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State of Me

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 07:19:45 GMT

Dear Diary: today my new city's baseball team captured the pennant. Tonight, my city celebrates! GO GIANTS!

While the bars and restaurants and taxis and Muni swelled with waves of orange and black, I made Beef Stew 2.0 with several updates*, served with rye bread, and knocked Roommate Number Three into a food coma. Next round of tweaking will feature much, much more pepper, and larger chunks of carrot.

*Reduced meat and vegetables by about one quarter, hacked rough flank cut into stew-sized pieces, used 1 tsp of salt, swapped olive oil for vegetable oil. My concerns about the cut were justified: the tough tendon-y or whatever parts did not transform into meat. However, chopped into bite-sized pieces, it softened enough to be interestingly chewy.

As suggested by the sudden beef stew, winter is coming to San Francisco. The first real rain in months fell Friday night, and left puddles all over my Saturday morning volunteer gig, a fundraising walk. In practical cities, this sort of walk happens in sensible and (presumably) sensibly priced public parks. In San Francisco, "sensible public park" sometimes means Marina Green, a site of dramatic physical beauty enhanced by the Golden Gate Bridge. So I volunteered, scored a coupon for Sports Basement, and bought rain boots just in time for the first autumn afternoon of cool, soaking rain.

I didn't know I liked volunteering until I moved to San Francisco. It turns out that, if you agree to help people herd other people for partying, parades or fund-raising, they feed you, give you ugly t-shirts, and motivate you to get out of the house before noon on weekends. Awesome.

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Dinner! Lentil Soup

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 06:26:04 GMT

( Recipe, from Cook's Illustrated. )

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The Rice Cooker Will Wait

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:22:20 GMT

I got online to spend other people's money on kitchenware, and ran into a few problems:

1.) Are the $25 cookie sheets really more than twice as effective as the $11 cookie sheets?

2.) Ebay has Pyrex.

3.) Online shopping fails to satisfy my need to touch things before purchase (the size test).

4.) I didn't write out my shopping list!

Due diligence requires me to solve these problems in reverse. Preliminary indications suggest I could drop $100 without trying, and $200 without getting into appliances. The Kitchen Aid will have to wait for ~~kitchen shelf space~~ another day.

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French Toast Alpha Version

Tue, 11 May 2010 04:05:00 GMT

I remember making french toast and liking the results sometime in the past. Either I didn't write down the recipe, or I did and didn't tag it. So it's back to basics! Parentheticals are things I want to try next time.

6 - 8 slices week-old TJ's sliced sourdough bread (or other bread)
2 eggs (thoroughly beaten)
2/3 c Silk vanilla soy milk
cinnamon
(nutmeg)
water as necessary
margarine / better / other oil for pan

Find bread-shaped container suitable for mixing ingredients. Crack eggs into container (beat until homogeneous). Add soy milk and spices, beat until mixed. If too stiff, add water to thin. Use a paper towel to smear oil on pan surface, then place pan on oven burner set to medium-high. Dip 'n flip bread slice, put on pan (depending on the pan and bread, it may be possible to cook two slices together), and flip when it's done: look at the eggy stuff at the edge of the bread for hints. Repeat, re-greasing pan between pieces, until out of bread, or liquid, or hungry people.

Notes: beat the eggs first, or they don't mix well with anything else. Sourdough was okay but needs more oomph in the liquid ingredients. Orange zest, maybe? Salt?

Optional sides: bacon (can be cooked in oven at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes, so start it first), cherries (yum!).

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Dessert is Served.

Fri, 07 May 2010 07:57:11 GMT

Food made after you're supposed to be in bed tastes better, yes?

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Lentil and Rice Soup Experiment

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:33:39 GMT

Or, what happens when I am out of work four days running: I get creative in the kitchen.

( Recipe under the cut. )

Notes: this was an attempt to combine a bland recipe with rice with a spiced version of lentil soup. If I were going to do this again, I would either reduce the amount of rice and lentils, or I would try doubling the spices (except the garlic and chile de arbol - the chile was doubled, oh my dripping nose) and using more sausage. Also, the picture isn't great. Next time I must remember to remove the soup to an attractive bowl before trying to get a snapshot.

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That Was Unexpected

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:35:30 GMT

Today I learned that brussels sprouts fried in olive oil are sweet and delicious. Tomorrow's lunch: brussels sprouts and asparagus with dad's lentil and sausage stew-like soup! Mmmm, food.

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Needs Salt (Beef Stew 2.0)

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:16:29 GMT

I've been sitting on this icon for a while, and I still don't like the text, but I can redo it later. I have a reason to use it!

( Beef Stew, V2.0. Okay, Beef and Vegetable Stew. )

The beef was, indeed, meltingly tender, and boosting the spices was a really good idea. (Some day, I am likely to throw vegetables, potatoes, beef and curry mix into a pot to see what happens.) I didn't add any salt above the salt in the beef broth, which really wasn't enough. I didn't think so, M. really didn't think so - M. made puppy eyes at the cookpot all night, so I did all the work and we both had beef stew for lunch. I will bribe her to take me to the store one bitterly cold January night with the magic phrase "but M., stew beef is on sale!" - so next time I may unbend enough to add a whole teaspoon of salt for flavor. I may also ask M. to donate her wine stash - untouched for many months and counting - to the beef stew cause.

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Cooking with Chicken and Vegetables

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:38:06 GMT

I think I accidentally reinvented the pan-seared chicken breast tonight. If only all my cooking experiments turned out so juicy and delicious! (Hint to future me: set to 5 / exact middle of your lame electric stove, stop poking at it until it's brown. Go chop vegetables or question your roommates' TV choices or something. Then flip it. Yes, it's going to take more than five minutes for each side, get over your instant gratification complex.) I also did something with the chicken skillet, shallots, bean sprouts, garlic, ginger, broccoli, zucchini, and soy sauce which was okay, except for the zucchini, which soaked up the ginger and soy deliciousness. I want to pick out just the zucchini and eat it until I figure out why it worked so well. Tomorrow, proper write, probably with pictures.

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Things, Including Cookies

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:45:34 GMT

Game night: check. Apparently I can too feed seven, but I need to remember by table really only seats six.

The electronics plague is back. My cell battery hiccuped Saturday, and I believe I've destroyed the baby laptop's third A/C adapter in 3 1/2 years. I break laptop adapters with depressing regularity; I blame HP's engineering. (I continue to ignore the misappropriation of a desktop replacement as an actively mobile device.) I was thinking it might be time to order a second cheap knockoff A/C adapter, but then Windows stopped booting, and when I unplugged it and put in the recovery disk, magically sensed the disk and booted from the hard drive, just as I was settling in for an evening of sandwich with troubleshooting. Neither of these should have had an impact, but lo: the baby laptop booted. The issues with all things plugged in make me think the baby laptop has a death wish, but if it'll hang on until Windows 7 is out of beta, I will swallow all my usual griping and just buy something.

Between game night on Friday, socializing in Baltimore on Sunday, meeting C. in Crystal City on Monday night (which was really cool, except for the part where I got totally lost finding her hotel), and work scheduling and work baby showers with cookies, I am way behind on my reading lists, so if there's anything that applied to me in particular, please point me at it.

The important point of all this is my continued quest for the perfect butterscotch walnut cookie.

( Recipe as of last tonight: )

I think I'm either overbeating the butter, or the eggs, or need to drop the cooking temp another 25 degrees. The butter-sugar temp may also be an issue; it may need to be cooled more before adding everything else. Or maybe sifting the dry ingredients really does make a difference.

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Foooood, Om Nom Nom Nom

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:37:23 GMT

Today I learned that soy chai latte is actually pretty awesome, so now I too can blow $5 and 200 calories at Starbucks. If I can find a pastry that won't try to kill me with butter*, I might actually start hanging out at coffeehouses!

*Dramatic license. "Distress my GI tract in ways you don't want to discuss at the dinner table" is much less snappy.

Roommate M. called about half an hour ago to apologize for her attitude this morning and say she had sushi to split. Since I don't recall her having an attitude this morning - in the cinematic retelling of my life, Act 2009 Scene 02 June AM will be filmed with vaseline on the lens and maybe some rotoscoping in post-processing to emphasize my complete lack of opinion about anything but breakfast and caffeine - I am calling this a culinary win.

Meatloaf for lunch wasn't bad, but by definition was greasier than I like. Someone suggested trying ground turkey, which sounds interesting. I'm really there for the spicing; the exact meat can be tweaked with (relative) impunity. Mmm, fresh parsley.

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Meatloaf: Another Fine Mess

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:07:00 GMT

Tonight's dinner: ( Meatloaf! ) I thought this was heavy, but I think meatloaf is supposed to be. The onions and green peppers need the sort of fine-chop TLC the parsley got; possibly they also need to be sauteed first. Finally, next time I do this, different sauce, with more heat. Ketchup covers many sins, but it's not spicy, and it's not a sauce.

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