Food (Mis)adventures

One of the things that Oklahomans (and anybody from the South, really) love is iced tea. These people drink it almost religiously. While on my mission, I experimented with several herbal teas to see which ones make the best (mint is generally a consistent winner) and with my recent discovery of rooibos tea six months ago, I've been meaning to get around to making iced tea with some of it.

Well, I finally did.

The key lime rooibos tea from Teavana was my first experiment, but a relatively weak brewing compounded with the lack of sugar we temporarily had made it somewhat of a failure. I recently tried using black current rooibos iced tea which was much more of a success. I have followed up with the chai rooibos tea I have, which is chilling in my fridge even as I type this. I will try it soon. Next on the queue: Pina colada rooibos and the key lime rooibos tea once more, as well as the regular rooibos with Madagascar vanilla.

The bottles I'm storing them in are even reused juice bottles! And the tea is organic! How environmentally friendly!

We also recently made stuffed jalapeño peppers. Usually, I mix cream cheese with shredded cheese, but this time we decided to be all crazy like and mix chipotle spices in with the cream cheese with a blender. It actually turned out really good. I highly recommend it.

Funny aside: The first time I made stuffed jalapeño peppers was on my mission (actually, I learned to cook for the most part on my mission). I cut about 50 jalapeños, since I was making them for my entire district, and did so without protective wear for my hands. And then I never scrubbed my hands (this is a Very Bad Idea). Later that evening, one of my hands began to burn with an incredible intensity. Unwilling to wake anybody up for what I thought was a baffling emergency, I ran my hand under cold water in the bathroom for about an hour, trying vainly to fall asleep propped up against the sink before caving in and asking for help. My district leader came over and we rigged up an impromptu rubber latex glove filled with aloe vera, which we rubber banded to my hand. We then filled up a plastic sandwich bag with ice, which I held in my hand and fell asleep to keep my hand from burning up. I awoke later at 4 in the morning, the ice bag completely melted and my hand feeling like it was literally on fire, to which I leaped out of bed and ran into the kitchen, clumsily trying to re-fill my sandwich bag with ice, half asleep.

As anyone would guess, my hand had gotten incredibly chemically burned by the peppers. After some excruciating mistreatment from the mission doctor, I was finally able to rest and heal very quickly, with little lasting scars. Except a fear for jalapeños.

To top off this rambling and picture filled entry, a photo of a breakfast Dantzel and I once made, when we were still un-married: