Beauty vs The Beast

Have you ever heard the old adage that says that the bet tasting food is often the ugliest? I find that I probably have to agree.

Case in point: this delicious cabbage and dumpling soup, the congealed appearance of which belies its utter deliciousness. Based of a Szechuan peasant dish, this soup is beautiful in its simplicity. A chopped head of cabbage, a few shreds of pork, and dozens dense little dough-ball dumplings rest in a rich broth seasoned with soy sauce, onions, sesame, and plenty of pepper. My batch this time was particularly cabbage-heavy as I wanted to experiment towards making a vegetarian pot in the future. My findings seemed to indicate that the pork really doesn't lend anything that can't be made up for with a little extra soy, kombu, or mushrooms, so I think that's what I'll do next time.  I also made my dumplings out of 50% mashed chick peas instead of just flour, and I have to say they were wonderful! Not as "gummy" as plain flour dumplings, they also had a nice nutty taste that really sang in this simple dish.

However true it is that ugly food is delicious, though, one can't neglect the pretty things. Especially on a food blog. To that I say, enter the popsicle mold. Who doesn't like food on a stick? And who can deny the satisfaction of a refreshing icy cold sweet after a big hot meal? Not me, that's for sure. But since in this dorm my ice cream always winds up losing half its contents before I can eat it, and since I've recently caught a bit of the high fructose corn syrup phobia going around (dismissing  99.9% of all commercial popsicles), I got myself a mold off Amazon and have had some fun making my own. It turns out, fudgicles (mmmm fudgiclesssss) are just frozen chocolate pudding, which I could use my own World's Best Chocolate Pudding recipe for! Let me tell you: real dark chocolate, milk, and sugar are way better than those supermarket jobbies. And cheaper.

But also along with the whole "make your own frozen deserts" business is the fact that plenty of obnoxious people take this as an opportunity-- nay, duty-- to be as disgustingly healthy as possible in regards to desert, a travesty that is masked by the aforesaid "food on a stick" and "frozen is good" axioms. See?

Even I'm doing it! This is a plain yogurt and blueberry pop, completely unsweetened. It's basically hippie breakfast in a star mold-- kind of sour-tangy because of the yogurt and awkwardly textured because of the blueberry skins, but damn if it doesn't feel like desert. I mean, if your sweet tooth is broken like mine is. The gent's is perfectly functioning and he couldn't stand it. So there's that. But there's always more time to play around with them, especially as the weather's warming up. Since I pulled of the fudgsicle so well, I was asked to try for an Orange Creamsicle knockoff too. We shall see!