Prompt Response: Exploring Food Experiences
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro app
What’s the best way to explore a new city?
Discovering New Foods
What’s the best way to enjoy a new city? Find an eatery that’s not part of a chain you can visit most everywhere else.
Traveling with Park Way Studios — Wisconsin
One of the first locations I worked in with Park Way (after my training in four really small towns in Utah) was a place called Pardeeville, Wisconsin. Yes, that’s really the name of a town, and it’s small but pretty. I didn’t have my car yet, so I was at the mercy of the hotel cafe until a co-worker joined me a few days after I arrived. Once we had wheels, we asked locals about things to do in the mornings before we saw customers and on Sundays when we had no bookings. Well, and for dinner if we finished the day’s appointments early enough.
I don’t remember if we got a recommendation or just found this amazing restaurant by driving around the area, but the meal there changed my palate from that point forward. The little place on Lake Wisconsin in Lodi is called Fitz’s By the Lake, but then it was the Okee Snack Bar. We couldn’t understand the two-hour wait until we tried the food, and then it made perfect sense. The special for that night was blackened prime rib.
So, understand my backstory of being raised on “Hamburger Helper” and other inexpensive meal options. The only time I’d tried prime rib was as a treat during a trip to Disneyland for my birthday. And it didn’t impress me at all. Plus, I’d never even heard of blackening seasoning at that time, so it was an amazing culinary experience. Every bite of food there was filled with more flavor than I think I knew food could have—including the sizzle of fresh blue cheese on my salad, which was another first for me.
Since that trip, I have never wanted my prime rib any other way. Years later, when hubby and I used to visit O’Charley’s for their Sunday prime rib special, I would eat it as served with au jus until one night when I saw blackened salmon on the specials board and remembered Okee Snack Bar. I asked if it was possible to get it on my prime rib, and the server didn’t know, but checked. As it turned out, the cook was interested in trying it for us to see how it worked, and everyone was impressed. From then on, that’s how we ordered it, and the servers often vowed to try it that way once they saw it on our plates. Eventually, it became a menu item, and I’ll never know if it was because of our orders, which would ultimately mean it was because of that out-of-the-way restaurant in Lodi, Wisconsin.
Traveling with Park Way Studios — Indiana
But sometimes, it doesn’t take a restaurant to find a new culinary adventure. Sometimes, it’s just about being a friendly and patient person who meets another friendly and patient person. In my case, it was a beautician who spent six hours putting a perm in my very long (at the time) hair. I want to say she used about 300 perm rods, but if not that many, it was a lot. I let her experiment with crisscrossing them to add texture and other ways she just had fun with my hair. Fortunately, she also used a high protein solution and after-perm treatment that my hair really liked, so the six hours was worth a wonderful and long-lasting permanent.
The town where I met her was the town of La Porte, Indiana, where much of the movie “Prancer” was filmed. I learned that tidbit along with lots of other fun information as beautician and client filled up chair time getting to know all about each other. If I had ever become a beautician, I would likely have been just like her in sharing about her husband and kids and favorite foods. That last conversation actually led to an invitation to dinner with her family.
Since the dinner was on a Sunday afternoon, and we’d already become fast friends at the beauty shop, she invited me to spend the whole day. While I was there, I learned how to make my next culinary delight: fresh salsa. She made it totally from scratch, right down to roasting Roma tomatoes in the broiler at the bottom of her gas range. (No, that drawer at the bottom of your oven wasn’t always used for storage. 😁 And I miss the wonderful flame-kissed steaks that could be made in those old broilers.)
Homemade Salsa Recipe 🍅🌶️🫑🧅🧂🍋🟩
If you want to try your own hand at making homemade salsa, I can give you the basics, but I’m not one who measures, so you’ll have to go by the taste that works for you. Ingredients in approximate amounts include…
- 5-6 ripe Roma tomatoes — roasted and hand crushed
- One half of a white onion — diced small
- 1 small jalapeño pepper without seeds — diced extra small
- One fourth of a green bell pepper — diced medium
- 1 cup chopped cilantro — finely chopped
- Chili powder and garlic, salt, or others seasonings to taste
- A few squeezes of lime juice is optional
Broil the tomatoes until the skin just starts to turn black. It makes it easier to peel them as you crush them between your hands and fingers. Plus, a little of that roasted flavor stays with them. Place some of the roasted tomato meat with the jalapeño seasonings in the blender and mix them into a puree to sauce to your bowl of salsa. The rest of the ingredients can stay chunky. Once you have it all mixed together, cover it and refrigerate it until chilled and ready to serve.
It’s been years since I’ve made this because hubby doesn’t like cilantro and because I no longer have a gas stove. I want to see if I can make it in a counter top oven/air fryer someday, but no matter how it comes out, it doesn’t replace the joys of exploring a new city, making a new friend, and learning a new recipe all in the same day.
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Cliché Month: Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
That’s the classic advice we celebrate for National Book Lovers Day on August 9th of each year since 1995. Note: The link goes to a page for 2023, but it’s the only one that gave a history. It also has some great quotes about reading like…
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin
Appearances can be deceiving, though, and the true value of any story lies within the content of its pages. I agree… especially if that book happens to be a recipe book.
That makes my mind immediately jump to that classic Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.” The Earth welcomed nine-foot-tall alien visitors called the Kanamits with open arms, largely because of a book they left behind with that noble-sounding title. Humanity judged the book entirely by its cover! Spoiler alert: If anyone had taken the time to actually peruse the pages inside—and decode a bit of the Kanamit language first—they would have realized long before it was too late that it wasn’t a manual for goodwill… it was a cookbook, and humans were the main course. 🙃 Here’s a quick clip from the episode:
The Proof in the Pudding
Thankfully, the recipe books in my home don’t require a government cryptographer to decipher, and their intentions are far more wholesome!
Whether it’s a cookbook, an instruction book, or a novel, every bookworm knows that the proof isn’t just in the reading—it’s in the application. What do you do with the words you read? A quote I’ve always liked says…
If all else fails, read the instructions — attributed to Agnes Allen.
When I first saw that quote over 40 years ago, it was appended by the followup instruction: And if that doesn’t work, follow them. That’s great advice since all the pretty recipe pictures and yummy ingredients won’t mean nearly as much if they’re never matched with a bowl and a mixing spoon. The Bible puts it this way:
James 1:22 BSB
[22] Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/jas.1.22.BSB
Once you make a cozy bowl from a trusted set of instructions, the true value of that book is undeniably in the taste. As another idiom says, The proof is in the pudding. (Which is wonderfully convenient, since August 9th is also National Rice Pudding Day!)
Turning the Page with Comfort Food
This is actually a perfect mashup of holidays—nourishment for the soul and nourishment for the body. One of the many “Today is special because…” sites I visited mentioned that most bibliophiles have more unread books than read books. I resemble that remark. 😁 And that even includes recipe books. That’s partly because I’m more apt to play in the kitchen and try to create something than I am to follow a detailed recipe.
For example, I’ve never made rice pudding, but one of my favorite experiments while looking for ways to sweeten food without sugar resulted in making fried apples with banana. Here’s a picture:
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
By caramelizing the bananas and butter directly into apples already sizzling with butter and cinnamon, you get the absolute perfect sweetness without needing added sugar. (Just a tiny touch from the vanilla bean paste!)
Tasty Fried Apples with Banana
- Apples ( I Prefer Honeycrisp Plus One Fuji or Gala; Peeled and Sliced)
- Banana (Mashed)
- Butter (Generous Amount Based on How Many Apples)
- Ground Cinnamon (To Taste; I Recommend Ceylon over Cassia)
- Vanilla Bean Paste (To Taste/About ¼ TSP)
- Optional Misc Spices Like Nutmeg and Allspice (To Taste)
- Optional Topping (Toasted Oats, Flax, Toasted Pecans, etc.)
Instructions: Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the sliced apples, cinnamon, and a touch of vanilla bean paste, and a little water for steam. Cover and simmer until the apples begin to soften and caramelize. In another skillet, add the bananas and mash them with butter until they create a puree. Mix the puree with the caramelized apples and allow the whole mix to brown and caramelize a little more.
Serving Suggestion: Spoon into oven-safe bowls and sprinkle with your chosen topping. Put in a warm oven until time to serve. In my picture, you’ll notice I decorated the bowls with some thin slices of banana before adding the topping. But it was fine without the banana slices or crunchy topping. I think I was just trying to get a fancier picture like my efforts using 2 cutting boards. Whatever your method, please come back and add a comment to let me know you’ve tried them and what you think. Hubby used to like them better than most of those served in restaurants, but he cannot have any banana anymore. (Potassium is a no-no without kidneys.)
And with that, I bid you good reading and good eating. 📚🍮
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