Nick:
Little bit hectic this time; farro goes in a pot to boil for 30 minutes, sweet potatoes go in the oven to get roasted for 22 minutes, throw the pepper in a pan, cook it, add onion and garlic and collard greens, go to the bathroom and play Pop Town, take the sweet potatoes out, coat them in maple mustard sauce, back into the oven, the farro's done, strain it and return it to the pot, cover it with BBQ spice, stir, plate, then the veggies, then the sweet potato on top. Whew!!
Katie:
Another cooking first for me; wilting something. The collard greens needed wilting in the veggie mixture and I think I pulled it off pretty well. It certainly was not the overly stiff kale we had in previous dishes. There wasn't as much for both of us to do the entire time. While the farro and sweet potatoes were baking, we finished the other stuff with time left to have to actually have a conversation. I kid. We talk literally all day and night, it's kind of impossible for us to get sick of each other's company. Unless Nick knows something I don't.
Post-meal thoughts
Nick:
Hmm, not quite what I expected. This is supposed to be BBQ, maple, and mustard flavored; despite dumping half the BBQ spice over the farro and the other half over the veggies, this only tastes like the maple syrup. Both the BBQ and mustard flavors are almost completely smothered; any bite with maple-coated sweet potato - and that's basically all of them - just tastes like, well, maple-coated sweet potato. Not that that's a bad thing! Give me the choice between salty, peppery, BBQ-y farro and maple sweet potato, and I'm probably going to pick maple sweet potato. Very good, but not what I was expecting it to taste like. To improve this dish, I might remove the collard greens; they were fine, nowhere near as nasty as the bok choy from last time we threw leaves in the sautee pan, but they didn't really add anything, they just made me chew a little longer any time I got a bite with one.
Katie:
I noticed someone deftly avoided addressing my statement about not getting sick of each other. I see. Well. This will long be remembered. In 5 or 10 years, I'm gonna bring this up. "Remember that time in our blog when you said you were sick of me?!". You know, typical wife stuff.
I echo Nick's comments about the BBQ flavoring. There was simply not enough of it. I am all for maple paired with BBQ--heck my favorite BBQ sauce is Sweet Baby Ray's Maple--but the maple definitely outweighed any BBQ flavoring for the most part. The sweet potatoes were absolutely the best part. I could have just eaten a whole bowl full of those. I thought the collard greens were fine. I've never had them before so I thought maybe they'd have more of a taste. I'm not sure why I thought that because dark leafy greens just taste like leaves to me. I'm sure someone out there is aghast at my uncultured palate.
PS from Nick:
I'm sorry, I thought we were reviewing food. Everyone welcome to Hammer Down Relationship Review. I am going to give me and Katie a 9/10, based on a strong foundation of shared interests and mutual respect. To improve this relationship, I would remove Katie yelling "Come over here, I want to kick you," and also it would be cool if we could read each other's minds, or perhaps physically become one creature like the changelings on Deep Space 9. Also, Katie and I are that annoying couple on the local news where it's like "They met at age 16 and they're still together even though they're old and gross in the nursing home" and who hold hands while they're out to eat.
PPS from Katie:
It's pretend kicking. The kind where you're like several feet away throwing kicks into the air at a safe distance. It's fun. Just don't accidentally hit like a chair while you're doing it because that hurts. I am stealing Nick's gimmick of suggesting improvements by suggesting we remove Nick's tendency to say "Ew, this is nasty. Here, you try it".
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