Hours after I've eaten.

Hello! Would you like to eat like a hippie today?

Currently at my feet is a pile of Daniel Pinkwater books. Most, if not all, of these wonderful, crazy, delightful books, which you should certainly read if you haven't already, include at least one scene in which the protagonist eats something that is delicious and amazing and utterly unlike the food he has been eating all his life.

In one case it is corn muffins at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor "in a steaming pyramid on a big platter on the counter." In another it is "plate after plate of wonderful things I had never seen before," including fry bread, blue corn dumplings, and cheese and green chile soup, served up at a little shack in the desert, where "every one of them tasted like an old friend."

Or it might be sfogliatelle at a coffee shop: "The pastry was crunchy and chewy and flaky, and had something unidentifiable and delicious in it." (The narrator observes that "the coffee was creamy and hot and strong," too.)

Or a biscuit:

I wasn't prepared to eat the best meal of my life, sitting in a creaky old camp chair, by a blazing bonfire, under a sky as black as ink, with stars as bright as light bulbs--but that's what happened. Ali Tabu could really cook. He was the best cook in Africa--maybe in the world. Everything he made--even if it was only a biscuit--was the best it could possibly be. The best biscuit. The best cup of coffee. He even made powdered eggs so we liked to eat them.

Or just plain good cooking, as in The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death. 

It was good cooking. That's what changed my life, and Winston's. Both of us had been victims of bad cooking since we were babies. Gradually, we realized that the food at home was horrible.... Now, of course both Winston and I had found plenty to eat outside our homes, and there were all sorts of things we liked, but most of it was on the order of snacks and junk. What Winston and I experienced that night at Bignose's in the company of the famous Mighty Gorilla was good cooking, and it was the first time either of us had ever had it.

And sometimes it's hippie food. Or rather, "health food," because most of these books take place in a time before hippies. Sometimes the protagonist is straight up delighted by it. The kid in Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario for example finds that "Charlie's Health Food and Juice Bar was truly a great place!" where you can get "a really magnificent breakfast!" Exclamation point!

Even the less easily dazzled narrator of Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars concedes that there's something to this health food business. "I'm not saying I'd like to eat [at my grandparents' house] every day--but it's not bad--and I do feel sort of good for hours after I've eaten every time I go there." The eponymous Alan Mendelsohn, more appreciative, eats three servings of everything.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes hippie food really does do a magic thing where it makes you feel good for hours afterwards. If it tastes good, it makes you feel good at the time, too. Maybe you wouldn't like like to eat this every day, but we ate it twice this week, and I'd eat it again today if we had the ingredients.

The idea, which doesn't sound half as good as it actually is, is this: make some quinoa; add ponzu (a citrus soy sauce), sesame oil, and hot sauce; put it in a bowl with some cut up avocado and strips of toasted nori (mm crunchy seaweed); and eat it.

It is really very good.

I did two things that diverged from the instructions in the linked recipe. First, instead of sharing a measly half avocado between two people, I gave us a WHOLE, if small, avocado EACH. It was not too much.

Second, because I am a bozo, when I make quinoa the way everyone tells you to--wash it, put it in a pan with twice as much water as quinoa, bring to a boil, then simmer covered for 15-20 minutes--it always comes out wet and mushy. The most recent time, however, at last it did not. I used a little less water, because wet rinsed quinoa actually already brings some water along for the ride. But also, and this is feeble, I know, I made it in the electric rice cooker. This seems like overkill and yet the results were so much better that I have decided to do it this way all the time. The end.

Comments

[Cecily]

My all time favorite is "Ducks!" which is the picture book I read to guests when we have all had too much to drink. It is a book that is hard to believe got published. It is one of the best things ever.

My little sister's friend Loretta says she used to work for you. Or something. We exchanged facebook messages about what a small world it is.

[redfox]

I have never read Ducks! Does it follow the pattern described here, or is it too much a picture book to have room for a rhapsodic food scene?

How funny about the small world!

[Cecily]

No one eats anything in Ducks!. But, the mom has an I [Heart] Rock'n'roll t-shirt on, and is a head taller than the dad. So that makes up for it, I think.

[Fidelcast.blogspot.com]

In the event you could be a genuine seeker after truth, it is actually needed that at the very least as soon as in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all factors.