Another culprit

I have moved out of Dad's, I haven't lived there in a while now. This is making it a lot harder to keep an eye on his food choices.nhiwever, I proudly told me the other day about someone with odd food habits( and even Dad considered his odd).
This guy was staying with Dad's friend who lives. Few doors down the street.  I think he might have been English, but I'm not sure. Even so, his nationality cannot excuse his horrid food crime.
He likes to eat porridge for breakfast, nothing odd about that right? Of course not. But he likes to top his porridge with olive oil, garlic, onion, chilli and...cinnamon. Just to bring it back to what it should be.

Red Curry Bolognese

The other night we had a fairly impromptu family dinner, so it wasn't going to be the usual incredible scalloped potatoes, some kind of wild salad and a meat dish, instead it was something simple, maybe with leftovers or the like.  The night before Dad had made spaghetti bolognese under the watchful eyes of my cousin, so it was kept simple.  So the idea was to buy some more mince and bulk up the sauce and have the same thing again.  Only Dad changed his mind once we were all assembled and announced that my niece was having the left overs and for the rest of us he was adding a can of red curry paste to some mince and putting the whole lot over pasta.
We all sat there looking vaguely bewildered and smirking and he exploded "what's the matter with you lot?  You bunch of conservatives!".  What were we to do, he was cooking after all.  In actual fact, there was very little curry flavour to the dish, so it was more like mince and bamboo shoots.  Over pasta.
The thing is though, I was just googling 'red curry bolognese' to see if I could find some kind of photo and it exists as an actual thing!  Of course the person who put the recipe up has done a little more than open a can and pour in over some mincemeat, but still.here's the link if you want to check it out,

Apples and Bean Juice

I've spent less time at home recently, which has meant less time to see whatever Dad is feasting upon.  However, I do have a couple of gems from Family dinners and the like.

The first came when Dad accidently bought too many apples.  I remember a book as a child that was about people putting apples in everything because they had to many.  It was like that at Dad's for a while, except mostly he just ate apples.  But then when we had some brown leftover bits, he decided to throw them into the omelette he was making.  Thus the omelette was egg, onion, garlic, cumin and apples.  There's something that's just not right about that.

The other new one came the other day when I had some cannellini beans that I was making into a lovely bean and garlic dip.  I was busy doing other things in the kitchen so I asked Dad to open the can for me.  He did so then asked "Now what?" I went over to the sink with the intention to rinse all the thick, slimy bean juice out so I could tip the lot in the blender, but Dad prevented me.  Instead of all that muck going down the sink, he tipped it into a cup and DRANK it!

It looked worse in reality and imagine the taste!

The return!

Yes I'm a slack blogger, moths have passed without a single peep out of me, dad's dinners have progressed without comment, beacuse I've been too slack to make them. But now, having brought up the subject of this very blog in my creative writing class, along with recent dallies into the idea of creative non- fiction writing, I'm at it again.
I think my lack of blogging has been somewhat positive, as Dad has yet again begun regaling me with his culinary masterpieces. Just the other day he told me how he had decided he was too tired to cook potatoes, so instead had substituted Tzaziki flavoured crisps instead. The rest of the meal consisted of tomatoes and sausages and he had slathered the three items in mayonaise and soy sauce.
Then there is the new favourite pickle, garlic chilli this time, which gets included in and on everything, even my home made hot cross buns.
Any indignation on my part is met with a sort of gaffaw, as he considers me very conservative in my tastes. And any peering I have been doing to check out his plate is usually met with 'get away'. If only Grocers were sellers of disgusting things, then I would recommend my dad become one.

Salty mistakes are the final straw?

I've had a bit of a hiatus lately as my father has been trying to hide his eating habits from me. However, I have managed to catch him a few times. There was the sushi and toast incident, dry toast with just one piece of sushi on top that he sort of mashed down into the bread. I have a bit of a problem with this, partly because it seems to me that these two items do not complement each other in any way, and partly because of the combination of carbohydrates. Is this just me? Is it ok to combine pasta and potatoes ( the most common repeat offense) or the triple whammy pasta, potato and bread? Too many carbs together! I think of how gnocchi is potato and flour, or how some stews and curries contain rice and potato, but still they seem somehow ok. Perhaps I'm just a snob, I'm sure that's what my father would say.

Then there was in incident the other day when he made veggie soup with sour cherry jam in it. he explained this to me as 'just a happy accident', when he mistook the pickle jar for the jam one. Why is he putting pickle in veggie soup? Another experiment. Lime pickle is the flavour of the month at the moment. I caught him about to put it in the broccoli and bacon pasta the other day, and he did mention he'd like to try it on porridge. He'll go through a jar in a week.

It seems there is only one thing that he dislikes. He accidentally put too much salt in the pasta water this week. It was almost inedible. I had some, then pushed the rest to the side. Dad ate some for dinner and then finished up the rest the next day and then proclaimed it to be the worst lunch ever! Yes, but he still ate it.

Cat food for people too.

The other day I was reading Joy Cowley's autobiography (a great read) and she was describing a sort of icecream she had eaten in a native village in the Alaskan Bering Strait. It was made from whipped reindeer tallow, seal oil and blueberries. She described it as similar to a strong fishy flavoured castor oil, a remedy given to children for constipation. When I read that, I thought now there's something made for humans that even my dad might pass up,

My dad eats cat food. Technically it's not his fault. My sister just happened be to around one day and she mentioned that cat food has a lot of vitamins in it, which my dad took as absolute gospel to try a bit. My cat Ninja is a bit of a fussy eater, and mostly she just eats those whiskers singles, which I can now pass on are like soggy cat biscuits in sauce. I have a feeling that was a once off. But when Ninja got some kitty treats for Christmas, Dad had to try those too, to see what all the fuss was about.

As long as he doesn't encounter any new varieties I reckon it'll be ok, it's more out of curiosity than as a meal anyway. Still if you come by can you spoil Ninja in secret to save Dad's taste buds just a little bit.

Springing back from a gout attack

Dad has been out of order concerning weird food due to an attack of gout which has prevented him having his usual flair for weird meals. Luckily for me ( and him) he has slowly but surely come right and started to add in weirdness once more. First it was a rice salad that he made using white rice and all the normal salad ingredients, lettuce, big chunks of tomato, cucumber etc. Not OVERLY weird by his standards, but just a strange combination of textures. Then there was the other day when he put mint in the bolognaise, again only slightly off. But then he was back in full force with a lunch of microwaved potatoes, yogurt, peaches and sage. I ate all the olives and asked jokingly if he wanted to keep the brine, and he said yes! Then later he made another meal of soggy briny bread, canned spaghetti, peaches, cheese and beetroot. I have been trying to get pictures, but he refuses, so I'll have to take covert ones.

It was his birthday yesterday and I got him a range of condiments, which will hopefully be put to some very strange uses soon. I live in hope for the sake of this blog!