Cardamom-scented Dover sole with orange and braised fennel

I don’t know if I can make this look any prettier. It’s a lot of monochrome visually, but the flavors were anything but one-note. I half-filled an olive-oiled baking dish with shaved fennel, layered on some milky-fleshed Dover sole filets (they smelled only of the Pacific and made me long for a gray day at the Oregon coast) the zest of an heirloom navel orange and some lightly crushed cardamom pods. Crunchy sea salt and black pepper, top with a protective layer of fennel fronds and into a hot oven. It’s done when the translucent fish goes porcelain-opaque.

Serve with a willowy Gewürztraminer and an ort of wit so obviously forced that it may as well be salami.

Hey, so I guess I feel like I’ve been doing a half-assed job at the blogging these days, and it 75% because I just don’t give a shit about food or cooking right now. I could probably eat a burrito or a bowl of noodles from a sketchy Chinese joint alternately and be perfectly happy. I guess part of it is shaking off the last bit of winter (unpredictable weather is causing a bit of learned helplessness) and some of it is the hassle of hobbling around in an orthopedic boot, but I just feel creatively tapped out.

How ironic, then, that I’ve been getting requests from marketers wanting me to blog about their product that they’re delighted to send me for free (chocolates? cheeses? sure, I’ll bite), and I’ve even been contacted a couple times to do a bit of real writing. The validation feels great, but unwarranted. When I feel the most proud of what I do, I feel my talents are being squandered and I’m unappreciated. When I blog through my self-loathing about a fucking grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and a fried egg, my traffic goes through the roof (it’s like the fucking Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model from Ecology 101). So I’m faced with an actual conundrum: do I whore myself to the traffic (and the sweet, sweet cash that it funnels into my PayPal account, thank you Foodbuzz), knowing that the people clearly want This Is Why You’re Fat SFW pornography? Or do I keep challenging myself creatively, accept that people’s eyes will glaze over if they can’t immediately relate, and resign myself to obscurity?

These questions don’t need your answers. I know the answer: you can’t force creativity and bacon fucking tastes good.