Staves of Life

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.

Foods I Made Recently

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!"

Pan-Asian Carrots!

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.

Let Me Ruin Your Meal

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.

Cookin' With Beer, continued

Made Bittman's spiced squash tart last night for a gathering tonight. Hope it works out; I tried to slice the squash as I was cooking the onions and I think I burned the garlic.

As the Sherbs pointed out, we went on a bit of a beer foods kick recently, which is kind of funny as the Sherbs doesn't like beer and I rarely drink it. Not only did we make tasty beer-sauced mushroom tempeh (which really could be anything in the mushroom gravy; white wine would work just as well, as would a tasty stock), we made our regular favorite, beer-glazed black beans.

The beer and black beans we made was pretty tasty, in my view, but using Heineken (and some Rolling Rock when we ran out of Heineken) instead of a darker brew gave it less of a malty, wheaty taste, and highlighted the spice more. Still good, but not with a hint of caramelized porter sweetness.

Semi-Korean

I had some great leftovers for lunch.

Mark Bittman's vegetarian cookbook had a forty-minute soup which is just as good, if not better, the second day. It's Korean-inspired, and involves frying up some carrots, garlic, daikon, chili peppers, and cabbage in sesame oil, then adding vegetable stock and letting it cook.

It worked out really well, although next time I'm trying "beef" stock. Also, I'm getting Asian chilis from the "Bangkok 54" grocery, next to the "looks way better on the website than it does in reality" restaurant of the same name.

Two Dishes of My Own Creation

I haven't blogged often enough, and certainly not about food, so let me tell you about two recent food inventions of mine (and no, they are far better than the stuff on Trashy Eats).

SATURDAY BREAKFAST: Deli-Style Egg & Cheese "Tartine"

Took a halved segment of whole wheat baguette, toasted both halves in toaster oven. While doing this, sauteed red onion and fresh mushroom. Set aside. Fried egg over hard, melted one of the remaining fat-free American cheese slices on top. Made two strips of fake bacon.

Half an egg with cheese, bacon, and sauteed onions and mushrooms topped each toasted baguette half. Sauced lightly with ketchup. Ate open-faced.

Pretty tasty, if I say so myself.

MONDAY DINNER: Asian Something

The Sherbs was coming home late on Monday, which put me in the solo seat for food preparation, but we also had a standing order to get rid of our remaining tofu before it went bad and to use some of the garlic, because we bought a bag of bulbs at Costco, not realizing that they are packaged there in a quantity more for vampire prevention than for the timely supply of garlic to a couple who do not work in food service.

I realized that, having made a trip to a Fairfax County Asian grocery, that I also had preshredded nori, soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles), and a bag of lotus root. My course of action was clear-

• Mince garlic
• Put garlic in pan with mixture of Kikkoman low sodium teriyaki sauce and San-J Szechuan sauce; heat
• Start water for soba
• Cube tofu, cut lotus root into quarter-rounds
• Cook tofu and lotus root in sauce/garlic mixture, stirring until coated
• Cook soba
• Drain soba
• Put soba in bowl
• Put cooked tofu and lotus root, which have basically absorbed all the sauce, on top of soba
• Sprinkle on shredded nori and sesame seeds
• Get lazy about vegetable side dish and use one of those Bird's Eye Steamfresh pouches that I bought at the Teet because we had a coupon

The Sherbs and I both thought it was mighty tasty, but today I realize that, had I just done a little internet search, and stopped by the Teet for some kale, I could have used even more garlic, plus parmesan cheese. Now, I get the powdered stuff in the green Kraft bottle (also from Costco), but if Germany can call it "parmesan," so can I.

Quick Thoughts Before Real Blogging

The Sherbs and I have realized that we have to get our post count back up, so we'll be doing a couple posts today. The first of mine is one of those "scattered thoughts" posts.

1. Went out for Ethiopian again last night, to a local place called Harar Mesob. It's right across the street from an Eritrean restaurant, but unlike the Horn of Africa, there appear to be no threats of armed conflict between the two. The Sherbs will give the definitive post on the place, but I must say I found it teff-riffic.

2. I was clipping coupons from the newspaper the other day (we got a good deal on the Washington Post's Sunday edition), and I found that there are few good manufacturer's coupons anymore. Most of the products were for things I wouldn't ever buy, and even for the ones that were closer, the terms were onerous.

$1 off two "I Can Darn Well Believe That This Is A Butter Substitute"? We do use a flax oil butter substitute, but one smallish tub at a time. We don't need the gallon size of Country Fraud. We're still not sure what we're using the second tub of Breakstone's sour cream for (another "buy two and get a lesser amount of cash off"), although the first one will likely be a stroganoff-style meal tonight in the slow cooker.

3. The Sherbs made a great couscous, cheese, garlic, and asparagus dish on Thursday.

Book Recommendations, Etc.

I have just recently acquired a copy of James Lileks's Gastroanomalies, the sequel to his modern classic The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is hilarious.

I do not just say that so that Lileks's lifestyle, which is that of a stay-at-home dad who makes extra cash by posting funny things on the internet, is still available for me in twenty years. Lileks's witty mockery of bad food concepts of yesteryear (although, I must confess, I am tempted in an inexplicable way to want to try the corned beef in beef-flavored gelatin) is as good as it ever was (unlike, say, Toby Keith).

Currently, the Sherbs and I are trying a Grand Chili Experiment in the slow cooker. We put in corn, beans, two cans of tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, a small can of mild chili peppers, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, half of a large onion, one whole bell pepper, and a whole mess o' TVP. We set the slow cooker on "forever" last night, and we'll see, come dinnertime, how it all turns out.

I can't think of a punny title with garlic and spices after going to the gym at 6:30

Last night for dinner The Pedant and I enjoyed a pasta primevera concoction (and will continue to enjoy it this weekend) and had stuffed zucchini from the vegetarian slow cooker cook book. They were quite tasty (and I will enjoy them for lunch today!) but it lead TP and I to discuss that this cookbook, although quite tasty, should be renamed "The Moderately Spiced Vegetarian Slow Cooker Book." Each recipe is delish but often is just lacking in spices. And, we even add way more than necessary. For instance, for a recipe that serves 4, the zucchini stuffing called for one clove garlic minced. Now, I ask you, is it 4 vampires? 4 people worried about bad breath? 1 clove of garlic is NOTHING. I added 4 cloves of garlic and it still wasn't garlic-y enough. (Ed. Note: The recipe was called "Zucchini Stuffed with White Beans and Pesto" and we kinda overlooked that when it called for fresh basil and fresh parsley and just used dried. But still, dried herbs are usually more potent than fresh herbs...and this isn't the first time.) So, we may just make emendations to this cookbook, always.

Pasta Tastiness

Today's lunch:

• spaghetti
• chicken
• spinach
• garlic
• crushed tomatoes

No sauce necessary.

Gar-licking Good!

Last night, after a frighteningly painful (good pain?) Pilate's class with the delightful Stoner, she adn I dinned at Preppy's Place and then proceeded to play Rummy 500, with Preppy, who is a big, fat, smelly cheater. But it was fun. We then watched a DVRed episode of Iron Chef, Battle Garlic. And that made up for Preppy's cheating.

What was great about this episode? Well, let's see. Mario Batali was the Iron Chef, whom I usually dislike, but have a new appreciation for. I recently finished the fantastic book, Heat, recommended to me by The Pedant's mother. And I am now recommending the book to anyone who:

• is a foodie
• doesn't mind being too grossed out by food preparation descriptions
• enjoys cooking enough to get some good ideas

So, now I love Batali. I won't say he's my favorite, because that spot goes only to Cat Cora (whom I have a feminist crush on because she's the only woman), but I understand him more now. We're BFF in literary land.

I also enjoyed last night's episode because of the Secret Ingredient, Garlic garlic, and appreciate that The Pedant likes Garlic as well. It makes anything better. Except the snails and cow . I for one loooooveintestine the Challenger made - those are hands down always gross, no matter how much garlic is added to them.

And Jeffery Steingarten, an iron chef judge whom I have a crush on (because he's a meanie and very funny!), was a judge and I loved him. He said "Don't touch me" to a bimbo judge. My heart skipped a beat.

Salad Days

Like the Sherbs, I find there's not much to look forward to in terms of sweets (much less palatable crunchy starches!) over Passover. And I get tired of meringue much faster than she, although I like coconut (although most prepackaged macaroons get old fast).

Regardless, I made a pretty fab salad dressing for myself yesterday for my alternative Passover lunch: salad with turkey on top. It was vinegar, oil, garlic powder, and salt. I'm not really sure of the proportions because I rebel against measuring things, or even pouring them into containers where I could measure them.

Delicious Foods With Asparagus

Today I had asparagus broiled with garlic so that the asparagus was a little toasted on the outside, and covered with minced garlic. Very tasty.