Episode 15: Misfit Veggies & Potato Records

Episode fifteen talks about a recently successful Zoom meeting that I hosted, shared some updates to LadyJupiter.com including a mini-rant about why I no longer pay to use Tailwind. Then I gush about our latest food subscription and share recipes for my Instant Pot mashed potatoes and "beetato" variation. Then a quick reminder of which platforms I am not on.

✭ Click here full the full transcript (including recipes) ✭

Transcript

Episode Fifteen: Misfit Veggies & Potato Records

Welcome back everybody!
Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio accompaniment to LadyJupiter.com a lifestyle blog where I write about my family’s military life, also travel, home stuff, and my low maintenance beauty and fashion. I’m happy that you’re here with me. 
Today I’ll share an update on our life as affected by the military, follow on with a blog update, then wrap up with my most recent domestic diversion. 

Today in our military affected lives I have nothing significant to update.
Since we last spoke I hosted a Zoom meet and greet for a small group of spouses and had a great time. Over the years I have become the person to go first, to continue silent conversations, to volunteer as tribute. I learned that in the realm of public speaking (among others) we are certainly our own worst critics. So in my late 20s I honed in my ability to speak first or the most. If I’m exceptionally poignant, loquacious, yet with brevity - then I feel like I have set the bar. However when I stumble over words, garble phrases, or use filler words - I know that I am putting others at ease because I have lowered the bar. In the end, I haven’t done any form of public speaking to a real-time audience in years, and I don’t think that the gap was perceived in the Zoom. 

For today’s LadyJupiter.com blog talk…
I have small updates! I finished and published a post about my five favorite routine skincare items, and finally added some photos to the current Outfits of the Day post. I also shared some evergreen posts on Tailwind and Pinterest. If you’re not a blogger you may not be familiar with Tailwind. It’s a publishing service that uses algorithmic magic to queue your content until they are most likely to receive engagement. They also have internal topic-specific groups where users can easily share like content. It is handy and clever, but not worth $100 a year. When you step down from the paid version (like I did) you still have access to the internal groups, but not the automated scheduler. But it’s okay…I never felt like I got my money’s worth in the first place, and I don’t mind spending a few minutes each week to post my own stuff by hand.
Otherwise I am still trying to find more time to write because I my unfinished article pile is higher than I like, and I have a few that I would publish tomorrow if I didn’t need to sleep or be an adult for the next 12 hours…so the struggle continues to find time for me to focus on writing. In the meanwhile I’ve temporarily moved my laptop and modified editorial calendars (one for the blog, one for this podcast) to the dining room table because the space and light are good for me.

And now for my most recent domestic diversion
I have more food to talk about! Primarily food subscriptions, and a recipe revelation.
The Jupiter House has three food subscriptions;

✔︎ Butcher Box for beef and pork, $15 off your first box
✔︎ Sitka Salmon Shares for seasonal seafood, (referral link pending)
✔︎ and now Misfits Market for imperfect organic vegetables, referral code COOKWME-NJ8YAR

Misfits Market has become my favorite the minute that I opened my box and was astounded at the bounty. If you want to give it a go - I do have a discount code for you. I’ll get it up in the show notes for easy copy & pasting, but if you’re able to write the code this moment it is COOKWME-NJ8YAR. It doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, but I don’t mind if we both get a little discount on our already low-priced organic produce. So for our first $22 box we received
2 oranges, 2 white onions, 1 cucumber, 3 mangoes, 2 Granny Smith apples, 2 zucchinis, 1 bundle of kale, 1 bulb fennel (with stems and fronds), 4 red potatoes, 1 small butternut squash, 2 red beets, 1 bottle Serrano & chipotle hot sauce.
I was bowled over. Both quality and quantity surprised me, but it’s a good thing. I signed us up for this one because I was feeling stagnant in our vegetable purchases and knew that a random box would definitely force me to use unfamiliar fruits and veggies, and most importantly share them with Kid Jupiter. The night that I received our box I made a fennel and apple salad, then made mashed “beetatoes” - yes, that’s a combination of beets and potatoes. It sounds goofy and looks hilarious, but we love beetatoes. Simply peel and halve some beets and pressure cook them with peeled and halved potatoes. Drain, mash with milk butter and garlic. They’re sweeter and significantly more magenta that regular mashed potatoes, but they mash well and the Kid likes them!
Which brings me to my recipe revelation. I might make it a point to shoe horn in a recipe here (with photo and full recipe in the show notes) because my recipe retrieval system is apparently changing. I used to load everything into an iPad app (that I still enjoy) and reference it each night, but now I just google what I need and only need the app when the iPad is dead, so I end up googling my questions and writing notes on a post-it note. Unless I’ve written or podcasted about a recipe then it’s super easy for me to pull up and use. So with that in mind, I couldn’t find my mashed potato recipe, so here it is for future reference:

Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes
- 3lbs red potatoes, peeled and halved
- about five cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
- salted water to cover.
Cook on manual high pressure for 8 minutes, then strain and mash with butter, olive oil, and milk.
Finish with salt and pepper.
If making beetatoes, simply add peeled and quartered beets to the potatoes, cover with water and cook like normal. The advantage to cooking and mashing in the Instant Pot’s stainless steel insert is that contact with beet juice is minimized, so staining is only most likely when peeling, cutting, and eating.
So now that the recipe has been said, I will eventually plug it into the show notes. At the time of recording I am a few episodes behind show note publication, but the transcripts are up just in case I have any fans who would rather read, or are hearing impaired. 

And that’s it for today’s show!
Show notes and transcript will be available eventually on LadyJupiter.com/podcast - scroll down to the link for Episode Fifteen: Misfit Veggies & Potato Records.
If you're looking to follow more things on Facebook, I'm there too! Luckily I don't post often so I'm unlikely to annoy you. Speaking of annoying you - I am not on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or any other short-form entertainment platforms - so I'm keeping it simple. It's a good thing. Facebook.com/ladyjupiterdotcom. If you're driving or otherwise busy, just pop over to the main blog at LadyJupiter.com, I've linked to the facebook page from there, so you can easily click over to my Facebook page.

I’ll be back next week, so until then - make sure that you have enough sunscreen and wasp spray to get you through the weekend. I won’t be able to check, but I care about these things. Talk to you soon, bye!