Working on Our Double-O Words: Food, Zoo, Doo

I need to gloat about how great it is to be part of a household team of three food-nuts all willing to be creative and share the shopping, prep, cooking, and cleanup with near-complete role-flexibility.

I might have the role with the least creativity and most dullness, perhaps appropriately. I do the same-old bacon-and-eggs-and potatoes (coffee!) Saturday morn, albeit with the taters never the same way twice, as I am never satisfied. Leftover bakers are fine starting point as they tie my hands and usually turn out fine. Starting from scratch though, even the choice of diced or shredded is not easy. Of course the Missus prefers "extra crispy," a concept that can distract from the more critical issues, something I can never get out of mind but rarely achieve. And she abhors any genuine zing or zest to these-here hashers, one of the essentials of good potatoes, imho. Hence the never-ending potato R&D.

But then on the weekdays, as routinely the last one home, I tend to end up as the sculler. Not my favorite, I admit, but then when I worked the food system in college, cleanup was where I found my role. Come to think of it, they never even asked me about my cooking skills! No gumbo was ever served at Commons from what I can recall.

Too bad.

One recent dinner revelation, courtesy Marg's research, was Moroccan-style Pot Roast. This cut spent a couple hours in the oven as I recall, in the company of predictable add-ons like onions, carrots, and garlic. Late in the cooking, more exotic ingredients like chick-peas, dried apricots, and raisins were added, as well as, from what I recall, spices that Auntie Em might have raised an eyebrow at. Like cinnamon. And, come to think of it, maybe only cinnamon!

Anyway, this turned out great, the meat scarcely needing to be chewed, the savours to swoon over.

I insisted on including some of the semi-exotic Ozette potatoes I raised for the first time this year in the dinner, and those worked out well, soaking up those Moroccan juices. This is a small quite rustic potato reputed to have been shared by early Spanish explorers of what is now called the Olympic Peninsula with the native Makah Tribe. Compared to most of our seed potatoes, these purport to be far closer to the original South American source species, as they were not subjected to centuries of European cultivation. And I can now attest as a consumer that this is definitely an unrefined but yet intriguing critter.

Just as an aside, we were recently the beneficiaries of a half-ton of "zoo-doo," the much-desired composted result of the fecal output of the Woodland Park Zoo, courtesy of friends (thanks, Jean and Bob!) who won the black-gold at auction but elected to go garden-less for a spell.

It actually turned out that we were provided more like a ton of "doo." It was a great relief to have the Zoo be flexible enough that we did not have to be dealing with elephant dung during the wedding! Equally important, it was terrific that other friends (many thanks, Rod and Nancy!) lent us their truck and that Dr. Doo (at the zoo) was equipped to fill said truck so that Eric and I got to watch (but where was that camera!).

There were several revelations in the process of transporting this wad of dung. It seemed trivially easy for said doctor to get it in the truck - he was basically playing the big-person version of a Puyallup Fair pick-up-the-prize game (jealous? - who, me?). Back at the ranch, oh mercy how heavy and clumsy (not to mention sticky) that stuff was, especially given our multi-tiered yard, such that every wheelbarrow involved at least one perilous steep stair-ascent. My bruises from wheelbarrow-collisions on failed stair-ascents are nearly healed. But it was a great way to bump up the organic and fiber content in our veggie and flower beds. My back has almost forgotten about it at this point.