Discoveries

It's amazing what having no ingredients will do for your creativity.  Last night after we finally went grocery shopping, we both just stood there, admiring our beautifully full fridge.  But before that point, we were running out of things.  And one of those things was milk.

Milk is one of those ingredients that lactose-avoiding people like myself seldom appreciate until it's gone.  I don't drink milk, and I don't put it on cereal, so I don't really think about its existence until I cook with it.  I do, however, eat mashed potatoes, so when my roommate showed up with a box of instant mashed potatoes for our shepherd's pie, I was torn between wild excitement, confusion, and disappointment.  The wild excitement was because I absolutely love mashed potatoes.  The confusion was due to the fact that my previous mashed potato experiences usually involved both potatoes and mashing.  My roommate's promise that this strange box of powdery flakes would transform into a mass of creamy goodness left me skeptical.  To top things off, the catalyst these flakes demanded was milk, which we were completely out of (hence the disappointment).

That's when I got to thinking.  Milk makes me sick, but so do many other things.  Perhaps we could substitute one sickening product for another (witness my logic at work).  We didn't have milk, but we did have a giant carton of heavy whipping cream I'd bought to make mousse with.  My roommate and I chuckled evilly as we poured a thick, calorie-laden cup of cream into the unsuspecting potato powder.  At this point, something miraculous occurred.  The cream not only did its job, it went above and beyond.  It transformed those potato flakes into the most amazing mashed potatoes I'd had in a long time.  I think this supports the theory that the more calories you pour into something, the better it's going to taste.

Just thought I'd torture you with a picture of the finished shepherd's pie.

My roommate has introduced me to other cool ideas besides instant potatoes.  One of these is drying flowers to save.  I'd done the whole freeze-your-prom-corsage thing back in high school, and it worked out alright, but my rose ended up really dried out and blackened.  She showed me how to clamp the end of the flower stem with a binder clip and hang it upside down for several days.  As she explained, this lets all the moisture go down to the petals, keeping them beautiful right up until the end.  I dried this rose a few weeks ago, and look how colorful it stayed!

My dried rose.