I swear to god I’ll get a pic as soon as Chunga comes home.
So by the time I got my ass down to the farmers market the half off produce booth was good and ready to be half off. Radish bunches for 75cents. So here’s what I did:
Get a big glass Mason or canister jar next to your cutting board. Slice your radishes thinly and long ways, envision scalloped potatoes and make sure you separate them while you toss them in the jar so your sauce wiggles around and coats things nicely later. If you hate chopping go put a record on. I put on Enos Music For Film and then Pablo Gargano’s Eurogoal while I made the sauce.
Chop up plenty of cilantro and throw it on top of your radishes in the jar. Now sauce.
In a small bowl swoosh in a bit of oil that isnt olive. I used grapeseed because I like the mild taste. Then swoosh in >1T of some kind of chili paste, a few drops of hot sauce, 1t of red chili oil in sesame (this, trust me) and a bunch of pepper and salt. You should be worried you don’t have enough sauce prepared, this is good. Don’t completely mask your radishes flavor with delicious condiments. Fork it together and pour into your jar letting it allllllll drain out by balancing it on the rim while you clean up a bit.
Now shake! Or gently turn around for a bit! Pretty! Radishes wont stay crisp forever so get eating!
Making extracts is so simple and satisfying. We buy our cooking oils in wine bottles so when they’re empty I sanitize them and use them for extracts. I had 9 oranges left from a 10 lb bag I’m guessing we had eaten our fill of so I peeled the zest off carefully while singing along to Aly Us for the rabbits pleasure (they show no signs of pleasure but I plug along). Jammed all the pith free zesty orange bits into a clean dry bottle and poured in the fancy vodka I keep hidden in the closet. Lovely.
Without getting into a whole recipe right here I like seitan/ frozen tofu battered with rice or tapioca flour and stir fried with lots of orange extract, liquid smoke, agave, chili flakes or chili paste, mirin, cornstarch, thai sweet soy sauce, that kinda thing. Chopped cilantro and fried rice with baby corn maybe or just some chopped bell peppers, onions and pineapple. Whatever, you’ve all had this kind of thing, you can figger it out.
Another nice thing is adding a dash to a simple baked treat that might take golden raisens or to fuss up some cinnamon rolls. I have my eye on cinnamon rolls with lots of crushed walnuts as part of the filling with orange glaze soon.
The goofiest thing is all I’ve had to eat today is Chungas leftover birthday cake, pie and beer. Culinary and nutritional master, right here!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Ok so it is not exactly a cassoulet, I didn’t pre soak any white beans for this and had to replace it with some barley and lentils. But my god was this good. I had never had a stew-y thing with biscuits or dumplings on top and this was like the most decadent junk food-y thing, turns out this is essentially a hamburger helper type dish everyone In The Middle eats…
Preheat to 425
4 finely chopped non-baking potatoes lightly boiled 12min and drained in the strainer
small sauce pot with 1C+ barley and 1/3C lentils softly boiling to soften quickly*
3 cups of water made into broth with some veggie stock paste swooshed w 3T of cornstarch
1 1/4C of frozen peas put aside
A LOT of Thyme, granulated onion, old bay, salt/pepper for seasoning in a little prep dish
2 giant leeks, 1 med onion and some garlic all chopped and sauteed til just about to brown in a large-ish pan with high sides
add everything into that big pan, bring up the temp till it bubbles and then bring it to a simmer for no more than ten minutes. Pour in all into a casserole dish.
Biscuits are 3/4C malk with 1t apple cider vinegar swooshed and set aside to curdle. Then mix together 1 3/4C flour, 2T baking powder, 1/3 salt and work in 1/4C veg shortening. add the malk mix with a fork and work it all in well with your hands. You may need a little extra flour at this point to work with the dough. Pull off and shape round blobs and toss em on top of your casserole. Bake for 15min and then let it cool on your counter for 15min before serving. Fall asleep an hour later.
*You don’t have barley on hand to toss handfuls into your soups? Gotta eat yer grains man. I promise the addition of the barley and lentils don’t make this taste like hippie at all, if anything it gives the smooshyness some tooth.
We had an anniversary and went to Point Reyes and to visit a newborn. At Point Reyes we kicked around a beached buoy. It felt like a photo shoot for a band should be going on there, bright day with good weather and a clear beach but extremely windy. Kinda awesome. At Matt and Amy’s we held tiny, hungry Stella and I deflected her punches on my boobs. We ate at Gracias Madre and once again rejoiced. New tactic for Gracias Madre: Order two apps and an entree. Plenty of food and variety for a touch cheaper. Their Mole dish just keeps going downhill for me but my love for them has been happily filled by Butternut Quesedillas.
I quit my regular jorb. That’s been really nice. I work a little more with Chungas company now, also really nice. Sad to miss out on providing food for a community but… we’d stopped doing that anyway. I already miss daily interaction with other vegans on a constant basis. It made me feel good to talk to and know A LOT of vegans. At Chungas company (where he is now Head Tech and has fancy pants to go with) I feel a lot more capable now and I’m kinda getting over that initial freaky feeling of not knowing how things work. Quitting my jorb means I don’t have a standing operation to distribute my baked goods through right now but I have the month of April to plan and figure that out. I have to go get some licenses soon… Anyone got an EasyUp and a farmers market stall they’re not using?
We are on our way to Oregon tomorrow. ROADTRIP! Our boss bought us a couple nights stay at a resort near Bend because of the crazy March and soon to be crazy May and June the company is about to have. We all need some time off. This was gonna be a camping roadtrip on the days before and after the resort where we would try to hit Crater Lake on the way home. The Weather Gods are making some cold nights though and it just wouldn’t be very pleasant. To make up for this I am coldbrewing 4L of coffee and bottled some condensed coconut malk I made with about 4 squirts of agave. Weee! Chunga really likes his coffee on roadtrips and I really like watching him get ridiculously amped. I’ve also made some cold peanut noodle veggie salad and still have to make Tonna salad (it’s like tuna) and finish roasting the veg for the curry and… I should probably get off the compy.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Four teeth were pulled from my skull. My kindly dentist patted my hand and sent me on my way with a goody bag full of various swabs and liquids and pills including Vicodin. Bless him. He let me watch a Doris Day movie and hum songs to him the entire time he worked on me. The procedure was pretty amusing.
I have been in bed for virtually 3 days. It is getting dull. I have watched so many Doris Day, Fred Astaire, young Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly type musicals and a few of the earlier ones like Broadway Melody and Gold Diggers of 33. I have slurped soups and dizzily snickered at rabbit antics. A wonderful Chunga has been caring for me and even sneakily prepared vegan orange jello for me as a surprise treat. I like treats.
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Chunga bought me a little game to put in my Steam called The Tiny Bang Story because it was on sale and just up my alley in the puzzle game category. Cute and sweet without being fey with lots of little puzzles where you seek out and collect and assemble the whatevers before you leave the place. It was nice but now it is all done and so now I would like recommendations to something similar. I really liked this game and I LOVED The Manhole but I’m not so very much for Bekeweled type games if you please. Thank you. I also need it to not take up my entire life and be something I do a lot of – this is why I don’t play the beautiful EVE.
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When I was very medicated and loopy that first night I had decided Chungas head was the moon. It was so large and glowing across the room and I really liked it but all I could do was scribble out little notes so I just told him his head was big today. I hope I didn’t damage his self image. His head isn’t even slightly over sized, it’s just the moon to me.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Never sure what to do with that leftover crust you’ve got sitting on your plate after finishing your pizza? This may come as a surprise to some of you but that crust is actually edible! I’ve got an exciting new recipe here sure to impress your friends down at the pizza parlor.
Ingredients:
-One pizza crust
-One packet of hot sauce
-Leftover pizza remnants
First, start by tearing open your pizza crust to create your “bun”. Damn, those are some nice lookin’ buns. Once that’s done set it down on your plate. A little trick I like to do is lean it against the side of my plate to ensure the walls of my bun properly envelope it’s contents. Next, carefully place the leftover pizza remnants inside of your bun. Excellent. Now we’re ready for the hot sauce. Find the “Tear Here” on the correct corner of your hot sauce packet and gently tear. Empty the contents of the hot sauce packet over the leftover pizza remnants. Lastly, grasp your pizza dog firmly with both hands and enjoy!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I was just puttering around doing kitchen-y things when I thought to put up some bananas for the freezer for later smoothifying. Leave ice out of your drink and just pre-freeze the nanna. I was happy to remember what the lovely Honey LaBronx shared with us: Sliced bananas in a little container lined with wax paper makes the whole process neat and tidy. When you reach for them they will be measured for your convenience and will not be stuck to your container. Top Tip!
While building a big assed rabbit cage Chunga got inside of it to help me connect the walls. He said it was pleasant and decided to sit and stay in there for a while. Eventually he got out and I climbed in. He was right, it felt safe in there and very roomy.
And then we made jokes about how this could be a creepy sex thing and our friends would start to talk if they happened to see it.
I swear to god we have rabbits, people.
