It’s winter.

Fucking winter.

You lie awake at night with ice-cold toes under your blanket. You can hear the clock ticking. Tick tock, tick tock. sarcastically reminding you that you only have a few hours of shut-eye left before you’re meant to get up to start another day.  The more aware you become of the time, the harder it becomes to get back to sleep. Your mind wanders, you relive the day, or you plan tomorrow. Anything to not have to “stay in the moment” with those fucking freezing toes.

It doesn’t help if you have someone snoring next to you. This particular night my shotgun riding bedside passenger (a.k.a. husband, a.k.a. FOR-THE-LOVE-OF-ALL-THINGS-HOLY-ROLL-OVER-AND-STOP-SNORING) was snuffling and wheezing away like it was nobody’s business. It was like an alien and a gorilla had a love child and that love child had swallowed a broken whistle.

So sleep was nowhere to be found.

I got up and dragged my sorry ass into the living room, scooping up my Thug Kitchen Fast as Fuck cookbook as I went. I climbed onto the sofa like it was a life raft and I was drowning at sea. I leafed through the pages till I saw the Sweet Glazed Winter Vegetables. My sleep deprived mind decided I’d make that the next day because, well…Fuck winter. I think my cold toes were influential in the decision-making process. I figured this was better than murdering my husband and his inner whistling gorilla-alien in its sleep.

A whole day of much warmer toes later, I was all set up in the kitchen, peeling away. That was actually the part that took the most time. The peeling and chopping. The rest of the recipe was fast as a flying fuck with rockets on, and the greatest part was it’s Walk-Away food. The kinda food you just shove in the oven and walk away from, forgetting all about it, only returning when it’s time to eat.* Minimal attention was paid. (Remind you of how that ex of yours used to treat you? We’ve all had one of those half-assed fuckers in our lives. Also, it’s why they now are exes, you know what I’m sayin’?)

So once the herbs and things were in there and the root veggies had been tossed around and coated oh-so-fucking-nicely, I was ready to shove this shit in the oven. But first the wine and apple juice lubricant. Just like an awkward social gathering, sometimes you just need a little alcohol as a social lube to grease the wheels and the get the party started. Drugs can also sometimes help things along, but it really depends on who’s attending the party. If it’s your in-Laws or some pre-schoolers, then I strongly suggest you steer clear.

Anyway, once stuff was swimming in alcohol I popped it all in the oven to do its thing.

 

I then followed Thug Kitchen’s instructions very closely, and chugged the wine.

Look, don’t judge me. The book told me to do it.

First rule of Thug Kitchen is: Read the recipe. The second rule is: READ THE GODAMN RECIPE. There are no more rules than that, but I believe it is implied that you are meant to then follow the recipe instructions and not just read them, say fuck it, and do something else entirely. So when it said quote, unquote ‘chug the rest of the wine’, I felt obligated to do so.

Anyway, 40 minutes and a lot of wine later this is the result.

The combination of sweet with regular potatoes and the parsnips was delicious, and I’m usually not a parsnips kinda gal. I think they can sometimes taste a little like how I imagine stale baboon sweat would taste. But that was not how I felt about this recipe at all. Maybe it was all the wine I’d had that was numbing my taste buds and impairing my judgement, but I don’t think so. I usually make great decisions when I’ve had lots of wine.

I served the sweet glazed winter veggies with some red cabbage (done Danish style) and some meat-free Scandinavian meat balls. It worked so fantastically well together that I considered opening more wine to celebrate.

I’d definitely make this again, and the wine helped keep my toes warm that night, which was an added bonus, because, well…Fuck winter.

 

* Okay technically you’re meant to open the oven and stir occassionally…but sometimes a girl’s just gotta drink her wine.