December 15 – Bolognese senza pasta

My basic bolognese sauce, liquified, thinned with a bit of v-8 juice and some red wine, eaten without pasta. Excellent!!

Wine is very unpleasant to use for swishing caught food particles out from between your teeth. Partly it was the alcohol getting in the cuts in my mouth from the wires and screws, and partly it was just the mildly astringent feeling on my teeth. I substituted coca-cola for the wine and all was good.

I have begun to develop a system for producing tolerably liquified “real” foods – you thin them with something that approximately matches. I’m not sure how much of the ‘match’ is color, texture, or flavor, but – for example: baked beans are pretty good to thin with beef stock; I wouldn’t consider using milk or ice cream. Ice cream is good to thin with milk (it’s called a “milkshake”). Indian food is good to thin with V-8 juice, as is spaghetti sauce, etc. Come to think of it, I guess the method is color and acidity, in that order.

December 14 – Baked Jack Whizz

This one is a bit out of left field: baked beans (Bush’s homestyle) thinned with beef broth and a jigger of Jack Daniels. Pureed in the blender, heated in the microwave.

Not bad at all!

December 10 – Le Goo

Le Goo

The goo actually smells very good, but it’s more or less inedible. I started off with some flavored rice, added shiitake mushrooms and chicken stock then cooked it down, threw it in a blender, and sampled it. Here’s a problem: blend something made with rice, and you’re going to wind up with sticky paste. The Japanese call it “mochi” – and it’s delicious stuff but not something you can suck up. Making it was a mess and a waste of time. But it made the kitchen smell great.

My fallback was to liquefy some of my old chili and add a bunch of chicken stock to it, to make it drinkable. It’s weird how being blended completely removes the flavor and the interest from a food. Whatever. it’s calories and I need them right now.

I’ve been eating protein/energy drinks and a lot of veggie/fruit blend juices (carrot mango is my favorite, so far!) This has been a serious problem, since I am a) still losing weight and b) went into some kind of calorie deficit coma yesterday where I got incredibly weak, passive, and stupid.

I’ve been reading Iain Banks’ “Hydrogen Sonata” which is surreal, interesting, and beautiful in that weird deadpan way of Banks’. It feels like he was just hitting his stride when he died.

December 5 – Mashstash

A mountain of mashed potatoes the size of YOUR HEAD

If I make mashed potatoes buttery and smooth enough, I can suck them between my front-teeth like some kind of filter-feeding whale. Whatever. It works.

The only problem is the dreaded:

Mashstash

See, getting stuff all over the front of your mouth is something you usually don’t notice. You sort of lick your lips or schmuggle them together and presto – the food is gone! When your jaw is wired shut, you can’t lick your lips. In fact you have to eat with a roll of paper towels handy so that when your teeth get blocked by a chunk that’s too big to fit through, you can huff it out into the paper and blot the potatoes off of everything that now has potatoes on it.

I always wanted a desktop covered with mashed potatoes.