Papa likes to drink Green Tea. It’s pretty bitter. Not sure why he likes it. I guess since he’s such a sweet, jolly person, he needs to drink bitter tea to keep that bitter/sweet balance in his life.
Anyway, he used to squeeze a lemon in his tea which made it a bit better. Recently though, he decided to use the pulverizer attachment that comes with our electric egg-beater/mixer (it mixes more than just eggs of course, but it kinda looks like an egg beater with the rotating whisks). The attachment is a round container with a blade in it. When you connect the mixer to the blade/container thing and turn it on, it spins pretty fast (as you would expect. I’d feel ripped off if it didn’t spin fast). The stuff you put in it gets blended into a pulp. So Pa throws a whole lemon in there and blends it up, rind, pith ‘n all. He’s been getting into pulverizing so when we made the marinade a while ago, he suggested that we pulverize the ingredients. A couple days ago when we were making a salad, he put carrots in the pulverizer to blend (keep in mind, the carrots didn’t turn to pulp, they were shredded).
Anyway, a few hours ago, Mama told me that lunch was a Chinese Stir-Fry (homemade of course) and it was ready. Since I was in the middle of woodworking, I decided to eat later. When I finally came up, I saw that noodles were in a rubber container and shredded broccoli with shredded pepper was in another. It was a little funny seeing the broccoli and pepper shredded to near-sawdust caliber because that’s not how she normally makes stirfries. I like my broccoli cut into chunks rather than shredded so it wasn’t that appealing but I thought, hey! What’s there is what’s made. Enough ketchup can fix anything!
So I got the noodles and broccoli, put some soy sauce on it and made some orange juice. With a pickle and apple sauce, I was ready to eat. After a bite of the unusually bland, spiceless foodstuff (which wasn’t stirred or even fried mind you), I knew something was wrong. So I asked Mama, “Did Papa suggest blending the broccoli?” She said that that was for her* and that the stir fry was in the refrigerator (or as I call, the ‘friddle’).
D’oh!
* Mama has TMJ so she has to eat soft/shredded things because hard stuff throws her jaw off kilter. As for the lack-of-spice, well, she likes bland food (either because it’s her Vegan spirit talkin’ or she’s Japanese at heart).
Green tea can be made less bitter by letting the boiling water cool down some before brewing the tea. Also, shorter brewing time makes for less bitterness. Using cooler water and shorter brewing times means you can get multiple brewings from the same tea leaves.