly various sorts of dried onion and a medium curry. The result was mild, but the spices presumably added interest. If you want actual zing, taste as you go.

Then, 4 large scrambled eggs and some cream (approximately the volume of one of the eggs). When the eggs were cooked, I added a good bit of parmesan cheese.

The result was comfort food, which I wasn't expecting. I think it wasn't just the amount of dairy, the texture (perhaps something glutinous from the flax seeds) hit the spot.

Jon Singer recommended stirfrying some green frying peppers (what are they called?--they're longer and a lighter brighter green than standard green peppers) with anchovies and eating the result with spaghetti.

Well, I couldn't stand the simplicity and I wanted more protein, so I added some chicken filets and an heirloom tomato and asiago cheese. (It was one pound of peppers and 4 ounces of anchovies.)

The result is quite nice. I was worried that it would be too fishy and salty, but the whole wheat spaghetti toned it down.

And it's good to be introduced to those peppers--they've got a much milder taste than standard green or red peppers, but the same texture. If you want something crunchy but mild flavored without going quite as far as water chestnuts, those peppers will do it.

Tried using St. Andre cheese (a soft and somewhat blue-flavored cheese) with spaghetti and boar sausage. (The sausage came from D'Angelo Brothers in the Italian Market of Philadelphia.) This was a big win--not only did it taste good, but the cheese coated the strands of sphagetti very pleasantly. Further experiments with other soft cheeses weren't as good--maybe St. Andre is the only one.

The other experiment was stir-frying tuna with whole unpeeled lime slices. The result was somewhat bitter and I won't be doing that again. One of my friends *likes* bitter, and he'll probably try it out for himself.

One of the lime slices escaped under the pan, and got lightly toasted by the gas flame. This was actually nice--the cooking seemed to sweeten the lime a bit, and the crispy peel was nice to handle, though I didn't try eating it.