I have what could best be described as a like-hate relationship with feta cheese.

I mean, it's OK. In small quantities. In certain, specific applications. Just, you know, not very much of it. It's very salty and very briny, and most of the easily available stuff is harsh as hell. 

For the longest time, I thought I didn't like green beans. I mean, clearly I didn't like green beans - I wasn't under some freakish delusion. They were nasty. Mushy, vegetal, bitter, and all-arouind unpleasant.

One of the problems with online holiday shopping is that you end up buying stuff for yourself. For example, while buying a bunch of beans for a friend, I also bought myself some beans and some chile powder.

Here at Forkbastard, I eschew food snobbery like a food snob whose food snobbery I eschew would eschew Pizza Rolls. On top of that, I freely admit that on a acale from Smoker With A Head Cold to Discerning Palate, I'm a five, maybe a six, tops.

I first discovered this stuff earlier this year in the deli section at Cub Foods. I'm frequently... disappointed by grocery store pita bread as a platform for foods, aso I thought perhaps this might work better. It's not really a proper substitute for good pita, but it does have its uses.

What in the everloving plaid FUCK am I supposed to do with five more red bell peppers? One of which, I feel compelled to point out, is appoximately 1/4 the size OF MY HEAD. I'd need to build a bonfire to roast it. Or I could drill three holes in it and go bowling.

I need to finagle a camera and get a picture of this thing. It's monstrous. And there are four more regular-sized ones next to it. And three more largish ones in the fridge. It's just ridiculous.

UPDATE: Finagled!

In the spirit of thinking about everything I do in or near a kitchen or restaurant as a potential blog post, I present the Frequent Four. Why a Frequent Four? Because the last time I was at Penzey's, a place I really do need to do a proper post on one of these days, I bought four empty eight-ounce spice jars. I bought these with the intent of filling them with the four seasonings, other than salt and pepper, that I use the most.

Fresh ginger is one of those irreplaceable ingredients. There's no dried, powdered, jarred, or tubed alternative that can come close. But it's not the most convenient stuff in the pantry.

A few years back, it seemed like you couldn't throw a brick in a crowded restaurant without hitting someone eating mahi mahi. These days, now that I'm allowed back into restaurants again provided I'm not carrying any bricks, not so much. But it was ubiquitous for a while.

One of the side effects of its popularity, for me at least, was that I never bought it for home cooking. If the grocery stores I shopped in carried it at all, it was more expensive than other, trustworthy, known-quantity fish. So I never really tried it or worked with it.