Misadventures in Food: Coriander

My mom is awesome - I am grateful to have been so lucky to end up with her as my mom. There is one thing my mom did not teach me growing up: how to cook. I am not betraying her by telling you this, she knows it (and all the amazing things she has done for me have more than made up for this oversight). So I have been trying to pick up this coking thing over the past couple of years. The English muffin pizzas and Costco frozen dinners I made in college are no longer cutting it.

Turns out cooking is pretty fun! However, like many things I attempt, stuff tends to go wrong the first time I try them out. In fact, they go wrong often enough that I hope to share them with you for your enjoyment and maybe you'll learn a thing or two with me:

Recently, I decided to try a new recipe this week for a Tahini Avocado Chickpea Salad from Ohsheglows.com (one of my favorite recipe blogs). The main part of this salad is the dressing, so I took a lot of care during it's preparation, even triple checking to make sure that I had done it right. I kept tasting it and thinking something was off, so I kept adding things to it to fix it. I just could not get it right, so I checked the recipe again and I hadn't forgot anything. I decided that I must just be tired of tahini since I had it in my lunch two days in a row (by the way, tahini is pureed sesame seeds if you didn't know - I had to look it up the first time I came across it). I was doubly disappointed because the recipe had avocado in it and I have yet to find a recipe I didn't like with avocado - this was devastating!

My solution was to bring it to my co-worker in hopes that she would enjoy it and it would just confirm that I had too much tahini for one week. She tried it and immediately realized something was missing, so we went on a quest to figure out what the problem was. We looked up the recipe again and went through it step by step only to find out I had done everything right. I started looking through the pictures posted of the process where I discovered that the coriander I used looked different than the blogger's which prompted me to asked this question to my co-worker: "Uhhhhh...soooooo...are you like supposed to...ummm...are you supposed to crush coriander when you use it?" I was relieved when she did not know the answer right away, so I wasn't a total idiot. After a few minutes of Internet research , it was confirmed that you cannot just throw whole coriander seeds in a food processor and expect it to come out delicious.

I encourage to try out the delicious salad, but only after you read the link about using coriander. :)

Misadventures in Food Scale: Worth a 2nd Try Due to Chef's Ignorance

Adage #18: An avocado a day keeps the doctor away.

I was standing in a line for some sort of Whitworth cafeteria lunch concoction when I felt a tap on my shoulder from a fellow Californian student. She excitedly told me that there were sliced avocados in the salad bar (for the first and last time while I lived on campus). It did not matter that I would now have to stand in line for even longer, I would get my hands on some avocado! I got out of my line, retrieved my avocado and moved to the sandwich line to have my turkey avocado masterpiece created. I looked around and noticed that the other students from California were doing the same thing and soon the sandwich line was full of us, all eager for this special treat.

This moment in college has stood out to me more than many others, a life long memory created by a vegetable (or maybe it's a fruit, I'm not actually sure, which is a little embarrassing). My Pinterest recipe board is 60% recipes containing avocado. At the top of my list of things to know about a potential boyfriend is 1. does he love Jesus? and 2. does he love avocado? When I am at a restaurant, I find my choice so much easier when I just rule out everything without avocado or guacamole on it.

Imagine my elation when I discovered that avocado is actually considered a super food! This delicious fruit/veggie I consider a treat, is actually good for me. How can this be possible! It's so tasty and it gives me vitamins and the good kind of fat - unheard of! Do these people realize they've just given me permission to eat this everyday; in fact, they have encouraged me to eat it everyday. 

Serving God should be like eating an avocado. Serving such an amazing God, getting to use your passions, your talents, and your gifts for him should be so enjoyable that you think, "how lucky am I to get to do this?" You should get to do things you already enjoy when you serve him. You must also know that there will be sacrifice. You will have to get out of the line and stand in an even longer sandwich line. You will be fulfilled in ways you didn't know you could be and you will be asked to give up things you didn't think you can live without. When you choose to follow Christ and give your talents to him you will have to make some sacrifices, but in the end you will find yourself thinking it couldn't get any better than this.

What are some of your gifts and talents? Are you using them?

(Here is one of my new favorite avocado recipes from Oh She Glows. She's got a ton of great recipes, so check it out if it's time to mix up your usual diet!)