Mixed Drinks With Dr. Pepper

Dinner Last Night

2011-06-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Dinner last night was mostly a success. Not just because it was tasty, but because I took pictures!

Last night's dinner was kind of made up. Well, not entirely, but it was kind of random. But, we got some chard from our CSA. The Pedant and I wanted to make the Cook's Illustrated recipe for Assertive Greens with Kielbasa that we made last week with soy chorizo. But, it wasn't going to be enough for dinner. Plus, we had some leftover Roquefort that's been calling my name. So I decided to make a pasta dish with a sauce using bad wine in our fridge as a vehicle for the cheese. The tasty, tasty cheese.

Step one: clean greens. Please note the before.
Step two: put in pot of water.

Please also note my very favorite Le Cruset Pot. I love it so much.

Then, drain chard. Please notice the after.
So little left! Greens are funny that way.

Anyway, step 2 of the recipe is cook "kilbasa" in the pan and add the green.
Also, this is in one of my favorite pans. It's super huge and lovely.

And I swear, it's tastier than it looks!

Then, I made the pasta.

It was pretty simple. I chopped up an onion and sauteed it in some oil. I added a bit of garlic and then about a cup of the terrible wine and let it cook down. Not sure why it was terrible. It was probably very good at the winery or wine festival we bought it at. I used some frozen asparagus that I steamed in it's neat-o bag. Probably should have just added them in without the steaming. They were a bit overdone. Oh well. I then added some frozen peas (lots of fun spring vegetables! In Summer!) and let that cook. I finished cooking the pasta in the sauce, because Lidia tells me to, and voila.

Then I put the stuff on plates and added the cheese:

The verdict: the greens were tasty (I used MUCH more chorizo than last time, but I was trying to finish it). The pasta was fair. A bit tasteless, but a great vehicle for the cheese.

Weekend PLUS PICTURE!

2011-06-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

The Pedant (while cooking breakfast): Oh, did you want to take a picture of it?
Sherbs: Oh, right.

(Taken with iPhone)

This is basically about 1/2 of the cooking we did all weekend, which is unlike us.

Friday night, we ended up ordering in Chinese food, which we haven't done in ages. It was warm out, we had little food to cook and we were really happy watching TV.

Saturday, we ended up eating at Subway for lunch and then had dinner with friends at Not Your Average Joe's. Dinner was good. Nothing fancy, and well priced. The portions were also really reasonable, which is sometimes hard to find in chain restaurants (where they overcharge you for HUGE portions...Cheesecake Factory, I'm looking at you...)

Sunday, we made this for breakfast. It was a fun creation:

Leftover rice from Chinese food
1/2 a can of black beans
Salsa
1 egg
Taco seasoning

TP did most of the cooking and I took this token picture.

We ended up having Costco pizza for lunch. Which was tasty. Tasty, tasty, tasty.

I did cook for dinner (but 100% forgot picture...will work harder). We had gotten greens from our CSA so I improved on a Cook's Illustrated recipe for Assertive Greens with Kielbasa. We used soy chorizo instead of the kielbasa. Quite tasty. Paired with roasted mini peppers and a low fat cherry muffin (random, but...) that TP's sister made up the recipe for, it was great.

The best part of dinner: caramel sea salt dark chocolate from Trader Joe's. Mmmm...

Tonight's plan is sushi. I was supposed to go out with friends and that feel through, so TP and I will go out together instead. We've eat out a lot lately (we usually just eat out 1-2x per week, not 4+ times), but things change.

Appologies

2011-06-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

So this plan of taking pictures of what I cook is a great idea...but I keep forgetting to take pictures!!! I think about it as I put the dishes into the dishwasher. And, while our plates are pretty, there is no need to have a dirty plate picture.

I will try harder tonight to remember. I'm making a Kale Lasagna for dinner. Yum

On Droid

2011-06-04T13:19:00.001-07:00

Just trying out the Blogger app from my smartphone. Went to DC today, walked for long enough that I could justify a gyro at Zorba's in Dupont Circle.

I think they put olive oil in the tzatziki sauce. It's smoother than most.

We're Back!

2011-06-02T11:22:00.001-07:00

Well, we will be back soon. Both The Pedant and I got smartphones in the last month and not only are we entering the 21st century, but we will try to post more about our eating adventures with pictures. There may be a few test posts this weekend...especially since we just got our first CSA box of the year!

Breakfast Rut

2011-03-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

I've been having issues with breakfast lately. I usually don't have time for something fancy, plus I want something healthy and filling. In the summer, it's often Greek yogurt and fruit and in the winter it's often oatmeal. Lately, I've been having the same breakfast (well, 3-4 times per week):

Oatmeal (with cinnamon and brown "sugar")
Apple with about a tablespoon of peanut butter

It's tasty and I end up not getting hungry until noon. Plus, it's super fast. I used to combine it all: dice apple and microwave it with cinnamon and sugar, add oatmeal and peanut butter. But, dicing the apple took time. And I got bored.

The new problem: I am SO bored with oatmeal. But it's SO fast. I love eggs for breakfast but I've been having trouble getting out of bed in the morning so I never want to take the time.

Today: I took the time. And it was worth it.

I made 1 serving of egg product and put in 1 oz of goat cheese. I made it in my little egg pan (which I love) and it was perfect. I had it with a mini rye muffin that we made on Sunday and ate a grapefruit along with it. Lovely. And I'm not getting hungry!

Will be happy to take suggestions for other exciting breakfast options...

More Food!

2011-03-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

OK, The Pedant reminded me with his last post that I've been bad at posting. We've done some great cooking and I should share. Since I just don't have time to let you know what I've made the last month, I'll start with the last weekend:

Rye and Cornmeal Muffins: I saw this recipe in the New York Times and it was great. Super easy to make and really tasty. We had them for dinner with a Quick Belgian Salad from the salad cookbook. Very yummy.

Minestrone Soup: I have to say that I've become known (well, with TP) for my Minestrone soup. It' a pretty easy recipe: cook some veg in broth (usually water though - then it makes a broth plus LOTS of spices), add a can or two of tomato paste, put in beans and pasta, let it get thick and yummy. I made it again this weekend from a batch of vegetable soup I made a few weeks ago. It's super tasty.

Fennel and Onions with Capers: Lidia Bastianich (whom I love) has a great and easy recipe for fennel and onions with capers. We made it in a much smaller pan than usual (since we were making it with some chicken soup and turkey meatballs for TP - I'll let you hear about it from him) so it took longer for the veg to caramelize but man, this dish is tasty!

New obsession: Trader Joe's. I like their low fat string cheese so much. Also, they have mini goat cheeses that come in a pre-packaged 1 oz block. Perfect for omelets. Or anything else. Mmmm.... And they have these super cheap pouches of beans - soybeans and chickpeas. So tasty.

Recent Food Developments

2011-03-05T16:32:00.000-08:00

We'll get to the eel in green sauce in Belgium in a later post, despite it having been two months ago.

First, Cafe Green in Northwest DC is much tastier than a vegan restaurant with a large number of raw food dishes has any right to be. Their not-quite-bibimbap was pretty tasty, even if not served in a superheated iron bowl. And the Sherbs loved their raw food assortment.

For dessert, the cake we got tasted like good pareve cake (better than meh), but the raw cashew "milk" shake I had was pretty fabulous.

Next, the Teet now carries individually packaged servings of freeze-dried fruits. As they say on Twitter, #winning.

Finally, I tried to use an online "healthy recipe" guide which advertised that it could give me a healthy meal just by inputting three items currently in my fridge. I tried that, and these were the failures:

soy chorizo + endive + mayonnaise
cheese singles + tuna salad + tomato (despite this being a pretty regular weekend lunch standby; fat free cheese singles on Starkist's "tuna salad in a bag" is more than tolerable on toast).
ketchup + onion + beans (okay, no baked beans recipes?)
dehydrated onion + brie + vegetable broth (and I didn't even try to confuse it with the fact that I was using Ile de France's "mini brie" - which, for the record, is superior to Trader Joe's Mini Brie Bites; there's something off about the way the Trader Joe's ones taste)
mustard + orange + beans

Okay, I do have some esoteric food in my house, but if I was down to just a couple things, I couldn't trust this recipe finder to help me with my "brown rice + whole wheat pastry flour + apple/grape juice mix." Or my "Fiber One muffin mix + San Marzano crushed tomatoes + anchovies" (two of which, however, will make a perfectly fine pasta sauce - just remember that there's no "apples and cinnamon" buccatini).

Lots of Cooking!

2011-01-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

In a nutshell, the rest of Belgium was amazing. We ate great fries in Brugge (and Antwerp), great waffles, and had an INCREDIBLE meal at a lovely restaurant in Brussels. We are SO sad to be home.

But, since I haven't started classes yet, we've had some opportunity for cooking. Here's what we've made:

SOUPS

It's the time of year where soup is divine. Plus, I find it an excellent lunch. So we've made the following soups:

Vegetable Soup - a big, big pot. I used it as a basis for a really lovely minestrone soup (which is quickly becoming something I'm REALLY good at)
Egg Drop Soup - with lots of spinach. Really, a lovely treat
Alma's Cooked Water Soup - From a Lidia Bastianich cook book. Basically, water and chard. Then, you use the broth to poach eggs for a great meal. It's a keeper, and will likely be better at the end of summer when chard is actually in season...

STIR FRY

Along with the egg drop soup we made a stir fry of our own creation, with lots of veg. Super tasty and really simple

COUSCOUS

I tried a Vegetarian Times Israeli Couscous salad that turned out great. It had couscous, saffron, tomatoes, leeks, fennel, arugula and a sauce from veg broth. Again, might have been better when leeks are in season (although I LOVE winter, I hate the lack of great produce), but still, a real winner. We might make it with less couscous and more veg (or a protein source? Chickpeas!!) in the future.

CHILI

Last night we made another VT recipe for chili with dark ale. I guess Belgium got to us?? It was simple - black beans, corn, tomatoes, chipotle peppers, cumin, onion, garlic, red pepper and beer (we used Brooklyn Brewery's Dark Chocolate Stout, since we have it) and let it get super thick. It was good, but a bit too bitter for me. (Darn sweet tooth!)

PIZZA

Last weekend my sister was in town and we invited our cousin to join us and her boyfriend for dinner. We had 2 bottles of wine, really good bread and cheese (thanks cus!), salad (thanks again cus!), minestrone and "make your own pizza." That was a hit! We had sauteed veg (mushrooms, onions, peppers), lots of seasonings and cheese. It was a hit! A really great thing to do for dinner.

Tonight is a bean casserole. The beans have been soaking and I'm excited to start cooking it. Next week, food prep will be mostly on the weekends since I start class again.

Thoughts on Brussels

2011-01-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

The Pedant has written about some of the many things we've done and eaten in Brussels. Basically, this city is lovely. It's small enough to walk everywhere and the architecture is beautiful. We seem to miss good weather: when we were here 2 weeks ago it was snowy and cold; this week it's been in the 40s but rainy and foggy. It's not too bad though. TP talked about chocolates and beer and other Belgian foods, I'll talk about the other foods we've had and thoughts about the city.

1) Pastry: We had a pain au chocolate and a pain au raisin the first morning we were here from a small bakery in the center of the city, Lowry. They were both very tasty and perfectly flaky. We also woke up after a nap yesterday and came down to the main room of our B&B just as the staff were having their King Cake for Epiphany. How could I object when they offered us to join them?? I've never had king cake before, but it was very good. The crust was flaky and there was a really lovely almond filling.

2) Sandwiches: As a cost saving measure, we try to eat on a budget during meals. Also, we don't really know how to rate restaurants - many just look fair and super touristy. Plus, I don't eat Mussels which is a big thing at these restaurants. We've eaten some great sandwiches. Thursday for lunch we had sandwiches with our fries. Tasty. Today, we had a cheese or ham-and-cheese sandwiches at a little Sandwich near the Central Station. It was nothing fancy, but very simple and tasty.

3) Chocolate: What can I say? I walk into a store and get overly excited. I've eaten so much already...and we have bought many truffles to take home. And there are 2 more cities we have to visit!

4) I am in awe of Belgians - they are able to eat chocolates, waffles, fries, nutella and then drink beer and are all THIN. I guess if I move here and eat all this stuff, I won't gain weight, right? Right? Right??

5) The beers (well, lambics since I dislike beer) are often in smaller bottles here - 25 cL (about a cup or so). I think it's a great idea. I would totally enjoy a lambic or the Hogaarden Rosee we had at lunch with a meal more often since it's less than a bottle at home. That means a) fewer calories and b) less of an opportunity to get drunk. Really, much more civilized.

Brussels Travel Tips

2011-01-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

1) Service at anywhere sit down is friendly but leisurely. They don't feel compelled to give you your check or follow up with you. Like, ever. However, once they come around to your table, the serving staff are your bestest friends ever.

2) The Brussels Central (Bruxelles Central/Brussel Centraal) train station is like an alternate universe version of New York's Penn Station where everything is modern and clean, it's not too crowded, and there are informational signs everywhere.

The Brussels Metro system is cleaner than the New York subway, but smells just as much like pee, if not moreso, as if someone decided to go all Mannekin Pis all the way down each walkway. Also, you don't need to swipe your ticket all the time, just have it validated in case someone checks.

3) The road structure of Brussels completely thwarts the non-SAS or Green Beret in keeping a solid direction sense, especially on a cloudy day. You will find yourself heading in the exact opposite direction for several blocks, but then, since everything in Brussels is right next to everything else, you'll pretty much be where you want to be anyway.

4) 25 centiliters of beer is remarkably cheap in Brussels supermarkets. Go buy plenty; it's less than $2 a bottle, which you basically can't get for beer of any real quality in the US.

5) Coca Cola is cheaper anywhere but vending machines, which are cheaper anywhere but the airport. Coca Cola "Light" (what we call "Diet") with lemon seems to have real lemon juice in it and is worth drinking.

6) The Magritte museum is closed this January, but that's probably for the best, given that it likely has a Magritte-style approach to geometry, and is therefore a madhouse of floating items, faceless men, openings to the sky where items should be, etc.

Brussels Chocolate and Other Dessert Review

2011-01-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

We're doing this by manufacturer/retailer.

Jean-Phillipe Darcis, 14 Petite Rue au Burre:

A cute little shop we stumbled by almost through accident. They do a very professional job, although I can't say their assortment is that far removed from their competitors.

La Cure Gourmand:

Off the Grand Place, La Cure Gourmand does not really sell much chocolate. They do cookies, hard candies, and chocolate novelties like their peanut M&M-style "chocolate olives," but for those looking for a Godiva-style seller of "pralines," this is not the right store.

However, what they do sell and we found delicious were their exotic caramels, including coffee and sesame flavors. They also sell really pretty tins, both with and without candy in them.

De Rose Damas, 19 Rue de Marche au Herbes:

This is a Middle Eastern confectioner, making both traditional baklava-style sweets and Belgian/Levantine "fusion" desserts. We got a small assortment from the shopkeep, and everything was sweet, crunchy, and wonderful, although we preferred the pistachio-filled crunchy pastries to the softer ones filled with fig paste.

Passion Chocolat:

A small store off the Place du Sablon, Passion Chocolat surprised us with its slightly different approach to truffle-like chocolates. Here, immersion in particular flavors seems to be the theme; there's a peanut-shaped truffle filled with peanut butter, a coffee-cup shaped truffle filled with coffee ganache, and a truffle with a coffee bean on top filled with a marzipan/coffee mix. Those, and the almond-crusted Grand Marnier ganache truffle, make it well worth your visit.

Elizabeth:

We probably don't need to review this, since you get a 25% off coupon in your Brussels Card guidebook, but it's a pretty decent store, if a teensy bit touristy, off the Grand Place. Unlike several of the touristy places off the Grand Place, it does make its own truffles, and none of them look like the Mannekin Pis (the little peeing boy fountain that Brussels is famous for; it's great that the city can laugh at itself, but I'm not sure that anyone really wants to eat a rainbow-colored assortment of chocolates in peeing boy shapes, as one shop sold). We ate a bag of caramel lace cookies dipped in chocolate that we got from Elizabeth, and they were pretty incredible; despite their odd cup-like shape, I would call them nearly the Platonic lace cookie; the lace cookie from which all other lace cookies should be measured. We haven't yet tried their spoons with chocolate to be dissolved in hot milk (some including alcohol), but we're looking forward to.

We also bought a bunch of things from Pierre Marcolini and Wittamer in the Place du Sablon, but we know both of those places are tasty, so you'll have to wait until we get home and eat them to learn about those.

Enjoying the Fruits of War and Colonization

2011-01-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Brussels, a land made tasty by the subjugation of faraway lands. We have chocolate (gained in Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, grown by forced African labor for many years), coffee (more conquering and plantations in Africa), french fries (potatoes gained from Spanish conquest of the Andean peoples), and pastry (gained during brutal French and/or Austrian occupation of Belgium).

Honestly, you don't read this blog to learn about the historical stuff we saw, although the ruins of Coudeberg Palace and the comic strip museum are pretty awesome. So let's talk about food and drink.

FRITES:

We went to Fritland, just off the Grand Place (the city center in Brussels with all the 17th C. buildings). You have two fry options at Fritland - fries on a plate, or fries in a sandwich. The sandwiches are full of things that are either grill-fried or dunked in the same fry-o-lator as the french fries. You can also, instead of a sandwich, get fried foods along with your fries.

The fries are awesome. There are too many sauces for us to rate (we had mixed feelings about the "curry ketchup," and whatever kind of spicy mayo "samourai" is, it's okay, but not awesome), but the fries are crispy-tasty-riffic. You will, however, order too many. The fry portions are big, and unless you are a massive glutton, one container of fries (or a sandwich-full, as "sandwich" means "foot of baguette-like bread with stuff in it") is already too much.

GAUFRES (Waffles!):

The most common waffle here is a large, puffy thing that people put various toppings on. We ignored many waffle places for not looking tasty enough (the truck with the Smurfs on it outside the Musical Instrument Museum, the waffle place down the street from the Central Station which everyone on Tripadvisor hated, the waffle place advertising "Australian" ice cream), and bought a waffle with whipped cream and strawberry slices on top at Elizabeth near the Grand Place. We didn't go to the one at Leonidas off the Grand Place because I kept making 300 jokes to myself in my head.

If you can master the serrated-edged plastic fork that they give you with your waffle, the waffle is a tasty, pre-sugared delight. Do eat it sitting down, though; it's tough to cut with your funny plastic fork while standing.

BEERS:

You get a beer with your entrance to the Brewer's Guild Museum. The Sherbs and I both got a Bell-vue Kriek (cherry lambic), which, despite the bizarre lambic ritual that they do here (pour from tap, scrape off foam with knife, dunk bottom of glass in cold water to wash off scraped foam dribble, dry off bottom of glass on cloth), is pretty tasty. Frankly, we haven't had a kriek we didn't like - Bell-vue, Lindeman's, and Mort Subite "X-Treme" are all pretty tasty and cherry-flavored. They're still a little more beery than a "malt beverage," but that, I think, makes them more flavorful.

There are also framboises, which are lambics with raspberry flavor. Both Mort Subite "X-Treme" and Hoegaarden Rose are pretty good; Hoegaarden is less sweet, for those who like that sort of thing.

Not recommended: Delerium Tremens's "Cactus" lambic. It's green. It tastes more like agave than you want a fruity beer to taste.

In the lambic family is gueze, which the Sherbs calls "beer for people who don't like beer"; it's lighter and sweeter than regular beer. La Morte Subite's house brand is pretty good in this regard.

More Foods of the Holy Land

2011-01-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

Back at Samir's on Saturday, where we got carrots and zucchini stuffed with rice and spices, then stewed. Also, in addition to the warm mashed chickpea dish mussabekha (as the Sherbs's uncle unhelpfully says, "rhymes with apricot"), we got some pretty tasty foul (pronounced "fool"), made with some sort of kidney-looking beans. And, of course, the usual pita and salad.

Last night, I went to Shuree Buree in Herzlia, the coastal town just north of Tel Aviv. Shuree Buree basically does one thing: first, you get lots of little dishes of salads and such. Then, you order a fish. You get the fish however you specified the chef to cook it, or you get it fried. That's it.

Still, they do a great job with fish, and you get plenty of bread for the tahina, tzatziki sauce, and guacamole. You can also order french fries, called "צ'פס" (chips) in Hebrew; I use the Hebrew because I want to pretend that "tzips" are not as fattening as french fries. Especially not the ones at Burger Ranch which come mixed with onion rings and bits of hot dog.

More Israel Travel Tips

2010-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

1) Israeli cellular phone companies do not want to do business with you. Their stores are like nice versions of the DMV: you take a number, sit and wait, and eventually someone will deal with what you need, like adding NIS 100 to your prepaid phone, but not with any alacrity. It was like they'd never done the transaction before, writing crap down on post-its and running back and forth from the mysterious back room and random computer terminals.

2) The shouks have the cheapest veggies. A "shouk," for those who don't know the term, is the descendant of that Arabian market that was caricatured in the Disney movie Aladdin as full of intolerant and pushy shopkeeps, vicious scimitar-wielding law enforcement officials, and a fez-wearing monkey.

In fact, they look like any nation's street market, but here, the shouks in Jerusalem, Acco, and Ramla all have great vegetable assortments, as well as fresh fish and baked goods, for a price far below what you'd find in the local supermarkets.

In Jerusalem, there's also a dumpling-in-soup place I hear is delicious, as well as a place that sells Judaic-themed health beverages. It would set off Penn & Teller's alarms pretty quickly, although the Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon-themed almond beverage and the angelically-themed chocolate drink looked tasty.

3) Elias's Butcher Shop in Ramla is a great place for raw meat. Elias himself will cut you pretty much anything you want of whatever meat he's got, and he stocks enough for an entire barbecue in his shop, from firestarter to bamboo skewers to frozen french fries. I'm a sucker for any butcher that has a side of meat just hanging around, and can yank a leg of lamb out from under a table.

Notable Meals in Israel

2010-12-30T06:11:00.000-08:00

DAY 1
Brunch: Shakshouka and a cappuccino at Si Coffee at the gas station just below the Latrun tank museum. The Sherbs already went over this, but the tomatoey dish with eggs and cheese cooked on top was pretty amazing, even for a chain cafe. Especially with the whole grain bread.

Dinner: Italian in Tel Aviv. Pizza, appetizers (including eggplant parm in individual ramekins), and a gnocchi in meat sauce.

DAY 2

Brunch: "Couples Breakfast" for the Sherbs and I at Cafe Rimon on Ben Yehuda street in Jerusalem. Each of us got two eggs, any way we wanted, and a salad, with a plate of cheese, tuna fish, and lox to share, as well as a bread basket with two croissant and four bagels. More than decent for a remarkably touristy establishment.

DAY 3

Lunch: Chicken shnitzel sandwich at a small shop in Old Acco at (I think) the end of Chaim Weitzmann Street. Breaded, fried, and stuffed in a toasted baguette with all usual falafel fixings and a couple french fries for good measure. Not the best food ever eaten, but better than average and unbeatable at NIS 20 for sandwich and drink.

DAY 4

Samir's in Ramla. Ramla is a small city near to Tel Aviv, and contains, in one of the many 12th-century structures still standing and in use, a restaurant called Samir's.

I've probably mentioned this place before. But there is nothing bad at Samir's. Today's assortment (when we go with the Sherbs's uncle, it's always the chef's choice for the menu) was chicken kabob, ground lamb kabob, falafel, and a mixed plate of animal hearts and livers cooked with onions and pepper. I am not being facetious to say that the organ meats were incredibly delicious - as I said, there is nothing bad at Samir's. From the pitas to the salads to the baklava at the end (and the coffee with cardamom), everything was tasty-riffic.

The Sherbs's uncle's ice cream. My better half's uncle makes his own ice cream, and has spent much of his life learning and perfecting the food chemistry of homemade ice cream. The flavors which we had too much of were a pineapple sorbet, a mint chocolate made with fresh mint (so much better than that spearmint oil stuff you get at the supermarket), and a dark chocolate ice cream with coffee and chocolate chunks mixed in.

Wine and Waffles; Shakshukah

2010-12-30T01:12:00.001-08:00

The Pedant described what we ate in Belgium well. I had a breakfast of a poached egg and some toast pieces, which was perfect. Also, the cafe gave pieces of chocolate with the coffee. Any country that does that is a friend of mine.

For crepes, I had a buckwheat crepe with cheese (Gruyere I think) that was filled to deliciousness and then topped with scallions and a fried egg. It was a lot of eggs, but really wonderful.

For the Christmas market, we had a "regular waffle" (opposed to a waffle on a stick - it was just going to be too hard!) and then topped with a chocolate sauce. I also got a glass of their muled wine. The snack was perfect. The waffle was fluffy (and I'm sure since it was a food stall not even the best waffle we'll have in Belgium) and the chocolate was divine. Creamy and delicious. Since it was cold, the chocolate sauce hardened a bit on the waffle, which made it even better. (A little less messy!) The wine was also great. TP and I traveled a few years ago to Quebec City and had Caribou, plus we've had homemade Glorgg (by TP's mother, who is not Danish but learned from wonderful Danes) and this was different. It was, of course, much sweeter, as well as spicy. Not a clue what kind of wine they used, but it was excellent.

Then we got to Israel. We've had some great food so far. The first meal we had here was at a coffee shop/cafe near my aunt and uncle that served amazing shakshukah with this incredible whole grain bread. We ate it outside with cappuccinos and espressos. I hope shakshukah catches on in the US. That night for dinner we went to an Italian place in Tel Aviv that was amazing as well. This afternoon we are likely going to Samir's restaurant, which has the best humus in the world, and I'm not even joking a teeny bit.

Israel Travel Tips

2010-12-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

Things to Ask the Rental Car People That I Didn't:
1) Will I be unable to figure out how to turn off the radio?
2) Why can't I lift the seat above a "recumbent bike" position?
3) Will it be remarkably easy to break my lease terms by taking the wrong turn on the road to Megiddo (in Israel) and ending up in Jenin (in Fatah-controlled West Bank)?
4) Will the tire unexpectedly spring a leak and your emergency service staff tell me to change the tire to a spare and have the flat replaced myself?

Things I Learned the Hard Way:
1) Acco (aka Acre) is impossible to leave if the road you expect to get to the highway on is blocked by police with a bomb-disposal robot.
2) The Herzl Museum, on Har Herzl (and poorly signed) is not on the same Jerusalem mini-mountain as the Jerusalem Central Bus Station (which has all the charm and cheerful ambiance of the NYC Port Authority on 42nd St.). Nor is it a short walk.
3) The Herzl Museum requires reservations, and if you don't have one, they don't have any interest in helping you.
4) In Jerusalem, Yafo (Jaffa) Street is NOT perpendicular to King George Street. Even though they're really close. You make one wrong turn out of the Mamilla mall, and you're heading to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. AGAIN.

12 Hours in Brussels

2010-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

Here we are in lovely Eretz Yisrael (Eretz Yisroel to you die-hard Ashkenaz), enjoying the sun and the above-50 degree temperatures while all y'all on the East Coast suffer under BLIZZARD.

But, you know, Israel's suffering a terrible drought, so the constant sunny days we're having are actually tragic for agriculture and municipal water prices. So we spend a moment of silent contemplation before enjoying our coffee at an outdoor cafe.

But back to the first day of our trip, when we were in both snow and honest-to-goodness slush: our twelve hours in Brussels prior to landing at Ben Gurion Airport.

We landed in darkness, 7AM Belgian time actually being appropriate more to Berlin, so the sun comes up at 9AM and it stays light until 6PM or so, where it should be more like 8-4. In the purplish tones of early dawn, we took a train from the airport into Brussels Central (Dutch: Brussel Centraal) station, during which I listened to the Tron: Legacy soundtrack on my iPod. Early morning Europe from the train is awesome to Daft Punk. You should try it.

Once in the city, we saw many historic sights and learned that all of Brussels is right next to each other. So we went about trying to see every chocolate shop we'd heard of. Galler was closed, but we visited Leonidas ("These...are...truffles!"), Pierre Marcolini (which wouldn't accept our credit card, and lost a sale), Wittamer (100 years of tastiness), Neuhaus (just like in the Union Station mall), and Planet Chocolate, the last of which had (unusual for these stores) free samples, and even better (and not necessarily unusual but much appreciated), great service. We bought a lot of interesting chocolates there.

For "real" meals, we went to the Wittamer Cafe in the Place du Sablon in the morning, as it was open and we wanted to miss the brief snow flurry. The breakfast was simple, but it was very tasty and the coffee came with chocolate truffles.

For lunch, we went to the Maison du Crepes at the corner of Rue des Midi and some street just north of the Grand Place. The service was leisurely, but friendly, but the crepes were fantastic. I had a crepe "Paysanne," which was creamy mustard cheese sauce, bacon, scallions, and tiny potatoes, all in thin buckwheat. Yum. I had it with kriek, the Belgian near-beer flavored with cherries, which was a mildly sweet, tart alcohol. Both Sherbs and I loved it.

Following lunch, we hit a Christmas market, eschewing buying a wedge of cheese the size of a airplane wheel-chock for a somewhat lighter snack, but I'll let my better half tell you about that. Then it was onto the plane, and off to Israel.

Thanksgiving Part II

2010-11-28T09:19:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving came and went. It was the first time I "hosted" a family meal (with more than 7 or 8 people) and it went well. It was VERY hard work. We had 35 people in total and it was 6 weeks of prep. The Pedant's mother helped organize everyone with a google group and document, and everyone pitched in.

My food came out great. The quinoa salad was a HUGE hit! Plus, I have 2 containers left (I would have had 3, but we ate it for breakfast Friday!). The Pecan Pies were also amazing, but the crust got a bit crispy - and broke 3 plastic knives. I made them in glass baking dishes and afterwords my mother said I might have needed to lower the heat. I will likely make the pie again for my work pot luck in December so will double check the cooking temp.

Thursday was one of the longest days I've had: After having nightmares at 4AM that the pie was burned to a crisp, I woke up VERY sleepy at 7 and did a 5 mile turkey trot (with my best time ever in a race - under a 10 minute mile!). I came home about 11:30am to a full house: Parents, grandfather, aunt, 2 cousins and made a second pie dough. (My mom rightly thought 1 pecan pie wasn't enough.) After, we went to the supermarket for some lunch stuff - a big salad. At 1:30 or so, we started the cooking

Making pecan pie and cooking said pie
Making stuffed mushrooms (my mom made the stuffing earlier but we needed to stuff)
Making stuffing (which my mom did most of)
Making quinoa salad (which I did most of)

About 2:30pm I realized I hadn't had enough water post race and had a THROBBING headache all night...

About 2ish TP went to his parents' house to get table cloths, wine, utensils and some other stuff since his mother was having a bit of trouble with the oven and the turkeys...

About 3 I started setting up the room with my dad and assorted family members. People started coming about 4 and I finally got to shower about 4:15! It was a non-stop event but I had a lot of fun doing it!

OUR MENU:

Appetizers:

Artichoke dip (Sherb's aunt)
Guatemalan black beans (S's aunt)
Broccoli/Carrots (S/TP)
Salmon (TP's aunt)
Humus, crackers, pita (S's cousin's parents)
Stuffed Mushrooms (S's mom)

Dinner:

3 Turkeys (TP's mom, TP's aunt, S's cousin)
Stuffing with meat (S's cousin)
Stuffing with no meat (S's mom)
Broccoli (S's cousin)
Slaw with tasty, tasty ramen noodles (S's cousin)
Quionoa salad (S/TP)
Sweet Potato (TP's Mom)
Sweet Potatoes with tasty marshmallows (TP's aunt)
Cranberry sauce from jar (TP's aunt)
Cranberry sauce - exact same kind! (TP's aunt, S's aunt - a wonderful coincidence!)
Salad (TP's Aunt)
Roasted Veg (TP's mom)

Dessert:

2 Pecan Pies (S)
2 Chocolate Pecan pies (TP's mom)
2 Pumpkin pies (S's cousin)
Chocolate chip cookies (S's aunt)
Pumpkin bread (TP's Mom)
Cranberry Bread (S's mom)
Parve whipped topping (TP's Aunt)

Beverages:
Wine, beer, soda, TP's Grandmother's whiskey sours

Thanksgiving

2010-11-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

Every food blog I read is doing a Thanksgiving post, so why not my own?? I'm kind of hosting our big dinner - The Pedant and I are combining families in the party room of our building. Other family members are making the Turkey, but we're still pitching in.

I'm making a Pecan Pie (recipe from Joy of Cooking, which I have heard from a friend is the easiest and best recipe for pecan pie) which I'm excited about. I'm making that Wednesday after work.

I'm also making a Southwest Quinoa and Sweet Potato salad (ala Mark Bittman). I've already cooked the sweet potatoes and will cook the quinoa and assemble the salad Thursday. But it will be a rush - I am running a 5 mile race that day (in order that I can enjoy my pecan pie!). I was originally going to make the quinoa Wednesday but am running out of room in my fridge...

My mom and I will also be assembling stuffed mushrooms and finishing a stuffing. It should be a hectic day, but fun.

Still Eating

2010-11-18T07:09:00.001-08:00

Not much cooking has happened this week - since again, busy life - but I have been diligently eating my cooked food. The parsnip soup is still amazing as is my ziti (and my mom's eggplant Parmesan).

I did go out for lunch this week with some coworkers and had a great risotto with autumn vegetables. I've made risotto before and The Pedant and I do a pretty good job, but this was superb. Really amazing.

Yesterday's Food

2010-11-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about this picture thing but can't get my act together I guess...

Yesterday The Pedant and I had a fun day and it included lots of food. (And probably too much soda - we figure we both had about 1.5 liters each...and I had a bit too much trouble falling asleep...)

So, our day in food:

Breakfast:

TP and I are taking a deep water cardio class at a local high school Saturday mornings. It's a lot of fun and an intense workout. Both of us needed new clothes, so we headed to a big mall after our class to beat the rush, but needed breakfast first. We had "bagels" (which I put in quotes because outside of New York "bagels" are never as good) at a local bagel place that is actually pretty good. Since it was pretty crowded, we sat outside (it was lovely!) and ate our "bagels" and read the paper. Then, we headed to the mall.

Lunch:

After the mall, we went to Bertucci's for lunch. As I get snobbier about my food, I have realized I don't really enjoy most chain restaurants. The food is usually fair and too greasy and the portions are WAY too large. I do however LOVE Berucci's, especially for lunch. They give you salad, their bread is worth every calorie, and their lunch portions are a great deal. TP got chicken picatta (which prompted us to plan making a version at home one day) and I got an eggplant pannini.

Food Prep/Dinner:

We ventured on after lunch to Costco and the Teet for some essentials and then came home and napped for a bit. (I think we deserved it.) I did get up and then make some food for the week and for dinner. For dinner, I made a baked ziti with vegetables. It was about half pasta, half vegetables (broccoli, mushrooms, onion, pepper, roasted in the oven while the pasta was cooking). I used ricotta cheese and made a tomato sauce and topped it with some mozzarella, provolone and Parmesan cheese. It came out well. Except, I have to remember to under cook the pasta more next time! The veggies let out a lot of water and the pasta got a bit too soggy.

I also made a roast parsnip soup. It's really easy and really tasty. We didn't eat it for dinner (it didn't go with the pasta really and we intended to make a salad, but we got lazy/not so hungry when we made dinner) and I'm really excited to eat it for lunch today.

Finally Back!

2010-11-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

I spent this weekend celebrating my grandfather's 90th birthday and it was lovely!! The only downside is that several family members asked how my blogging was going. I sheepishly admitted I have been lazy. So no more. New goal: posting at least 2 times per week. I will continue to debate about putting pictures up - at least about cooking (The Pedant and I hate taking pictures of food at restaurants: it's rude).

OK - a small update since August: We've been cooking a lot! Not much terribly new - we did make some great meals but nothing really out of the ordinary. I am excited that the weather is FINALLY cooling down and I can make more wintry foods like soups, casseroles, roasted vegetables, etc.

Last week I made a black bean and butternut squash chili. the recipe came from NPR's The Splendid Table's weekly newsletter. It came out really well. I personally love chilis. I also love sweet and spicy foods.

Also, I have a new project one day. My Aunt M. is an EXCELLENT baker. There is a cake from HER Aunt, that is a chocolate cake. It is a really rich chocolate cake with freshly made whipped cream and a chocolate "frosting." My mom makes the cake also and it is incredibly tasty. It has always intimidated me since it is a 2 step process and you have to add the chocolate sauce on top of the whipped cream. I really enjoy baking and have always wanted to have the time and space to bake (and the willpower to not eat everything as it comes out of the oven). When I was home this weekend Aunt M. showed me how to make this cake (well, the chocolate sauce that is the hardest part) and has now t

Save Now

old me it's time for me to bake it. She also chastised me for not owning a 9x13 metal baking pan. So now i have a project. Anyone want a tasty chocolate cake??

Cooking Night

2010-08-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

Last night was a night of cooking. I sadly, didn't take pictures, but maybe will one day! Not only did I make dinner (with The Pedant!), but I also made soup and zucchini bread and TP made mac and cheese.

Mac and Cheese (times 2)
There was a tiny bit of confusion between me and TP about dinner. I was going to make a baked mac and cheese for dinner since I had milk to use. This is a Vegetarian Times recipe and it's pretty fantastic: using skim milk, you create a "cream" sauce and then add in 1/2 a cup of reduced fat cheddar cheese and 2 tablespoons of Parmesan. You top it with panko and then bake it. It comes out really great and much healthier than regular mac and cheese. So, I had to run some errands after work and asked TP to start water for the pasta. He got home earlier than I expected and started to make the pasta from the mac and cheese he got from the BBQ festival. Since it was Kraft and gooey and delicious (read: too many WW points...) he ended up making the Kraft stuff for himself and we made the mac and cheese from VT for dinner still.

Green Beans
We got a TON of green beans from our CSA and are making a Hungarian Strogonoff in the slow cooker tomorrow, we made a sort of French style green beans with almonds. TP did most of the cooking (I was doing zucchini bread) and they came out great. The beans were still crispy and the slivered almonds were perfectly toasty. It was a great dinner: baked mac and cheese and green beans.

Squash Soup
Since squash is in season, I made (yet again) my new favorite soup - Chilled Curried Squash Soup. (I already have 2 containers in the freezer!) Plus, since squash is in season and super cheap at the Farmer's Market, it's so tasty. It's pretty easy (I've blogged about it here) and fun to play with. For this one, I think I put in too much salt (or, parve chicken soup) and a bit too much curry, but I think it's still tasty.

Zucchini Bread
As I said in my last post, I got a TON of zucchini. I used half of the GIANT one (which means I still have 1/2 a giant zucchini and a large one left!) and made 4 zucchini breads. The recipe I have makes 2 loaves, so I bought some aluminum pans at the Teet on Monday (I only have 2 loaf pans). It was a GIANT batter. I had to use my GIANT glass bowl to mix and it was a work out. Nonetheless the bread came out great and tasty. I've gotten several complements from my coworkers (I brought in a loaf) and will enjoy the other 3 loaves in my freezer.

But now - I need to do something with the rest of my zucchini. Ideas??

Squash and such

2010-08-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

A post! Finally!

It's been a busy summer - between work being busy and taking a class, it's been a rough summer for blogging. And cooking! We've been in and out and busier so although we have great CSA produce, it's not necessarily blog worthy - nothing new and exciting.

However, I did make zucchini bread this weekend with a zucchini from the farm and I loved it. Super tasty. I will probably make it again since I just got a HUGE zucchini from the neighbor of a friend's parents. I might even make 4 loafs (my recipe makes 2 loafs - although I only have 2 loaf pans...) it's that giant.

This weekend was spent with friends at their parent's lovely house in New Jersey. My friend L. made a really fantastic dinner: soba noodles (which were basically cold sesame noodles - my FAVORITE), a bean and squash salad, and seared tuna (The Pedant loved it). She also made a plum and cherry crumble, which was perfect (and better the next day for breakfast). We had cocktails of champagne and strawberry puree and some cheese which was great. For lunch yesterday we all went for dim sum.

Tonight's food will likely be pizza at costco since TP and I need to get some shopping done.

Less Free, More Food

2010-06-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

I did not join The Pedant at the BBQ Festival today. Rather, I had a paper to write for school, so naturally I had lunch with some friends. I also did a lot of cooking. (I did do SOME work. In fact, I'm doing some now! Can't you tell?!?!)

While at the farmer's market (FM) this morning picking up some delicious produce and things, I had a great idea to take pictures of the food - before, during and after. But I TOTALLY forgot. Maybe next time? We'll see.

Q: What did I cook?

A 1: I made a black bean and corn salad: black beans, frozen corn (the FM had ears that looked good but I got lazy), FM green pepper, FM jalapeno, FM red onion and a dressing of sherry vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper. It came out really well. The one single jalapeno was HOT. My fingers are STILL burning from touching it. But the salad was tasty.

A 2: I made a curried squash soup. TP mother made it this winter and served it warmed, although it was supposed to be served chilled. So I used a yellow squash from our CSA and a few more from the FM, as well as an onion from the FM and some potatoes (FM finds too!). Basically, you saute the squash and onion in oil, add garlic (from our CSA), ginger and cumin, then add potatoes and veg broth. Bring to a boil, simmer, puree, and chill. It came out really great. I cannot wait for my lunches this week of spicy bean salad and chilled curried squash soup.

A 3: Granola. We've been making our own granola. I don't know if it's healthier than buying it, but it's more fun to make. And is super easy. And tasty. A small handful works great for me with greek yogurt and fruit for breakfast. Yum!

Now, you may ask yourself, why is Sherbs making a big deal about FM finds and CSA uses. I'm not quite sure really. I'm so not into buying organic foods (yes, better for the earth but the processes can get stupid - lie organic must be certified by the government which many small farms can't afford. Plus, organic doesn't necessarily mean it's the most environmentally friendly - it could come from across the county which produces oil waste and the food is inherently not as fresh, blah blah blah). I do like buying local to support local farmers and the food is fresher and keeps longer. Plus, it's to walk around our FM on a Sunday morning. Many people bring their dogs. I like dogs.

'Q Freebies

2010-06-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

I went to the Safeway barbecue cookoff in DC today, near the Archives/Navy Memorial station.

Since DC law prevented the competitors from handing out free samples (or paid samples), it was mostly an opportunity to get free stuff from vendors. And did I ever:

FREE FOOD

Smoked sausage and pulled pork sandwich from Stubb's barbecue sauce
Sample of Kraft Homestyle Mac n' Cheese
Sample of Safeway's "Rancher Reserve" beef cooked in pepper and olive oil
Claussen's pickle
A really, really tasty slice of watermelon
GEICO Gecko Pez dispenser
Sample packs of Mrs. Dash from the DASH NGO for prevention of domestic violence
Margarita mix
bloody mary mix
5 spice bloody mary mix
two free packages of Kraft Homestyle mac n' cheese

FREE NOT FOOD

Tote bag from winning Bingo from the DC Lottery
Tote bag for taking a survey from Benjamin Moore paint
Luggage tag from Greyhound Bus Lines
Flimsy water bottle from Greyhound Bus Lines
Magnets with a Clausen's pickle theme
Magnets with the Dunkin' Donuts logo
Magnetic shopping list with the Dunkin Donuts logo
climbing-unsafe carabiner from Oscar Meyer Lunchables

All this, and plenty of coupons. I feel like I got my $11 admission's worth, even after buying some ribs with coleslaw and potato salad from the Midwestern place that played early Michael Jackson on a loop (and gave cups of free iced tea to people in line).

Some Like it HOT

2010-06-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

Yes yes, I'm a bad blogger.

Anyway, lots of good food lately. Most importantly, I ate at a great restaurant last night. My friend C. and I, and her friend L., went to Nando Peri Peri. It is fast food in the way Noodles & Company is fast food. You order and they bring food to you, but you don't have to clean up. They are "known" for their chicken sandwiches. Luckily, they had a cheese and protobello mushroom sandwich. The other thing they are "known" for is their spicy sauces. I got HOT (there is also an extra hot) and it was HOT but really, really good. I do love spicy food that makes your cheeks hurt. It is so good. I will def go back. I even texted The Pedant right after to tell him we must go. Yeah, it was that good.

A Shorter Update

2010-05-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Since I'm procrastinating doing my last final - a short update.

Today is The Pedant's Birthday! HOORAY! But, since I'm working on this final I requested nothing special. So we ordered in Vietnamese food. It was delish. We should eat it more.

A Short Update

2010-05-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

An incredibly short post since my life has been incredibly busy. (I have 1 final left...and then summer school...why did I go back to school again??!)

Anyway, dear readers (i.e., Hello Dad, Aunt L., The Pedant's Sister, Bluesleepy...anyone else actually read this blog?!?), life has been hectic. My experiment with less caffeine was going really well...until I went all decaf Monday and wanted to die. Tuesday was worse - again all decaf and wanted to die. Wednesday I did a double mug of all caf and that was good. Today - half caf. But it's only 12:40 so we'll see...

As for food, we've eaten some great stuff. We were in Boston for a wedding a 2 weekends ago which was lovely. I had goals of blogging about all our good food, but then finals got in the way. Which is why I haven't blogged much (TP has no excuses...). I WILL try to be better. Which is what I say every time.

For a quick food update, I have made meringue cookies twice. My mom is an expert at making them and I've decided to try. But, I wanted to get all fancy and pipe them. But I don't have a pipping bag. The first time I tried a Ziploc bag - epic fail. Monday night I tried a parchment paper "pipping bag" which worked eh. Probably better if the cookies didn't have chocolate chips. Will continue to experiment. I may buy a pipping bag one day and make them all pretty like.

Caffeine, Races, Ice Cream, Paella

2010-04-27T11:12:00.001-07:00

I haven't updated about my caffeine and other food recently. I've kept a good equilibrium for half-caf coffees this week. I did slip up a bit on Saturday. We went to a different farmer's market and I was kind of cranky so decided to have a coffee. But it was a bit larger than I expected. However, it was really good, and I intend to go back to the store (they had a table at the market even though they are across the street).

Saturday, we had a pretty tasty lunch of hot dogs (well, veggie dogs for me) and homemade ketchup we bought at the farmer's market the week before, plus some couscous and a salad. For dinner, we made a beet, asparagus (from farmer's market) and egg (again, from farmer's market and SO GOOD - the yolks were bright yellow like they should be!) salad from the best salad cookbook, plus some quinoa and cabbage (thanks Bittman!).

Sunday morning I got up REALLY early to run a 10 mile race. It was my very first 10 mile race and I was really excited and happy how I did. (I did it in 1 hour, 44 minutes! Go me!) The race ended in Old Town Alexandria and The Pedant met me at the finish line (he also cheered me on in the last leg). They had some food at the finish line - bagels (which were NOT real bagels, just bread products), bananas (yuck) and chips. I'm not usually hungry immediately after I finish a big race, so I had a bottle of water and we started to walk to the Metro. TP was a bit hungry, so we stopped by Le Pain Quotidian, a great chain, for some breakfast. TP had a mochachino and a croissant sandwich. I ordered 2 soft-boiled eggs (TP ate one of them) and it came with lots of tasty bread. It was perfect, although the server got a little annoyed that's all we were ordering. I did make myself a mocha with coffee and light chocolate soy milk when I got home.

We made a carrot and cheddar salad for lunch from the salad cookbook. It was fair - but not something we'll do again (although we amended the recipe a bit). We both ended up eating a bit too much of it and by the time dinner rolled around we didn't feel like making paella, which we planned to eat. We did, however, have a new Ben and Jerry's flavor of ice cream for dinner. Which is the only reason I run.

Last night TP made the paella. It was a Bittman recipe (of course) and had mushrooms. It came out really, really well.

Less Caffeine, Day 4

2010-04-22T07:57:00.001-07:00

So now it's day 4 of less caffeine. Yesterday I was working late so I actually slept much later than I normally do (yet another sleepless night...) so lots of caffeine wasn't as big of a deal. I did make my new favorite coffee drink: in a double mug (mine is very much like this and a good friend got it for me a few years ago - I do LOVE the slogan!) mix 1 part coffee, 1 part light chocolate soymilk. Add one sweetener packet (mostly because I have a sweet tooth). Enjoy.

I did manage to not eat anything when I got home last night and slept ok. Today it's another mug of half-caf. It's going well this project. I do want to devour an entire bag of chocolate covered espresso beans. Is that normal??

Less Caffeine, Day 2.5

2010-04-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Short update. I broke down and got coffee from the cafeteria. I had full intention of getting half-caf (I swear!) but I was thwarted because the decaf coffee was no where to be found. And, since they're closing up shop for the day I figured it wouldn't be making a reappearance. So I was forced - forced! - to get a cup of regular coffee. I used my reusable mug and I didn't fill it all the way.

Maybe it's a sign this is a silly goal?

Less Caffeine, Day 2

2010-04-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

What I neglected to say in my post yesterday is that I will be limiting my caffeine intake over the next few weeks. It's something I've been thinking about recently since my life has been busy and I haven't been sleeping well. Well, I have NEVER been a good sleeper. Many of the stories from my childhood revolve around me not sleeping. I have never been an insane coffee drinker - my father drinks about 8 cups a day of STRONG coffee and I have never been that bad - but I always take a spill proof mug worth of coffee. I will sometimes get another small coffee or latte int he afternoon or even a diet coke. But they seem to not work at waking me up. Which defeats the purpose.

Plus, I've been reading that bad sleepers shouldn't drink too much caffeine.

Also, I think it's screwing up my body and making me more tired at night. And I've been eating way to much at night. Yes, I've been running a lot lately - but not on the weekdays - and I come home at 9:30 after a 13 hour day but I have been snacking a bit too much. Because I'm tired. Which isn't a reason to eat. So I'm hoping to limit my caffeine intake over the next few weeks. I'm not going to cut it out completely. I just don't want a crutch. Plus, I want a cup of coffee or a soda to actually effect me. Also, I like diet soda too much for it to be lost completely to me. And decaf coffee does have a lot of caffeine. And tea is boring.

The Plan:

Start with half-caf coffees for the time being. Why? Because stopping cold turkey at this point in the semester is scary AND I have a lot of coffee still. (Dad, you may be getting a donation of Costco coffee soon!)

The Goal:

By Julyish be on fully decaf coffee in the AMs. Try to get decaf coffees when I need a pick me up. Sleep through the night (something I don't think I ever do unless I take a Tylenol PM or Benadryl).

Yesterday was day 1. I could not realize why I was still REALLY tired at 10 AM. Then I remembered. By 3 PM I could barely stay awake. I was unhappy. THEN I woke up about 3AM and had a lot of trouble falling back asleep.

Today is day 2. I have already decided I will likely buy some coffee about 2pmish. Not sure if it'll be half-caf or not. It depends on how badly I want to tear my eyes out. It is also day 2 of no snacking after 9PM. (I think one of the reasons I woke up at 3 AM is I had a little too much to eat for dinner last night. The cheese from yesterday kept calling my name...) We'll see if it works. Day 1 was a bust.

More updates tomorrow.

Food for the Week

2010-04-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Sunday which means I did some cooking for the week, since between work and school I have little time for cooking. And also little money and little caloric needs for going out 2 meals a day. (However, I am probably treating myself to Subway for dinner tonight. I do love Subway. And laziness. But in fairness, I'll be passing Subway on my way home from picking up a packet for my 10 Mile Race this Sunday, so I get a pass, right?)

Regardless, back to food for the week.

I made a pasta dish with shells (they were supposed to be Whole Wheat, but The Pedant couldn't find so we have white wheat pasta which is luxurious after whole wheat...) with asparagus, peas, basil, mint, scallions, lemon zest and feta cheese. It's from Vegetarian Times and I made it last year but kind of screwed up (like, it was supposed to have "garlic oil" so I used garlic powder, which was fine, but not great and I didn't have 1 cup of fresh basil so I used waaaay to much dried and it tasted kind of funky). I fixed my mistakes: lots of fresh basil and I put 2 whole garlic cloves in the measured out oil to flavor it, but not too much. It came out really well. It's totally fresh tasting and delicious. It will be great for lunch. Plus, we got the asparagus at the farmer's market, which is always fun. We also got apples and some really amazing cheddar cheese from a new vendor. I had my book club over so we had a cheese plate - plus meringue cookies which I made for the first time and were great - and it was really great.

I also made granola from scratch (well, from Bittman) which TP and I have gotten into lately. It's incredibly easy to do and really much healthier than the stuff we could buy. I messed it up slightly so the dried fruit got REALLY hard and crunchy, but it came out well.

Although I didn't make it for the week, TP and I had some great food for lunch. We had friends over last week and made a pizza with fresh mozzarella, but had 2 small balls of mozzarella left over. So we sliced that up and put it with some of the fresh basil on chibatta rolls. I added avocado and TP had tomato. I drizzled the rolls with EVOO and balsamic. It was amazing. We had a side salad with a poached egg for protein. Very tasty.

The "Hard Ways"

2010-04-18T10:01:00.001-07:00

So, inspired by my sister, for breakfast this morning I made the vegetarian kosher version of the KFC Double Down:

I call it the "Hard Ways," because I wanted to keep with the gambling metaphors, and I like craps.

What is it? Two Morningstar Farms "Chik" Patties, Morningstar Farms fake bacon, Haolam jack cheese, and a smear of light mayo.

How does it taste? Eh. Not bad, but really sort of one note - meaty/salty, with a little tang from the mayo. I'm glad I didn't try the real thing; I had a bad experience with a "famous bowl."

Passover Foods

2010-04-05T13:09:00.001-07:00

A very quick update since things have been busy.

It's been Passover, so The Pedant and I have eaten lots of leftovers and made some of our own food. We've managed to eat really well.

Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls

TP made a really good soup. It had lots of veg and the matzah balls were nice and hard - not light and airy. Blech. He makes a mean soup.

Quinoa with Sweet Potatoes

Ala Mark Bittman that we've made before. A real winner. I want to make (and modify) it again after Passover the southwest version with avocados, cilantro and lime juice and add some corn for more guts.

Shakshuka

Actually, not a great success. Mostly because I forgot to ask TP to get tomato paste. I love shakshuka, mostly because it's really forgiving and is so tasty. (It's even better with warm pita and chumus...) However, it came out REALLY watery this time, which was my fault. Sad.

Matzah Lasagna

This was a real winner. We had lots of veg and store bought tomato sauce (mostly because we saw it in the Teet - last year we made our own) and lots of cheese. Also, only 3 boards of matzah so it was light on the matzah. It came out really well. We may replicate the recipe with lasagna noodles to make it after Passover with lots of veg again.

Parve Brownies

Mostly because the store was out of good passover chocolates. Turns out, not horrible. Also tasted really great after a 10 mile (!!!!!) run.

Bisli

TP found kosher for passover bisli. It has been utterly amazing.

Although I'm ready for pizza tomorrow night.

You've Been a Bad Girl, Gaga. A Very Bad Girl

2010-03-26T06:29:00.001-07:00

I have no idea why Lady Gaga's "Telephone" video takes a song about getting bugged while dancing and turns it into a story about mass poisoning.

Anyway, I've been a bad blogger, and I will remedy that with this short update. I discovered in my favorite ethnic cookbook a great way to combine two of my favorite packaged foods - canned fish and ramen.

It's in the "Hawaiian" section, where it basically says to stir-fry them.

It is tasty-riffic, especially with extra veg and ponzu sauce.

2010-03-22T06:41:00.001-07:00

Dinner last night was late, but tasty. When The Pedant and I got home from the Teet we walked into our apartment (which we hadn't been in for a while) and it smelled like a fire. Which was odd because non of our appliances were on. We called maintenance and after some time they pinpointed the stench to the apartment NINE floors below us who left something on the stove and then went out. The burning smell permeated through the vent. You can even still smell it this morning. We didn't want to cook until we knew the source, in case there was something odd. Once we did cook it turned out really great. We used our electric grill and took advantage of the nice weather. TP marinated some chicken breast for about 36 hours in Soy Vey. We bought some cute, little sweet peppers, baby bella mushrooms, an onion, a green bell pepper, yellow squash and tempeh (for me) and put them on skewers with some of the Soy Vey. It came out really well. We made some boil-in-bag brown rice (since we started Passover cleaning last week we found we have A LOT of rice, so after Passover, we'll be making LOTS of rice...) and now have some great lunches.

More Weekly Cooking

2010-03-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

UGH! We have become such neglectful bloggers...It seems we have little time to cook, let alone post, except for weekend updates. So, here is (yet another) weekend update.

Saturday, I had a GREAT training run for a 10 mile race coming up next month. 9 miles in 1:35:50! I was PUMPED. So, to celebrate, (although WW hates when I treat myself with food...) The Pedant and I headed off to our local sushi place. I did eat a bit too much, but had a great appetizer of complementary fired tofu (I guess they were out of miso? Sad.), green salad with super tasty ginger dressing, edamame, avocado roll, kampia (squash) rool and tamgo (egg). It was as tasty as ever. For dinner, we enjoyed a homemade fiesta! We repeated the jicama and avocado salad from the best salad cook book and ate it with an Atlantic Magazine Food Channel recipe based off of Bobby Flay's Black Bean Jalapeno soup. I had made the soup before and it was amazing. This time, it was good but the jalapeno peppers were not quite as spicy as before and the kick wasn't as intense. Oh well. We also bought some Edy's slow churned Thin Mint ice cream.

Sunday we had a wedding and enjoyed our time there. Since the wedding was in the afternoon, we stopped off at the supermarket for some veggies to make a light salad for dinner. We also did some cooking for the week. It included making our own smoked paprika hummus and a sweet potato and quinoa salad. The hummus came out really well. But, it's hard for it not too. Not as smooth as some brands but I'm NOT removing the skins of the chick peas in order to get the smoothness that requires. The quinoa salad was a Bittman recipe for lunches. I've read a few places sweet potatoes are great for runners and they are also SUPER tasty. This salad was pretty easy - boil sweet potatoes diced into bite size pieces, add quinoa, red pepper, shallot. Vinaigrette dressing of EVOO and sherry vinegar. Salt and pepper. Enjoy.

Sunday Night Cooking!

2010-03-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

Since our lives are busy and we are a) cheap, b) health conscious and c) much prefer to eat our own cooking than buy lunches/dinners because of reasons a) and b), Sundays have been spent cooking food for the week. This is what we made:

Vegetable Pizza

During the snow storm, I made some whole wheat pizza dough to freeze. Last night, I made a pizza with some of this dough and it came out really well. The dough was a bit sticky and I needed to add a lot of extra flour and it was on the thinner side on some parts. The Pedant made pizza last week for dinner so we had some extra sauce and cheese. I sauteed up a shallot, a bunch of asparagus and mushrooms in some balsamic and let it get really well cooked. (Mostly because I spent more time fussing with the pizza, but it turned out great!) The pizza came out really well.

Farnase Salad

Another winner from the best salad cookbook. Also eaten for dinner last night. It was fennel, red onion, oranges and parsley in a salad dressing of lemon juice, olive oil and honey. It was really good. We had that with the pizza for dinner.

Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

I love sweet potatoes and have read recently that sweet potatoes are good for runners. So, I decided to make this slow cooker chili. It looked okay when I took it out of the slow cooker this morning. I usually like my chili thicker, but it smelled really good because I put in a lot of chili powder and chipotle powder.

Wild Rice and Barley Salad

Dinner tonight from the best salad book. It has wild rice, barley, LOTS of shallots, celery, golden raisins and almonds. Should be tasty.

And now, a movie plug. We watched Word Play last night. It was great!

Saturday Night Fiesta Dinner

2010-03-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

I'm training for a 10 mile race coming up in April and have been going on long runs. Saturday morning, while running 7 miles (!!!!) I had plenty of time to think about food, which is the only reason I run. We had some leftover mini potatoes that needed to be used and what better way to make potatoes than in Tortilla Espanola. So The Pedant and I had a Spanish/Mexican dinner that was fantastic.

Tortilla Espanola

I sliced the potatoes very thin. We sauteed them up with 1/2 a vidalia onion and a bunch of garlic in (too much - my hand slipped!) olive oil. Sadly, it was not Spanish olive oil like Jose Andres would have liked, but whatever. We let that cook until the potatoes got cooked and the onions browned really nicely. We then used egg beaters to make a tortilla. Sadly, it didn't flip as well as hoped, but it was super tasty.

Jicama Avocado Salad

While looking for food for the week, TP passed this salad recipe in the best salad cookbook and wondered why we hadn't made this salad yet. We decided it was similar to the "Spanish" theme and cooked it up. It was very simple - chopped jicama, chopped avocado, cilantro, red onion, lemon juice, olive oil. It was really amazing.

Dinner was just lovely. We bought some Ben and Jerry's light Phish Food which made it even better.

Cooking with Fruit

2010-02-17T11:58:00.001-08:00

I've been having a cooking with fruit obsession lately. I think some of it has to do with the fact that fruit is abysmal during the winter that I want the sweetness of it without having to eat sub par fruit. The Pedant and I were in Costco this weekend and found a GIANT bag of apples at a fairly good price. The apples aren't bad - they have some brown spots - but how many apples can a girl eat?! I want me some cantaloupe, peaches, nectarines, pineapple, grapes, and more!

So what have I been doing with said fruit? I have put oranges in salads (a trick I learned from eating a salad at a Lebanese restaurant). I made a wheat berry salad with cabbage from Bittman and took his advice and added in an apple. And this morning, I made myself my new favorite omelet.

[Begin Back Story]

In November, I was in Cambridge, MA for a wedding of a dear, dear friend, Smel. Smel's wedding began at 11 and TP and I needed to get breakfast someplace. Another dear, dear friend, RGM, was staying in the hotel with us and using a combo of her trusty iPhone and wily skills, took us to Zaftig's. We got there early and were seated immediately. (That seems to be a rarity because when we left at 10 there was already a line out the door.) Zaftig's immediately brought me back to the Jewish delis/diners of my youth and I had an incredible omelet made with a lot of cheddar cheese and an apple. I thought it was the perfect combination ad instantly fell in love with the omelet. I tried to recreate it once, which worked out really well. TP made a great suggestion: saute the apples first.

[End Back Story]

I decided to take TP's advice and saute the apples. I was a bit too guilty to do it in butter, but I bet that would have been great. I made some additions. First, I chopped up a few tablespoons of red onion and sauteed them in cooking spray. Then I added a chopped up apple and some salt and let it cook. I then put in a few handfuls of baby spinach and let that wilt to perfection. I took the fruit and veggies out of the pan and cooked up some egg beaters. I then put in a few cubes of reduced-fat cheddar and let that get melty. I added in my filling which was waaaaaay too much for the omelet, but warmed everything together and attempted to fold the omelet. It came out PERFECTLY. A cheesy, sweet/salty combo that made my day.

Indian Feast!

2010-02-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

For dinner last night, The Pedant and I decided to make some Indian food complete with leftovers for lunches. It's been a while since we've cooked from the best curry book ever, so we decided to rectify the situation. We made a potato with spinach curry and an eggplant-chili stir fry curry. The potato curry was fantastic - it had new potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, garlic and dried chilies and turned out really well. It was spicy, but not overwhelming and flavor full. The eggplant was spectacular. We stir fried french-fry style slices in a VERY spicy mixture with chilies, lime juice, lime zest, salt, garlic and cilantro, added tomatoes and then let get very tender. It was immensely flavorful. I even needed some Greek yogurt (which I found a GIANT tub for cheaps at Costco! SCORE!!! Especially with a $3 pineapple. May not be super organic/local, but very tasty! I figure rejoining a CSA will balance that out, right??) and the wild rice blend we made to make it edible. But it was super good.

For lunch, we met some friends at the Lost Dog Cafe. We all has some really great sandwiches. I got the veggie, which had guacamole (although not enough to satisfy this avocado lover), zucchini and broccoli on a pita with provolone cheese melted on top. TP got some really tasty fries which I had. It was a great lunch. Plus, the restaurant does great things for dogs! Hooray!

Tonight is a vegetarian pot-au-feu from the slow cooker. I will also make a Bittman Wheat Berry salad for some lunches. We had very good wheat berry salad at TP's parents' Friday night and we have some leftovers of it, but both of us really enjoy wheat berries. They have plenty of healthy benefits and make a great addition to salads.

Snowy Breakfast

2010-02-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

Since I have (yet another) snow day from work, I made my new favorite breakfast. It's a bit odd, and I don't know why I feel in love with it but I did, nor do I know what made me want to make it in the first place. It's whole wheat pita, sliced apple and hummus. And it's DELICIOUS. Basically, I toast a frozen whole wheat pita and slice up an apple. I then make little sandwiches (I'm sure I could do a big sandwich, but I like playing with my food) with the apple slices and hummus. And it's really good. I get fruit and protein in one meal! I've had it like 3 days this week (since I have time for breakfast). I do feel a bit like Zohan.

The Pedant made himself a barley breakfast where he cooked barley, melted some cheddar cheese, added some whole-grain dijon mustard and some chopped walnuts. He really enjoyed it.

Now we both have mugs of tea and are watching the snow fall down while doing work.

Snow Prep

2010-02-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you've hear, dear reader, the DC area has been dumped with snow this weekend. The Pedant and I were somewhat prepared since we bought lots of food last week. Therefore, I think we were the only ones in the city who didn't spend Thursday night in line at a supermarket. We were snowed in a bit, but thanks to living in a somewhat urban area, we ordered in Chinese food Friday evening and had Ben and Jerry's from the little store in our building. Now that's what I call surviving a snow storm!

We made some pasta and a salad for dinner Saturday evening and by Sunday were able to venture out to TP's parents for an amazing Red Beans and Rice dinner (in honor of New Orleans in the Super bowl). I took a copy of the recipe and will eventually blog about it I'm sure.

Today, TP went to work while I stayed home and did some cleaning. I made a new favorite lunch: pasta with edamame in a sauce of miso, ginger, ponzu, mirin and a touch of sesame oil. It's really easy and very good. I ventured out to the supermarket which was quite bare. I came up with some ideas for food for the week (since we're probably getting another snow storm tomorrow) and a few ideas were thwarted since there was very little food left in the store. Good thing I didn't want milk...I did want onions but settled for shallots.

I took advantage of some free time this afternoon to make some pizza dough. I used Bittman's whole wheat recipe which was great (we made it once before) and doubled it to freeze. I made a bit of a mistake when I did a double batch in the food processor - it came out much gluier than I had hoped. I think it will be fine though. I used about 1/4 of the whole thing (1/2 of a regular recipe) and made a REALLY AMAZING pizza tonight. First, I put sun dried tomatoes and some roasted garlic (which I cooked in some EVOO and then reused the extra oil for the soup I'l describe next paragraph) into the crust which I found out worked before. Then, TP and I sauteed some shallot, garlic and portobello mushroom (all they had left today...I wanted baby bella or cremini...) and put it on top of the crust. I added a bit of a granny smith apple that was on it's way out plus some walnuts and a bunch of Gorgonzola cheese. I baked it for about 12 minutes and it came out PERFECTLY. Really, really great.

I made a minestrone soup with the few veggies left in the store: carrots, parsnip, zucchini, canned tomatoes, kidney beans and some mini bowtie pasta. I ended up adding in more water than I originally intended but it came out well and now we have 3 containers frozen which will make for great lunches in the future. I let the soup really thicken up and get all flavorful thanks to the pasta and the beans.

For dessert, we had Ben and Jerry's light ice cream (I sometimes just have too much guilt buying regular B & J but not enough guilt to buy the slow churned ice cream...which is so much better for me...but much less tasty...) because that's what I need to survive a storm.

I'm actually going to be one of the very few going into work tomorrow. We'll see how I fare.

Busy Cooking Weekend!

2010-01-31T09:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, after a trip to the store, The Pedant and I spend a snowy afternoon cooking up a storm. We made a fantastic dinner plus lots of food for the week. Now that I'm back in school and coming home late and TP working long hours again, we needed to make sure we have lots of extra food on hand. Going out to eat is fun, but not worth wasting the money or calories for sub-par lunch options!!

So here's a round up of the great food we cooked for the week:

Cauliflower Salad from everyone's favorite Monk. It was basically easy - steam cauliflower (we just boiled it in some water since we had it boiling for some later), put it in a bowl with hard boiled eggs, shallots and capers. Make a tasty dressing with hazelnut oil, EVOO, dijon, white wine vinegar and tarragon (which we didn't have so we used herbs de provonance). I tasted it and it was really good. I think it will get better in the next few days in the fridge.

Southwest Egg Muffins from Pinch My Salt. I found this recipe a while ago and printed it out. I decided to make some egg cups for freezing for quick, easy breakfasts or lunches. Like a mini fritata! I hadn't tried this recipe but it came out well. I did use less eggs but I think it came out fine. I bought egg substitute (because 8 whole eggs just seemed grotesque for someone who grew up eating mostly egg whites!) and misread the bottle so I used 4 egg's worth. I think it was fine.

Veggie Egg Cups from Slashfood. I made this last year and enjoyed it. This year it worked well too. (Although harder to get the muffin tins cleaner than I remembered!!) The cups were a little runnier when we took them out of the oven but still looked tasty.

Saturday Night Italian Feast!!

Dinner was a great feast complete with leftovers for the week. I decided to make stuffed shells which I never had before. They turned out well. I mixed some ricotta cheese with frozen spinach and stuffed the shells with that. (Note: I will need more than one tub of ricotta and 1 box of spinach next time...) I made a really simple tomato sauce and topped them with just a bit of mozzarella cheese. The only problem was that the shells broke in the box so we were left with lots of pieces. Solution: Appetizer of broken shell pieces with some EVOO, Parmesan, sea salt and red pepper flakes.

We made 2 salads: orange and red onion salad which I love. It's sweet and sour and savory and salty. And easy: just use rounds of oranges and slices of red onions, place on platter (or our case, rectangular container for easier clean up), drizzle with EVOO and sea salt. The other was from the best monk and was a Venetian Gorgonzola Salad. It made a lot so we have plenty left over. It was arugula, endive, radicchio, frisse, granny smith apples, walnuts, Gorgonzola and a dijon-based dressing. It was perfect. Elegant and classic.

We also made lunch yesterday from last week's Minimalist column: the fried rice. It was simple and perfect and delicious. Definitely becoming part of the rotation.

2010-01-25T12:39:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since I posted. I am going to try to focus on short posts which probably won't have all the fancy links. (That's a lot of work!)

This post will have 2 parts: food I cooked last week and food I ate in NYC this weekend.

Food I cooked

I don't remember much of last week other than I did cook. Wednesday I made a great dinner. We had the best soup ever: Curried Sweet Potato Soup with Apricots. It was super easy and really fantastic. It was like eating candy for dinner which I was totally ok with. To go along with that I made Moroccan Chickpeas with apples that was in the Washington Post a few months ago and it was also really great. The two complimented each other very well.

Food I ate in NYC

The Pedant and I went to NYC this weekend for a minivacation. We got to eat some good food. We met some friends at Le Pain Quotidian which recently opened a location on the UWS. I got their hot chocolate which was to die for. We had dinner with TP's sister and she made some cheesetastic foods that were amazing. We had lunch with TP's sister and several family members. The best part about Saturday: Korenet's pizza near Columbia which has GIANT slices. The problem with the DC area is that the pizza is by no means as good as NY pizza. You can get great "artisinal" pizza but nothing that's really like NY pizza. We also went to a local coffee shop/dessert place near Columbia that I spend many an afternoon "studying" (i.e., drinking coffee and eating tasty pastries).

Sunday we got bagels which were good. Not the best bagels I had in NYC ever but very tasty. I miss NY Bagels so much some days. We had a late lunch with friends at Zen Palate which was tasty even though the service sucked.

I start up school again soon which sadly means most of my cooking will be relegated to the weekends but stay tuned for info on that!

The Belated Parker's Post

2010-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

I went to Parker's a long time ago, during the barbecue-tasting tour my brother calls the "ham hajj," but I only blog about it now because things have calmed down.

The new year brought a renewal to my job search, and finally, I got a job.

But you, as the reader, say, paraphrasing Positive K in "I Got A Man," "what's your job got to do with me?" The answer is that, until I stopped sending out mass resume mailings, I had trouble finding time to talk about the second-to-last stop on PorkFest 2009.

Parker's is an establishment of traditional simplicity. The decor is 1960's cheap. There are four main courses: chopped barbecued pork, fried chicken, fried chicken livers, and barbecued chicken. Sides are fries or boiled potatoes, coleslaw or Brunswick stew, and hush puppies and "corn sticks," aka unsweetened hush puppies.

All you can eat is $8.95.

The pork was Carolina traditional, vinegary and tasty, but my favorite food there was the chicken liver. It was fried to hearty, crispy, meaty goodness. If you're not a big fan of organ meats (and since I ended up eating chicken heart in Japan before figuring out what it was - the cardiac septum has a distinctive crunch - I'm cool with much more usual organ foods, like tripe and liver), this won't hide the liver-ness for you; it's not like fried okra. You still taste the liver. But it is awesome.

The Brunswick stew ain't bad, either, and the boiled potatoes are way better than the fries. Don't bother with the fries. The corn sticks and hush puppies are better.

The Sides Review

2009-12-28T06:13:00.000-08:00

So The Pedant blogged all about meats, which I don't eat so here are the sides review. I won't tell you too much about the places because 1) TP already did and 2) I don't feel like it.

Buz N' Eds

As TP already said, it was very tasty. The sides we got (mostly, throughout the trip my parents, TP and I all shared various sides) were:

Mac and cheese
BBQ Baked Beans
Collards
Cole Slaw
Hush Puppies

The best was by far the beans. Smokey, definitely made with pork, and perfect. The mac and cheese was fantastic - creamy, gooey and the like. (I was going to rate the best mac and cheese but it's hard to - they were all really about the same level at all the places.) The coleslaw was good and had a kick to it. The collards were a bit on the greasy side but pretty tasty. The hush puppies were perhaps the best puppies we had that day - fried to perfection but not too dense.

Q Shack

For dinner in Durham we went to Q Shack which was recommended by several people. It was worth it. They had a cobb salad with meats (I got it without and therefore actually ate a meal) avocado (how could you go wrong??!), crumbled egg, tomatoes (meh) and lettuce. It came with a chipotle blue cheese dressing that was fair. It had the potential to being better, but was kind of thin. I really like my blue cheese to be on the thick and creamy side. The sides we got were:

Cole Slaw
Mac and Cheese
Creamed Spinach with Jack Cheese
Onion Rings
Hush Puppied
Fried Okra
Baked Beans

Again, very good mac and cheese. The onion rings were what I wanted to order - I saw someone with them when we walked in and thought they looked amazing. They were by no means as good as the onion rings we had in Iceland, but very good. The beans were not nearly as good as the ones we had for lunch, but the Creamed Spinach made up for that (it was the best of the sides) - really tasty and cheesy. The slaw was fine and the hush puppies were good but a bit on the heavy side.

The Pit

For lunch yesterday we went to The Pit in Raleigh which not only was recommended but also had BBQ Tofu. The place itself was a bit more upscale - sit down restaurant with waiters - and the food really good. I got the Tofu which was fantastic. Smokey and in a the molasses sauce. It came with grilled vegetables, but I did, for good measure, try all the sides:

Baked Beans
Mac and Cheese
Sweet Potato Fries
Green Beans
Fried Okra
Cole Slaw
Biscuit
Hush Puppies

(All the other meals came with hush puppies, a biscuit and 2 sides. Mine was the grilled vegetables - asparagus, onion, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. The vegetables were all amazing.)

The mac and cheese was once again really good. Maybe the best but only by a little since it was probably made with a roux. The sweet potato fries were perfect and the best - not quite shoe string but really great. I actually never tried the slaw because by the time I wanted to my mom finished it, which is a good sign. She said it was good. The beans were interesting - a mix of beans and nice and smokey. The okra wasn't too heavy and the green beans not too greasy. the hush puppies were also really good - round and not heavy at all. The biscuits were also to die for.

Going to Carolina With My Stomach

2009-12-27T18:03:00.001-08:00

The Sherbs and I have followed my father-in-law down to North Carolina for his barbecue tour of the Research Triangle area, where we have tried our darnedest to eat Carolina barbecue at every meal, save for the complementary breakfast at our hotel, which includes a pitiful mockery of bagels as well as worse-than-McDonald's® chicken biscuits, which even after a healthy microwaving tasted like a chicken nugget on butter-flavored sponge.

Anyway, to the barbecue reviews. As the Sherbs and I agreed, I'll review the meats, which I eat, while the Sherbs will comment on the various tasty side dishes, which she had more opportunity to sample.

One of the great pleasures of Carolina barbecue is that at least two hush puppies come with every meat product. The number of sides may vary, the presence of a biscuit is not guaranteed, but a somewhat corn flour-based fried object is a sweet crispy addition to every meal. And it's always good, although each place does it differently.

To the places:
BUZ & NED'S BARBECUE - Richmond, VA
As is usual for I-95, we ran into traffic between Fort Belvoir and Fredericksburg, so we couldn't quite get to North Carolina for lunch yesterday. Still, we made it to Richmond by lunchtime, so we went to Buz & Ned's, the place that beat Bobby Flay at a "throwdown" regarding ribs.

Best Food: surprisingly, I liked the pulled chicken sandwich the best. It was moist and flavorful in its sweet and spicy sauce.
Second Best Food: the ribs. I can see why Bobby Flay lost to these guys. They make a meaty, sweet, and very edible rib.

Q SHACK - Durham, NC
After touring some of downtown Durham, which is not quite as Blue Devil-themed as one would expect, we went to the Q Shack, a homey restaurant with a no-nonsense ordering system and rapid delivery of orders (as opposed to the passive-aggressive note for "piggies to cool your jets" at Buz & Ned's). I did miss a chance at the fried bologna sandwich, which seems like it would be incredible, but of everything else -

Best Food: The pulled pork. Comes in its own sweet sauce, and is basically able to be eaten alone on a fork.
Second Best Food: a tie. The smoked beef sausage is pretty darned incredible; I'm a sucker for kielbasa-style sausage, and the addition of smoky flavor makes it irresistible to me. Also very tasty were the ribs, which appeared to be flavored with something like cumin, which really was quite tasty, although definitely a particular taste; those expecting regular St. Louis or Carolina ribs will be disappointed.
Surprisingly Better Than Expected: the smoked turkey. It's moist and tasty, although it is still turkey, which is not a particularly interesting bird, so not my first choice.

THE PIT - Raleigh, NC
After traipsing around Raleigh on the city's visitor center's self-guided walking tour, which had one of the most misleadingly marked maps I have ever toured from (the little red dots were placed approximately where the site was, which was not helpful to determining which corner a particular building was on), we went to The Pit, which was well recommended, and not just for the barbecued tofu, which the Sherbs will tell us about. Unlike the previous two establishments, this is a sit-down restaurant with table service. Be aware that the two barbecue sauces both have different pour rates; the molasses sauce is slow as molasses, but the vinegar sauce is really fast-pouring; be careful. Also - the fried okra is better here than at the Q Shack; the Q's is a little overdone.

Best Food: The ribs. My in-laws liked Buz & Ned's better, but I found these the best kind of ribs in terms of traditional ribs, as they were both dry, not soaked in sticky sauce to make it tasty, and full of a complex smoke flavor which was much stronger and more interesting to the palate than any heretofore tasted.
Second Best Food: Chopped barbecue pork. It is vinegary and spicy, although those who like barbecue better with a tinge of sweet should add the molasses sauce. It is good both alone and on starch products.

There's at least one more bar-b-meal in this trip, and I'll review that when it happens.

Because This Blog Is Named That Way

2009-12-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

The "no-knead" bread last night, with a substitution of one cup whole wheat flour for all-purpose, was very tasty, especially with a reheat of the vegetable soup from Sunday with the addition of a cup of water and 4 oz. Barilla Piccolinni® tiny pastas.

But today I want to make my own tonic water, because the Washington Post tells me I can. The only challenge? The Sherbs prefers diet tonic water.

So, the next question is, will Splenda® work? It needs to become a syrup. McNeil Nutritionals, the makers of Splenda® and possibly the sibling company of a pharmaceutical firm I used to sue all the time (nothing you need to worry about), says that it works in caramel sauces, but it dissolves and browns quickly.

Am I up to the challenge? I think so.

Now I just need gin. Or the Post's suggestion, homemade spiced rum.

Oh, also, while I'm also blathering about bread, cooking a fried egg in between pieces of sage bread (couldn't cut a hole in it) in a pan filled with cooking spray and paprika, with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes and sea salt, tastes awesome.

Sage Bread Success!

2009-12-15T06:25:00.001-08:00

The sage bread came out of the oven this morning. I don't know what shape it was supposed to have, but it ended up with a large round loaf with a pretty good crust.

It's tasty, but hard to find condiments for as sage doesn't really mesh with not-butter, peanut butter, or mustard (I didn't even try jam). The bread was still so delicious that I had to put the rest in the freezer to keep from eating the loaf.

Staves of Life

2009-12-14T18:48:00.000-08:00

As we speak, the Le Creuset Dutch oven is heating up for more of Cook's modified "no knead" recipe - the one that one actually has to knead, but not much. In storage are several finished loaves of black bread from Bittman's green bible, although one of them is denser than the other despite using the same ingredients contemporaneously. Waiting to rise is a Pueblo Indian sage-flavored bread made with cottage cheese, a recipe from my new ethnic food cookbook; a gift from my sister.

Why so much bread? Because 2 lbs. of yeast at Costco is the same as three packets at the Teet. So now I have a block of yeast in my fridge, of which I've used four tablespoons.

Back to the ethnic cookbook. Earlier tonight, I made the Pueblo Indian "Pojoaque cream soup" recipe, which is pinto beans, evaporated milk, garlic, and chili powder (I used ancho for some Bobby Flay big bold flavor). It goes in a blender and then on the stove to heat up.

I thought it would be spicier, but it's really tasty regardless. Pinto beans give it a mellow flavor, but a rich one.

While eventually I'll try the non-Indian recipes in this book, there is a Souix recipe for pumpkin stuffed with beef and wild rice on pg. 255. I have to make it.

A bread for all seasons...

2009-12-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

I had my first encounter with baking bread this weekend. The Pedant has already baked several loves, and I didn't do the work all myself (hooray teamwork!) but I did more work than just pre-heating the oven and eat the finished product (although there was much of that last night and this morning).

We had a bottle of beer still from the last time we made bread (the America's Test Kitchen Almost No Kneed Bread calls for 3 oz. of beer which helps in the cooking process). I'm not a beer drinker and TP seldom drinks beer that's not "fancy" so we often have a random bottle of beer in the fridge from some cooking project we never made or a 6-pack we bought several months ago for the cooking project. And, since bitten by the bread making bug, I suggested we make Bittman's Brown Bread again.

We made the Brown Bread Saturday evening (after the ravioli debacle) and let it rise overnight. It came out really well. We doubled the recipe to freeze some. One batch (we made two smaller loaves) was a bit wetter than the other and came out nicer, but both were amazing. Bittman suggests spreading whole grain mustard on the bread. And boy, does that taste good! Especially when it's still warm. I had it this morning with some peanut butter which wasn't perfect but still tasty.

We also set the Almost No Kneed Bread last night and used most of the beer to make Bittman's Beer Glazed Black Beans. I'd say we do that much of the time we're making bread (and vice versa) since the black beans call for a cup of beer and the bread calls for 3 oz. Plus, the black beans are just too delicious.

Tonight, TP is making dinner from his new cookbook and I'm making my famous butterscotch brownies for a work party tomorrow. Hooray!

Vegetarian Times Recipe Review

2009-12-13T12:24:00.001-08:00

Ah blogging...something I haven't had time to do lately...Or do much cooking for that matter. Working and being in school (with finals!) has sucked up my time! But I did get to make some things from this month's Vegetarian Times and 2 out of 3 recipes came out really well.

1) Samosa Casserole (Excellent)
It was from their "healthy casserole" section that is also meant to be great foods for freezing. And it was very tasty. It was mostly easy too - not a weeknight meal since it took about 30 minutes to prep and 45+ minutes to cook, but not difficult at all. You make a crust out of whole wheat pastry flour (which I didn't have, so substituted regular whole wheat flour) and all-propose flour. Then you cook potatoes and roughly mash them. You also saute some diced carrots, onions and frozen peas with Indian spices and mix it in to the potatoes with vegetable stock to resemble samosa filling. You put that in a pie plate and put the dough on top. Then bake.
It came out really well. The dough wasn't super flaky - because I didn't use pastry flour - but it was truly delicious. I think it is an excellent addition to our Indian curry repertoire and we can pull it out for an Indian feast!

2) Sicilian Green Beans with Balsamic Glaze (Very Good)
This was in their "best of" section for best side dish. It was very good. Pretty easy to make too. Just put some EVOO on green beans and a red pepper and put them in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. Then you make a sauce with orange juice, orange zest and balsamic vinegar that you let boil to a syrup. We were supposed to mix the green beans with the glaze, then transfer to a serving platter. I'm incredibly lazy and didn't do it (one more dish to clean? No thank you!) but it might have made it better, since there was plenty of sauce. It was still really, really tasty. We made it with a simple pasta dish (whole wheat noodles, a can of roasted tomatoes, garlic, seasoning).

3) Ricotta Ravioli with Sweet Potato Sauce (Meh)
This recipe had great potential: ravioli made with won-ton wrappers and a sweet potato sauce. What could be bad!? I love ravioli, I love sweet potatoes! Plus, this was a great way to make homemade ravioli since I don't have a pasta machine or the counter space to do it. The recipe says to make the raviolis and then freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet. This way, they will stick together and the filling won't fall out when cooking. Brilliant! I didn't mind the patckah-ing since I was up earlier than The Pedant Saturday morning (and procrastinating studying for a final). It worked really well. I did run out of filling, which I thought was odd. And, I totally didn't have space in my freezer for 2 (!!!) baking sheets with raviolis, so I put them in a deep container and put parchment paper between the layers.
We went to go make the sauce for dinner (which called for 1 cup cooked, pureed sweet potato, a shallot, garlic, some sherry and EVOO) and cooked up and mashed a sweet potato. Because that's the same as pureeing, right?! Wrong. Well, maybe not. Plus, we used a whole sweet potato and it was more than a cup, but it was just THICK. So we added some white wine which made it really tasty.
Then we went to go make the ravioli. We boiled the water. Great. I went to take them off the parchment paper - not so great. They stuck more than I expected. But it was fine. Then we drop them in the water. Fine. (Confession: I might not have used enough water. But it was 8:30 and I was getting ready to eat.) We stir them oh so very gently. And then TP is afraid they aren't cooked through. So we wait a bit. And then they get mushy and fall apart. And we waited, maybe 4 minutes to take them out (not the requisite 2). And they taste like won-ton wrappers with ricotta cheese. Not like delicious raviolis. We are bummed. It was not easy.
Lesson: Make ravioli with real pasta. Make won-tons with won-ton wrappers. Or buy pre-made raviolis. Or just eat it at a restaurant and do zero work.

I did make a pretty awesome vegetable soup to go with the ravioli. That came out perfectly.

Foods I Made Recently

2009-12-04T09:44:00.001-08:00

1) Beef stew. I took beef from Shopper's Food Warehouse, kosher chicken stock from the Teet, turnips, onions, carrots, parsnip, garlic, bay leaf, paprika, and dill, and cooked it for various times in a pot. I got impatient before putting it in containers for lunches, so it's a little more liquid than one might expect for "stew," but it's very tasty.

2) Mushroom and egg thing. I heated up oil with taco seasoning in it, then sauteed mushrooms in the taco seasoned oil. Then I poured the remainder of some Egg Beaters Southwestern into the pan, and finished it off with a sprinkle of cheese. Tasty.

3) Super-deluxe Fiber One® muffins. As you know, I am loath to just use Fiber One® apple and cinnamon muffin mix without adding more apples and cinnamon. This time, however, I also added golden raisins and black walnuts. It was fabulous. Black walnuts change the whole character of the muffin from "OK but box-tasting" to "hey, this is pretty complex and interesting!"

Breakfast

2009-11-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

This morning for breakfast I made my new favorite dish: Apple-Cinnamon-Brown Sugar Oatmeal. It's healthy and delicious.

I take 1/2 an apple and "dice" it. (I use dice in quotes because it's a very rough dice. The pieces are not tiny, but not big either.) I microwave it for one minute with some Cinnamon and Splenda brown sugar blend. I then put in a packet of instant oatmeal and just enough hot water for the oatmeal to cook. I'm a big fan of gluey, not soupy, oatmeal.

It's a really fun treat in the morning.

2009-11-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

Things have been hectic on my end - between work and school I have had minimal time for life let alone food. This weekend (it seems like so long ago!) The Pedant and I made some great food from 660 Curries. That's the extent of our cooking this week. (We did make a slow cooker risotto which was good in the past but since we've made several stove top risottos it was only fair by comparison.)

Today, the excitement in the food world (in the real work it's that I got a promotion! Hooray!) is this link TP sent me: http://www.nordicstore.net/noa_licorice_bombs_2445_prd1.htm

Icelandic Chocolate Coated Licorice. For sale. In bulk (cheaper!). For real. As Liz Lemon says: I want to go to there. You see, I love licorice. And chocolate. And Iceland. I bought a whole lot of this in Iceland and really enjoyed it. (I brought it to work and everyone turned their noses up, which just meant more for me.)

This weekend TP and I have some catching up to do on life and I really want to make this recipe I saw from a SELF Magazine healthy eating blog. It looks just up my alley since I really enjoy root vegetables.

Pan-Asian Carrots!

2009-11-11T10:48:00.001-08:00

As I wait for my dutch oven full of chickpeas, oil, and garlic to turn into deliciousness (at least according to the Post's food section of two weeks ago), I will blog about the "pan-Asian" carrots I just made.

Like so many things we do, this was from Mark Bittman's grimoire of eatings, "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian." I needed to get rid of some of the three pounds of garlic I got at Costco, much to my better half's chagrin, and so the Quick-Glazed Carrot recipe variations caught my eye.

This one involved simmering the carrot slices in sake with a teeny bit of olive oil (and garlic, because I had to get rid of it). Then, at the end of the cooking, I mixed in a solution of white miso and low-sodium soy sauce.

Turned out pretty good, actually. Not knock my socks off, but totally edible.

Okay, time to check the dutch oven.

Simple "Souper" Supper

2009-11-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling under the weather all week and by the time I got home last night I was ready for bed at 6. After realizing that might not be the smartest idea, I needed to fill my time. The original plan for dinner was to reheat Minestrone soup we had made and froze a few weeks ago. But even that seemed to be too much effort and not what we wanted. The Pedant came up with a great idea: Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese. The unlimited comfort food. So we opened a can of condensed soup and I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. TP did two open faced tuna melts which made him really happy.

It's such a quick and easy meal that is both healthy and wonderful. We should make it more when we're out of ideas.

Day for Tea

2009-11-04T06:16:00.001-08:00

I'm feeling a little sinus pressure, having spent yesterday out in the cold trying to get people to vote Democratic in Virginia (it wasn't as hard last year). So I am majoring in tea this morning.

First tea of the morning was Bigelow's "Earl Gray Green," which is an Asian green tea with the addition of bergamot oil. I like it better than traditional Earl Gray.

Now I'm on to Harris Teeter's Orange Spice Tea, which is a black tea with orange oil, cloves, and other spices. It's also quite tasty, but more of a souped-up English Breakfast taste than the Earl Gray Green.

Not sure what's next in the rotation. May move away from the caffeinated teas and go for Bigelow's "Ginger Snappish" or the Wissotzky lemongrass, za'atar, and verbena herbal tea.

I'll keep you posted.

A Weekend of Carbo Loading Before (and after) a Race

2009-10-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

This was yet another weekend of good food - both cooking and being cooked for. Here's the story:

Friday Night: The Pedant and I had very little food in the house by the end of the week and after a long week decided to treat ourselves to dinner out at our local sushi place before seeing Good Hair (Highly recommended!). The place was really busy, but the sushi was as good as ever. Even though I don't eat fish, I personally enjoy sushi - it's never too much for me and I never come out super stuffed or eat too much. Plus, I do love avocados. It can get pricey but it's worth it to know I'm eating better than cheesy Italian food or fatty Chinese food.
Saturday Dinner: I was running my first 10K Sunday morning and needed to "carbo load" (i.e., make a recipe TP saw on line). We made butternut squash risotto from Cook's Illustrated and it was really tasty. It was very different than the butternut squash risotto that TP made last week but really tasty. We amended the recipe a bit - mostly because we bought cut up squash without seeds or fibers (easier to deal with) so we didn't let the stock simmer with the seeds or fibers. But it was still really, really good. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday Brunch: Since I ran the 10K that day (with a pace about 30 seconds better than I did for my 5K and my best time ever! 64 (or 68, depending on the time on the website) minutes!), we had planned to make pancakes. However, both TP and I were tired and felt like treating ourselves (well, me, I ran, TP just cheered me on) so we decided to forgo pancakes (which we better make soon since we stocked up on maple syrup!) and went for brunch instead. We went to a creperie I'd been wanting to try and it was really, really good. I got the Crepe Moroccan which was like spinach pie filling in a crepe with a delicious mint-yogurt sauce. We shared the Just Peachy desert crepe and it was just peachy and super. (I did have PB&J before my race, a granola bar and 1/2 a (white bread but part of my post race food packet) bagel toasted with butter and honey before we went for brunch.)

Sunday Dinner: After a much needed nap we began making some dinner foods. Since we still have a hoard of potatoes we found a soup base recipe in Lidia's Family Table for a savory potato broth. That took a while to make (more time than we realized) but the end result was great. We froze more than half of it and made a garlic and onion soup with the rest of the broth. We poached some garlic in water and chopped up an onion and then let them thicken in the broth before pureeing it. And it was SO GOOD. I think I can't stress how good it was, since it was SO GOOD. SO GOOD. The best part (other than the garlic and onions and broth was the pureed bits of Parmesan cheese rind that was a little present. SO GOOD.

To go along with that soup, we made a crunchy couscous salad from our favorite benedictine. It was pretty good, but I think it had too many cucumbers.

I also prepped our last massive sweet potato and acorn squash for a slow cooker soup recipe for winter squash and sweet potato soup. We'll have that for dinner tonight with pasta in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce. Yum!

Here is Sherbs running her 10K. I'm the one in the red shirt (showing my support for Jody Wagner) and the purple jacket tied around my waist

First Time Making Gnocchi - Epic Win!

2009-10-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

Last night I made gnocchi for the first time and it was SO WORTH IT. The Pedant had found a recipe on a food blog and it met the requirements for dinners lately: 1) easy; 2) healthy; 3) uses food we have in the fridge from the CSA; 4) tasty. We had planned to make it Saturday night, but we both took a nap that was longer than expected and didn't wake up until 7. By the time I baked the potatoes, let them cool, mixed the dough, boiled the water, made the gnocchi and the sauce, it would have been 9:30. We tend to eat late, but I was running 6 miles in the morning (since I have my first 10K in 4 days!!) and didn't feel like going to bed very late with a very full stomach and running the next morning. So we put it on hold until Sunday, but as I said, we ate too many snacks and weren't hungry. That left last night. TP boiled the water while I was in a work out class and I made the gnocchi (he doesn't like touching food...I know...). I decided not to follow the recipe (never a great idea) and roll them into a long rope and cut it into bite-sized pieces so I made small ovals instead. Turns out that's much more difficult and they come out kinda lumpy. But, they were AMAZING. Sweet, but not too sweet, and warm and comforting. And, except for the pre-baking of the potatoes, not so hard to make.

TP made the sauce and kind of amended it. He sauteed some garlic in EVOO and then added the chard. I put in some of the gnocchi water to help the greens wilt. We added some white wine in and then some (fake) butter to give it a creamy texture. And it was so good. A real winner!

Now, who's coming over for gnocchi!?

2009-10-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

As I posted yesterday, we had a weekend full of cooking. We ended up not making the gnocchi for dinner since both of us snacked a bit too much at the book club. Plus, it was after 8 when people left and neither The Pedant or I felt like cooking much. We will make it tonight along with cooking up a Beet and Gorgonzola salad and setting a sweet potato and winter squash soup in the slow cooker for more easy to grab lunches. But, I can talk about some of the foods we made this weekend.

First, I'll start with Friday Dinner. TP found a recipe on the Mark Bittman blog, Bitten, for a Carrot, Spinach and Rice Stew, which worked out really well. It was nice and creamy (thanks butter!) and totally tasty. Also, although it took a while to thicken, it was pretty easy to make. We decided to make some sweet potatoes that we had gotten from our CSA and, according to a brilliant idea of TP's, I mashed 2 up with about 3/4 of a cup of red kidney beans (for protein). I added some cinnamon, salt, pepper, hot pepper flakes and EVOO and it came out really well. It was sweet and spicy with a really interesting taste.

Sunday we baked for my book club and had had pretty good success. We made polenta cookies from Lidia's Italy and they came out really well. We used a stand mixer not a food processor (I try to keep the food processor parve and the recipe call for butter) and it worked really well. I was supposed to pipe out crescents, but I didn't have a pipping bag, so I shaped them by hand which worked fine. They were a hit, and a bigger hit at work! We also made Peanut Butter Cupcakes from the Joy of Cooking that came out a bit more like muffins. I think for a few reasons: 1) I didn't follow the recipe perfectly and didn't alternate the wet and dry ingredients; 2) I used skim milk not whole milk; 3) I used natural peanut butter that was from the bottom of a large jar and was pretty dense; 4) I didn't frost them with a maple frosting because I didn't have confectioner's sugar. We did add about 1/2 a cup of receese peanut butter chips which added a great flavor, but we should have added in a full cup for more peanut buttery goodness.

As for the minestrone, I was pretty full from snacking during the book club so I only had a few tastes. It came out really well. We finally remembered to add in some Parmesan rinds to the cooking which I think made a huge difference. (A tip of the great Lidia!) Really good!

Weekend Overview

2009-10-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hopefully more in-depth blogging will come in the next 48 hours, but this weekend has been a great one for cooking:

Friday Dinner: Carrot and Spinach and Rice stew ala Bittman, plus sweet potatoes mashed with red kidney beans ala me (really tasty actually)
Saturday brunch: Potato curry that resembled hash browns with tomatoes and hot chilis from 660 Curries and fried eggs
Saturday Dinner: A pasta creation from The Pedant with canned tomatoes, red pepper and red kidney beans (really tasty)
Sunday Baking: Cornmeal cookies from Lidia's Italy and Peanut Butter Cupcakes from The Joy of Cooking (my bookclub is coming over and TP and I had fun baking, although the cupcakes came out more like muffins, but they are so tasty)
Sunday Dinner (upcoming): Sweet Potato Gnocchi with a kale sauce (the gnocchi dough is chilling)
Sunday Prepping: Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup

A weekend filled with good food - what could be better!?

Potato Lasagna!

2009-10-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

This post is a few days late, but I finally have time to write it. It's about dinner from Saturday night, when I made a Potato and Mushroom Lasagna that The Pedant found on the Food Netwoork site. Mostly because we have LOTS of potatoes from our CSA (and this is the last week for the CSA...I'm going to miss it so much!) I've talked before about what we've done with the tasty starchy veg (potato leek soup, tortilla espanola) but we currently have about 3 weeks worth of potatoes and are at a loss for cooking time.

Since I've started school, I'm out of the house 2 nights a week and don't need quite as many leftovers since I end up taking sandwiches. Plus, between all the Jewish Holidays we've been getting leftovers from family and/or spending weekends out of the house. Plus, we don't want to just make plain old baked potatoes. So TP came up with an idea - Potato Lasagna! He found the Emril recipe and bought most of the ingredients. But of course we ran out of time this week and Saturday, after heading to some wineries with friends, TP came home and fell asleep. I had run 6.5 miles that morning and was hungry (and proud of myself! Go Sherbs!), so I started cooking.

I did come across a one mail problems with the recipe: It did not take 1 hour to cook like I thought it did. (Turns out, I misread it and Emril said it takes 1 hour to prep, 1 hour to cook. That makes more sense. If that was the case, I would never had made it. 2 hours! Not worth it!

Well, it was worth it in the end. It was tasty. The potatoes were well cooked. We didn't have enough mushrooms (TP intended to change the recipe slightly, but didn't tell me, so I followed it closely) and I used 3/4 cup skim milk instead of cream and milk(because really, cream?! Sure it would taste so good but SO UNHEALTHY!) and less cheese since we didn't have enough Parmesan. It did take a while to cook with the cover off. Since it was skim milk and didn't absorb the way cream might, it was on the liquid-y side. And I was getting cranky and hungry - it was nearly 9 PM. So we put it in for longer and finally I just gave up and wanted to eat it. It wasn't actually as liquid-y as it seemed, and was very tasty. Even better the next day since it had absorbed more liquid overnight and while microwaving it.

I would make it again but make a few changes:
1) make it in advance and put it back in the oven without the top to crisp up after letting it sit for a day
2) I'd use the skim milk again (it added a creaminess and crisped up the potatoes) but less next time
3) I would use a full pound of mushrooms and maybe even spinach to make it tastier

Short Review of Tuna

2009-10-08T11:18:00.001-07:00

The foil-packed mango and chipotle tuna from Star Kist is not worth it. Not even with soy sauce.

Risotto Stories

2009-10-08T05:46:00.001-07:00

Last night I broke the faucet. Again.

Or, more accurately, the faucet broke while I was handling it, trying to clean butternut squash risotto out of our large pan. It then sprayed me in the chest with hot water, and when I moved out of the way, shot a jet straight out of the kitchen that left a big puddle in front of the entryway.

The risotto was worth it, though. I would say that it came from the Washington Post's most recent Food section, but I doubled the recipe as there's two of us in the house, except not really, as there was only one shallot at the Teet, I have no idea whether the two butternut squash from the CSA were bigger or smaller than required, and I had just slightly more Wolfgang Puck organic vegetable broth (yes, as my brother says in his Dadaist way, I get the Nazi discount at Spago) and arborio rice than would strictly double the recipe, but I added it anyway. Also a bunch of Smart Balance 50/50 butter blend which may not have been exactly doubled. Or the fact that I couldn't get unsalted shelled pistachios at the Pentagon Row Teet.

But thanks to patience and the indestructable tastiness of butternut squash and toasted coconut, I came away with a tasty risotto, which is now in the fridge waiting for future risotto meals.

The only thing I would absolutely change in the future is to mash up the butternut squash instead of merely scooping it out and throwing it in; it was a little clumpy. Still tasty, though.

Spanish Dinner! Ole!

2009-09-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

We've been receiving plenty of potatoes from our lovely CSA. 2 weeks ago I made potato leek soup (which, I found out after the fact that I was following the recipe wrong. It calls for 2 32-oz cartons of chicken stock (I substitute veg stock of parve chicken bullion) but I have always used just 32 ounces. And it comes out thick and delicious. I'm not going to change it because I like it thick but it now is a bit less healthy since there are more potatoes per serving, but potatoes are a healthy starch and blah blah blah...I digress...).

We now have plenty since we have 2 week's worth of potatoes so we used about 2 pounds last night as part of our Spanish dinner to remind us of our lovely honeymoon in Spain. So we made a tortilla espanola and mushroom paella.

The tortilla espanola was nearly 2 lbs of potatoes, 3 onions and 3 eggs (we used egg substitute) and was really simple. Now, I didn't fry in 18 oz (!!!!) of oil like the recipe told me to, but I sauteed the onion and potatoes in a few tablespoons of EVOO for a while until they were cooked through. In retrospect, I should have left it a bit longer to brown the onions more. I added lots of salt and pepper (maybe too much salt) and it was tasty. Then instead of more oil I sprayed the pan with Pam and added the eggs and potato-onion mixture (I pre-mixed them in the bowl and the heat of the potato-onion mixture started cooking the eggs which was kind of cool!) and cooked it on one side. It held together well when I (well, OK, The Pedant) flipped it and it was fairly evenly brown. The other side was also fairly brown, but fell apart when I tried to put it on a plate. Nonetheless, it was SO TASTY.

TP made the mushroom paella. It was (of course) a Mark Bittman recipe from the glorious How To Cook Everything Vegetarian and just really lovely. We used brown rice that TP pre-boiled (as per Bittman's suggestion) and baby bella mushroom caps. It was perfectly cooked. It was warm and delicious and tasty.

To top it all off for a great evening, we each had a square of Lindt 70% dark chocolate. All while watching the last hour of the BBC Pride and Prejudice. A perfect evening in my book.

Beer-Glazed Pinto Beans and Penne, Pedant Style

2009-09-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

New protip: do not wipe your brow after slicing hot peppers from the CSA. It burns. For a while.

Was out of ideas for dinner, and forgot I had tuna casserole in the fridge, so I made pasta with a variation of Bittman's beer-glazed black beans for the sauce. First I threw some hot peppers from this week's CSA box into a pan of hot olive oil and ground black pepper. Then I sauteed the too-sharp red onion remainders from last week. Once that was done, I added a cup of Amstel Light (I drank the rest), orange blossom honey, pinto beans, and red pepper flakes (to ensure spiciness). Into this I put nearly-cooked whole wheat penne.

It's a little sweeter than I expected, but it has a nice burn on it that makes it quite tasty. Works really well with parmesan (what doesn't)?

Starting a New Year Off Right

2009-09-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. The Pedant and I were going to TP's parents for services and meals. TP's mom asked us to bring 2 salads, one for a meat meal and one for a dairy meal (since most of our family keeps kosher). Last week had been really busy, so while I was at work, TP researched salads that would be easy to make, delicious and fitting in with our religious obligations. We chose 2 orzo salads and they were both a hit.

First, the "meat" salad. It was a Bon Appetite recipe that we found on Epicurus. The Orzo, Green Bean, and Fennel salad with Dill Pesto was a HIT. The fennel gave it a really lovely flavor and worked really well with the dill pesto. It was fresh, colorful and fairly healthy - not too much pasta (which is one of the lovely things of orzo - a little goes a long way).

The "dairy" salad was from the monastery salad cookbook, which is always so good to us. We had made it before. It is orzo, olives, green peas, red pepper and red onion in a mayonnaise sauce with dijon mustard and lemon juice dressing. The problem we had the first time we made it was that the onion (1 red onion, thinly sliced) was SO sharp it rendered the salad inedible. All you tasted was ONION. (For leftovers, we added more mayo and mustard and an avocado and it was still ONION!) This time, we tasted the onion first and instead of using the entire thing in slices, we use 1/5 of it chopped very fine, which gave it the flavor but did not overpower it. (We also used more may this time since it wasn't just us eating the salad.) And it was perfect. Refreshing, sweet (the peas) and tangy (the onions - even just the few tablespoons!) it was a great lunch dish.

Dinner Last Night

2009-09-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

Since I was doing some home work and The Pedant was researching, dinner last night was fast and simple. I decided to make a kind of succotash, since I had a yellow squash and corn from my CSA. Also, I love succotash. I kind of made it up as I went along, somewhat following a recipe I'd made before for zucchini and green bean succotash from my favorite Weight Watcher's cookbook. First, I sauteed half an onion and some garlic until nice and brown. Then I added in a chopped yellow squash and some frozen lima beans with salt, pepper and ancho chili powder and a bit of EVOO. I then let it get all caramelized and tasty and threw in some corn that I was boiling. And it was tasty. A perfect late summer dinner (and lunch for today too!).

More Lunch News

2009-09-10T08:44:00.001-07:00

I too have an exciting lunch today - in fact, I had it for dinner Tuesday so I know it'll be good. It's a sandwich with hard boiled eggs (which I relearned are very tasty on sandwiches while in Scandinavia), roasted garlic hummus, Bittman's caramelized onion chutney and lettuce. And I'm quite excited. The chutney is much spicier this time than I've had it before, mostly because the hot peppers were very hot. But it's quite tasty. And the bread gets all soft and saturated with hummus which is fun.

Lunch Lessons Learned Today

2009-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

As I'm home and searching for jobs, I am now making lunch out of what we have in the pantry at the moment, and trying not to subsist entirely on Fiber One™ bars (or their Special K equivalent which have extra warnings for fibrousness) and fifty-cent ramen. This would be easy except that I am lazy and occasionally suffer from what I call "food aphasia," which is where I look into a fridge at raw ingredients and say, "how does this become food"?

Today, I made food in two steps. I cooked up some Uncle Ben's "Country Inn Mexican Fiesta" rice, adding a can of Goya red kidney beans for complete protein-icity. I then heated up a Quorn cutlet with some of Mark Bittman's tomato chutney.

Lessons learned:

Quorn is good with tomato chutney.
Uncle Ben's "Mexican Fiesta" is about as Mexican as the taco stand at McFadden's on Cinco de Mayo (the Hawk & Dove in Southeast also has a similar stand on offer, but McFadden's manages to keep its ground floor from smelling like urine, thus making it a classier establishment despite the Georgetown frat boys). The rice is also pretty tasteless.
The "Mexican Fiesta" rice does not go that well with tomato chutney.
However, it tastes great mixed with the extra-spicy version of Bittman's onion chutney that the Sherbs cooked up for our Sunday hot dog party.

That's lunch. Now back to the job hunt.

The Thrill of Organic Vegetables

2009-09-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

I hate insects. I hate having to touch them, especially. Even through gloves.

So the fact that our CSA farm is organic leads to some unfortunate surprises, like today, when we did not get a single ear of weevil-free corn. I salvaged some of it, discarded the rest, and basically flushed the weevils themselves down the disposal. There's also a ladybug flying around the apartment from where I brought up the courage to flick it off of our lettuce.

That said, the veggies and fruits that are not bug-ridden (the vast majority of them) are delicious. I had a tomato from our box today with hummus on bread, and it was quite tasty.

Jewish Delis on the Fall

2009-09-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

An article popped up on my twitter feed today. A friend who I used to work at camp with runs an online Jewish community and follows interesting trends in the Jewish Community. She tweeted about an article on a man on a mission to save the Jewish Deli. I read, and loved the article. (And now, have a craving for a potato knish with deli mustard on the side to dip, cole slaw, half sour pickles and a diet cream soda.) I do love Jewish delis. As a vegetarian I do miss many meat products and often it's turkey breast on rye (or wheat) with mayo and mustard that can be had at Jewish delis. There is something wonderfully comforting about deli food - it's quick, it's terrible for you, it's giant, it makes you want to speak Yiddish, it's delicious. I wish there were more of them. It is a shanda that so many have closed down!! Bring them back!! Give me a knish!!!

"Fancy" Dinner

2009-09-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, The Pedant and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We had assumed it would be filled with pomp and circumstance - an exquisite dinner out with wine, dessert, fantastic food, waiters who wait on you with bated breath when you finish a sip of water to refill your glass, you know, the works (and we've been to those restaurants before: the anniversary of our first date, a pre-wedding dinner, when accepting my current position). However, since we had SO MUCH good fondue the night before, a big, fancy, filling dinner was the last thing we could imagine doing. Plus, once we ruled out fancy food, we just didn't feel like going some place for a casual dinner when we could stay home and veg with some food and wine and watch TV. Which is just what we did. And it was a perfect evening. We got to watch most of Jacques Pepin Fast Food My Way, Cook's Country, and America's Test Kitchen (CC did a chocolate cake recipe that looks amazing; ATC did LOW FAT chocolate recipes that TP printed and I can't wait to do - he also printed the chocolate cake recipe but that is a bit advanced and oh so caloric). While doing that we opened a delicious Syrah from a Vintage Ridge (I had 2 glasses! and 2 glasses of wine Sunday! That's more wine than I've had in the last month!) and ordered in from a local pizza place - we got a pizza capreze, Greek salad and a pasta salad, and boy was it good. The pizza was well cooked - although the crust was a bit light for the weight of the cheese, and would have been better eaten with a fork and knife - not a bad thing at all! The pasta salad was a fun addition, very fresh and great. Plus, we finished it by sharing a bar of Lindt 70% dark chocolate. And still feeling full, but very happy.

Perhaps it was one of the best meals we had in a while.

Cheese Overload!

2009-08-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

We have made and eaten some pretty awesome foods this week.

Last night I made tomato cobbler from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian; like any cobbler, it's chopped up fruity stuff with a batter topping. Unlike fruit cobblers, the tomato is mixed with salt, pepper, and cornstarch, then covered with a flour and cornmeal batter. It was pretty good, but not as good as I'd hoped; probably because I didn't add enough cornstarch and so the tomatoes didn't sufficiently gel.

I hate cornstarch. Every time I open the box up, the silken powder gets everywhere. It sticks to my hands, won't measure easily, and doesn't wipe up or wash off without work. So I try to avoid it as much as possible.

This morning I made scones again, and again with chocolate chips. The recipe from Quaker Oats is wrong about adding raisins (or chocolate chips) halfway through the process; if you do that, the raisins or chips will end up mostly on the edge of the scones, and will become burnt into bitter carbon. The rest of the scones turned out fine, though.

Dinner tonight was fondue, from our Barnes & Noble fondue cookbook. It was easy - chop an onion, sauté in a hunk o' butter, add flour and sour cream, then stir in gruyere and cheddar until gooey deliciousness achieved. It was so awesomely cheesy tasty, and none of us should have eaten as much as we did, even using broccoli and cauliflower florets as a nod to balanced nutrition.

Also a frequent dunk into the cheese goodness was Cook's Illustrated's "Almost No-Knead Bread" recipe, which is sadly no longer online for free. It's a variant of Bittman's loaf, with a little tweaking for a higher rise and tangier inside. And it worked, despite all my attempts to ruin it with inaccuracy (I'm not sure I added enough flour), shortcut-taking (we didn't let it cool for two hours because we were too hungry), and my complete inability to knead. The crust is crunchy, the inside soft and tangy, and it tastes like something you get at a restaurant. Next time, we're making it with whole wheat flour.

Weekend Roundup

2009-08-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

Although things have been busy recently, and they only will get busier soon. I am going back to school part-time and still working full time, so many of my meals will consist of really delicious sandwiches eaten between classes (good thing I'm married to a guy who likes to bake his own bread!). Nonetheless, The Pedant and I will focus our energy on cooking on the weekends.

This past weekend my parents were in town, so we didn't do lots of cooking. There was, of course, lots of eating: NY Bagels (SO GOOD!), really great Greek food, a movie about food (plus I dreamt of french onion soup Saturday night), ice cream, Chinese food and more ice cream. We also walked a lot and caught up.

Also, I have fallen in love with cantaloupes from my farmer's market. Yes, we're members of a CSA, but I like eating cantaloupes because I need the potassium. And the farmer's market cantaloupes are very sweet and very good.

Your Source For Mockery Judaic

2009-08-20T05:59:00.001-07:00

This post is only somewhat food-related.

Last night, we got a copy of the Jewish Source catalog. We receive this catalog because a thoughtful relative gave us a gift from it for our wedding, a gift that bears a resemblance to a certain Nazi-vaporizing artifact, so much so that, despite its attractiveness and clear utility, we fear to use it with our eyes open. Although the Nazi-vaporizing effect of this item may be that we now get the catalog every month, which is filled with all sorts of amusing items that we will never, ever buy.

So, taking a page from Chris Sims's Invincible Super Blog and its mockery of a comic industry trade publication, I will proceed to lampoon the most amusing items from the Jewish Source:

The already out-of stock Rosh Hashana gift basket: only one shofar cookie. It's a big cookie, but the kids will be fighting over it regardless. Also, since it looks like everything else is pareve, why include the one box of milk chocolates?
If I said, "Jews with access to lasers," you'd think that it would be awesome, right? Sadly, not so much. Too many Jews use their lasers to create incomprehensible glass knickknacks. Also trivets. If a right-wing Jew says that we have to do something aggressive to Iran, tell him that Jews like him should stop doing stupid crap with their lasers and actually use them how lasers were meant to be used.
For a long time, my favorite inappropriate Kabbalistic item from the Jewish Source was this seemingly H.P. Lovecraft and Japanese animation-inspired hamsa print, which I believe is crafted solely for the purpose of putting into children's and teenagers' rooms to freak them out and make them paranoid. But, in fact, you can do one better with a glass sculpture that makes the Jewish deity appear to be a poorly-rendered Sauron from the Lord of the Rings.
Nothing says "I ♥ Kahanist politics" as much as an Israeli Defense Force bullet necklace.
Speaking of, when your Israeli Defense force magen david amulet starts looking like some sort of Hindu fertility symbol, or possibly yet another H.P. Lovecraft-themed item, maybe it isn't really Jewish anymore.
I told the Sherbs that these rings would be much more meaningful as piercings, and that we should get a pair. She pretended to laugh and humor me while desperately looking for an exit to the conversation and the room.

There are some useful and attractive things in the Jewish Source catalog. But they're far outnumbered by stuff like the above.

In a preGood Italian Food!

2009-08-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Last night, The Pedant and I cooked a really great dish from Lidia's Italy. It was really, very good. And not too complicated! The dish was Pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian specialty. We did modify things a bit but it still turned out to be amazing.

The recipe called for about a pound of eggplant fried in a cup of oil. We probably had well over a pound - maybe closer to 2 pounds - and we so didn't fry. (Sorry Lidia. I love you and your shows, but frying is just too hard for me and my waistline!) We sauteed in about 1/4 of a cup (a thin layer - but next time, maybe even a thinner layer) and it was good. Then we set a pound of whole wheat penne to boil (apparently, we couldn't find whole wheat ziti at the Teet) and made a simple sauce with canned crushed tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. After adding in the pasta to let it finish cooking in the sauce, we added some fresh basil (from my mini-garden, i.e., 2 small pots on the balcony with basil, parsley and chives from our CSA), about 1 cup of ricotta salata (which, I really have to say is an amazing cheese - I really love it and need to find many more ways to use it!) and then layer on the eggplant and 1 more cup of ricotta salata. And it was amazing!

TP and I had a lovely evening eating (too much, but so worth it!) Pasta alla Norma and watching Cranford - a mini series recommended by my cousins and very entertaining.

We also made another Lidia dish for dinner Tuesday, but this time from Lidia's Family Table: Cauliflower and egg salad. We liked the recipe so much we actually copied it from the TV show before we got the book (although this was the first time we made it). Very simple, very good: steamed cauliflower, hard boiled eggs, EVOO, white wine vinegar. Toss, enjoy. And we did.

Tuna With Mammal Hearts FTW

2009-08-11T10:26:00.001-07:00

The tuna fish, olive oil, and pickled pepper sandwich I wrote about earlier was tasted today, after some time in storage. The taste has, if anything, improved. Food win.

Only downside: the oil turned the anadama bread a little greasy.

My Bread Adventures

2009-08-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight's dinner is avocado themed - because really, who dislikes avocado*? We will had a cold avocado chipotle bisque and avocado mango rolls, made with rice paper. Both are from recent Vegetarian Times. We've made the soup before and it was so tasty.

But, I had about 1/4 of an avocado left over from the prep for the rolls. I couldn't let it go to waste so I made a sandwich with it. I am quite excited about lunch in 90 minutes! It is:

Avocado slices, red pepper slices, tofu (not marinated, but I kind of like raw tofu), whole grain mustard and the Bittman brown bread The Pedant made yesterday. The only downside is it was falling out of the bread when I made it but I can handle it. It might be the sandwich I'm looking forward to the most since I was in Scandinavia.

*TP's cousin is sadly allergic. I know she dislikes avocado. But that's ok. More in the world for me!

Let Me Ruin Your Meal

2009-08-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Fun fact of the night: Ba-tampte pickled bell peppers, when just taken from the jar, look disturbingly like preserved mammalian hearts.

I made this discovery while working on my lunches for the week. Having created two breads, I needed to justify them by making sandwiches. The brown bread, which was pareve, was made into sandwiches with Empire turkey bologna and French's mustard with horseradish; the horseradish mustard helped compete with the strong flavors of the bread, which was made with (among other things) bran cereal and cocoa powder.

But I also made "Anadama" bread, which is dairy (as well as containing plenty o' molasses), and I needed a sandwich for that. Enter my eternal quest for the perfect tuna fish sandwich.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am always trying to make canned tuna into something better than a mayonnaise-y mass tasty only for tasting mostly like mayonnaise. I've had limited luck with mustard-based concoctions, so today I tried a base of olive oil, dehydrated onions, garlic powder, and crushed red pepper. I added to that tuna and chopped pickled red bell pepper, the latter for extra taste and texture.

It tasted pretty good right out of the bowl, but the important thing is for it to be palatable after a day or so in the fridge. My mustard tuna sandwiches were merely adequate to that task, and gave off a pungent vinegar/tuna odor which few others could stand. We'll see how these do.

Food Prep Day

2009-08-09T12:02:00.001-07:00

I have ten minutes before I put the brown bread in the oven, so I might as well blog.

Today's been food preparation day here; I made scones from my mom's recipe (taken from the Quaker Oats cookbook) this morning (including my family's traditional chocolate chips), along with a bread from Bittman's magnum vegetarian opus that involved white flour, wheat flour, cornmeal, and molasses. It tastes great; so much so that it's already half gone. The Sherbs made our usual amped-up Fiber One muffins - we take Fiber One-branded "apple cinnamon" muffin mix, add apple bits and golden raisins, and enjoy it a lot more.

This evening's bread is a brown bread from Bittman; it smells good already, so I'm optimistic.

I'm also making a gigantic chickpea and mushroom soup from Lydia's Italy; the chickpeas still seem hard after an overnight soak and twenty minutes of boiling, but they're on boil for another two hours, so I will trust in Mme. Bastianich at current.

The soup itself is lunches and dinner later this week; dinner tonight is hot dogs. Hebrew National makes them low-fat.

Meat Without Flame

2009-08-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Chicken kabobs last night on the George Foreman outdoor grill. We used some Soy Vay wasabi teriyaki for marinade. Other ingredients included pineapple, onion, mushroom, and green bell pepper.

I'm still getting the hang of grilling on the Foreman outdoor grill; it doesn't have the same sensation as over a flame, and requires the cover for most of the cooking, so I feel like I have to guess how long it needs to be on before a turn. Regardless, it was tasty.

Next Time With Salt Fish!

2009-08-04T06:56:00.001-07:00

New food lesson: when trying to make a meal in the time indicated on the recipe (7 minutes, not including pasta cooking time), use pre-pitted oil-cured olives.

Otherwise, one has ten minutes or more of olive-y frustration as one individually pits the olives. Okay, maybe it would be faster if I had some sort of pitting device. But no. I had only a Wusthof 8" chef's knife, a wooden cutting board from Ikea, and a resolution to ignore my mild sensory defensiveness no matter how dirty/greasy my hand became (in a nod to my obsessive need to wipe my hands after each olive, I dedicated my right hand to holding the knife, so at least one hand would feel clean).

But it was worth it. Following our heroine, Lydia Mattichio Bastianich (our house motto is WWLBD - "what would Lydia Bastianich do?"), we decided to make a recipe out of Lydia's Family Table. I made spaghetti in an orange and olive sauce. Oil-cured olive bits go into a pan with browned sliced garlic, then orange zest, orange juice, and toasted pine nuts are added (not to mention pasta water!). It is absolutely delicious.

Someday, when I'm not just cooking for the two of us, I'm making the breaded salt fish from Lydia's Italy.

Poetry is fun!

2009-07-29T13:19:00.001-07:00

A Poem* in Honor of my 12-inch Calphalon Non Stick Skillet

Dear 12-inch Skillet, how I love you
You are big enough for fake bacon plus an egg or two.
You are easy to clean and make cooking a cinch
I can fry onions with less oil and salt - just a pinch!
I tend to make you my go-to pan
Like for dinner last, tonight's, or beans in a can.
Plus pastas, stir fries**, Mexican fiestas galore
Tonight's Shakshooka will prove not to be a bore.
Oh Calphalon pan, it's you I adore!

*Note: I so don't care about meter
** Yes, I have a wok, but it's hard to get to. Actually, I have 2 woks, but this is easier!

On Why Using a Cookbook is Important

2009-07-22T09:30:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's the fact that's I'm reading a great book or maybe it's the fact I'm moderately fed up with people in general, but I really dislike people who think they are better cooks than you (me?) because they don't use a cookbook. Or recipe. Ever.

Now, I'm not saying I'm Julia Child (but I am so excited about Julie and Julia!) or my heroine Lidia Bastianich or even Mark Bittman, but I can hold my own. I'm a pretty good baker. I can use a knife (thanks Sur la Table and friends/family who gave us visa gift cards for our wedding). I can make a mean tomato sauce. I can even flip an omelet in a pan (well, once I did it!). But I also know the value of a good recipe and cookbook.

I've heard from several people before "Oh, I never look at cookbooks. I looooove coming up with recipes on my own." Well, bully for you. You see, the value of a recipe is fantastic. Now, I seldom measure (my mother-in-law's comment about measuring is only when baking). I can eye ball a teaspoon, 1/4 of a cup, a dash, etc. And I often under salt and over garlic and put in 2 times as much hot pepper than a recipe often calls for. But that's the beauty of a cookbook. The author won't come to your house, wielding a 8 inch perfectly honed chef's knife (although thanks to The Pedant, our knives are perfectly honed as well!) threatening to stab you in the stomach if you don't use exactly 1/8 teaspoon cumin. No. That's preposterous. Cooking is really about feel and senses to when things are done (except rice. I learned this last night. I am terrible at cooking rice. It's because I'm impatient - thanks Mom - and cook everything too high. So our brown basmati rice burned. It did actually give the dish a nice, er, crunch.) but recipes and cookbooks are invaluable. I use them as a jumping off point. In my slow cooker recipes I add in more spices than the author calls for. I substitute regularly. I omit. I add. But I use the cookbooks all the time. Why? Because I'm not a trained chef. Because I can't tell the difference between cayenne, ancho and chipotle chili powder (well, I can because they do in fact have different flavors, but I just don't care - see the difference?).

I think I was thinking about this theory while reading the book and eating lunch of 3 different things that all came from cookbooks or recipes.

1) Roasted Eggplant and Mushroom Soup. My mom found this recipe in a freebie magazine when they were in the Berkshires one summer. It's a very simple and healthy soup. My addition - I use about 1-2 tablespoons of EVOO instead of like 1/2 a cup.

2) Sri Lankain Yellow Curry with Hard Cooked Eggs. This comes from our favorite curry book. It was a simple recipe (but I did burn the rice we made) and really good. Did it matter I didn't have fungeek? No. Did it matter I added in the cinnamon stick after the onions because I forgot? No. Would I have been able to come up with this recipe all by myself? Hell no. That's why Ragahvan Iyer wrote the dammed book. And Thank God he did. So tasty.

3) Minty Kidney Beans with Potatoes. Also from the curry book. Also really good. I used fat free Greek Yogurt and fat free half-and half (does any one else find this an oxymoron?) instead of full fat yogurt and heavy cream (to prevent curdling). Did it matter. Well, actually yes, because the yogurt curdled a bit. But it is still super tasty.

So that's my rant. Also, cookbooks are fun. They have pretty pictures. And tasty recipes. I'd buy more if we had more space for them/wasn't a cheapskate. But, I was thinking about it. Most cookbooks cost between $15 and $30. And produce an endless number of meals (because each time they are slightly different). Eating out all the time costs waaaay more. I know what I may do with my amazon gift card...Hooray for Lidia!

Changing Habits

2009-07-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Since this is (half) my blog, I get to pick my posts and topics. Now I SO don't want to turn into a "diet blogger" because really, no one wants to hear about that, I do enjoy the fact that I have successfully lost some weight in the past 3 years and have been eating better. And more interestingly. Not that I didn't before, but I definitely have changed eating habits and exercising habits (which, when I exercise, I can eat more sweets, so I'm all for it) for the better.

I was at a Weight Watcher's meeting last night and the leader mentioned briefly how your taste buds change when you loose weight. Well, not necessarily change, but are different. He talked about fried chicken. How he eats it and is disappointed. And I have a similar situation. Not with fried chicken, but (sadly!) with Chinese Food.

It started in April. I was home for a wedding and had been really craving good, New York Chinese food. The greasy, saucy kind. The fried chips with duck sauce, the dumplings, the cold noodles with sesame sauce, moo sho with lots of hoison, the works. The only thing I didn't get was General Tso's Tofu (or mock chicken) mostly because the don't have it at the restaurant we went to. But I can taste it in my mouth. There is one really good take out place that does the tofu and it's amazing. Sweet, spicy, fried, saucy, amazing. The problem: after I had the dinner I'd been waiting for, I wasn't happy. I was overly full for one thing and for another, it just wasn't as comforting anymore. A few weeks later, The Pedant and I ordered in lots of Chinese food one night (it was after an argument and both of us didn't really feel like cooking or going out so we ordered a bit too much) and again - same thing. Too greasy! Too fried! Not what I wanted. I was a little bummed. Maybe my taste buds have changed. Or I can't handle the amount of food I used to and therefore am eating too much without realizing. I'm not sure. I still crave Chinese food (I will get my Gen. Tso's one day as a treat dammit!!) but no longer want to go out of my way for it. It might also have to do with proximity. In college and grad school, I would order from a local place a few times a month and it was always just good enough. Here, I can't replicate that meal (there are apparently no scallion pancakes in DC?!) and when I have Chinese food infrequently I build it up in my mind for being amazing. And it's not. It never was, but it was always good.

Man, now I want some Gen. Tso's. TP - want to not make another curry from our favorite curry book and order in?! Probably not, but worth a shot.

Things I Learned Recently

2009-07-17T09:18:00.001-07:00

Evidently, there's a new conveyor-belt sushi place in DC. If I hadn't just got downsized, I'd go, especially since it is a fusion place and our last fusion experience worked out really well.

Also, Rhagavan Iyer has a pretty awesome curry cookbook. His curries with pasta have all been tasty, although we have to work from eating all the cashews pre-recipe.

Dinner for One

2009-07-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Pedant had a previous engagement last night so I was on my own for dinner. And I made something amazing. (I did realize when alone I almost always make a small variation on the same dish, which I kind of already knew, but was reminded how I eat when alone while listening to last week's The Splendid Table at the gym this morning.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper interviewed the authors of a new book about people eating alone.) Regardless, this was a clear winner. And tasted so good while watching Gilmore Girls from Netflix after a nice swim.

I cooked up a little over a serving of whole wheat capellini. While boiling the water, I sauteed half a red onion in a little (too much...what can I say, I love EVOO and let my hand slip when cooking for me too often...) olive oil with some salt. I then added in a huge handful of spinach and a lot of powdered garlic and let that cook down. As Lidia Bastianich always tells me to do, I added in a lot of the pasta cooking liquid to thicken the sauce. I put it all in a bowl and sprinkled some fresh parmesan on top. Then I fried up an egg until it was just perfect - the white was on the crispy side and the yolk was runny and warm and delicious. It coated the pasta perfectly and made it creamy and fatty and amazing. The cheese got a little melty and the dish was to die for. So good.

Chicken Salad Success!

2009-07-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

I had a bunch of roast chicken that my mom gave me after dinner Friday. I had a bunch of kosher-for-Passover mayo that wasn't getting any more shelf stable in the back of my fridge.

So I made chicken salad. I also added one whole onion and a whole mess o' pepper.

The salad came out great, so I distributed it onto a number of Pepperidge Farm® Deli Flats for future lunch consumption. Deli Flats are not only pareve, as mentioned before, but are quite good as not-a-lot-of-bread which still tastes like bread. I got the 7 Grain, because they're more fiber and less fat than the Whole Wheat. Go figure.

Summery Dinner

2009-07-13T07:31:00.001-07:00

Dinner last night was divine. We made a delectable summery feast and ate it while watching a great movie peripherally about food (highly recommended!). Both were from epicurious.com and both were very, very good.

The salad was a Beet Salad with Plums and Goat Cheese. We had both plums and a (giant!) beet from our amazing CSA and wanted a way to use both without being left with a cake for 2 people (which means I would eat 4 people's servings). The Pedant found this salad on line while doing some searching and it was perfect. We did amend it - as you see it serves 10 (!!) and has many more steps than I cared for (really, I'm going to put it on a platter and dirty up 2 or more bowl if I don't have to?! Plus, I had hazelnut oil not walnut oil and it worked out just fine, thank you.) but it worked out. The only tiny hitch is that we purchased a Camembert goat cheese that I don't like and didn't crumble on top very well. TP put some in his salad and loved it. I was a bit bummed because I do love me some goat cheese but I didn't really need the calories anyway. The salad turned out really well in the end. The dressing was tasty, the beets and plums and onions contrasted really well together and I can see how it would present itself very nicely on a large platter with a color contrast.

Our main dish was the Tuscan Beans in Summery Tomato Ragu that I found from their daily RSS recipes. And it was really great. It was a great dish to make over the weekend since it took some time (between soaking and cooking the beans - which I probably should have cooked 10 minutes longer) and baking it in the oven for a good half an hour but it was worth it. The sauce was very flavorful and it was just delicious. We followed their suggestion and bought a great multi grain bread to soak up the sauce which really tied the dish together. Pair it with a rose wine and a Skinny Cow Mint sandwich for desert and we were set.

So psyched for my leftovers lunch today!

News flash!

2009-07-12T11:15:00.001-07:00

Pepperidge Farm deli flats are pareve.

Wedding Food

2009-07-09T06:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I SWORE I'd post more but then I went to NY for nearly a week for the Sister-in-law's wedding, which took up all my time. Plus, we hadn't been eating terribly exciting food. The wedding was lovely and they did have onion rings and curly fries. Amazing. Plus, the Thursday before the wedding I had like 3 mini canollis. Even if they were kosher parve, they were still surprisingly good.

Winning Dinner

2009-06-29T09:29:00.001-07:00

Last night's dinner was an amazing WIN. Yes, in capitals, because it was that good. Since we love our CSA, The Pedant and I wanted to use some fresh broccoli and collards that we got. So, yesterday morning during breakfast we pull out Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian - a cookbook quickly becoming our go-to-first and favorite (although, shameless plug for presents - we are DYING for Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Italy which may be another great one since we are obsessed with her shows). Lo and behold he has 2 great recipes that we used for our broccoli and collards.

The broccoli was a suggested substitution for a green bean with miso-walnut dressing. And, after three tries at acquiring white miso, we blended the miso, soy sauce, ginger, walnuts and water in a blender and poured over steamed broccoli. It was tremendous - however, a bit salty for my taste with the miso and soy - but nutty and creamy and really great.

The best part of dinner was the rolled kale (in this case, collards) with feta, olives and tomatoes. (Ok, I picked off the gross olives and tomatoes.) Basically, you cut off the stems of the collards and saute with some EVOO and garlic. Meanwhile, you slice the leaf in half and cut a block of feta into small slices that get rolled into the collard leaves. Nest in the pan with the cooked stems, add wine (we used water but I'm sure it's even more flavorful with a good white wine) and pour olives and chopped tomatoes on top. Let it cook until the collards are tender and the cheese is just a bit melty. Then we topped it with chopped red onion. And it was gooood. Like, really good. Company worthy in fact. So good.

There was another Bittman win I almost forgot about. For my book club, I made Brown Sugar Cookies with Sea Salt. And I even fudged it a bit - I didn't have some semolina flour,so I used all all-purpose, rather than a mix, I used light brown sugar not dark (after having dried out dark brown sugar one too many times I never buy it anymore), and I had a coarse kosher salt. Yet, they still turned out amazingly. They were sweet but not clawing, buttery and a tiny bit salty for fun.

And...We're Back!

2009-06-27T04:19:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is incredible. It has been well over a month since our last real post - the interlude about John Kerry counts, but the tiny amount of text is inexcusable. And well, while not sleeping well last night, I have single handedly decided to resurrect the blog (I'm sure The Pedant will agree but he was fast asleep during my revelation) and I woke up early and am not ready to go running yet (although I do have a goal to get to in October - wish me luck!) so I will blog about dinner last night. And, well food for the last month.

First - Scandinavia and Iceland. It was awesome. Iceland was incredible. The food was amazing. Many vegetarian options. Very good. Best Onion Rings in my life were had here. Oslo was also very good, we just happened to have bad food experiences - expensive, not worth it restaurants But the sandwiches we had for lunch (roasted veggie with humus one day, the next day got a pesto and cheese on a baguette) were cheap and tasty. Copenhagen was also amazing. The city was beautiful and we had some great pastries and really good food.

When we got back we started getting food from the CSA we joined. We've gotten some really great, fresh produce and have made interesting food. This weekend we're making a broccoli soup to use up broccoli from the last 2 weeks. Plus, the food is super fresh and stays longer in the fridge.

Last night, I had really wanted to see My Life in Ruins (especially since I read Nia Vardalos's blog post last week) so I was to meet TP for dinner right near the movie theater. Or so we thought. Google Maps was a bit off, and the restaurant wasn't quite as near to the movie theater as I thought. And then I got there a little late. And got lost. So we nixed the movie (boo!) and had a really tasty dinner. It was at Yaku, a Peruvian-Chinese place. TP ordered some appetizers while I got lost in the surrounding neighborhood and we started with Yaku lettuce wraps (with tofu) and Stuffed Yaku croquettes. Both were very tasty. The croquettes were cheese fried with a spicy sauce on the plate and were very tasty. The lettuce wraps were messy to eat, but tasty. We took advantage of happy hour prices on booze (well, for my drink and the appetizers, especially since I was cranky we wouldn't see the movie and I got lost, but we missed the big rain storm and the restaurant has giant windows that were perfect for watching the storm) and I got a white sangria which was fair (I got less fruit than others around me and it got watered down with ice quickly) and TP got a fun spicy tequila ginger drink.

For entrees, I got the Quintto Vegteriano - a risotto made of quinoa with veggies and Parmesan cheese. It was perfect - just creamy enough with the interesting texture of quinoa. TP got the Chinese BBQ Duck and really enjoyed it. He loved the cilantro fried rice.

For dessert we shared the apple wantons with an amazing Dulce de leche ice cream. A total win. This place has brunch and we said we will definitely go back for that one day.