I Feel Like This is the Beginning, Though I've Loved You for a Million Years

Everyone who creates deals with those big lulls in inspiration or drive. Even if it goes away for couple of days one can fear the loss forever. Also, you begin to wonder if you ever did, in my case, cook anything great tasting ever to begin with. I've been eating cereal for dinner more than a few nights. The stove is cold and I find myself opening and shutting the fridge hoping to jolt some big idea. Suddenly at work today I was struck with a craving for that amazing Pueblo Green Chile Sauce that is so famous there. But my rule is I must dance with the food I brought home that week. I try my best not to let produce or meat go to waste ever. I actually had a sack of Poblano peppers. Pathmark never carries those for some reason but this time they had them and they were all a deep forest green color right out of the Crayola box. I also had turkey thighs unthawed along with a pound of ground turkey. Now I had forgotten that in order for this sauce to truly shine, she must have her pork meat to allow the flavors to develop. But I made it straight with the roasted chiles off a simple web recipe. It was good but I'm telling you when you eat that green chile sauce made right, there is something magic about it. The kind of sauce you want to lick the plate afterwards. I think it's because of that flour based element type comfort thing but mixed with the punch of a mild pepper and small bits of meat in a gravy like consistency. Poblano's have a different flavor than those Hatch chiles when roasted so I figured now I was in uncharted territory anyway and went rogue. The base sauce I ladled over the turkey thighs after browning on the stovetop and stuck them in the oven covered for an hour and 1/2. I took my ground turkey meat and added it directly to the simmering pepper sauce. The meat browned right in the sauce and also melted it's meaty goodness into the sauce. So then that took on it's own new flavors. I was able to put this over almost everything I ate over the next few days. Oh yeah! I learned another food lesson this week and that was just like pestos or soups, one can follow the same basic blueprint of a recipe but use a variety of ingredient combinations to come up with new and amazing foods. The difference in pepper and meat lent a bolder sauce, which could then go with different pairings. I served the thighs with a buttered polenta and just pulled the sauce in with each bite. Awwwwwesome! I can't define art but I know it when I see it. The mind is marvelous and mysterious. When its doors open you must enter trustingly and promptly, graciously. Understanding the most fundamental concepts in life, at least for me, is very fleeting and I think art is when you do see clearly even for a moment something deep and somehow bring it to surface successfully in some form. So that when anyone hears it, tastes it, sees it, knowingly and collectively says, yeah that's right. As if all the truths of the world are all wrapped up in that one thing. The knowing is almost a recognition as if we've all seen and known perfection before in a very distant past. This sauce wasn't that but at least it pulled me out of my rut and I am inspired again to create something that is.