Foodwise, it's been pretty tame. haven't been baking, roasting, or cookin' outside of the occasional boring casserole, stir-fry, curry or pasta dish that I stuff my face with every evening.
I picked up a cold two weeks ago, then got rid of it, and decided that i needed to reenter the real world to make sure I didn't step into a dystopian future wherein my cold became some sort of horrible bioweapon, and I managed to become the inverse of patient zero.
Plus, a new Trader Joe's opened up by where I live, and I wanted to get in on it.
I picked up some Chicken sausage (mushroom and herb), frozen artichoke hearts, honey, a jar of organic sauce, "Hawaiian Style" potato chips, a wedge of fontina, boxed chicken stock, organic pasta, one bar of valrhona bittersweet chocolate, a jar of pesto, mini pitas and hummus.
One of the more frustrating things I find about shopping in Large Chain Supermarkets is that the organic markup is HUEG, and usually they lack things that matter.
Hummus for example. I hate store hummus; I have since I was little.
I'll grant the folk that know me that I was a picky eater when I was young. (and sometimes still am, but for a totally different reason). I didn't like condments, anything colored black or brown, non-cabbage lineage vegetables or anything that remotely smelled: sour, spicy, curry, chocolatey, pickled, or fermented. Granted, it's not a terrible list but it was enough to make life difficult for my parents, who love things like Kimchee, pickled mustard greens, and eat spicy food like it was a vital component of their blood, lest they collapse and die from a lack of capsicin in their GI tract at any given time.
Hummus has the distinction of being one of these foods, but for a reason completely different from the above. It doesn't smell sour, or fermented, and unless someone decided to make some sort of diabololical hummus laced with pepper spray, definiely not spicy. Had I the chance to eat a proper hummus growing up, I would have loved it, and become much more annoyed at supermarkets much earlier.
Normal store-bought hummus has preservatives in it. Sodium Benzoate and citric acid to be exact.
As an aside, I know "Preservatives" is a big scary word in some people's minds. It's only becuase of their common use as "synthetic preservatives" (and even that's an arguable thing) that makes them associate it with cancer and mummification, and all manner of awful, horrible things, like chemical plants that make the surrounding areas smell like rubber cement for miles and miles, but not all of them are bad. Those are primarily relegated to the realm of nitrates, sulfates, and some benzoate compounds, which do actually make some nasty things in the wrong combinations. However, salt, sugar, oils, and good old Al Keehaul are technically preservatives, and aren't really all that horrible in and of themselves (unless you're diabetic, or have hypertension, cardiac, or alcoholism issues, respectively). Citric acid is a chemical found in, whoa, citrus that does a good job of preventing discoloration and funky oxidization of food.
Store bought hummus is actually pretty horrible, I think. There's a certain unpleasant tang to it, and almost harsh acidity that really makes me not want to eat it, and I notice it only ever happens when there are ever the duo of citric acid and sodium benzoate.
The latter of the two chemicals only works in environments with a pH of less than 3.6 (Starting at 7, Lower pH= more sour), while the former actually contributes to the sour flavor, which explains why I found the stuff so unpleasant. Store hummus HAS to be that sour, otherwise it just doesn't preserve that well. The other problem is that citric acid imparts a sort of dull, blanketing tartness that, when combined with the lemon simply runs over the more subtle flavors like a giddy steamroller operator over a family of cute, delicate, baby
Unpreserved store hummus commits the same crime of being a little too tart, mostly because I think that's how people are used to it. However, it seems that the absence of those two chemicals let some of the more subtle flavors of the chickpeas and tahini shine through, however small. It's like the aforementioned chickpea and sledgehammer situation, but instead of severe citrus-based cranial trauma, I have the luxury of having my knees kicked in by a midget in a lemon costume instead.
I realized this because within a one day span I came from absolutely hating hummus, to realizing that it was a fantastically tasty food, but horribly marred by the act of food preservation. The first hummus I liked was one that my sis bought from a Whole Foods in Chicago, wholly lacking in preservatives. Many years, much more hummus, some research, and one patently obvious logical deduction later, I figured it out.
Of course, the best stuff, fresh/homemade hummus, doesn't even require you to make it that sour, meaning that the stuff actually tastes like chickpeas and tahini, unless you're into that sort of stuff (Like my mother, who does things like eat lime juice straight from the wedge and smile.)
Back to application junk. I've been slacking off a lot lately; this is partly because I've been spending my days shaking off a cold, but also because there's no looming deadline at the moment, so I'm working leisurely on my essays. I should be done with the next bits by the end of the week, and most definitely by the 15th.
The great news, of course is that my AMCAS is done, and by definition so is my essay. Huzzah. Thanks to the folk that helped. What's next is pretty simpel and straightforward here. At this point, I recycle my old AMCAS essay and adapt it to my AACOM (D.O. school admission) primary and ship that off with 5 school choices or so. Shiny.
Edits: If you haven't noticed by now, I'm really bad at getting this stuff right the first time. Forgive me. Alternately, you can hunt me down and force me to put the effort into getting it right, most likely at knifepoint. Just make sure it's a chef, paring, or slicing knife, otherwise I'll smack you for not being ironic enough.
