Food, Glorious Food!

Pretzel bun with  soy-Bratwurst and grilled Vidalia onions

M and I have recently started playing the, "What if we won the lottery?" game.  Not that either of us play the lottery.  We're both too easily depressed.

That said, we've been playing this hypothetical situation game a lot.  We're pretty much in agreement that not a lot of things would change.  We'd pay off our mortgage, probably look into buying a larger (but still reasonably sized) home, pay off all of our debt, buy a new car, give big lump sums to our parents...

But yeah, M would keep him job, I'd keep looking for one... we'd just have a nice new savings account prepared to pay for our kids' college educations and our own retirement.

Except that today, as I was leaving the grocery store having spent more than three times what I had meant to, I realized that it wasn't true.

Thank God M usually goes with me to the grocery store or we would already be destitute.

If I won the lottery, the one thing about my lifestyle that would change would be the food.

I already eat pretty darn well (when I eat).  I love to cook, and I predominantly buy organic and local whenever possible.  Hooray for Farmer's Markets that take food stamps!  I'm good at getting a lot of flavor out of not a lot of fat or calories.  But I long to lead a life where I can satisfy all of my purely taste related culinary wants.

How SuperMommy does Cheese

I want to have morels every month- fresh ones, too.  I want to always have gourmet pastas and fresh carrot juice.  I want to have half a dozen bottles of GOOD wine on hand at any given moment.  I want to have graples and other freaky hybrid foods in my fridge.  (Ever had a graple?  It's an apple spliced with a grape.  Tastes like concord grape jelly.  Only it's an apple.)  I want to have fresh figs every week.  I'd fill my fruit basket with Asian pears and blood oranges and Honey Crisp apples and those fingerling bananas.  I would fill the other tier with a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes.  And I would eat all of them.

I would have a separate mini-fridge just for special cheeses.  Ginger infused Stiltons, raw sheep's milk farmer's cheese, whole wheels of double cream brie...

The pantry would be full of local portobello mushroom salsas, a wide assortment of ketchups that actually taste like tomatoes, strange and exotic canned fake meats...  and the tortilla chips.  Oh! The toritilla chips!  Blue corn, red corn, RAINBOW corn!

We'd have a shelf dedicated to popcorn.  Black popcorn, which pops so white it's almost blue and crunches more strongly than the boring Orville Redenbacher stuff, and red popcorn that pops slightly orange and melts in your mouth.

There would be so many berries.  No matter the season- bing cherries and blackberries and wild strawberries- the itsy bitsy ones that cost a bloody fortune.

I would have the best stocked kitchen in the universe

I'd have another shelf just of oils and vinegars.  Truffle oils, white and black, avocado and walnut oils, oils infused with herbs and vegetables.  I'd have real Balsamic vinegar, I'd have blackberry vinegars, ginger vinegars, pear cider vinegars, seasoned rice vinegars...

I would eat artichokes for lunch every. single. day.

I would make the same sorts of meals that I already make, only better.  I envision meals the same way I cook them now, only so, so, so much more delicious.

A post dream-lottery meal plan:

• Wild Rice Pilaf with Morel Mushrooms and Gjetost
• Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Black Truffle Oil and Chipotle Infused Aoli
• Gigantes in a simple garlic sauce (with Pink Himalayan Sea Salt to bring out that buttery Lima Bean flavor)
• Mixed Baby Greens Salad with Cilantro, Fresh Figs, Brazil Nuts, Pomegranate Seeds, and a little Buffalo Mozzerella in a Fresh Fennel and Lemon Vinaigrette
• For dessert, Bing Cherries and Mixed Berries with a Balsamic Reduction and Dark Chocolate Shavings on top

I know, it sounds absurd.  But actually, that would be a really easy meal to make.  If you had all the ingredients.  And that's a pretty healthy meal, when you break it down into its nutritional content.  You just have to watch your portion sizes.  Which would probably be a problem.

DD at six months- terrified of what I plan to do with food

This is how I would eat every single day.  Unless I was just binging on Cadbury Creme Eggs that my excellent husband brings me whole sacks of because he knows how much I like them.

In my new, post-lottery dream, I would need to have a weekly food budget in excess of my current annual clothing budget.  Yes, annual.

In my post-lottery, food indulgent world, I only do my grocery shopping at places like Fox and Obel's and I invest in all the super-fancy cookware that you only use for extremely specific dishes.  Like an authentic 24" paella pan and a tagine.  And a deep fryer.

So if I ever win the lottery, and my children grow up living in the same sort of barely-making-ends-meet lifestyle that I've come to enjoy, and they hate me for not putting aside any money for their college education... It will be because of the food.

They'll also probably be the youngest food snobs known to humanity.  But if they become world famous gourmet chefs... it'll all have been worth it.

Dolmades stuffed with mujadarra

Praline stuffed french toast, peach cobbler, and vegan andouille hash

Bison Steak with rosemary gravy, shitake mushroom risotto, and a southwestern Caesar salad.