Yucky

From Food

My name is Kelly, and I'm a Food Addict. "Hi, Kelly."

I love to cook, bake, eat, watch Food Network, read food blogs, go to Farmer's Markets, walk down every aisle of the grocery store, get food flyers in the mail, read food flyers online, read cookbooks like novels, read food magazines like novels and I love to blog about food.

In all the cookbooks, blogs, and foodtv shows, the food is always portrayed as being amazingly fabulous. I'm picturing Giada De Laurentiis closing her eyes and exhaling a sensual "MMMMMM...." barely after the fork has touched her mouth.

Is it always that delicious? Does their food always taste that good?! Probably not, and it would be really nice if they admitted it once in a while. *Sometimes* I would see Jamie Oliver taste something and say that it needed more salt -- but only sometimes.

I do a lot of learning by figuring out what does NOT work well. There needs to be a show like What Not to Wear, but about food. How Not to Cook. Stacey and Clinton would surprise people in their kitchens and show them footage of all the terrible things they're doing to food.

I will kick it off:

Do not grill mature zucchini.

Usually, my favourite way to eat zucchini is thickly sliced, covered in a good olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and then thrown onto a hot grill. Since I still had half of a giant zucchini, I thought I would cook it just like that. Doesn't it look delicious?

From Food

Not this time. It was quite yucky. It did not hold together well, and it did not have a juicy bite. It was mushy and quite dry.

I've discovered that when a zucchini gets to be really large (or mature,) it needs to be treated much more like a squash. It needs to be stewed, or used for baking. Chinese cuisine uses lots of mature melons for stewing or for soup. If only my mom was more computer savvy to tell me how she would have cooked the zucchini: Stewed Beef Brisket and Zucchini in a Garlic Black Bean Sauce. (And this is the point in the show where Stacey would say "Shut, Up!")