Culinary bravado...

The memory board on the coffee table has worked out well for me, as far as helping me to remember things that I want to be doing and what I have fresh in the refrigerator to eat along with the freezer meals.

Yesterday, I finished this overview booklet on Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) that I had offered to make for my friend Bettina, whose daughter was diagnosed with that and ADHD.  I thought that if she had a small booklet to share with family and friends, it might help them to better understand her daughter's (and family's) struggles.  To see that this was a mental health issue, not poor parenting.  I have been reading about ODD for a couple of years now, more intensely in the past six months.  It is sad how often, in the articles and information I came across online, it is noted that the parents feel isolated and like failures, battling the blame they errantly put on themselves and the blame others put on them.

Few understand that normal parenting strategies do not work with the ODD child and the parents need special training to help support their child.  The ODD child also needs cognitive behavioral therapy to help learn to change the thoughts and perceptions in their head and how to recognize healthy social interactions and to learn to practice them.   It is not the same as Asperger's Syndrome at all, but it is the same in that the ODD child's brain sees the world differently than most people do.

I am not sure if my friend will use the booklet or if it will be helpful.  I did consult with my friend who is a seasoned licensed family counselor to make sure that it was a good cross-section of information.  I included the following sections:  What is it?; Why Argue?; Behavioral Characteristics; Getting Help, and Support.  I also included links to all the references I quoted and some additional resources.  The only words that were mine were in the Support section.

To me, I thought the two most enlightening aspects was 1) the ODD child's thought process behind arguing and 2) the covert/passive aggressive behavioral responses.  How often do we over look the passive in life?  Yet passive actions and words are oft more telling than the active.

Anyway, that task was on my memory board.  It felt good to be able to erase it and add something else.

One side of the board is food.  On that side, I had broccoli, because that was one of the fresh vegetables and fruits I had bought at the store.  Today, I cooked it, being a bit culinarily brave in the process.

For well over a year, I've been wanting to make broccoli patties, but the recipes I first saw on Facebook (back when I was on there) and the subsequent ones I found on line all seemed a bit ... lacking.  They are all pretty much the same ... the main difference being if you bake them or fry them.  Now, having done a lot of cooking myself, I had the confidence to try and craft a better recipe for baked broccoli patties.

One of the basil plants really is closing in on the top of the fence, so I have this constant reminder to start using them ... and the admonishment to face my fear of blanching, which I still have successfully ignored.  I went a Googling for which herbs work well with broccoli and found this website.  Yes, I saved it to the cooking tips of my rather extensive recipe bookmark collection.

I went with thyme, basil, and oregano off the list.  Now, you have to picture another sprig of oregano and more thyme if you want to know how much I harvested to try and get equal amounts of minced herbs.  I was not planning to harvest from those two slips of oregano that my realtor gave me from her yard, but they have tripled in size since I put them in just a month ago.  [Is it my soil mix or the worms or both that is reaping such ginormous harvests of what's in the raised bed???] They have also flowered, which I think is how they replicate.  In any case, I thought I could judiciously harvest from them now.

Not being an onion person, I simply dropped the onions from the recipe, but then I used the core ingredients to craft something that had much more flavor.  For one, I used fresh broccoli and then I roasted the broccoli and garlic together first.  [I saw Marie roast broccoli before adding it to a pasta recipe and thought that a most brilliant idea.  The broccoli added ever so much more flavor that way.]  Then, I added in the fresh herbs.  I also changed it from merely Parmesan cheese to a mix of hard cheeses.  

So, here are my Roasted Broccoli Patties with Garlic, Herbs, and Cheese!

These are cooked 15 minutes per side.  In the recipe, I put 12-15 minutes, because I thought they could be a tad less crispy.  However, I know there are lots and lots and lots of crispy folk out there who might even cook them longer.  I put three on a plate to photograph them, but ended up eating just two of them.

I found them really tasty and far more ... together ... than I would have thought given how crumbly the mixture is and how hard it was to form the patties.  For a while, I was deeply concerned that I had ruined them, but they are far more ... substantial ... than I thought they would be.  One recipe I reviewed had the option of adding in some parboiled potatoes chunks. I might try that sometime.

What I read is that they freeze well, so the other five are in the freezer, along with the two helpings of the rutabaga.  I still have fresh asparagus, which I really only wish to have sautéed with olive oil and Kulp Spice Shoppe organic seasoning salt.  So, my plan is to eat up the asparagus and try some more rutabaga recipes before eating more of the patties.  I figure that all I have to do will be to thaw them and then warm them in the oven.  Being all very crispy, I will probably do so wrapped in foil rather than on a baking stoneware, which is how I re-heat most things.

Now that my house is still filled with the delectable aroma of roasted broccoli, I will be off to work on editing a friend's project.  And watching some Fringe.  And snuggling with my fluff ball.  And not thinking about discomfiting things.