multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Today I decided to experiment with latkes - usually I follow recipes though I've never settled on a One True Latke Recipe. I made my regular sourdough pancakes and just added a bunch of shredded potato. That turned out pretty well, and I don't know why I never thought of it before. I will up the potato content even more in the future, because  I like my latkes practically hash browns.

I think I have all the ingredients to try making chocolate tamales. Oh, except for corn husks. Whoops. Well, I will check the recipe before I run to the store for those, make sure I have everything I need.
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Succeeded in making yogurt (well, another hour before that's done, but it's just a matter of moving it into the fridge at that point), coin laundry, AND roasting the turkey and stuffing. Had my sample plate - nom! Also made cranberry sauce, because I had ten minutes to spare and cranberries.

What dominated the day, however, was my freaking iPhone telling me it needed to be Restored as soon as I got up this morning, and then refusing to actually Restore. Spent all day googling error codes and working my way through troubleshooting step-by-steps (in between moving laundry around, etc.) and when I finally decided to go ahead and ask Apple for help got told it was outside of working hours. Grr. At least I am pretty sure I got it backed up before everything went kerblooey.

Anyway, Mom and I confirmed our menu, which has all the traditional elements in different ways than we have usually eaten them. I think it will be good. I'll make the stew on Wednesday, maybe mix up the dumplings, I think they'll hold up to early assembly, and that's really all I have to do ahead of time. Get a bottle of wine out of the shed, I suppose. The cranberry pudding I'll make over there from mom's ingredients, just have to bring the pudding basin. Mom's providing brussels sprouts (whew! I was alarmed when I got home from shopping and realized i hadn't bought any) and squash/maybe pumpkin and maybe a beet salad. If our calculations are correct, we should be okay for burners and oven space, even. A Thanksgiving miracle!
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Got the stuffing mixed together, skillet-browned, and into the roasting pan. I'm gonna put my feet up for a bit and then butterfly the turkey* and get it into the brine overnight. So, on pace there.

Had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, because I am at that stage of the holiday festivities when I have tons of food but hardly any of it is actually in an edible state. If I can get the turkey roasted tomorrow, though, those days will be over.

So the plan for tomorrow is to roast the turkey and try to cover my usual Monday schedule of doing laundry and making yogurt. We'll see how it goes.

*Mission accomplished, but that was harder than I expected. I've gotten pretty good at butterflying chickens, but turkey anatomy is enough different to be challenging. I doubt I will ever do that frequently enough to really get good at it. Oh well.
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Picked up my heritage turkey (and a duck, but that's not for Thanksgiving) and bread and so forth today. I've cut up half the bread into cubes and have it drying in a bowl. I don't think it looks like enough. The recipe calls for 18 cups of bread, and I've got more than that, but I think I will need more. It shrinks some when it cooks. And there's no such thing as too much stuffing, after all, not when the turkey's butterflied.

My plan is to at least start the stuffing and maybe get the turkey roasted tomorrow. I'll be using the cooked turkey and stuffing to make Turkey Stew with Stuffing Dumplings for Thanksgiving Day (which my parents may or may not eat, they are less strict about their vegetarian diet than they used to be). I've got the ingredients for sweet potato casserole and mashed potatoes, so I can make those whenever (those are just for me, because i like them with a lot of butter). I'll be trying out my new pudding basin with Cranberry Pudding, looking forward to that. So much more relaxing when I don't have to try to wedge all the food into one day. Possibly less coma-iinducing, too.
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
My box came on Wednesday and I forgot to post about it. I'm sure you're all breathlessly waiting to find out what produce i'm eating this week. 
  • Gala Apples (I've eaten half of them already)
  • Pears
  • Grapes (all gone)
  • Bell Peppers
  • Beets (in the oven now, greens already eaten up)
  • Delicata Squash
  • Swiss Chard (also all eaten up)
  • Lettuce (half eaten up)
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Yellow Onion
I don't know what I'm going to do with those peppers, but everything else I will devour pretty quickly.

ION, I successfully made mayonnaise with a whisk and bowl rather than the blender today. And t was easy! Well, my forearm's sore from all that whisking (I should do it everyday, I don't think that particular muscle gets a workout doing anything else), but emulsification went so smoothly, I was amazed. I have no idea what I did differently this time from last time, but I hope this is the beginning of a new era of problem-free mayo making for me. I might even be able to make smaller amounts than a pint, because eating a pint of mayo, even over the course of a week, is challenging for me. Maybe if I start making, like, a quarter cup at a time it won't hurt my arm so much, either.

I may not have mentioned, because my brain is being eaten by Mac products, but I upgraded my laptop to Lion, the iPad to iOS5, and my cell phone to the new iPhone all in the past week. I literally forgot to eat and drink most of yesterday because i was messing around with technology. Communicating with the outside world is way down on my priorities.

multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
I have been sad about Cascadian Farms discontinuing their Sweet Baby Gherkins for a long time now. Deciding to produce only relish rather than pickles and relish was an example we analyzed in Marketing class, so I do understand, but I really liked those gherkins and I'm not so much a fan of relish. And there aren't a lot of sweet pickles out there that aren't made with corn syrup, and  of those few I haven't come across any I liked that much. I even tried making my own, but I don't eat enough of them or have enough interest in pickling to go to the trouble of perfecting a recipe.It's not a big deal, but when I just want a pickle and there isn't a pickle to be had, and I know there used to be, it's disappointing every time. 

Last weekend I picked up a jar of County Fair brand sweet bread and butter pickles, because no corn syrup, and got around to trying a few slices today. Delish! I am very pleased. And slices are almost as satisfying as gherkins. I just hope they don't get into the relish business.
multipurposegoddess: (Simpsons)
As unable to keep up with most everything as I get, I am pretty on top of breakfast. 

I hadn't done that in a long time, maybe since I was a kid. We used to make them for my dad - no one else in the house ate eggs, so it was a very dad-specific treat, and even little kids can do the mashing-cooked-yolks-with mayo-etc. parts. I always liked the mayo-mustard combo, even when the actual eggs were nausea-inducing. Mmm, mustard. So, now that I am eating hard boiled eggs with some regularity, and since I had some homemade mayo leftover from that quart of chicken salad (for future reference, that is too much for one person (if that one person is me, anyway) and is said not to freeze well), deviled eggs sounded like a good idea.

I used one of Cook's Illustrated recipes, though I meant to cut it down to make two eggs rather than six. Of course, doing the conversion in my head, or rather not doing the conversion, I ended up with two yolks in enough mayo-mustard-etc. for 6 or 7. Whoops. I added another two and that came out okay, will probably have extra filling but I can always mix that with tuna or something. Had 4 halves for breakfast (sprinkled with paprika, because that's how my mother always served them), pretty yum. I hope I can finish the rest in the next day or so. Pretty sure Walter will help out if necessary, though he is not as interested in hard-boiled eggs as he is in raw or fried.

It's almost a Moebius recipe, in a way: egg -> mayo -> deviled egg

multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
 I think last time they came up in the breakfast rotation I took a pass, as they are cumbersome to make and pretty rich and sweet to eat, especially first thing in the morning. But today I was up to the challenge.

My plan to mix up the dry ingredients for a full dozen and use that to mix up as much dough as I want immediately seems to be working out. Today I made four donuts (yes, I am inconsistent with spelling. It's a choice and I choose variety); I could probably have done with less, but I'm also not too stuffed to move. 

As always, getting the oil to a consistent temperature is hard. I don't have a pan suitable for deep-frying that works on the induction burner, sadly, but I have recently acquired a candy thermometer complete with clip and temperature alarm, so that helped. Even so, I ended up with the oil a little too hot for the first batch and a little too cold for the second, which mostly made for differences in crispiness. Both quite edible, though, and puffed up like they are supposed to. This post is mostly meant as a reminder to myself for next time to take more care with that aspect. And also maybe make only two. 
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Beet greens, sauteed in butter and left to wilt, covered, for 15 minutes. Finished with a teaspoon or so of Meyer lemon infused olive oil.

Like candy. So good. 
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
I was supposed to go grocery shopping and probably run some other errands today, but I apparently decided not to get dressed. Hey, I got dressed yesterday, I'll get dressed tomorrow, today it wasn't happening. So, no grocery shopping. I need to go soon, though, I am out of garlic and that is just crazy, me not having garlic to throw in everything.

Instead I worked on eating or cooking for storage yesterday's produce haul. It's just a lot of cooking )

I did get the queen excluder and super installed - snuck up on the hive before they were really awake, the bees were barely disturbed. Adding supers is easy, when it comes time to remove it will be another story.

Royal Thai

May. 16th, 2011 09:25 am
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
There's  a restaurant near the train station in Martinez that has changed hands several times but has been a Thai restaurant, albeit with different owners, menus and decor, for a long time. Well, it just changed management again. My parents and I went there after seeing Chicago at the Campbell Cabaret Theater (a fantastic production, by the way) and I LOVE the new menu. They offer duck as an option with all the curries and noodle dishes and entree! Not just roast duck and duck curry, you can get just about anything with duck. Love! My local favorite Thai restaurant will make me Pad See Ew with duck, but I get self-conscious about ordering off the menu for some reason. Anyway, nice to have options, and Places to Eat Near Train Stations are always useful to have in mind, especially this particular train station which is a common transfer point between the Capital Corridor, San Joaquin, and Coastal Starlight lines. 
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
So, one of the things I've been doing lately is trying to eat yogurt every day, because i'm sure I could use the calcium and probably my intestinal flora could use the boost (I'm also taking probiotics but I don't plan on doing that forever). Me being me, I found buying yogurt every time I turn around (ie, every week, more or less) oppressive. Unfortunately, if I buy a large container of yogurt, I never eat it, it just sits there in the fridge telling me I'd need a bowl to have some and it just doesn't happen, and buying all those individual portion-sized containers hurts my eco-friendly conscience. So I got a yogurt maker with 7 little glass jars. )


And I've still got a half-gallon of milk because I didn't know how big my crockpot was when I bought the gallon. So I may do this all again sooner rather than later.
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
I'm really happy with how this loaf came out. It's soft and light and tender. Also, huge - it rose way too much and flopped over the loaf pan, so each slice kind of looks like the Motley Fool logo (I think that's what I'm thinking of - little square head with a jester cap), it's pretty close to double the volume it should be and won't quite fit in the bread box (but it is not, I think, bigger than a breadbox) -  but I'm pretty sure I know how to fix that next time. If I cut down the flour  and water to accomodate the starter (duh, right? But when it was not rising very much in my cold kitchen, didn't seem like I needed to do that) and don't leave it rising overnight I think it'll be just about perfect. 

This particular loaf is so soft it's hard to slice, and the slices probably won't fit in the toaster. Oops.

I am out of baking powder, and don't have cream of tartar lying around, so I  made pancakes today using a substitution I just learned - baking soda and molasses for baking powder. I left out the sugar figuring the molasses had that covered, but I couldn't figure out a way to decrease the liquids easily, so the pancakes were thinner than usual, but rose pretty well and tasted good.
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Today I am supposed to be doing my approximately tri-weekly lemonade cleanse, but since yesterday was Farm Fresh To You delivery day I can't just not eat my fresh produce. Today will be just fruits and veggies, I think, which is probably just as good for detoxifying. I might even go all raw, but it's cold enough today that I might need hot food. Tomorrow I'll roast a chicken for Shabbos, though - I've got extra bread for stuffing, even, and celery to hand, and I need to make room in my freezer for some more confit and stewing chickens.

Three weeks may be too short of a cycle for my breakfast schedule, though. Having a detailed plan of what to eat every day for breakfast is slightly nuts, but I kind of need it. I wake up either so hungry that I can't think about what to eat, or just not thinking about food at all, and if I do forget to eat the rest of the day is not good for anything but trying to recover some normal equilibrium. I don't even remember to make coffee unless I put it on my To-Do list as a recurring task, until the caffeine withdrawal headache hits in the afternoon when it's too late to have any without messing up my sleep for the night. DH was great at channeling his habit-energy into the coffee-making ritual, and he could always be counted on to at least decide what he wanted for breakfast if not fixing it for us (which he did  often enough, as well). Lacking that, I have a schedule of sixteen different breakfasts plus three cleansing fast days to make the decisions for me. On days like today when I decide to diverge, no harm done as long as I replace the planned meal with, well, anything. I've thought of a couple more I could add (like cold cereal, duh, how'd I miss that?), and I could eat out more than once in the cycle - gotta keep those breakfast-serving restaurants in business!
multipurposegoddess: (Fire)
When I got the stewing chickens, I had making chicken and dumplings i the back of my mind. It seems like every recipe I see for that includes some reference to what you have to do to make supermarket chickens taste like grandma's stewing hens. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn't use those recipes, but I have a 1953 edition of Joy of Cooking that mentions whether you want broilers, fryers, or stew chickens in the poultry section, so I started with their Chicken Stew (which they mention you can serve with dumplings) and adapted Cook's Illustrated Classic Chicken and Herbed Dumplings with Aromatic Vegetables and I am quite pleased with the results! Good thing, because now I have three servings in the fridge and two more in the freezer. I think next time I will cook the chicken and make the stock in the crockpot rather than using the dutch oven all the way through - even after 3 hours, the chicken was not really tender, I'm betting the slowcooker will help with that. I can also use the non-dumpling part as pot pie filling very easily - I think dumplings store as leftovers better, but I do like a nice single-serving pot pie.

Between those leftovers, the pot roast I made for lunch, and tomorrow night's traditional pizza, I'm set for meals through at least Tuesday. Wednesday my Farm Fresh box is due, so I need to plan any further meals around that.
multipurposegoddess: (Default)
One of the things I did on Valentine's Day was go back and look at what I wrote last year around this time, which was nice because that was a pretty good time to be me, on the whole, and those times are always nice to remember. This Valentine's Day was obviously not as good as last year's, but it also wasn't really sadder than any other day this year, so that's pretty good. Have an estimate for my fence, which my mom approved and faxed in, so now we are just waiting for the Borg to schedule a time to come assimilate my backyard.

Anyway, what I was starting off to get to is that in amongst y ramblings of yesteryear was a mention that I was looking forward to trying my hand at kletski, which are Russian spoon-dropped semolina dumplings. I never actually did that, I think shortly after writing that I realized that there was no way I could get through all the February recipes in February and consulted with H to pick out the ones we most wanted to try first, and kletski didn't make the cut. They are not, after all, a sentimental favorite from my childhood, or full of ingredients either of us are especially fond of, orsomething we'd had in restaurants and loved. So they were passed over.

But today I realized I actually had all the ingredients to hand, aside from the optional fresh parsley and milk (which I never have to hand and have pretty much decided to just substitute a water and cream mixture for since I find milk icky) so I whipped some up. They are similar in preparation to matzo balls, which iis unsurprising once I stopped to think about it, though the semolina makes for a very different texture to the finished dumpling than matzo, of course. In the future, I will whip the egg whites in my standing mixer rather than by hand, and probably use smaller spoons for dropping the dumplings as my half-recipe batter that should have made 14 dumplings only made 9.5. Which should have been two servings but I ate them all up, because (a) yum! and (b) I wasn't having anything else with them. The book says that leftovers are nice fried up in butter the next day, which I don't doubt (afaict, almost all leftovers are nice fried up in butter the next day), or served in broth or borscht. Will have to try that sometime.

It's a keeper.

Next up, Chocolate Bread Crumb Pudding. I think I have all the ingredients for that, too, so it could happen at any time.


multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Remember those bagels I started two weeks ago? Why would you, that was two weeks ago, surely they were cooked up and eaten long ago and I just didn't mention it, hardly memorable.

No, the dough's been in the fridge all this time. I finished them up yesterday. The dough was a little stiffer than usual, drier. More like PlayDo, which was kind of nice for the rolling out and shaping into tori step. I let them rise in a warmed up and cooled down oven, like I've been doing with recent loaves to good effect, for maybe two hours, and then maybe another hour on the counter while the oven and tiles heated up. They did float immediately upon hitting the malty water, so probably a bagel connoisseur would find them less dense than ideal, but I am just a dilettante and they seem fine to me. A little extra crusty and extra sour, but I like both those qualities.

I won't be doing super long first rises in the future (on purpose, anyway), but I do think I will proof in the oven before overnighting in the fridge next time.

Rambling

Feb. 4th, 2011 11:20 am
multipurposegoddess: (Default)
Worm Bin #2 came yesterday, but it seems to be missing all its hardware. I'm going to go look for the missing bag of parts probably a few more times over the weekend, but if it's really not there and not just hiding from me, it looks like I will have to send the whole huge box back and wait for a replacement. Bah. AFAICT, the Green Worms are doing okay - they aren't on the surface anymore, at least and I saw at least one wiggling around the chard.

I think I forgot to mention that said worms are, of course, Red Wigglers, the Cadillac of Worms (which I sing to them all the time).

Today's mail brought a bill for H's corporate credit card for $250. I called to see what that's all about, but it was going to be a 6 minute wait on hold according to the automated thing that answered, so I took the automated voice's advice and will call back later. Probably something I do have to pay, which is disheartening. Such a round number, I hope they can tell me what the charges are. Were. Cover. I'm not sure what verb goes there.

For breakfast today I decided to have Cold Lazy Woman's Pho Ga, ie chicken broth with a lime squeezed into it. Yum. I love soup for breakfast whenever I think to have it, I wonder why it isn't more common.
multipurposegoddess: (Default)
Box o' Produce arrived yesterday afternoon. For once, my fridge was basically empty and ready for it, so that's awesome. I will spare you the details, but I have been feeling like going back on the clear liquids for a while might be a good idea, so I almost postponed delivery. When I went to see about that possibility, though, I also saw that this week's box includes beets, and I couldn't take a chance that I wouldn't get beets later if I did postpone. Eating lots of vegetables might be just as therapeutic as eating not much of anything, right?

Anyway, in this week's box:
  • Green leaf lettuce
  • Braeburn apples
  • Tangelos
  • Tangerines
  • Beets (red) (with attached greens)
  • Carrots (Nantes, I think?)
  • Green onions
  • Red onion
  • Dino kale
  • Collard greens
  • Cauliflower
That's a lot of nom. I'll be cooking up a mess of greens at some point today, and I've got a pound of chicken liver thawing for tomorrow; either I'll carmelize some onions in the crock pot to add to sauted liver, or I'll try the chicken liver pate in the crockpot recipe I just stumbled across in one of the cookbooks I forgot I had. The beets and cauliflower are destined to be roasted, I think, but they'll keep better than the greens so they have to wait their turn.

Also arriving yesterday was worm bin #1, and also worms, so that is all set up in the garage. This happened to be the green one (I mean it is the color green, not that is more eco-friendly than the other), the red one (terra cotta according to the web site) will go out in the old dovecote which I suppose I can then refer to as the worm shed to distinguish it from the shed shed. I put all the mail-order worms into this one, because I didn't think they'd stay alive any other way, so I'll have to get some more once the other comes. I'd be surprised if I can successfully separate a half pound of worms from a just started bin. Anyway, they have some well-aged chard and cilantro to munch on, and they all were moving around after a couple of hours under the damp newspapers yesterday, so I think they will be happy enough. Green = kitchen scraps and Red = dog waste, btw, so I can easily remember which worm castings to not put on food crops when I get to that point.

Oh, almost forgot, Farm Fresh To You, my source for delivered vegetables, is going to start offering eggs for delivery with the box! I put in a request for a dozen with my next box, which'll be before Soul Food has pick-up available again (and delivery is nicer than pick up, anyway, though I will keep picking up chickens and eggs from Soul Food, just possibly not quite as frequently)
multipurposegoddess: (Penguin Cookie Jar)
Ran up to Sacramento with Mom to order my bees. Chatted with one of the owners about the state of my curent hive body - she thinks it'll be fine and I might even attract another wild swarm before the packaged bees are available, in which case I can cancel the order or get two hives going. They expect the bee packages to be ready for pick-up the second week in April. IIRC I'll probably want a second hive body 6 weeks after that, end of May. I'll probably go for a little earlier or later than that, come to think of it.

Picked up some beeswax Hannukah candles, since I had such trouble finding candles this last year and they were there, and a Hibernation Diet book, because I am all for hibernation in general. Also, honey chocolate mints because yum.

Then we had lunch at a Vietnamese-Chinese Restaurant that the GPS found for us. Roast Duck Pho (not the real name, but that's how I think of it) = nom. And leftovers, so future nom.

Tomorrow is Tu B'Shvat, I think I will observe by planting my sprouted avocado pit and assorted other gardening. I don't think I'm up for putting another tree in he ground just yet, but in a pot I can do.

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