As much as a stickler to rules I am in real life (rules are good, mmmkay?), I don’t follow them in cooking.
Recipes merely serve as a guideline, on which I build my creativity, due to lack of ingredients or patience or having different tastes.
The only time I’m sticking to it word by word is when it’s a new territory for me (like when I turned vegan) or when I’m baking. Which would explain why I don’t bake at all 🙂

This recipe mashup lifestyle usually pays off. I like to be creative and like to make things work. The only drawbacks are:

– I don’t ever write down my creations (sometimes I annotate existing recipes), so it’s difficult to recreate the deliciousness that was the other night’s dinner. Although, if I do it often enough, it stays in memory, or I accidentally discover yet another cool twist on the ordinary.

– Putting together the wrong ingredients in the wrong amount goes horribly wrong sometimes. I have enough experience and talent  to know what goes well with what, what I can use to fix things, and I’m not just talking about using sweet to soak up the heat. But, some things are just unfixable.

Enter, raw broccoli cream soup. Started innocent enough: rejuvelac, some celery, coconut aminos, spicy sprouts. Then, I decided to save my half a cucumber for next dinner and use something else I had in abundance: broccoli! What a great idea, broccoli cream soup! I added it, along with some hemp seeds to produce the creaminess, and why the heck not, put a tablespoon of papaya seeds for a bit of peppery flavor. Blend blend blend.

Wait, did I say a bit of peppery flavor? Holy… what was I thinking using this ingredient for the first time in an untested amount? The broccoli itself has a weird sharp flavor to it too (which was also a first for me, that I can remember, but I may have blended it with cukes before). Add the papaya seeds, and… no good. At all. Hmmm, what can I do to fix this? I added some hemp oil to bring out those notes, added apple cider vinegar to turn down the sharpness and added some nutritional yeast to bring up the cheesy factor.

Still tastes like ass.

No matter, I hate throwing away food, I thought maybe if it sits, it will get better, and I try again at lunch time.

Nope, still ass. OMGISOGROSS.

This is the second time my thinking betrayed me as far as ‘maybe it gets better if it sits’. Some things do, but raw blended soups that taste funky when they are made definitely are not those some things.

Lesson learned. I’m not giving up broccoli though, but next time I’m steaming them and omit the peppery hell known as papaya seeds.