The gift that keeps on giving?

I've been searching for DIY Christmas gift ideas online, because this year is shaping up to be my brokest ever.I always lean toward food ideas, but since I give my friends their Christmas gifts at a party where I force-feed them sugar for a few hours, food-as-gift is kind of redundant.

But then I had an idea: I would give them jars of things! Homemade things like apple butter, and lemon curd, and other things you put on toast! It's like giving the gift of breakfast!

I got really excited about that idea for like, a day. Then I dropped it. Partially because I'm worried that the cost of supplies could end up higher than my miniscule budget, but that I'll be locked in to the project by the time I realize it. But the main reason is this: if I knit something for someone, worst case scenario is that they hate it and never wear/ use it. That's not ideal, because I try to make things people will like, but it's not the absolute worst thing in the world. Because with canning, the worst case scenario is that your homemade salsa's secret ingredient turns out to be botulism.

It's the gift that keeps on giving. Until it, you know, paralyzes you.

So canning is officially off the table.

I'm currently seeking less potentially fatal ideas.

It would also make a gross gum flavor

This week we bought lemons, and at some point those lemons became...corrupted. Which is an exceedingly melodramatic way of saying that (possibly due to ill-advised fruit bowl combination) every single one of them tastes of bananas. At first when, halfway through a pitcher of iced tea, I tasted banana I assumed I was imagining it. Or, more truthfully, I thought what I always think when something tastes or smells weird - that maybe I had had a teeny-tiny stroke, and should maybe get checked out just in case. Then I completely forgot about that, which bodes super-well for my future health, until other people noticed it. And it's everywhere. And you know what? Lemon/Banana isn't really a flavor combination that works all that well for me.
Here are the things I've spent the last week being vaguely grossed out by:

• Water, with a twist of banana
• Lemon-Banana Tea
• Shrimp and Avocado with banana and lemon
• Banana-Lemon Sandwich cookies

 I feel worse for my mom. See, the cookies were my brother's birthday gift, but both of us tasted one. The difference between she and I is that she has a hatred for bananas that burns hot and constant, like the sun.

I can only attribute her not immediately spitting the accidentally-banana cookie directly into the trash can to her love for me as her daughter.

On personal failings

I'm not a vegetarian. I'm not really likely to become one. However, for budgetary/health/environmental reasons I try to cook about half of my meals vegetarian.

But I'm really, really bad at it.

Part of it is just the lack on an adventuresome spirit. I have this massive vegetarian cookbook with a million recipes marked but I don't trust it. It doesn't help that I won't eat zucchini, because it looks like a spoiled cucumber. And if you slice an eggplant, it basically looks like purple-skinned zucchini. And broccoli makes me ill.

You get the point.

But beans are where I reign supreme. With a bag of black beans, a slow cooker and some spices, I can Change. Your. Life. Or at least Make. You. Tacos.

Which is close enough.

But there's a limit to how often one can eat black bean tacos. Mine is probably two-three times a week, but my husband doesn't feel quite as committed as I do. So I figured I would venture into the realm of lentils. I mean, they're cheap, there are multiple kinds, and they pop up in multiple cuisines, so it seemed genius. Except that I'd never had them. I don't know that I'd ever actually seen them. They were just something that Cinderella had to pick out of a fire.

At this point I've made lentil tacos once, lentil soup twice, and one god-forsaken mistake of a red lentil curry. And I can't tell if I'm doing it wrong, or if I just really hate lentils. I almost found out with the last soup, which followed a very promising sounding recipe. And then it went kind of wrong.

See, you know how toasting whole spices makes them more fragrant and delicious? I only knew that in theory. This recipe, which called for toasting cumin seeds, was the first time I'd actually tried to put it into practice. I'm pretty sure I burned them. Or, given that I'm pretty sure used too much oil, the problem may simply be that I deep-fried them. Having no basis of comparison, I can't say for certain but the seeds went in tan and came out black. I doubt that's how it was supposed to go. The other problem was I didn't feel like measuring the cumin - I just eyed it. And I like cumin, so I used an amount that I felt reflected that. This was not the correct choice. Every bite made you feel like you'd been sealed into a giant envelope of low-sodium taco seasoning, which I used to think would be a perfectly lovely way to pass an evening, but no longer. By the time things got this far, I realized I'd also forgotten to blend some of the soup. Then I stood there and I thought about all the work that would go in to setting up the immersion blender (i.e. taking it out or the pantry, plugging it in, and pressing a button), and just gave up, walked away, and watched some Buffy.