The Pioneer Father "Cooks"

   I'm home with the boy a lot of evenings right now. Mom's working late a couple nights a week, and dad's in charge of making food for her. Mom's very unhappy if she comes home to things that aren't just right. It's kind of ridiculous how high her standards are. Like, just the other day, she came home and was all "why haven't you changed his poopy diaper why haven't you cleaned anything why is the water running in three of our sinks why is there a big pile of mayonnaise on the carpet why are you still playing pokemon at your age!?" and I'm all "Whoa!? How about some it's great to see you husband who I love when you walk through the door next time!?" I know Wyatt would appreciate it, he hates to see me unhappy. Just, you know, make sure when you walk through the door you don't step in that bowl of salsa with chips around it.

   Anyways, food. We have a persimmon tree in our back yard that puts out hundreds of fruit each year. That is not an exaggeration (I need to make that clear because I exaggerate like 6 trillion percent of the time. Our first year, I tried to eat one, and my face went numb (exaggeration!). It turns out they don't get ripe until November, and it was, you know, September.
   Our second year we left them on the tree until they were ripe, but all the birds and squirrels ate them in just a couple days. It was sort of fun to have so many woodland creatures around. I would wake up in the morning and stick my head out the window and sing and pretend like they all came running to me.
   This year, our third fall in our house, we knew to pick them in September/October and put them in the garage, then eat them in November/December. And to freeze them so we could eat them whenever.

Yumm! bowls with a smoothie. (If you aren't from Eugene, you probably read that wrong.) See that orange thing to the far right? It's a persimmon. So is the thing cut in half to the left of the banana. This is the only healthy meal I have made in seven months, so don't be too impressed.

   You've probably never had persimmon. It's an Asian fruit, I'm told, that Asian's love, I'm also told. So if you see an Asian, be like "hey do you like persimmon!?" and just watch what happens. Also, don't pronounce it "permission" because then that last line sounds even worse. There are two types of permissions, one that you can pick and eat and love off the tree (they really are delicious, I've had one once) and then there's our kind. Ours is only ripe when it's skin is like a water balloon, and the stuff inside is like a bunch of jelly. It doesn't eat well, but it cooks quite well. That's where I, Grant, Master Chef Recipe Instruction Follower come in. I've got three moves so far:

The one on the left has blueberry. The one on the right should have some vodka, I think.

1) Persimmon/Banana Smoothie. This involves a banana, some persimmon, and a smoothie. Well, ice, and if you are adventurous you cut it with some apple juice and maybe throw some blueberries in there. It is actually really, really good, and since we have so many persimmons we have them a lot.

This was probably my best loaf ever. I miss it terribly.

2) Persimmon/Banana Bread. Yeah okay fine everything involves banana, leave me alone. This is also quite wonderful, and quite easy (Not that it matters how easy it is! I COULD DO IT EVEN IF IT WERE HARD!!). We have this once or twice a week as well.

Mater loves to tow bread around!!

3) Persimmon cookies (no banana!) They taste a lot like persimonny ginger snaps, but you don't know what a persimmon tastes like so that means nothing to you.

   We're thinking about making some persimmon jam, and maybe just throwing some persimmons at our neighbor's houses. Other than that, we still aren't sure what we can do with them. I had a friend come and take hundreds of the fruit, so maybe I'll ask him what he did with all those. But my guess is he'll just say"art."

   This means that between my staple, ready-to-make-for-a-party meals of "chicken," "Costco Lasagna" and "hot ham water," I can really throw a shindig.

My mood: full!!
Wyatt's mood: neglected!
Cara's mood: Angry about the state of the house but get over it or fix it yourself it's not my fault Wyatt loves to mash chips into little crumbs and spread them all over the living room!!