FOOD PORN, Kentucky style!

No, we're not talking Kentucky Fried Chicken on a vegan food porn blog. 

And to be honest, the food itself wasn't particularly unique to Kentucky, aside from being limited to grocery stores so sparse they made Grocery Outlet look like Whole Foods.

I was cooking for between six and fifteen people hungry from walking all day, which partially explains the vast amounts of food being consumed.

L has a small farm in Lexington where he grows garlic. This didn't show up until midway through the walk, but we still got plenty of use out of it.

 Breakfast potatoes with peppers -- one of two batches cooked.

Raisin bread toast, made with freshly baked bread that JB brought from Cincinnati.

A slightly elaborate dinner salad, made with ingredients on hand: fresh lettuce that a walker brought from Lexington, tomatoes, black beans left over from a previous dinner, olives that a walker inadvertently took from a church kitchen thinking they were ours (oops!). And in the background right is a fresh jalapeño, garlic, and olive oil relish. C'mon: relish isn't just the cut up green pickle stuff you buy at the supermarket!

Eggs 'n taters. Here's where I out myself: while the walk was entirely ovo-lacto vegetarian, yes, I did occasionally cook non-vegan food for the walkers. No, I didn't taste or eat it, and got compliments for this: being able to cook good food without tasting it. Please don't call the vegan police. (And no need to call the health department, either: I cooked the eggs way more than shown above...)

 Much garlic bread was made, much garlic bread was consumed.

 

What would a food porn post be without a mostly gratuitous shot of ONIONS?

 Leftovers here of lentil stew, fresh coleslaw, etc.

This is how you make a lot of pasta for a lot of people. Those cans of cheapass pasta sauce forming the bottom of the food pyramid? $0.50 each. The only cheaper food we ate was the excellent produce we pulled out of a dumpster in Prestonsburg.

One of the church kitchens I cooked in was super small and had, literally, one station that could be used for prep. So piles of stuff had to go everywhere. This was prepping for pasta, and flash-fried collard greens with garlic.

A shot of the mostly unadulterated cheapass pasta sauce, and ONIONS!

A shot of the now much tastier pasta sauce, brimming with vegetables and kidney beans. 

My lunch one day on the walk: the delicious freshly baked bread, this one with anise (?) in it, a ton of peanut butter, and some dumpstered banana.

Doing prep the night before for breakfast: peppers and ONIONS!

I have no idea what I was prepping this for. Maybe the lentil stew?

More still not cooked egg. The caramelized onions and garlic were for potatoes.

I wanted to feed people festively for the Superbowl, and the grocery store didn't sell refried beans (or tortillas.) So I bought some pinto beans, and, well, refried them. This was for the six layer dip.

 This was nachos before baking them.

 And nachos after baking them, along with the six layer dip.

The six layer dip you've heard so much about: from bottom, refried pinto beans, cheese, raw onions, tomatoes, sour cream, and green onions. Yuckola. But people really liked it.

And this was the main dish for the Pooperbowl: stir fried brown rice with veggies. The rice was a leftover, gussied up with broccoli, cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, and soy sauce.

I lost a dollar bet on the Pooperbowl, because I gave D the line of 3 and took the Patriots. I didn't really care about the game, but we were all going to watch it, so the bet at least made it interesting. Yet another reason to hate Tom Brady.