But I don't like.....

Today's lunch: Avocados, cottage cheese, tangerines, grits and tomatoes. If you know me at all, you would be surprised I ate any of this. Growing up, I hated all of these except grits. Since no one else in my family much cared for grits, I was never exposed to them until I married my current husband, and he usually only eats them in the occasional restaurant we visit that has them on the menu. Probably my avowed hatred of Cream of Wheat had something to do with the lack of earlier exposure, as the texture is similar. Once I saw grits for the first time, the resemblance to Cream of Wheat made me not a fan.

I overcame my hatred of oranges as a young adult. I did not overcome my hatred for tomatoes until my late 30s. (I turn 50 later this year.) I still will not claim to like avocados or cottage cheese. Yet, both of them, combined in a "salad" with slices of tangerines (or maybe oranges)are delicious. Here's how to make this simple dish.

AVOCADO SALAD

1. Cut the avocados in half and remove the pit. (I'll admit, my "half" was only about one-third of the avocado. Since Don likes them, and LOVES cottage cheese, he received the more generous half.)

2. Salt the avocados.

3. Spoon cottage cheese into the depression where the pit was.

4. Top the cottage cheese with tangerine slices.

This is so good, I will be saving it on a list of favorite recipes. Yes, that means I'll be eating a mix of avocados, cottage cheese and tangerines again sometime soon.

I am still on the fence about grits. My grits are not the traditional kind. For one thing, most grits recipes call for "grits," a cornmealish substance that I'm not even sure you can buy in a typical California supermarket.

But I am going to share with you another food blog I discovered recently. Rook No. 17. This blog has lots of good things, but I'm linking you to a recipe for Southwest Black-Eyed Peas and Chili-Cheese Grits. Although I only learned of this at the end of 2010, it is apparently a tradition in the southeast to eat black-eyed peas on Jan. 1. With us spending New Year's at the coast, that wasn't going to happen, but I decided they would be the best choice for the first meal I cooked once we got back last night. I had to take out most of these ingredients, one because I didn't want to go on a grocery store run until today, and two, because with Don still having traces of indigestion that made him, my dad and my brother ill while we were on vacation, he wasn't feeling up to spicy food. So, my black-eyed peas were simply the small amount of peas I had in the cupboard, with a little bit of salt, pepper and leftover chopped ham, boiled for about one hour. I followed the grits recipe more closely, but omitted the chilis.

I also changed this to yellow cornmeal. This may be very good with white, but if there is white anywhere near here, it wasn't in my house. There is (still) a lot of yellow cornmeal here though. And while this recipe has given me second thoughts about grits, I needed to improvise on the cooking techniques to make it satisfactory to all.

For one thing, using exactly the amounts called for in this recipe, and cooking the grits for the prescribed amount of time left me with grits the consistency of the dreaded Cream of Wheat. Although that is exactly how we ate them last night, in bowls with the black-eyed peas on top, even my grits-and-milk loving husband said these grits were too thin.

Secondly, since I only used a small amount of black-eyed peas, and fed the peas and grits to just the two of us, I had lots of leftover grits. I wasn't sure how I'd use those, but I had noticed the yellow cornmeal/cheese mixture made something similar to polenta. When I came across a recipe for polenta wedges topped with tomatoes, I decided we would have either that or grits topped with tomatoes, depending on how thick my reheated grits would end up.

I added more cornmeal. Maybe a cup more. My finished product today ended up looking more like a yellow version of the grits Rook No. 17 has pictured on her website. It is very good topped with tomatoes, but I think next time I will make polenta instead of grits. Just a little more my style. And you can buy ready-made polenta in local grocery stores.