Mild Amusement

As with many people, I tend to spend a lot of time interacting with my coworkers. I mean, it's about a third of your day on any given work-day. Unless you work in an environment where socializing is highly discouraged or you have problematic coworkers, you're eventually going to learn a little bit about them. I know some of their kids names, I've met some spouses, they've met the Mild Wife, and on and on. It's not that I set out trying to make friends with them, it just happened over time. This ultimately means that we end up talking about hobbies or other random bits of life, so the conversation sometimes takes a turn towards daily life. In this instance, the topic turned to food. Early on during the pandemic, one of my coworkers was saying that he was eating a lot of oatmeal. It was something he had available, and finding groceries at the store was a bit of an uncertain proposition. So, I mentioned to him that we had found that miso paste was a quick way to add s...

Over the course of this blog, certain things have come up often enough that they had warranted a series. The " Little Kids Are Awesome " series is probably my favorite one of these (it's up to eleven different entries), but there is a lesser known one about food ingredients that has also started to make a presence. Today's fun is one of those stories . Let's start with adding in a bit more detail about a post from long ago. When the Mild Wife and I went to the food tasting for the Mild Wedding , we had all sorts of fun. However, one detail that I left out was that one of the people there commented that one of the dishes was "really spicy." Since the Mild Wife and I both liked spicy food, we were excited about sampling that dish, and we made a point to give it a shot. As it turns out, the dish wasn't really spicy at all. I don't mean that she and I just had a higher tolerance for spicy food, I mean that we couldn't detect a hint of spiciness a...

Around 18 months ago, I wrote a blog post about a particularly interesting way of making granola . It wasn't the ingredients that led to a raised eyebrow; it was the manner of measuring out the ingredients. In that case, the Mild Wife had used a butter knife to scoop out peanut butter, so that became the rough guide for how much to use. Now, the Mild Wife and I have both looked at enough recipes that we know "however much fits on a butter knife" is not a standard measurement. You will never see that in a cookbook, for example. It's just too variable from person to person, or even from time making it to time making it. In essence, we both immediately recognized that we were playing fast and loose with the rule by describing the recipe in knife-fuls. There was quite a bit of chuckling when I pointed out this style of measuring. It's still a valid way of cooking, though, and it still appears in the Mild Home to this day. The Mild Wife and I joke about how it is the ...

Christmas is one of those holidays that is lined with traditions. From watching Christmas movies to making Christmas cookies , there are lots and lots of traditional activities for celebrating the holiday. Some families also have traditional meals, where certain items make an appearance during the festivities. It doesn't take too much imagination to see how these things happen a few years in a row, and then suddenly it is a family tradition. In the case of the Mild Home, we do appreciate a nice panettone and hot chocolate, but we don't have a go-to recipe yet. Many times we visit our respective families during the holidays, so we have left-overs that we will happily feast on. We did make a seafood paella a couple of years as a means of celebrating, but it didn't stick around as a long-term thing. Basically, we're still experimenting a bit. For this latest go-round, we decided to make a prime rib. We both appreciate it, but it wasn't something we had ever prepared...

Continuing with our Christmas 2020 series , today's blog post will talk about cookies. Specifically, let's talk about Christmas cookies. I know that making and eating Christmas cookies is a tradition for a bunch of families, but it never really became a huge thing for my family when we were growing up. I don't really have a good explanation for it, but I don't exactly have a sweet tooth ( given what happens when I have dessert right before bedtime , this is probably a good thing). I just never got those cravings, so I never felt like I was missing out on anything. This means that I didn't make gingerbread people or houses, I didn't cut out sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas trees, and I didn't decorate those cookies with red and green frosting. I have plenty of happy Christmas memories and I enjoy the holiday just fine, but that particular bit of nostalgia just doesn't exist for me. You know who it does exist for, though? The Mild Wife. And since we...