My mother's bf had a fairly major surgery (he's fine and recovering well DW) and he's going to be housebound for his birthday this year, so I've been enlisted to come up with a fancy birthday meal for the special birthday boy that's primarily fruit and veg, sweeter than savory, and is something he's never had before.
Bc I'm making watermelington. It's beef Wellington, but watermelon. bc my mom only found out recently you can use watermelon as a tuna substitute. And I know that you can substitute most higher quality beef cuts with tuna or salmon.... usually. Anyways the idea fascinates her so I'm hoping to use that for bonus points.
Now he's off his ass on pain killers so I can't like. Ask him if he's ever had something before. so to meet my brief I've decided to just. commit a novel hate crime against the British I guess.
Anyways. I'm writing this because I need to walk myself through this process and think it'll be surreal enough to be worth taking y'all along for.
So, Beef Wellington. In its most basic bitch arrangement is a beef tenderloin wrapped in prosciutto/really thin bacon, with a layer of mushroom and onion mush, that has been further wrapped in mustard slathered puff pastry.
We will be ship of Theseusing this. bc beef Wellington is like. the opposite of what he wants. Which is why it's funny.
Puff pastry-> it's still just puff pastry
this one doesn't have to change (aka I can't be fucked to do pastry prep and I'm just gonna use store bought it's Fine.)
the prosciutto is also just going to be prosciutto.
Thin meat
Beef tenderloin-> watermelon,
Tbh this is a pretty 1 to 1 substitution. I'll bake the slices at like. 250-300 for an hour or so ahead of the rest of prep to dry it out a bit. bc you can't like. Sear watermelon to seal in the water like you can beef. By definition it's a very wet fruit (like me when I fall into the lake). Ill Add salt and chili and lime juice while baking maybe. this is the easy part
The mushroom mush-> salsa done bad style
As the word mush implies, this is meant to be a very soft mix. It adds a lot of nuttiness to the wellington that rounds out all of the salt from the meats. I'm replacing it with white person salsa(the birthday boy can't handle spice). Tomato, lime juice, parsley, avocado, cucumber, feta, and maybe mango so I can have an excuse to have a lil mango treat. I said I wasn't making it spicy. I'm still putting a bit of chili in it. bc it'll be better like that. This is also a ridiculously wet bit of mush, Even the original mushrooms have too much water. I'll figure something out.
Mustard -> jelly
He lives in a big city. those preserve sections are massive. I'll find a weird one. maybe apricot.
Prep:
We're in the mind palace kitchen, I have not attempted any of this. We're just thinking real hard about it and I'll edit as needed on the day and post results.
The watermelon
Preheat oven to eh. 300f? We want low and slow to dry things out without it taking a year. but idk what his oven is like. If it's gentle I'll bump it up another ten-twenty.
Slather some watermelon slices in salt chili powder and lime juice mixture.
bake for 30 min on a wire rack or directly on the oven racks (after cleaning thoroughly) if he doesn't have a wire rack. with a drip try underneath to catch the drippage. check frequently. Have one slice that's for being poked to see if it's approaching being meat. Bake longer if needed.
Salsa bad style
chop everything up and add it to a pan with some oil in it. Tbh I don't think the type of oil you use for cooking matters if you're not like, getting near any smoke points. Most people can't tell the difference unless you made your food bland as hell.
Anyways there's some wildly different moisture contents on the list so there has to be an Order to cook off as much water as possible without getting yucky.
Tomatoes and cucumbers go in together with some salt to get the cucs softening, then the mango chunks and lime juice. Once most of the water is gone the avocado feta and parsley can go in. There is a good amount of water in avocados but they're delicate and don't pan fry well, so we're just going to ignore their water crimes and hope for the best. They just need to be evenly mixed through the rest of the mush.
Putting it together
lay out the puff pastry, cut into sections to wrap each watermelon slice individually with.
Slather in jam
Take the prosciutto and lay it out on half of each section of the pastry,
spoon the salsa onto that
Melon
Another layer of salsa
another layer of thin meat
Fold the pastry over the top and pinch the edges bc watermelon slices are not a rollable shape and I don't want to carve a watermelon into a tube for this because that sounds irritating.
Brush with egg wash and more parsley
Cook in oven following the pastry's preferred temp and time. it's fucking watermelon, you're not getting ecoli from it.
watermelington :)
I'm serving it with baked sweet potatoes and spinach based salad with whatever toppings are left over from making the salsa.
anyways thank you for joing me on this thought experiment. I will post updates once the deed is done. I'm sorry to every British person ever.
82 notes
·
View notes
i went to some vintage and thrift shops today looking for a leather bomber jacket for my launchpad mcquack cosplay. i didn’t find the right jacket, but i did stumble upon these collectible mickey glasses!! i love weird collectible glasses SO much, so these were an instant buy.
also spotted a straight up scrooge jacket at my favorite vintage place LAWL, but it’s too small for me so i left it for someone else.
here’s the items i ended up getting:
spotted this INCREDIBLE shirt at my vintage place. the material is really nice and i adore the colors and patterns. i will definitely be wearing this one to work a lot.
i’m pretty sure this one is a scout’s uniform? the shirt is made of a durable and stiff material and i really like it. the white fastens on the shoulders are too cute! i also nabbed that handkerchief today.
this cropped jacket is REALLY rad. it’s hard to tell because i couldn’t get a good picture in my tiny house but the crop is pretty severe and baggy. it’s actually a size too small on me, so fastening the cuffs are out of the question with my fat wrists, but i absolutely love the way it looks on me. it also kind of gives me della duck vibes.
23 notes
·
View notes
myah
my paimon age headcanon* is that she is like dave from kipo. she's technically a super old immortal** but also she Is a kid***. i was originally framing it as a phoenix sort of situation but dave from kipo has the same vibes plus like. being a person and not an animal and also being the same person (which, if i likened paimon to a vidyahara a la hsr, would not really be the case)
*i flip flop between a few headcanons, namely the seelie one and this sort of phoenixy one. i really like paimon i have so many thoughts about her shes so interesting and sweet and ridiculous
**i think the reason her memories are so inconsistent could be erosion at play. sometimes she can remember things and sometimes she is actually a really helpful guide but mostly she doesn't know what is going on and what she can remember seems so random. i also think theres some paimon lore in the wrio story quest so im actually gonna play that one just. not until the finals are done beating me up. so maybe this is all disproven there and i can stop flipflopping
***her interactions with other child characters (klee, diona, qiqi are the big three for this point) are definitely mentorly but in a fellow child sort of manner. she treats them like younger siblings typically. adult characters (albedo is the one i remember the best) often think of her as a child and she hasn't really objected to that, that i've noticed? she gets cranky about being called a pet, or food, or a toy (but still plays along sometimes because being in disguise etc etc, but she is noticeably unenthused about those labels) but i haven't really noticed her get upset about being called a kid. however, she is noticeably more helpful and more advanced than the littler child models. she seems to be similar to nahida (and they get along really well)(i really liked the paimon nahida interactions it always feels like paimon is trying to fit in with adults or babysitting kids but with nahida it felt like they matched better. despite nahida being well,,, a lot smarter). i think nahida is also a technically immortal but also kid sort of situation, but not in the same way as paimon is. nahida reminded me a lot of the aranara, with her reincarnation looking the same yet being someone else, with all the stuff about dreams, etc.. also the aranara are childlike and only knowable to children (and certain people with special circumstances) so . yeah. i think nahida is permanently in that kid but not state and paimon is currently in that kid but not state but i do kind of think paimon hasn't always been a kid, maybe possibly. i do definitely think shes existed for way longer than twenty years. but also shes kiddo.
anyway i love paimon. shes my son. id feel kinda bad for paimon haters cus she is in Every Single Thing except that like if u hate paimon why are u playing the paimon game? just to gamble???
6 notes
·
View notes
im glad y’all liked the other greek mafia thing here’s another i wrote but never posted bc i thought y’all wouldn’t give af:
i like to think as percy and annabeth get older and have more mortal friends (“friends” their kids have friends so they’re friends with their kids parents) that they like to have fun with the stories they tell
like i want one day they’re with one of their kids best friends house talking with the parents and maybe it’s a birthday party or smth so there’s a small group there
they have one of those hats with the balls attached your supposed to punch around and everyone’s taking turns until it gets to percy and he’s trying to humbly decline until someone (prob annabeth) is like “no balls” so he does and he’s insanely good so he makes annabeth do it and everyone’s like “no hard feelings if you can’t blah blah” and she’s even better then percy and all the parents are like in shock that these two randoms are so good at this game
so their all asking like why they can do this so well yada yada and at first percabeths like “well we go to the gym a lot..” “we were into a lot of sports growing up so we needed the hand eye coordination..” until they finally snap and percy’s like
“ok listen..you shouldn’t know this so don’t tell anyone but basically we were in the army for a couple years” and everyone’s like “omfg did y’all fight in iraq??” like hello ??
and annabeths like “well no…our parents just have a lot of power over in…greece..” and everyone’s like floored bc tf you mean GREECE like tf does that even mean ??
but they kinda leave it at that so everyone thinks they’re somehow tied to the greek mafia
especially when they hear percy or annabeth on the phone talking in what sounds like some type of tongues and then a couple weeks later they ask if the kids can spend the night because they need to go “take care of some things”
this is basically a different version of what i already posted but i thought it was funny lmao
2K notes
·
View notes