we are sure you ENJOY it

making soap

2012-01-13T20:21:00.003-05:00

I started making soap in 1990 as a way to use the gallons of fat rendered from cooking sausage at my dad's restaurant. I got the soap recipe from a Foxfire library book. Those bars were green and gorgeous, hard as rocks, and the nicest soap I have ever made -- but they smelled like soapy sausage.

Now I make all-vegetable soap based on Ann Bramson's recipe. This is a simple version of how I do it... I won't say it's not a dangerous process -- I recommend reading all you can about the soapmaking process before you attempt it and I don't recommend attempting it if you're squeamish about it.

honey chamomile soap, marbled with turmeric

soap

10 3/4 oz lye
32 oz COLD water, not even a tiny bit warm

44 oz olive pomace oil

17 oz coconut oil

24 oz palm oil

1 oz essential oil (one, or a combination)

On a kitchen scale, zero a Rubbermaid-type 2-qt pitcher. Into the pitcher, weigh the lye. Run filtered tap water into another pitcher, and then slowly pour the water into the lye pitcher to reach the combined weight of lye and water (42 3/4 oz). The lye mixture will become hot as hell. Be careful not to splash the lye, it will burn holes in your clothes, your kitchen rug, and your skin (if you do happen to splash some lye on yourself, pour some plain vinegar over the splash to neutralize it).
Take the lye pitcher off the scale and stir the lye gently with the long handle of a wooden spoon. Put the lid on the pitcher in the open position so that steam can escape, and let the lye cool on the countertop for several hours. Wash the wooden spoon; you'll use it again.
While the lye is cooling, prepare molds. This batch will make a large shoebox -- line the box with a plastic garbage bag, taping the bag to the box as neatly as you can. Save the box lid; you'll use it to keep the heat in once you've poured the soap.
On the kitchen scale, zero a large stainless steel soup pot. Weigh the oils into the pot, then heat briefly on the stove over medium heat, just until the solids are melted.
Bring the lye pitcher and the oil pot to just above body temperature (you can measure this with a thermometer, or simply touch the OUTSIDE of the pitcher and pot and test against your own body temperature). You can cool them by placing the pitcher or pot or both in an ice bath in your kitchen sink.
When the lye and oils are each at just above body temperature, move the pot to the COOL stovetop. Start stirring the oils with the wooden spoon, and then slowly drizzle in the lye in a steady stream while you stir.
Keep stirring the oil/lye mixture until it becomes very thick and "traces." This means that if you spoon out some of the mixture, you can drizzle it on top of the mixture in the pot and see the pattern -- the mixture will support itself for a few seconds at the trace stage. Once you have the lye incorporated, you can speed up the stirring by blending the soap with a stick blender on low speed until the trace stage.
When the soap is thickened, quickly stir in the essential oil.
Pour the soap into the shoebox, put the box cover on, and cover the box with a thick towel. After a few minutes, the soap will become very hot -- don't peek until it has cooled down. The cooled soap may be very liquid; it will harden after a day or two.
Wash all of the soapmaking stuff (pitcher, lid, spoon, pot...) with hot water and dish detergent; you can use all of these things again for food, as usual.
When the soap has hardened, turn it out of the box onto a brown paper bag and let it harden further for several days.
Cut into bars and keep them cool and dry until you use them.

This might go without saying, but I'm saying it: the above is for entertainment purposes only -- I make no claims as to the validity or safety of any of it. Salut!

black-eyed peas, 2012 style

2012-01-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

I make these often, and though I think they're the same each time, looking back at my recipe from 2009, I now realize that I am a big, fat liar. I am pretty sure that this version is what I answered with when asked how I made them this year, but as I was under the influence of Prosecco in abundance, I cannot be quite sure.

new year black-eyed peas

2 TBSP olive oil
2 TBSP minced fresh ginger
1 cup minced shallots or 1 chopped large onion
2 giant lemons, minced peel + juice, separated
2 pounds dry black-eyed peas, rinsed, soaked overnight, drained
Water to cover the peas by a few inches
2 tsp salt + more to taste if needed
1 chili, dry or fresh
1 or 2 bay leaves
Another lemon, juiced
Cilantro, chopped

Bring the oil to medium-high heat in a big soup pot. Add the ginger, shallots or onions, and lemon peel. You could add garlic if you want it, as well, but you don't need it. Sauté until beginning to brown, just a couple of minutes.

Add the peas and enough water to cover by a few inches, then the salt, chili, bay leaves, and juice from the lemons. I used two Meyer lemons, which produced at least a cup of juice, but use as many lemons as you need to make them a bit on the tart side. Check the water as you're cooking to make sure the peas stay swimming in lots of broth. I like my peas soup-like, which works well if you serve them with rice.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered until the peas are soft and delicious, about two hours or so.

Add in more juice from a half (or whole) lemon, adjust salt, and top with fresh cilantro.

pleased to meet you

2011-09-24T16:14:00.001-04:00

You hate cauliflower? You just haven't met the right cauliflower yet.

Look at this cauliflower. This is a beautiful thing.

cauliflower for haters
1 cauliflower (comin' right up)
2 TBSP olive oil
4 or 5 garlic cloves, minced
1 or 2 Thai chilies if that's how you roll
a spoonful of sesame seeds if you have them

salt and pepper

Really the most important part of this recipe is the slicing of the cauliflower. To do it so that you get nice brown, crispy edges, first cut it in half, with the stem end on the cutting board. Remove the core and any tough leaves, rinse the two halves, and go back to the board.

With the flat end of the cauliflower half on the cutting board, slice the cauliflower into 1/2" slices. Just slice it from stem to crown. Don't worry about breaking up the florets (though if you end up with a particularly unwieldy slice, you might snip it into two or three). Do the other half, too.

Heat the olive oil in a cast-iron skillet to medium high, add the garlic and chilies if you're using them, and almost immediately add the cauliflower—don't give the garlic time to brown too much first.

Fry the cauliflower pretty hot and fast, letting the edges brown. The little cauliflower bits will get quite brown, and this is good. When the cauliflower is almost as brown as you want it, add the sesame seeds (if you're using them), salt, and pepper.

I dare you not to like it, hater.

hell yeah baked beans

2011-09-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

The whole family's home? Make them delicious baked beans, because what could make them love you more? This makes a 3-quart casserole dish full. I have a big family.

Hell yeah, saucy.

homemade baked beans
12 oz. thick-sliced bacon
1 giant yellow onion, diced
2 TBSP garlic, minced
3 Thai chilies
1 TBSP dark soy sauce
1 1/2 cups BBQ sauce - Pat's Ho-made or whatever you like
1 cup brown sugar, light or dark
2 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup water
1/4 cup Lizano - you could substitute Worcestershire for this, but I don't want to know about it
5 small cans navy beans

Cut the package of bacon in half, lengthwise, and cook over med-high heat in a large pot, stirring around until very crisp. With tongs, remove the bacon to a small bowl. Pour off almost all of the bacon fat, saving 2—3 tablespoons in the pot.

Add all but a small handful of the onions (reserve those for the top), garlic, and chilies to the pot, and sauté until lightly browned, stirring around with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bacon on the bottom of the pot (the sucs).

Add the BBQ sauce, brown sugar, dijon mustard, maple syrup, water, and Lizano and stir around a bit. Crumble the cooled bacon with your hands and add all but a small handful (that's for the top, too) to the pot. Add the beans and stir it all up together.

Dump the pot into a casserole dish (it's what Corningware is for), top with the reserved onions and bacon, and bake, covered, at 350°F for about 90 minutes. Check every now and then to make sure the beans aren't drying out. If they are, feel free to pour a little teacup of water into the dish around the edges (you don't want to soak the browning bacon and onions on the top). The sauce will be super bubbly and the top will be crispy (and really freaking delicious).

Bacon.

Delicious, bacony, mapley beans.

German chocolate cake really isn't German

2011-07-24T14:07:00.006-04:00

Since German chocolate cake is Ian's favorite, and the tiramisu I planned really needed a couple of days to perform at its best anyway, I made a German chocolate cake yesterday.

Super moist, not super sweet

I used Aliyyah Baylor's recipe, which I recommend completely with the following exceptions:

I used unsweet grated coconut instead of "flaked coconut," which apparently only comes in extra-sweet flavor, because I like for my teeth to feel normal when I eat cake. You can find the unsweet version in Asian markets, frozen.

Aliyyah's recipe makes two layers, but her instructions include a mysterious third layer. Instead of fabricating a third layer from the aether, I made two and assembled thus: Split each cake layer in half, horizontally, with a knife or a length of wire, so that you end up with four layers. Lift the first layer (with your hands, not a spatula) onto a plate, cut side up, and load it with a layer of filling. Put the next layer on top, cut side down. Repeat for the remaining two layers.

I don't frost the sides, but you can if you want to.

Feel free to crush your pecans with a bottle of Marsala.

This was by far the best German chocolate cake of the seven I've baked in my lifetime. If you don't believe me, ask Dan Wilkerson, who said it was the best he's ever eaten, made me believe him by taking seconds, politely refused a swan-wrapped piece for later, and then commended his wife for accepting one on his behalf.

super delicious greens

2011-07-23T00:51:00.002-04:00

Greens are my second favorite food (eggplant is numero uno), and I love them all: kale, collard, beet, mustard, spinach... Beet greens are especially mild, which makes them a good choice for kids, if you have some of those.

Beet greens and garlic

beet greens with garlic, chili, currants, and walnuts
2 TBSP olive oil
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch beet greens - stalks and leaves coarsely chopped and separated
salt and pepper
a small handful of dried currants, figs, or dates, or a combination
1 tsp chili flakes
a large handful of chopped walnuts, briefly toasted in a dry cast-iron skillet

Cut the beet greens from their beets and wash them extra thoroughly in several sinks full of water. You really need to float the greens in sufficient water to allow the sand/grit to fall to the bottom of the sink, shake the greens around a bit, then lift the greens out (being careful not to stir up the sand from the bottom), drain the water, refill the sink, and repeat the process a few times. Drain those babies.

Cut the stalks and greens into 2 or 3-inch sections and separate into a pile of stalks and a pile of greens.

Whack the garlic with the side of a giant knife, then peel and slice or mince.

Heat the olive oil over med-high heat in a cast-iron skillet or a wok, then add a piece of garlic to be sure it's sizzly. If it is, add the rest of the garlic, then the beet stalks, and sauté until the stalks are slightly browned and delicious-looking.

Beet stalks, garlic, currants, and dates in my favorite cast-iron skillet

If you're using dates or figs, chop them coarsely and add to the sizzly pan; if you're using currants, just throw them in. Add in the chili flakes, salt, and pepper. Raise the heat a bit, sauté for a minute or so, and add some olive oil if you need it - the fruit will make the stalks sticky and even more delicious-looking. The chili will take your breath away.

Add the greens a handful at a time, stirring as they wilt and adding more greens as you can. They'll shrink a lot. Be sure to sauté until there is very little liquid in the bottom of the pan. You're doing this on a pretty high heat - it's a quick process.

All together, now

Once all of the greens are added to the pan and wilted, push them aside and add the already-toasted walnuts to the empty side of the pan. Sauté them a bit, then stir together with the greens and plate it up.

Beet greens, currants, dates, and garlic with toasted walnuts - delicious

only what I remember: it's time.

2011-07-21T19:02:00.001-04:00

Inner Excavation: Senses and memory

2011-06-14T12:54:00.001-04:00

I'm continuing my Inner Excavation with a little trip (very little) to downtown Melbourne, where I grew up.

As part of the theme of capturing senses, you have to play the video while you read... only because this here is mood music. You don't have to watch Claudio Villa, just listen.

As it happens, I still live just a few miles from the old house that my family bought when I was in second grade. It was old when we moved in, old when we moved out, and it's really looking its age these days.

Our house

I felt a bit like a spy with an undetectable camera taking this photo, only of course my camera is completely detectable.

What I see when I look at this photo... My sisters and me in the yard, selling lemonade for 10¢ and trying to get a neighbor to buy our brother. Eileen in the mulberry tree a few yards over, skinned knees, blanket tents in the backyard, my dad's music room in the garage. Our side porch with the mix-and-match floor of tiny tiles from Italian Tile and Terrazzo. The bamboo trees that are gone now, and along with them, the woodpeckers, my grandmother's ducks, and Nonno's giant garden next door. The people who live here now probably still find Barbie-leg carrots and welk shells the the neighbor boys from India - Sam, Modi, Jay, and Subash - painted for us in the yard.

I really did want to wander around, to touch the cedars (are they cedars?) my dad planted, but I stayed in the car in the street, looking spy-like. The driveway's still bumpy as all hell. I wonder if the giant Lantana is still out back.

This house smelled like onions, garlic, basil, and sometimes squash tendrils (tenerumi) to me. Also orange blossom perfume, Balsam creme rinse, Comet, Vick's Vap-O-Rub, and Pepto Bismol. These days I imagine it smells more like oldness.

I remember sweet tastes from when we lived here: grape ice pops and Jell-O, Kool Aid, peanut butter, bananas, and super sweet iced tea. I might be remembering things wrong.

But I can still hear Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, "I'm gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own," and Glenn Miller, even without my dad's headphones stretched across his head and mine.

"O chitarra romana, accompagnami tu."

Inner Excavation: Appreciation

2011-06-05T16:36:00.003-04:00

Week one continues with the toughest assignment so far. This list was murder to assemble, and each item in it has its caveats. I'm saving those for another day. Here we go.

You know what I really love about me?

Even with these jacked-up hands...

I can teach you how to send a photo to Facebook from your cell phone and how to fix your blog. I can teach you how to choose the correct "there" for your sentences, make a website that doesn't look like crap, cook up a chamomile soap from olive oil and lye, and make kimchi with lots of ginger, like I like it. You'll probably enjoy learning a thing or two, too, because I am having fun teaching it to you. If you don't want me to teach you, I have no problem sending you shit from the internet. Like this. I like that I am a pretty good teacher.

A pretty painting of fairies and birds by Arthur Rackham

I appreciate the little things. Look at these fairies - dang, they're as little as birds, so dainty and perfect! Little mayonnaise? It's adorable! Tiny yellow cup that can fit six pens and a crochet hook in it? Delicious!

But I also appreciate the little things in life, like a phone call from one of my kids, a pretty little weedy flower, a great cup of coffee on a very quiet morning, or an email from a cousin I haven't talked to in twenty years. I like that it doesn't take too much to put a smile on the old face.

Annie's is always awesome.

I like that I was a decent role model for my kids while they were growing up. They may have spent too many latchkey afternoons doing crazy shit like spinning each other in the dryer (I didn't find out about this one until they were way too big to fit in the dryer anymore), jumping off the roof onto the trampoline (and inviting the neighbor kids to do the same), and eating way too much Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but they know firsthand that even an underpaid secretary can earn a couple of college degrees, keep a nice feng-shui-proper home (with a pool for the kids to clean), cook great food from real ingredients (on a charcoal grill! after a hurricane!), and take the kids to NYC for summer vacation without going into (too much) debt or sacrificing all integrity. My kids are my greatest priority, and I like that about myself, even though they're big (and awesome) people now.

Have some wine and plant some seeds!

I'm a doer. My mother taught me that whatever I wanted to do, I just had to decide, and then do it. She predates Nike marketing by a decade or two, but she knew what she was talking about. I can't say that I attempt to do the most outrageous things, but I know that I can be a teacher, be a librarian, go to Scotland, or make a tomato growing box because I am determined to just freaking do it. Thank you, momma.

Inner Excavation: Series

2011-06-05T14:30:00.001-04:00

It's still week one!

Check my series of thrift shop doors. I felt funny taking every one of these photos and tried to pretend I was texting my friends instead of snapping shots on exit, but I persevered in the interest of inner excavation.

Saint Paul's is a hit-and-miss experience.

Saint Paul's Thrift Store, Eau Gallie. It has the best door - look at that color! The patina! Inside, you'll find old church ladies talking to each other behind the cash-only register, and if you're lucky they might forget you're around. Apparently one old lady's now-dead husband didn't like sweets much, you know, because of the alcohol. Alcoholics don't like sweets. Did you know that? Another old lady's husband likes cake, but will only eat one slice, leaving the rest to you-know-who. Oh yeah. We know who, now!

The prices are all over the place in this place, but don't try to steal anything, because "God Is Watching." I know this because of the variety of signs within that say so. I once bought a set of Hull brown drip dishes for $12. The bowls are awesome, but what the hell do you do with a miniature bean pot? Or six? This time, I passed up a tiny gemini-embossed teacup because it was not very useful and overpriced at $3.

I bought Tatyana's sewing machine at this Salvation Army.

Eau Gallie Salvation Army. All Sales Final! No Refunds! That's a foreboding sign, but the people who work here are super nice and there are tons of good clothes inside. In fact, Guayaberas are only three bucks a piece! I bought two! There is a boutique section now, where you can pay three times the dough for the clothes that still have department store hangtags on them. It's the times, people. They're difficult.

I passed up a gorgeous green, 1970s-style, patterned soup tureen (for a small soup) with four very small soup-tureen-with-lid-style bowls because it was $12 (who are they kidding?) and because I could hear Hannah's voice in the back of my head (it lives there) telling me I didn't need another bowl. She's right. But I am still fighting the urge to go back and get it. I did buy a pretty crocheted potholder that matches the green and pale yellow of my kitchen for a quarter. That was overpriced, too, but I didn't complain.

My favorite Goodwill

Goodwill, Melbourne Midtown. If you can see the clothes for the glare through the gigantic front windows, you can find some sweet deals here. Black slips like the ones I wear at home no matter who's around are only $2, and some of them are actually old (you can tell, because the fittings are metal, not plastic). If you find the white dress that I thought I was buying but inadvertently hung back on the go-back rack (the crinkly one with the tube top that I was going to fold down and wear as a long, flab-hiding skirt), let me know. I'll be there in a flash.

I didn't buy either of the two punch bowls that I found here (one was kind of small and not very pretty, but it was only $9, and the other one was footed and actually quite attractive, but was $12 - I must have some sort of subconscious "below $12, but only if it's pretty" limit), but found it quite difficult NOT to buy the ugly $5 Italian ashtray (I don't smoke) with the thick orange glaze and odd impressions in it. Really, I held it in my hand for a good three minutes, pondering.

The absolute score of the day (an excellent thrift store purchase is called a "score") was a nifty glass measuring vessel that would make a nice vase, but which is in fact a urine specimen container. Is someone messing with me? I couldn't pass it up. Should have bought both of them.

This is where I bought most of my pretty cut-glass champagne coupes. I don't care
if champagne is better in flutes. I serve whiskey punch in them.

Goodwill, Palm Bay. I'm not sure what was going on in Palm Bay on this particular day, but this store was absolutely jammin'. Not the best place to buy clothes, unless you like ugly ones, you can sometimes find good glasses here. Not today! Better luck next time!

Inner Excavation: Day in the life

2011-06-04T20:58:00.161-04:00

And now for something completely different...

I'm doing a little project based on Liz Lamoreux's Inner Excavation with my friends. Maybe while I'm digging around in my guts, some new insight will emerge. Or I'll learn something. Or a complete surprise will happen. Or I'll just have some fun with my lady friends.

One of this first week's tasks is to share a day in the life of me. I didn't manage to get shots of the steps in my day - maybe someday I'll be together enough to produce that here - but I did capture some things that maybe show my personality. My character. I'm a character. This is how I'm looking inward, to share my story.

We'll see what happens.

Kitchen windowsill full of goodness

I love looking at the things on my friends' windowsills and counter tops. Don't leave your mail around if you don't want me to read it! My kitchen window, with its tiny bowls of chicken bones and peach pits, might be a little bit crazy, but I love everything on it.

I like the wooden chopsticks.

I didn't realize at first that all of these photos are collections. Dylan tells me I have the weirdest collection of food in my pantry.

I can peel an apple with that Chinese knife. It came with the last house I bought.

You might be thinking that I lamed out on this task, but I do use these little collections every day.

I like little cups.

Some more than others.

Who has the Corona?

Okay, I don't use lemons every day (you would know this if you had been to my house and seen my shriveled citrus collection), but lemons are food, which is pretty important to my days, and lemons remind me of the Sicilian family I grew up with. I hear that Uncle Jimmy makes a mean lemon salad (haven't tried that one yet).

Where is your mind?

Some of these things remind me of people that I miss. That's Bob Dylan. I don't miss Bob Dylan, but I miss Hannah, who drew him and made me guess who he was. She drew Robert Downey, Jr., too, but he was harder to figure out.

There's one from Iceland here.

So I guess I have collections of people, too. That is neat. Most of these postcards are from my brother and sisters. I usually stand in front of this wall to photograph my new haircuts.

Meh

Some of the things I collect I should probably lay off on a little bit.

Angela's shoes are called "Black Mountain."

No, I wasn't talking about my shoes...

Semester-long book checkout, yo!

...or my books, earrings, glasses, and fortune-cookie fortunes. I don't really have too many fortunes lying around, but you will find some sort of hair implement on every surface of my house.

Rosewater and unguents galore.

I like having all of these little collections.

That's ylang ylang from Costa Rica in that there basket.

Everything reminds me of something or someone.

Basils like the shade. So do lizards, sometimes.

Hello, basils. Lizard, Jacob gonna catch you.

shake it like a Polaroid picture

2011-05-21T10:50:00.001-04:00

Ian's coffee and cream, originally uploaded by rosiepet.

You won't find cream in my coffee, but you will find me shaking the hell out of the half-and-half to make Ian's coffee super delicious and foamy.

Yes, you can throw away that battery-operated mini whisk now.

You're welcome.

only what I remember: sudo make me a sandwich

2011-05-04T10:35:00.000-04:00

chicken salad

2011-05-02T19:50:00.042-04:00

chicken salad, originally uploaded by rosiepet.

I cannot resist Publix fried chicken—I also cannot eat eight pieces while it's hot, and it's less appetizing once it's not. So...

chicken salad

1/4 cup toasted walnuts or almonds or both
2 or 3 pieces of leftover chicken (fried, baked, boiled), skin removed and meat cut or broken into one-inch pieces
an apple, chopped kind of small
3 cloves garlic, minced
a green onion, sliced up
juice of a lime or half a lemon
1/2 to 1 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
parsley or cilantro, chopped up kind of big

Mix everything together, adding salt to taste and more olive oil if you need it.

This is good with curry spices, too (cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili), and it's much better really cold.

Don't look for the parsley or cilantro in my picture, because I didn't have any today, since I spent my grocery money on Publix fried chicken instead of herbs. LOL.

Sesame steak and bok choy

2011-01-07T18:05:00.007-05:00

Sesame steak and bok choy., originally uploaded by rosiepet.

We went to Minneapolis for winter break. It was cold enough to freeze our New Year champagne there, and (in the spirit of the season) I accompanied my family to the Mall of the Americas (the name of which I purposely bastardized out of respect for the Central and South Americans who also love to buy overpriced clothes that look like everyone else's), but aside from those differences, my days were pretty much spent as usual. I cooked food for my kids in their well-stocked kitchen while drinking almost all of the champagne by myself.

I spent my vacation with teetotalers. They don't mind me too much. Jacob's cartoons almost eliminated the need for wine, but not quite. Let's not be unreasonable.

It was fantastic seeing my kids and getting a good visual of the places that they spend their days, but it was nice to get back to my own kitchen, where the sesame oil, rice, and garlic are right where I left them and the wine flows like I like it. Sláinte, y'all, you're coming to my house next winter.

sesame steak and bok choy

2 TBSP olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
about 6 cups bok choy, rinsed and sliced, white and green parts
2 TBSP toasted sesame oil
a leftover cooked chuck eye steak, sliced thinly
3 green onions, sliced big. white and green parts
1 tsp sesame seeds
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

In a cast iron skillet on med-high heat, sauté the garlic in the olive oil for just a minute (don't let it brown). Add the white parts of the bok choy and sauté until slightly browned, then add the green parts and cook until wilted and beginning to brown. Add the sesame oil and steak and turn the heat up to high – you want to sear everything at this point, letting the steak brown in just a few places – a few minutes is all you need. Add the green onions, sesame seeds, salt, and red pepper and stir around a bit, pretending to cook them but really just making everything warm and toasty. Serve over basmati rice that has been cooked with a few minced cloves of garlic added to the water.

You can make this with a not-leftover steak, too. Just add it to the pan before the green part of the bok choy and make sure it's cooked almost to your liking before you add the rest.

spicy pepper pork chops

2010-07-30T14:56:00.005-04:00

I should probably rename this blog for my boyfriend's sister, since most of what I post here is for her. I have a seriously good eggplant appetizer in the works for the next post, by the way. Look out for it, Ariela.

spicy pepper pork chops

4 center-cut pork chops, 1/2" to 3/4" thick
4 cloves garlic, smashed and minced fine
1 tsp cumin, ground
1 tsp black pepper, ground
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coriander, ground
1/2 tsp ginger, ground
1/2 tsp paprika, ground
1/2 tsp chili, ground
2 TBSP olive oil

Mix the ground spices and garlic together in a little teacup, and add the olive oil. Stir to make a paste. Rinse and dry the pork chops and place on a rack in a broiler pan (I use a sheet pan with a cooling rack on top). Rub the spice paste on both sides of the chops and broil about 7 minutes each side. You want the chops to be crispy outside, but not so done that they dry out inside (THIS is a good instructional overview of broiling pork chops).

Enjoy your dinner party!

kitchen counter cole slaw

2010-07-19T20:37:00.007-04:00

At the risk of inviting botulism upon all those who make this here recipe, I'm going to go right on ahead and say that the second-greatest thing about this cole slaw is that you can leave it on your table all day long while the adults toss back beer after beer (after beer after beer...) and, when the aforementioned adults finally remember that there's food on the table and yes, they're pretty hungry again, it will still get eaten. The first-best thing about this cole slaw is that it is undeniably delicious. Mangia.

no-mayo cole slaw

one green cabbage
one red cabbage half as large as the green one
3 or 4 green onions, sliced
a carrot if you want it, grated
1/2 cup toasted sesame oil - there are no substitutes for this
1/4 cup rice or apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp celery seed if that's how you roll

Slice the cabbages as thinly as you can manage - I aim for slices about 2 1/2" long by 1/8" wide - with a KNIFE, not a food processor. Rinse the beautifully hand-sliced cabbage in a colander, and drain out as much of the rinsing water as you can.

Toss the cabbage together with the onions and carrots in a gigantic bowl, and dribble the oil over the vegetables - you want to coat everything in oil without sending it swimming. Add the vinegar, salt, sugar, and celery seed if you're using it.

Taste the slaw to make sure you have a good balance of yummy (that's the sesame oil) to tart, and salty to sweet.

You guys know I don't ever measure when I cook, so these amounts are ballpark figures that you'll probably adjust, before leaving a comment to ask me what the hell I was thinking. The comment I leave you, in turn, will most likely explain my documented prowess in the kitchen, which lets me off the measuring hook for eternity.

Chill the whole deal for a couple of hours if you can wait that long, and that's the whole shebang.

Bacon apple pie

2010-04-03T14:42:00.005-04:00

Bacon apple pie, originally uploaded by rosiepet.

Since I promised my boyfriend's sister I'd make her a bacon apple pie when she visited, I did. I had made one before with a woven bacon-strip top crust, and though it was pretty, the bacon didn't add much to the pie, which was weird, because there was a lot of it. Ian suggested crumbling cooked bacon into the crumb topping this time, and it was, I must say, delicious.

bacon apple pie

4 oz. thick-cut bacon
5 green apples, peeled, halved, and sliced 1/4" thin
juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground coriander
2 TBSP butter, cut into thin slices
1 pie shell

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup whole oats
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ginger
4 TBSP butter

Cook the bacon - I bake mine in the oven at 350°F for about 20 minutes - until it's crispy but not burned. Set it aside to cool.

Slice the apples, drizzling lemon juice over them as you add them to a big bowl to keep them from browning. Add the flour, sugar, salt, and spices and mix everything up to coat the apples.

Pour the apple filling into the unbaked pie shell - I use a frozen one because I am sane - and dot with the butter.

Combine the oats, flour, sugar, salt, and spices in a food processor and blend for a few seconds to break up the oats a bit. Add the butter and pulse a few seconds to just mix it in. You may have to repeat the pulsing a couple of times, but don't overdo it; you want to end up with pea-sized chunks of crumbs, not dough. Crumble up the cooked, cooled bacon and mix it into the crumbs.

Pile the crumbs on top of the pie filling and bake at 350°F for about 40 minutes.

soup me, please

2010-03-19T16:44:00.003-04:00

Peas, originally uploaded by rosiepet.

Tatyana says I make a lot of soup. So be it.

I know the last soup I posted was also split pea. I don't care. This one has BACON.

bacon split pea soup

1/4 lb. bacon, chopped small
1 yellow onion, chopped
4 or 5 cloves garlic, smooshed
3 carrots, sliced
8 oz. green or yellow split peas, rinsed
2 qts. chicken stock plus water to fill the pot
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp marjoram
salt and pepper

In a gallon-sized soup pot, sauté the bacon over med-high heat until it begins to brown. You can pour off some of the fat if you'd like, but leave enough to sauté the rest of the vegetables in. Add the onion, garlic, and carrots and cook for a few minutes. Add the peas, stock, water, and spices. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about an hour or until the peas fall apart. Top with green onions or parsley, or a mixture of tomatoes, onions, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Mango salsa

2010-03-18T16:25:00.019-04:00

Mango salsa—we had this on top of a couple of soups.

a mango, chopped not too small
a tomato, diced
cilantro, chopped
green onion, sliced not too small
salt and pepper
juice of a lemon
a dribble of chili oil if you like it

Mix it up. That's all there is to it!

Potato curry

2010-03-18T16:25:00.018-04:00

Potato curry—adapted from several recipes I found on food blogs

8 potatoes
4 TBSP olive oil
2 onions, sliced
2 inches ginger, peeled, minced
2 curcuma (turmeric) roots, peeled, minced
2 chilies, minced
1 TBSP cumin powder
1 TBSP coriander powder
1 tsp garam masala
1 TBSP mustard seeds
1 tomato, chopped
4 tsp salt
1 can coconut milk
cilantro
green onions
chilies

Heat 1/2 of the oil over medium-high heat and fry the potatoes until they acquire several tiny browned spots and a crust (this helps them stay together during cooking). Remove them to a big bowl and add the rest of the oil to the pan along with the onions. Fry until the onions turn caramel brown. Add ginger, curcuma, and chilies and fry for an additional 30 seconds. Add cumin, coriander, garam masala, and mustard seeds all at once, and stir rapidly for 15 seconds. Add tomatoes, coconut milk, salt, and the fried potatoes, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer very gently, covered, for 35 minutes or until the potatoes are fully cooked. Check during cooking to make sure the gravy is not sticking and burning. Top with a hefty pile of cilantro, green onions, and chilies.

This curry tastes even better the next day.

Curried potato soup

2010-03-18T16:24:00.005-04:00

curried potato soup

4 TBSP olive oil
1 onion, sliced
5 cloves garlic, peeled, minced
2 inches ginger, peeled, minced
2 curcuma roots, peeled, minced (or 1 TBSP ground turmeric)
1 chili pepper, minced
1 TBSP cumin powder
1 TBSP mustard seeds
4 potatoes, chopped
1 or 2 tomatoes, chopped
water to cover
salt and pepper
1 can coconut milk
a handful of chopped cilantro
a handful of chopped green onion

Saute the onion for a minute in the oil on medium heat, then add the ginger, curcuma, and chili until it begins to brown. Add the spices and saute until the seeds start to pop, then add the potatoes and tomatoes. Raise the heat a little and saute until the potatoes begin to brown. Add the water, salt, and pepper, and cook until the potatoes are soft. Mash with a potato masher to make a soup, then add the coconut milk. Stir in the cilantro and green onions and top with mango salsa.

Ceviche

2010-03-18T16:23:00.003-04:00

Ceviche, originally uploaded by rosiepet.

ceviche for you!

6 tilapia filets, sliced into little strips
1/2 cup or more green or red onion
an avocado, sliced smallish
a spicy chili or two, slivered
a big handful cilantro, chopped
juice of several lemons or limes (enough to cover the fish)
salt to taste (about a tsp.)

Mix it all up and let it meld in the fridge for at least three hours. Serve freezing cold.

Makes enough for six appetizer-sized servings and one lunch the next day.

pot pie for the masses

2010-03-09T21:58:00.008-05:00

Hey, Samantha! Chicken pot pie!

chicken pot pie

a whole fryer chicken, rinsed
an onion, ends cut off, brown skin on, quartered
3 or 4 celery ribs, cut into a couple of pieces
2 carrots, cut into big pieces
a big bay leaf
1 TBSP salt
1 tsp peppercorns
(optional) a big chunk of fresh turmeric, smashed with the side of a big, wide knife

2 TBSP olive oil
an onion, diced
3 carrots, sliced
4 cups bok choy, sliced
10 dried shiitakes soaked in boiling water 15 mins, drained, stemmed, and sliced
1 tsp rubbed sage
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3 or 4 cups chicken stock
the cooked chicken
1 cup cream or milk
1/2 cup water
2 TBSP flour

10 sheets phyllo and 2 TBSP melted butter
(or) 1 nine-inch pie crust
(or) a recipe of biscuit dough

Put the chicken with neck and gizzard (but not liver) and the first batch of ingredients in a one-gallon stock pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to med-low, cover, and simmer for an hour or so (until the chicken falls apart when you try to lift it from the pot). Remove from the heat and lift the chicken onto a plate to cool a bit. Strain the stock into freezer containers, keeping 3 or 4 cups of stock available for the pie.

In the stock pot, sauté the onion in the oil for a minute. Add the rest of the vegetables (you can use any combination of vegetables - potatoes, peas, corn, and celery are all good), sauté another couple of minutes, and then add the seasonings and chicken stock to almost cover the vegetables and cook for about 10 minutes (the vegetables will cook longer in the oven).

While the vegs are cooking, remove the chicken from the bones and add it to the pot. Add the cream or milk. You should have what looks like cream-of-chicken soup (and you do, actually); add more stock if it seems a bit dry. Put the flour into a little teacup and slowly mix the water into the cup. Pour the flour mixture into the pot, stir, raise the heat to medium, and cook for maybe five minutes to thicken the stock.

Pour the whole shebang into a 1 1/2 qt. casserole dish or ovenproof bowl. Top the pie with layers of phyllo brushed with butter (tuck the ends into the pie), or a pie crust (frozen ones work great and taste delicious), or a batch of biscuits (homemade or not).

Cover the casserole with the glass lid or aluminum foil and bake at 350° for about 35 minutes. Remove the cover and bake another 10 minutes so that the top browns a bit. When the pie is bubbly and the top is nice and brown, it's done.

regular old split pea soup

2010-02-20T10:11:00.009-05:00

Normally, I'd add an Indian edge to split peas with spices like ginger, turmeric, mustard seeds (love the pop of those things), and cumin. Last night's dinner was a last-minute affair, prompted by an ill-timed toothache combined with a crucial need for sustenance. This basic soup was tossed together almost by rote in 15 minutes and reminds me of my dad, who nearly lost his temper over the gob of butter I once smashed onto a really nice hunk of Italian bread. In the words of my dad, "Just taste your food! Leave it alone!" Cheers, Daddy.

super basic split pea soup

2 TBSP olive oil
a big yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, scrubbed and sliced
3 celery ribs, sliced
8 oz. dry green split peas, rinsed
3 qts. chicken or veg stock
a bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste

Sauté the onions and garlic in the oil for a few minutes, add the rest of the ingredients, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the peas fall apart, about 30-40 minutes. If the soup becomes too thick during cooking, add some water. Check for salt before serving, and maybe toss some sliced green onions on top.

You can make the hammy variety super easily by using water in place of the stock and adding in a leftover hambone. I usually leave the peas out until the hambone has had a chance to flavor the brew. Then I pick out the bone, save whatever meat there is, and add in the ham with the peas for the last 30 minutes of cooking. My dad surely prefers this method, but that's another story.

other people's phở

2010-01-30T22:23:00.007-05:00

My phở recipe is of course based on other people's phở recipes, and really very similar to Chuck Taggart's. You can start with his and run with it. You can also make a chicken-y, phở-inspired soup that's a little bit simpler, I think.

This is how I run with it...

Rose's phở

Broth:

a package of marrow bones, preboiled, water discarded, rinsed
oxtails - I dunno, a package of maybe six pieces?
a small chuck roast, about 2 lbs.
a knob of ginger, unpeeled and toasted under the broiler just until it begins to char on both sides
a big yellow onion, quartered and toasted under the broiler with the ginger
1/2 c fish sauce - you want the thin kind, my favorite's Rufina Patis, but Squid or Three Crabs is also good
8 star anise pods
8 cardamom pods
a cinnamon stick, about 3"
2 big bay leaves
salt
peppercorns
a hot pepper if that's how you roll - you can even leave the seeds in if you want
water to fill your largest stockpot - I think mine holds two gallons

Put the anise, cardamom, and cinnamon into a big tea ball, because you're going to want to fish them out after two hours or so of simmering - leaving them in too long makes the broth too licoricey. Add all of the stock ingredients to the pot, bring to a boil, and simmer, covered, about two hours. Fish out that tea ball of spices, check the salt level and add some if you need it, then simmer some more, until the roast and oxtails are falling apart.

Strain the broth into another stockpot, reserving the meat and bones, and discarding the mushy vegetables and bay leaves. At this point you want to pour a kettle of boiling over the rice noodles in a big bowl (or maybe that first stock pot). Chop up the chuck roast and the oxtail meat and add them back to the pot, bring the stock to a rolling boil, and add the next bunch of ingredients. Don't forget about your noodles - drain them and rinse in cool water once they're softened.

Finishing the broth:

juice of a lime
a bunch of green onions, sliced in 1" or so pieces
a sweet yellow onion, peeled and sliced into paper-thin rings
fish sauce to taste

Bring the pot of broth with the lime juice and green and yellow onions added to the table, and divide the next bunch of ingredients among bowls, filling about 1/3 to 1/2 full.

In the bowls:

1 pkg thin rice noodles, soaked in boiling water just until softened
a flank steak, sliced super thin - slicing's best done while the steak is partially frozen, trust me

Ladle the broth over the noodles and raw beef in the bowls; the flank steak will cook almost instantly. Everyone adds their own combination of the next bunch of ingredients.

On the table:

mung bean sprouts - get a huge bag of super-fresh sprouts at the Asian market for around a buck
a bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped
a bunch of basil, roughly chopped
chilies, sliced
lime wedges
fish sauce

Delicioso.

little doves of corn

2010-01-09T13:21:00.009-05:00

Yes, I have a microwave. I use it to heat up coffee and bowls of soup. I don't use it to make popcorn (because that shit is terrible). I like the Spanish name, which translates literally as little doves of corn. Isn't that cute?

sweet and spicy palomitas de maiz

2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
2 TBSP sugar
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup popcorn kernels (nothing fancy, just the stuff in the generic-looking bag)

Add all of the ingredients to a big, heavy-bottomed pot with a well-fitting lid (you want some steam to escape, but you also want the lid to stay on while you're jiggling). Shake everything around so that the corn is coated, put the lid on, and turn the heat to med-high.

Begin moving the pot back and forth on the burner when you hear the first pop. To make sure the lid doesn't fly off, I stretch a tea towel over the lid, grabbing it on each side at the pot handles and using it as pot holders.

Shake, shake, shake until the pops slow down - when there's a one or two second lull between pops, remove the pot from the heat but don't take the lid off. You'll hear a few more pops, and that means it's time to dump the corn into a big-ass bowl.

A cool thing that happens when you add sugar to the mix is that while the corn is popping, the sugar melts and glues all the spices to the corn.

I use a Revere Ware 8-qt stockpot, and this recipe fills it to the top (sometimes lifts the top off just like Orville Redenbacher's).

mushroom soup two ways

2010-01-08T19:37:00.011-05:00

If it's soup weather in Florida, it's definitely soup weather in Nashville. Here are two mushroom soups for you, Eileen. Stay warm.

I use dried Asian mushrooms when I don't have fresh ones. Look for those that are packaged without sulfites - these are the darker, unbleached version - and when you're ready to soup them, soak them in boiling water for 20 minutes or so, cut off the stems, and strain the soaking water to add with the stock. They'll double in size.

mushroom soup, creamy or beefed and barleyed

1 TBSP butter
1 TBSP olive oil
1 lb shiitake or wild mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
5 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme or a few sprigs fresh
flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
green onion, chopped sloppily

For creamy mushroom:
4 qts chicken stock
1/2 cup cream or yogurt

For beef and barley:
2 lbs beef chuck, cut into cubes
4 qts beef stock
1/2 cup dry barley (pearled or not)

Melt the butter and oil in a large soup pot.

For the beef and barley variety, add the chuck and sauté until evenly browned. For the creamy variety, skip this step.

Add the mushrooms and cook them in one uncrowded layer like Julia Child does so that some moisture can evaporate, then add the garlic and sauté a minute more but don't let the garlic brown.

Add the salt and pepper, thyme, barley if you're using it, and whichever variety of stock you're using and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until it begins to smell awesome. If your soup begins to cook away, add more stock or water. Check the seasonings near the end of the cooking and add salt if you need it.

For the creamy variety, remove from the heat and blend just a little bit with a stick blender, then stir in the cream or yogurt. For the beef and barley variety, skip this step.

Serve as is or over rice, topped with the parsley and onions.

Doh! Apologies to anyone who tried to make this soup with 1 qt of stock, as originally posted. That's just silly, because everyone knows you make soup a gallon at a time.

sizzle it...

2009-12-12T09:02:00.005-05:00

...a fried bean tortilla recipe from Hannah.

risotto for simple folks

2009-11-28T18:09:00.008-05:00

I've never made risotto - probably because that one-cup-at-a-time with the broth, stir all the time business seems unnecessary, even for a lady what likes to cook anyway. So... as I had a hankering for risotto and a bag of Thai glutinous rice on hand, I made up my own maybe not so authentic version of risotto, and it was damned good, ladies and gentlemen.

asparagus and shiitake risotto

1 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
half of a big onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
1/2 lb asparagus, cut into 1" pieces (reserve the tops)
1/2 tsp salt
a handful of cilantro, chopped
2 cups glutinous rice
4 cups chicken stock, hot
1/2 cup shredded parmesan

Heat the oil and butter in a large pot, then sauté the onions and garlic for a minute or two. Add the shiitakes and stir them around until they begin to brown - watch them closely because you don't want them to burn, but you also don't want them to be too mushy. When the mushrooms begin to brown, add the asparagus bottoms and cook a minute or two until they become bright green. Add salt.

Add in the rice, asparagus tops, and cilantro and stir around to coat the rice with the oil. Pour about half of the hot chicken stock into the pot and bring to a boil. Add the remaining stock, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, and cover. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, or until the stock is absorbed and the rice is soft.

Stir in the parmesan and eat the whole pot, like I did.

only what i remember: skype

2009-11-26T15:47:00.004-05:00

black-eyed peas

2009-11-25T12:06:00.008-05:00

These are my New Year peas—love 'em.

black-eyed peas with lemon, garlic, and cumin

1 lb. dry black-eyed peas
a big onion, chopped
a head of garlic, peeled and smooshed (or a half if you're skittish)
a bay leaf
a chili, halved and seeded
peel of a lemon, finely chopped
juice of a lemon
1 TBSP cumin (or more)
salt and pepper

Rinse the peas and soak for an hour or so; drain and rinse again. Add the peas to a big ol' pot and cover by two inches with water, then add the rest of the ingredients. I start out with about a TBSP of salt, but check the flavor about an hour into the simmering.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer for a couple of hours or until the peas are soft. You're going to want to check the water level often - if you like your peas juicy (like me) you'll probably have to add a few cups of water once they start to cookin'.

Just before serving, taste for salt and squeeze another lemon's worth of juice to the pot.

This makes a shitload - be prepared to freeze some.

cookbooks, tempeh, and yogurt

2009-11-07T10:44:00.017-05:00

Hannah asked me the other day why I have so many cookbooks but I never make the recipes in them. Interesting. Cookbooks are my favorites - I'm still pissed about the box of them I lost a few moves ago. They're more than recipes, they're beautiful and full of regional and personal history - the last two books I read were Marcella Hazan's Amarcord and Julia Child's My Life in France, after all... Cookbooks inspire me to get cooking, but it's the food in my house that determines what gets cooked.

I always buy those huge 2lb. containers of plain yogurt, eat some of it, and throw the whole shebang down the sink once I realize it's growing pink mold. THIS time, I decided to prevent that tragedy by straining it and eating it for dinner, which is really the only meal I consciously cook. I've wanted to strain yogurt since I saw Jeff Smith do it on The Frugal Gourmet (his cookbook was in the box that disappeared), not sure why I haven't attempted it before now.

So this dinner was really inspired by a sudden urge to strain yogurt, my impulse purchases of Asian market herbs and beets purchased for our Russian-themed Halloween party, spiced pecans brought over for the same party by the lovely Karan, and the last slab of tempeh in the freezer. From what my housemates tell me, it was a pretty decent combination.

pink tempeh

1 cup pecans (mine were spiced)
2 TBSP+ toasted sesame oil
2 beets, peeled and sliced
beet greens and stems, cut up
1 lb tempeh, cut into strips
s + p

In a hot, dry, cast-iron skillet, toast the pecans for a minute or two, moving them around constantly so they don't burn. They will begin to sizzle and smell lovely. Remove from the pan and let cool, then chop them briefly in a food processor or with a knife.

Add 1 TBSP sesame oil to the pan and sauté the beets for a few minutes, then add the greens and stems and continue to cook until the greens begin to crisp in a few places. Remove from the pan to a serving bowl.

Add 1 TBSP sesame oil to the pan and sauté the tempeh until lightly browned. Add the pecans and stir around a bit. I used spicy pecans, which seasoned the tempeh on their own, but you might want to add some dry chilies if you have them. Add the beets and greens back to the pan, taste, and add salt and pepper.

Dump back into the bowl, and serve it up with cold herbed yogurt.

herbed yogurt

16 oz. plain yogurt, strained overnight
giant handfuls of cilantro and mint
1 TBSP rosemary
2 cloves garlic
salt

Chop all the herbs and garlic super-fine and stir into the thickened yogurt. Add salt to taste. Let the yogurt sit in the fridge for a few hours to absorb the herby goodness.

If you don't know how to strain yogurt, do this: Get a mesh strainer (mine has a handle) and wedge it on top of a plastic to-go container like the one in the picture above. You want the bottom of the strainer to clear the bottom of the container by a few inches, because you're separating whey, which will collect in the bottom of the container. Line the strainer with a cloth napkin or cheesecloth, dump in the regular, plain yogurt, flip the edges of the cloth over the top, and stick the whole deal in the fridge overnight.

You'll end up with thick yogurt in the cloth, and whey in the container. Don't ask me what to do with the whey, I haven't consulted the cookbooks yet.

hello, pesto

2009-11-05T08:38:00.006-05:00

Since this year's garden is little more than a water-starved sand patch, I've had little use for a pesto recipe. Nothing a trip to Orlando's Vietnamese district, where a bag of pretty basil can be bought for $1, can't fix. Usually I make my pesto garlicky, but I just didn't feel like it this time. I know, I can't believe I just wrote that.

sunflower-basil pesto

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds - get them at the health food store or Publix produce dept.
4 cups basil leaves, loosely packed
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup olive oil, to start
salt and pepper

Toast the sunflower seeds in a hot, dry, cast iron pan just until they begin to brown, shaking the pan so they don't burn. Let the seeds cool.

Dump the cooled seeds into a food processor (mine's a little half-sized one and it fits all of this) and puree them a bit. Add the basil, cheese, and about 1/2 cup of olive oil and get to smooshing. Add oil as needed to keep everything moving around - I ended up adding what seemed like a ton of oil, but since I don't measure as I add, who knows?

When the pesto looks like something you could mix into pasta, give it a taste and add salt and pepper, maybe a pinch of chili if you want it.

Leave a bit of the cooking water on your pasta when you drain it, and add a bit of oil if the pesto still seems dry after you mix it in.

This batch made enough for two pounds of pasta, so I'll freeze the leftover half.

pad thai

2009-10-11T21:37:00.011-04:00

My recipe is based on this one from Chez Pim, who makes hers one dish at a time.

pad thai

sauce
½ cup tamarind pulp (get the brick, soak a 2" block in hot water to cover, then push through a sieve)
½ cup fish sauce (Rufina Patis is a good one, you want the thin stuff)
½ cup palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 tsp or more chili pepper

Combine tamarind, fish sauce, and sugar in a small pot over low heat, stirring until the sugar melts. Add the chili to taste. Remove from heat. You want a pretty tangy sauce - the flavor will be diluted by the vast amount of noodles you're cooking.

noodles
sesame oil
½ lb or so boneless chicken, cut up (optional)
1 lb extra firm tofu in 1" cubes
6 cloves chopped garlic
1 pkg extra-wide rice noodle soaked in cool water to cover (get these soaking before you make the sauce)
juice of ½ a lime
a handful of bean sprouts

4 eggs, swished up, ready to scramble

½ - 1 cup ground peanuts (use sunflower seeds if you're allergic)
a second handful of bean sprouts
1 cup or so green onions, sliced into big pieces, about 1" long
a handful of cilantro, chopped

lime wedges, ground peanuts, chili pepper, fish sauce for people to add to their plates

Heat 3-4 TBSP sesame oil in a large wok over high heat until very hot. Add the chicken, stirring to sear the outside, about 1-2 minutes. Add the tofu and garlic and cook until the tofu browns a bit. Add a few tablespoons of the sauce, and cook for another minute to blend the flavors together.

Drain the noodles (they'll be firm, but pliable) and add to the wok. Pour in about half of the warm sauce and cook the noodle until soft, mixing everything well. Add more sauce, a couple of tablespoons of water, or a blob of sesame oil if you think the noodles need it. The pad thai should be dry-ish in the end, not soupy, but the noodles should be covered with sauce.

When the noodle is tender, add the lime juice and a handful of bean sprouts and just mix them in - don't cook longer than a half-minute or so. Dump the wok into a serving bowl, then cook the scrambled eggs quickly in the pan and toss them into the bowl. Top with the peanuts, the second handful of bean sprouts, cilantro, and green onions. Serve whatever sauce you have left on the side.

Yum.

vegan potato salad

2009-09-27T13:39:00.010-04:00

Oh yeah, kids. This is what I make for the people who really deserve the love (and who really hate the mayo - you won't miss it, believe me).

As ever, my measurements are a bit sketchy, which is a reflection of my aversion to measuring anything in the first place. It's pretty hard to screw it up unless you gob too much vinegar in there - start with a little bit and taste before adding more. That's how I do it, anyway.

If you're making this for a party, don't count on having any leftovers. If it's just the two of you, go ahead and have some for breakfast the next day. Mmm.

kick-ass potato salad

(for six people or so)

3 lbs red or yellow potatoes, boiled whole in their skins, drained, and cooled
3/4 - 1 cup olive oil
1/4 - 1/2 cup rice vinegar (or equal parts rice vinegar and lemon juice)
salt and pepper
a big handful fresh garlic, minced (maybe 5 or 6 cloves?)
a not-too-ripe tomato, diced (squish the seeds into your compost bin before you chop)
a handful each of parsley and cilantro (basil's nice too), chopped kind of biggish
3 or 4 green onions, sliced (make sure you use the white part - it's the best!)
a small can of sliced black olives, drained
a big jar of marinated artichoke hearts, lazily drained (don't fret if some juice goes in)
capers if you want them

Once the potatoes are cooked, drained, and cooled, quarter those babies up and start slicing them about 1/4" thin - leave the skins on, they won't hurt you!

When you have a couple of potatoes' worth in the bowl, drizzle with olive oil and give them a stir before adding the next couple of potatoes, then add more oil and stir... until all the potatoes are in the bowl. What you're going for here is potato slices that are coated with olive oil so they don't stick together.

Add a splash of vinegar and the salt and pepper, give it a stir, then add all the vegetables.

Mix it up, taste it, and maybe add some salt before you call it done, then chill the hell out of it.

Deelish.

a ton of bricks

2009-09-20T13:32:00.019-04:00

I love found objects.

Like lots of people, I've scavenged glass bottles and clay flower pots from wild garden plots and rescued other families' forgotten furniture from attic storage. In a rat's cache between the walls of a demolished farmhouse, I once found a bisque doll's head and old marbles, and brought them home along with a massive pile of old hickory planks and multi-pane windows. Come to think of it, I even found three intact, dried rats on the carport laundry room shelf of the first house I owned (I didn't keep those for long). That house came stocked with the silverware, Corningware, and Japanese cleaver I now use in my kitchen, though the former owners' recliners, computer desk, and dried flower arrangements became someone else's treasure through the virtue of curbside pickup. Over the years countless mirrors, tables, and chairs, including the perfect antique Steelcase that I sit in every day (all day) and the eight oak college library chairs around my dining room table, have made their way from other people's homes and offices to the rooms in my house.

The finds I like the best are the buried ones - like the ten awesome bricks I uncovered in one of our flower beds (if you consider a strip of sand and yard-tall grass a flower bed at all) while doing some earth-turning a couple of weekends ago. Look how pretty they are!

Once part of a series of weird borders involving coquina rocks, broken tiles, and popcorn stepping stones, these babies will soon see a second (or third, or fourth) life as something fantastic - once I figure out what that is. Just having them makes me feel good.

I recently tried to explain to Ian the value of found objects for landscaping projects. Of course he got the part about reusing good stuff that might end up in landfills, and he appreciates the character of aged materials that you just don't get with brand-new Home Depot purchases, but I don't think he quite understood the thrill that comes from finding good, free stuff just there, waiting for you to take it. Until now.

A few days after my astronomical find of the ten awesome bricks, I received the following instant message from Ian, who works at the college in our neighborhood:

Ian: They're redoing the area in front of the president's office.

Tearing up the brick pavers and putting in new ones.

They're going to have a gigantic pile of the old bricks that they're going to give away.

Interested in some?

Are you kidding? Check it out.

Four hundred awesome bricks. Never mind that Ian had to dig through four mountains of sand, cement, and broken bricks to get them, or that we spent a couple of hours together stacking them in our cars and hauling them back out again. They were free! And we're thrilled.

Green mango salad for Emily

2009-08-02T16:01:00.009-04:00

I learned to make this from Merritt, who managed to sneak a few green mangoes off of a tree in my rented yard before the asshole landlord could steal them. I'm not sure my version is exactly like his, but it's pretty freaking good.

green mango salad

two firm, not-quite-ripe, green mangoes
a chili or two
1/2 cup or so green onions
1/4 cup fish sauce (to start)
juice of a juicy lime that is juicy
chopped cilantro

Peel the mangoes and chip the fruit into tiny slivers with a heavy knife (hold the peeled mango in your left hand, chip away with your right hand, rotating the fruit around as you're chipping and letting the knife fall into the fruit, rather than heaving it - you'll get the hang of it after a minute or two).

Slice the chili and green onions super fine, saving the chili seeds to plant in your compost pile if that's how you roll.

Add the vegs to the mangoes and pour the fish sauce and lime juice over - you want everything covered, but not swimming in sauce. Add a bit of fish sauce if you need to.

Refrigerate (the colder, the better) and stir in the cilantro before serving.

You can add a little bit of sugar to this if you'd like - no more than 1/2 tsp, I'd say. I typically don't, because I like my green mango salad to be tart, like me.

Makes enough for four people to devour in about 5 minutes.

day three in San Jose

2009-07-09T10:30:00.007-04:00

Day three of our Costa Rica trip and I'm lounging about like a lady of leisure until someone tells me it's time to get ready for lunch at Ariela's dad's...

After napping our first day away, we spent yesterday morning around San Jose at Ian's health appointments, had a lovely Tico lunch, and picked up mango and maracuya pies for Jaya's welcome party in the evening. Hannah, Dylan, Bobby, and Tatyana were invited to spend the day in Playa Hermosa with Ian's cousin Max and his family, who are on summer break from school. Apparently the waves are pretty sweet right now thanks to a storm in the Pacific, so Dylan lingered there, spending the night with Mazi and the kids while everyone else returned with Max in time for the party.

There's a picture from the party, where I got to see some people again and meet a few relatives for the first time. Click the photo to go to Flickr for a few more shots of us hobnobbing with San Jose's pretty people.

A cool part of yesterday was my trip to a biorhythym therapist, Jaya's gift to me. Jaya's sister, Esther, drove me there and we had a coffee after at Giacomin, the city's oldest chocolatier, run by the same Italian family for 50 years. It was a lot of fun.

More later... breakfast is served.

Ian's high school reunion Costa Rica

2009-06-11T11:56:00.003-04:00

I'm testing Animoto!

Garden therapy

2009-05-30T14:38:00.015-04:00

As you know, I'm counting down the days to graduation, this being my last semester in the FSU Library and Information Studies MS program.

...and the garden's looking great. At Angela's stern suggestion, I thinned the eggplant so each plant will have its own distinct chance at life, and managed to take advantage of our glorious week-long rain to replant the thinnings (which look great). You know this was rough for me, because I want them all to live - I have a hard time plucking healthy plants out of the ground.

I also thinned the Seminole pumpkins, which are so danged pretty, and hope they'll thank me by dangling themselves over the edge of the planting box so the chard can continue to bask in the danky sunlight of Central Florida. One beautiful pumpkin will be worth their sprawling.

lemons, hummus, and Okabashi neighbors

2009-03-29T14:43:00.010-04:00

Like most of my family members with the exception of Jacob, who seems content with the kind of nourishment poured out of tall boxes, when life hands me lemons, I skin those fuckers and make soup.

Details aside (believe me, I've vomited them to several unsuspecting friends over the past few days, which I guess when you think about it is because they are friends), let's just say after last weekend's events our freezer's stocked and we're well set up in the soup department for a few months or so. Add Tuesday's curried dal and Friday's mushroom barley to the five pounds of tempeh left after Tempeh Film Fest and the gallon of kimchee in our fridge and I think we can probably claim the most unique foodstuffs in our neighborhood. Lucky us! And hey, life, enough with the lemons, okay jerk?

Today's cooking therapy isn't soup, but involves lemons and chick peas, whose deliciousness really screams for Smell-O-Vision, but all y'all are going to have to settle for what you're getting right now, unless you're Schweers and you bike your ass over for some hummus once it's done. (There's one picture for ya from last Friday, Rob... it's a good one!)

Inspired by an awesome Saturday afternoon in Winter Park that included hummus and baba ganoush (and a super-fat turkey bread) at Bosphorous with Laurel, these chick peas are loaded with lemons, garlic, and chilis and are making the whole house smell fabulous. Who needs Xanax?!

The recipe's coming, but first, look at these adorable basils! They have their first true leaves and seem to be digging on today's rain — I think they grew a couple of centimeters this morning and are real troopers despite the damned squirrels that hang (and dig) around the garden. I am thinking about covering the seedlings with rose prunings to keep them out. Yeah, gardens are another thing my family does and I'm trying to suck less at it. I walked around the neighborhood today — in the rain, which was freaking awesome — and noticed some baby bananas and mangoes, and some sort of beautiful purple-flowered trees. It's so cool when neighbors have the same plants... I picture ladies walking cuttings next door in their Okabashis and hanging out for a couple of glasses of wine. Therapy.

hummus

8oz dry chick peas
a bunch of garlic, chopped
2 or 3 dry chilis, broken in half
peel of one lemon
juice of half a lemon
1 T salt
a blob of olive oil
water to cover everything by a few inches

Bring all of that to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, covered until the peas are soft. Drain the peas, reserving the stock.

Add the following to the food processor and pulse the dookie out of it until smooth:

a bunch of garlic, coarsely chopped
juice of half a lemon
1 T paprika
1 T ground cumin
2 T or so olive oil
the drained peas
salt, to taste
some of the reserved stock (if you need it)

Dump the hummus into a bowl, top it with some chopped cilantro, more olive oil, and a little bit of paprika. Screw flatbread, get out the spoons.

Dee-lish.

love in my tummy

2009-02-16T21:01:00.009-05:00

Well, when I say I'm going to do something, bet your ass I do it. It's been a year since I very publicly stated in Peter's blog—click that link for the recipe—that I was "gonna try" making yummy kale.

Let's just say, it was worth the wait. I think Peter used the curly kind for his, but I like lacinato, so that's what I used. I did stick with the olive oil and salt of his recipe in the interest of not fucking it up right off the bat, but next time I might try using sesame oil and adding some pepper.

If someone made this for me every day, I might be able to give up potato chips. And I would love them forever.

Robot Love

2009-01-23T12:11:00.005-05:00

If you're in Melbourne, Fla. this weekend, definitely stop by the revamped Science Center on Highland Ave in Eau Gallie for ROBOT LOVE - art, music, and love (free love!) Friday and Saturday nights.

Be sure to look for my friend John Sluder's sexy photos (if you see him there, he can tell you about the one that got away), and those of another favorite, Casey DeCotis. I declare Casey to be a lovely non-robot human after meeting him last night - and you can catch him both on and offstage tonight (apparently he's a fixture at Melbourne's own Foo Bar). I'm just sad you won't see the fabulous Cook Trio, who entertained our pants off with their stellar Gypsy jazz.

Viva 321 Agency for bringing (robot) love to Melbourne!

...tempeh's here!

2009-01-20T14:47:00.009-05:00

UPS delivered 20 lbs. of gorgeous tempeh this afternoon from Jose Caraballo's Tempeh Shop in Gainesville. This batch was made by my sister, who is the ultimate kitchen witch.
Now that it's here it doesn't seem so imposing (but I'm glad I cleaned out the freezer last week, anyway). The two square packages on the bottom shelf are tempeh. Look for an invitation to the tempeh tasting filmfest soon!

orange you glad i have a tangerine tree?

2009-01-18T14:51:00.009-05:00

We're having a bit of a cold snap here in sunny Florida. Our winter usually spans a day or two, and involves waking up one morning, sliding the thermostat control from cool to heat, complaining about our sinuses for a while, then sliding that control back to cool where it belongs. It's often warmer outside the house anyway, especially if we can find a sunny spot. With this in mind (and because I have a presentation in the works for Wednesday and I'm procrastinating, naturally), I ventured outside - braving the unseasonable cold that brings my northern neighbors to their knees with (sympathetic) laughter - to warm up.

It did the trick, probably because after wandering through the tangle of knee-high death that is our lawn seeking out still-living things, like the one tenacious rose that dared bloom yesterday, I noticed our tangerine tree was loaded with ripe fruit so I climbed the ladder and got to picking. We did this once after Thanksgiving when my sisters were here, and ended up with a freezer full of tangerine and kumquat juice. Nothing's left of that bunch but one bottle of the kumquat variety that Ian will use for pies.

Not much else to say about these tangerines - they're not certified organic, I didn't measure their output or compare our harvest to last year's. Just squoze some damned tangerines and it felt good, took my mind off of some weird bullshit, and made the kitchen smell amazing.

I like the pictures. Here's Hannah enjoying a glass, not completely against her will...

what to do with the pretty basil you bought at that cool Asian market...

2009-01-06T13:30:00.010-05:00

Drew came to town last week as part of his 2009 festivities, so I met him, Ryan, and Chelsea at Dandelion Communitea, where we ate quinoa (how do they get those bagels so tiny?) and I became enamored with the idea of rescuing the illiterate and directionless youth of Brevard County mostly because Ryan has a pretty damned sweet job doing as much for a select group of Orange County students...

...all that to say that Dandelion Communitea is dangerously close to my favorite area of Orlando, the Asian shopping district at 50 and Mills (which probably has a real estate agent-friendly name that I don't know about, like NoCo or some absurdity). I know shopping for Chinese products flies directly in the face of Communitea's philosophy of supporting Tibetans in spirit and from afar with the power of the pocketbook, but I just can't keep myself from loving stainless steel bento boxes and unusual vegetables by the crateful.

So... yeah... I did bring home a pretty steel bento box like the one the grandpa loads up for his little neigbor in Eat Drink Man Woman, and I also nabbed a big bunch of Thai basil (un-greenly wrapped in saran wrap on a styrofoam tray - I'm killing me, here), which, when combined with the big bunch of cilantro I got at Publix and forgot about until I cleaned out the fridge as part of my own 2009 festivities, made for a really damned good black-eyed pea salad.

2009 salad

black-eyed peas leftover from New Year's Day
a whole bunch of basil
a whole bunch of cilantro
5 cloves garlic, smooshed
a hot pepper from the garden
olive oil
kumquat juice from the garden
salt

Yeah, just mix it all together and chill it. You're good to go. What, you need explicit amounts? Psh. You know me better than that, but you can probably take a look at the picture and determine the ratio of beans to herbs - maybe 2:1? As for the olive oil and kumquat juice (which you can easily switch up with lemon if you don't have a giant kumquat tree in your backyard), do it up like you would for a lettuce salad - I probably used 1/4 cup juice and 1/2 cup oil for maybe 4 cups of beans and 2 cups of herbs combined.

It was nice and spicy and good for the people in the house who are afflicted with sinus infections at the moment. We ate ours with pan-toasted tempeh. Delish, y'all.

only what I remember: one from Hannah

2008-12-08T19:41:00.010-05:00

I hope this means you're cooking next year.

2008-12-02T18:34:00.016-05:00

Hey, y'all, how's about a huge picture of our stove, complete with lucky turtle brass spoon rest and cup of brown sugar for the oatmeal I'd rather not be eating?

Since so many people (two) are craving more sesame asparagus and dirty garlic mashed potatoes, I have deigned to post recipes here. Get ready to salivate, my friends, and I don't mean that in a disgusting sexist fashion (this time).

sesame asparagus

a pound of asparagus
2 TBSP toasted sesame oil (it's BROWN)
4 or 5 cloves garlic, beaten to a pulp
salt and pepper
brown and black sesame seeds, if you have 'em

Cut the asparagus into 2" lengths, or whatever you're comfortable cramming into your mouth on a fork, and separate the tops (put those in a little bowl for later).

Sauté the garlic in the sesame oil on med-high heat, but don't let it brown (yet). Add the asparagus bottoms and reduce the heat a bit, so they cook without browning too fast. You want them to sizzle, but they should get soft before the outsides brown (I don't know, maybe 15 minutes? Maybe 10?).

When those are almost done enough to eat (taste one - you can eat asparagus without cooking it, you know, it's just grass), add the tops, the salt and pepper, and the sesame seeds and cook until the tops are bright green and a little bit softer than when you started.

Dribble some more sesame oil on top if you're like me and like to think you don't give a rip about cholesterol.

dirty garlic mashed potatoes

7 potatoes (just kidding, make as many or as few as you want)
4 or 5 cloves garlic, peeled (I always say 4 or 5, but I mean half a head)
water, salt
1 or 2 TBSP butter
milk or cream, room temperature, maybe a cup, maybe less, depending on whether you're making 7 potatoes or 3
salt and pepper

Rinse the potatoes, cut them into chunks, and put them in a big pot, well-covered with water. DON'T peel them, or else they'll be CLEAN. If you want them to cook fast, cut the chunks small.

Add the garlic cloves (don't bother cutting these, just peel them) and salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat a bit so the pot doesn't boileth over, and cook until the potatoes fall apart when you stick a fork in them.

Pour off almost all of the water (keep a little bit in the pot so you don't have to add as much milk - if you want to be cautious, drain some of the water into a cup or something so you can add it back into the potatoes while you're mashing), and add the butter to the pot.

Mash the potatoes and garlic in the pot, using an old-fashioned masher, a fork, or an electric mixer (don't use a stick blender unless you're using these potatoes to glue down roof shingles), adding milk as needed to make them as creamy as you like.

Add salt and pepper and chow down.

AND... If you're wondering what the devil that orange stuff in the picture is (obviously this is because you didn't read the last incredible post), it's curried pumpkin soup. Make it like this, only with pumpkin instead of squash.

since when are thrift store glasses $7?

2008-11-23T22:33:00.016-05:00

I almost bought a pair of super fancy rhinestoned glasses at the Valu-Thrift yesterday. They would have been perfect for the character of my mother, had they been a wee bit cheaper. Instead I bought a Minnesota Woolen sweater for Jacob ($2.99). It's 15°F in Minneapolis for cryin' out loud. (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACOB, I love you love you love you.) I also scored a red and olive wool wrap for Seasons ($3.99) and a skein of super bulky lion bouclé, color: snow cone (69¢). Isn't that awesome? Now I must crochet a hat (69¢).

In other news, I've been up to my anejo in homework and work work, and spending all my movie-watching time chatting people up on Facebook. Damn, it's a time suck, but the banter — I just can't quit the banter.

Jeff, here's the curried squash soup recipe you crave. It won't let you down. Drop by my place if you need any of those spices — I have a few barrels in my spice rack. Oh yeah, and the Publix near Rob's house (on Wickham and Lake Washington Rd.) is selling gigantic Cinderella pumpkins for $3.50. It's the deal of the century (I'm making curried PUMPKIN soup for Thanksgiving with half of mine).

curried squash soup that won't let you down

a big winter squash (like butternut, hubbard, or the generic calabeza that I used)
salt and pepper
5 or 6 cloves of garlic, totally massacred
2 TBSP olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
stock to fill the pot (veg or chicken, or water if you ain't got none)
more salt and pepper
1/2 can of coconut milk (not cream)
3 or 4 sliced green onions
a handful of barely chopped cilantro

Don't waste your time peeling that squash — cut it into quarters, grind some salt and pepper on top, and roast it uncovered on a flat pan at 350° for 40 minutes to an hour, until the edges are a little bit brown and it's soft all the way through. No, don't put butter on it. No olive oil, either.

Take the pan out of the oven and while the squash cools somewhere near the sink (don't put it in the soup yet, dig?), heat the oil in a big pot. Add the garlic and spices and sauté until the mustard seeds pop (the best part). Add a couple of cups of stock to keep the spices from burning, then scoop the squash out of its skin with a spoon and stir it into the pot. Cover with stock (if you have a squash the size of a baby's head, you should probably use enough stock to fill a few cereal bowls), add salt and pepper to taste, and heat it up.

Remove from heat and add the coconut milk. Give it a good go with the stick blender if you really must have smooth soup (I do, because I'm neurotic, despite my aversion to measuring devices). Float the onions and cilantro on top.

Yeah, baby.

last night's dishes

2008-11-11T23:22:00.010-05:00

If I keep this up I'm going to have to start scavenging thrift shops for awesome dishes to dirty up for the blog photos.

they keep pulling me back in

2008-11-11T07:50:00.008-05:00

I subscribe to a blog called Last Night's Dinner. I think I'll start my own, called Last Night's Dishes. What do you think?

only what I remember: O HAI!

2008-11-04T15:29:00.009-05:00

only what I remember: McPalin

2008-10-13T18:26:00.007-04:00

only what I remember: get a pen

2008-10-10T08:00:00.004-04:00

only what I remember: only the good ones

2008-10-09T14:31:00.006-04:00

Our systems have detected that you are using a substantial amount of data internationally.

2008-09-20T08:00:00.013-04:00

Now that my cell phone bill has arrived, I feel like the Scotland trip is over. Believe me, cellular data exchange is such an integral part of my life that doubling the amount of my student loans — unsubsidized, at that — to pay off AT&T seems a pretty reasonable move.

Let it be said that I could have easily added an international data plan to my account before trucking off to Scotland, and paid something like 13¢ instead of the $552.68 I gave freely, but who has time to deal with AT&T's website? It can also be said that a very nice international data representative did give me a call about six days into the eight-day trip to let me know she was going to sign me up for this deal that would save me lots of money — and that it would go into effect that very day. Nice! So, since I assumed the dumb plan was time-sensitive (not in effect for the entire month, not retroactive), when I got home, I canceled it (from the AT&T website — the same site that won't let me add text messaging capability online but will obviously allow me to totally hose my finances in one 35-minute transaction). Woe is me, I had a very large phone bill, but it was worth every Sterling pound to email my boyfriend every night from that sweet little twin-sized Ikea bed.

Now that I know I didn't rack up an extra thou in vacation bills, I can tell you that the trip was lovely. Argyll is gorgeous country, the people are maybe the friendliest I've met abroad (which isn't to say that I didn't dig Costa Rica, still by far the most gorgeous of the countries I've visited, but they speak ENGLISH in Scotland, which helps with the being friendly thing), and drinking is an acceptable social activity. Hot damn!

Kilmun house is a renovated livery stable or some such — stocked with an Ikea kitchen fit for posh dinner parties (we had many) and big, comfy furniture in every room. We probably should have spent more time there sampling all the whisky Peter brought back from every cute little town we visited... but I guess balancing down-time with a hefty dose of sight-seeing was a good plan. We did celebrate two birthdays during the week — one salty, one sweet — and played a bunch of highly-competitive trivia games while watching the Olympics, for which the house served us well.

All-in-all, my introduction to the UK transcends the hurdles I jumped to be there. Despite the pitiful US exchange rate (I still have Scottish pounds in my wallet), that aforementioned phone bill, the horrible grade I earned for the paper I submitted while packing my suitcase, and the giant clusterfuck of a return flight that left me 45 minutes from home, Scotland was swell. Click that photo at the top of this post to see the rest of my pictures, then take a look at Peter's here, and Eileen's here.

spice, so nice.

2008-09-19T15:47:00.010-04:00

Hey! A blog post about the kitchen! I know everyone (and I do mean one) has been waiting for that re-do followup I promised a long time ago...

The problem is, I have this little memory problem. Is it important? You'd better write it on a post-it and program it into my phone with an obnoxious alarm, 'cause I will never remember it. Is it inconsequential or embarrassing? No problem, mate. It's committed to the ol' hippocampus for life.

Blegh. Anyway, the kitchen is a delight. Rachel did a bang up job on the paint, Jacob put everything back together again — better than before — with his trusty Dremel, I did some stuff, and Ian made me this awesome spice rack to display all the stuff that fits in tiny jars (yeah, you won't find cumin on this baby — it's in the cabinet looking like a peanut butter jar full of pencil shavings).

Want to know how he made it?

How to make an incredibly above-average spice rack!

Rescue a wooden cassette rack from the Goodwill pile in your garage.
Scour garage sales for those spice jars your mom had 80 million of when you were a kid.
Pull out some of the rack's long dividers (they will be vertically-oriented when you hang it) to make spaces large enough for your jars to fit in.
Tape off the rack's outside wooden casing.
Spray paint the guts black.
Peel off the tape once the paint's dry.
Screw the rack to the wall.

Click on that picture up there to see more pictures of the finished rack, and the finished kitchen.

for men what cook for they ladies

2008-09-16T19:33:00.005-04:00

At Ian's request, my incredibly average spiced potato recipe will be immortalized here for you tonight. He swears he will make them for me in the future, which is the only reason I am making the effort, 'cause dang, I'm a tired person.

Incredibly Average Spiced Potatoes!

Gather up:
some potatoes - cut into uniformly sized pieces, get out the ruler if you must
big pot of boiling water - enough for the potatoes to swim in and one tsp salt within
2 TBSP olive oil - extra virgin Spanish, Italian, Greek, or Turkish
2 bay leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds - precisely measured (is joke)
1 tsp sesame seeds - the tan kind with the hulls on them
2 tsp ground cumin - don't skimp
salt and pepper - how should I know how much?

Boil the potatoes in the salted water until just done. How many potatoes? My former mother-in-law (I reserve "ex" for the boyfriend's former wife, because it sounds a little bit like "expired") doles out one potato for each person she's serving, plus one for the pot. Maybe that's a good idea unless, like me, you want leftovers for the week, in which case, make eight potatoes no matter what. What kind? Whatever kind you want. I like Yukon Gold. How done is just done? When you test a potato with a fork, it should resist the intrusion only mildly. This means that the fork should enter and exit the test potato effortlessly, but the potato shouldn't fall apart when met with tines.

While the potatoes are cooking, heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet. When it's hot (it appears thinner, but doesn't smoke) add the spices and let them sizzle until the mustard seeds start to pop. Remove the pan from the heat.

Drain the potatoes and add them to the hot pan of spices. They're going to make such a noise, you won't believe. Stir them around and add the salt and pepper.

That's all. You expected something more elaborate?

It's Labor Day! Get to work!

2008-09-01T13:48:00.009-04:00

It's Labor Day! To celebrate your day away from the cube, get offa teh internets and read Oil!, a REAL BOOK by Upton Sinclair. Don't even think about renting There Will Be Blood, which, despite Daniel Day Lewis's earnest (duh) portrayal of a very successful oil baron who is also a complete bastard, is really running with the poetic license by claiming a basis in Sinclair's novel.

Since I already read Oil!, I commemorated the folks who busted ass to make my working conditions sweet with a morning of solitude in my weedy backyard. Bliss.

ying?

2008-08-18T15:07:00.003-04:00

It's YIN yang, people.

much better than Doan's

2008-06-24T16:27:00.007-04:00

Sometimes when my back's killing me, I have a wee teeny drink to make me feel better. Much better than ibuprofen and just as damaging to the liver, so why not?

So today I went about the business of prepping my standard sweet vermouth and lime (something Steve Czagas turned me on to, god bless him, although it may have been lemons he used), only to discover I had finished the damned vermouth probably ages ago when Angela was here. Piss. Luckily, I'm a bit of a lush and always have bottles of stuff stashed here and there - usually in my bedroom where Dylan can't get to them before I do - and I found a sweet bottle of limoncello from Sherry's 2006 trip to Italy in the freezer. Danged if it doesn't taste just like tart lemonade when you add some kumquat juice (delish) and lime to it. Yum. And isn't it pretty?

yummy limoncello and citrus

Mix up 1 oz each limoncello and kumquat juice, a squeeze of lime, and 3 ice cubes if you want one for yourself. If what you really want's a sweet vermouth, go get a bottle of Cinzano (the red one) from Publix, pour some in a cute little Italian glass (I was being lazy with the blue teacup) over ice, squeeze in some lemon, lime, or even kumquat (my favorite and we have loads of last year's juice in our freezer next to the limoncello) and I dare you not to drink the whole bottle.

No one can eat just one

2008-06-20T15:37:00.002-04:00

The serving size for Cheerios is 1 cup. Who can eat just one cup of Cheerios?

...did it

2008-06-18T18:52:00.010-04:00

I finally managed to keep a basil plant alive in the hot, hot heat of F L A long enough to make me some of Ayun Halliday's Watermelon with Basil and Feta. You may remember me bitching about having to lay my hands on all three ingreds at the same time, but never did I plan to lose the ding dang recipe book, of all things. I know the Dirty Sugar Cookies cover's got a hand with some sprinkles on it... but all I could find in the same scheme was James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which I lost interest in reading once it came out that the thing was all made up. Fiction!

So I winged it, much like the lady herself might, were she to find herself in the same predicament. What you see there's some watermelon pieces, a tub of Vigo feta that I rinsed and crumbled up just a little bit, a big handful of the best damned sliced basil this side of Tammy's pit bull, a dribble of olive oil, and some cracked black pepper. Suhweet. Here's a picture of everything once it's mixed up...

cataloged!

2008-06-11T13:02:00.003-04:00

Check out my friend Sandy's impressive list of titles, available at a library near you!

mother-in-law me

2008-06-11T10:07:00.007-04:00

Jacob and S are getting married this weekend in a teensy beachside ceremony performed by Rachel. It's bound to be lovely, as the betrothed are adorable and charming, and the whole thing will be washed down with cakes and pies at our house afterward.

The newly married two will head to the Great Midwest next week, where S will attend MCAD, and Jacob will begin his quest for an airplane hangar garage.

Love.

chikken!

2008-06-11T07:01:00.015-04:00

Oh yeah, lots going on around here... but food's always cool, yes?

Today, my friends, you're getting my killer chicken soup recipe that my homeslice, Laurel, featured on her way more successful and smashing blog, Laurel on Health Food. Let me tell you, I just can't go back to bay leaves and celery, 'cause this shit's divine. The stock's also handy for freezing and versatile as hell - made some yesterday to cook my newest favorite food, escarole, in. Delicioso.

Rose's Pho Chicken Soup

If you're just making stock to have on hand for other recipes, you can use other parts of the chicken, like wings, backs, and necks, and strain the whole thing before cooling and freezing (I use my leftover plastic Chinese takeout containers).

2 TBSP olive oil
1 1/2 lbs chicken thighs with skin and bones
water to fill a pot
2 carrots, unpeeled, cut in big chunks
one big yellow onion, quartered
one 2" cinnamon stick
4 star anise pods
4 green cardamom pods
1 1/2 tsp salt
black pepper to taste

6 green onions, sliced big
2 tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smooshed and chopped
1/4 to 1/2 cup fabulous olive oil
s&p to taste

1 cup orzo or other small pasta

In a big pot over med-hi heat, sauté the chicken in the olive oil for a minute or two to sear the skins. Add the water, leaving space in the pot for some boiling action. Add the rest of the stock ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cover, keeping lid ajar to release steam. Let simmer for about 40 minutes, skimming the gunk off the top of the broth from time to time.

While the stock's cooking, prepare the toppings. Slice up the green onion tops and bottoms into big pieces and set aside. Chop the tomatoes and garlic, and mix in a bowl with the olive oil, salt, and pepper.

When chicken's cooked and falling apart a bit, scoop it and the veggies out of the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside to cool. Return the stock to a boil and add the orzo. Cook about 9 minutes and check the seasonings, adding salt if necessary.

Remove the chicken from the bones and add back to the pot. You can discard the spices and eat what's left of the veggies.

Add the green onions just before serving - they should stay fresh. Ladle into bowls and top with tomato mixture.

Serves about 4.

inspiration

2008-06-05T14:28:00.011-04:00

This juice made me take its picture because it's so pretty.

I wrote up a recipe for Laurel's blog today and realized it's been pooploads of weeks since I posted anything to we are sure you ENJOY it. Yeah, I realize this thing kind of often, but had to wait for the beet inspiration to really sink it in.

Another thing that hit me like a half-pound of bricks today is that I should probably mitigate my frustration at not technically doing any writing at work by reviewing the music and books piled up in my Ink 19 queue. Damn. Once I finish them can I start complaining again?

"...fantastic kitchen, washed down with lots of wine"

2008-02-28T17:02:00.014-05:00

My ticket to Glasgow is bought! This August I'll join parts of my family in a remote Scottish outpost for plenty of gaping at lochs and Munros and stuff and inevitably tons of time spent in Kilchrenan, where the pub is. We're bound to do some hiking and cycling, but you can bet your bippy I won't be pedaling my ass the seven miles for whisky.

That there is the place - looks like a hopping joint that I guess we arrive at by hot air balloon! Do you see a road? All my friends are welcome to remain as such by not telling me how to get cheap plane tickets over the pond, oi. Delta did a fine job of scraping well over 1000 noodles off my cold, unfeeling carcass and I guess now that it's done I don't want to think about the insult to my savings.

UK, ho! And when I get back, I'll post a comment in the Guest Book to rival the excerpt in this post's title.

It's cabbage! Sauerkraut is cabbage!

2008-01-08T21:03:00.006-05:00

Drew gave us an organically jarred jar of sauerkraut that he undoubtedly sliced with his own tomato-stained hands before perfecting its goodness and smashing it into that big ol' Ball. I cooked it tonight with some decidedly non-organic pork ribs and Macintosh apples, and damned if I didn't eat that mess with a spoon!

To make the sauerkraut even more delish, Drew put two spicy little heathen peppers and some cloves of garlics in the jar. The apples cooked to sauce, but the garlic was tenacious, retaining its shiny integrity for me to ingest whole-ish.

Next, I will allow Dylan to make pizzas with the fire-roasted (are they fire-roasted?) tomatoes Drew also broke a sweat to can for me and only me.

Damn, I like Drew.

Happy happy, joy joy

2007-11-22T14:53:00.012-05:00

Am I the only person in the discovered world who expects Chinese restaurants to serve mei fun on Thanksgiving? I mean, what do all the French people who are stuck in Melbourne do?

Thank god we're Sicilian. We're having lasagna—spinach/ mushroom and sausage varieties. Maybe if I'm not too soused when they come out of the oven I'll take a picture. We're also having tomato salad, which looks pretty good in its naked state. Bon appetit, Frenchies!

Oh man.

That was a satiating feast, friends. And though this display of fine foods appears a bit thin when compared to the gluttonous plop of flesh and vegetable consumed during the traditional Thanksgiving 20 (the minutes required to pack 3 pounds of food into the standard gut), it was a divine consumption, let me tell you. A toast to friends and family. Slainte.

Fuhuhuhuqueue

2007-11-20T19:08:00.004-05:00

My Google reader queue currently holds 1000+ items (that's over a thousand, for other members of my elite kingdom of math-impaired dodos). They're unread! Because I'm busy! Yeah, I still check that baby daily, but I only read Adventures in 01524, Izzle Pfaff! (That's Skot, who just posted a scalding story about the former landlord. I ate it with sugar), and things that appear among the first ten lines of Boing Boing. So what? Don't ask me why after a month of posting --zero-- I chose this to write about. I just sucked three glasses of wine down my gullet! Yellow Tail!

iDidit

2007-10-06T14:53:00.001-04:00

In the house. October 16.

and now for something competely different

2007-09-21T18:47:00.004-04:00

At Peter's request, here's my favorite photo of myself avec do-rag, massaging the heart of the Petralia Koss household in an attempt to wake its ass up. No, we're not remodeling the kitchen to accommodate the new baby. That car-fixing light illuminated about a week's worth of dinners until we made up our minds about what new light source to string from the newly-painted authentic and totally faux old-ass plaster texture finish ceiling.

Once we decided on our pretty halogen wire-strung track lights from Lowe's, and psuedo-industrial pendant lamp from Home Depot, Frank came over to do whatever it is he does when his friends take advantage of his electrical skills. It worked!

Stay tuned for more fabulous kitchen re-do news. Next time: we braved the scary eBay scene to nab our new brushed nickel hardware, which we will screw into newly painted cabinets! Watch us live our lives as we live them right HERE! It's amazing!

DIY or die

2007-09-02T14:31:00.010-04:00

Well, DIY unless you can find someone to do it with you...

Rachel came over this morning to have a cup of coffee and discuss color palettes for my kitchen/dining room combo, which is in sore need of a design refreshment. The girl's absolutely fabulous with interiors, if I may be Frank; her apartment and other people's kitchens are testament to the fact. Her talent established and perfect shades of fresh chosen (citron, deep yellow-green, and aubergine - could you just die?), we moved on to the timetable - what task to tackle first? Rachel took exactly half a moment to decide that the 70's retro-tray ceiling needed tossing.

After months of dropping subtle hints which weren't picked up by my sister the home remodeler, we ripped that baby down this morning. Sayonara yellow plastic dinge! The pall of 1974 is lifted to reveal light, sweet light.

I haven't lifted the first can of paint yet, but I can't wait to get a pretty new Ikea table and throw a party.

You can bet your organic ass I'm going to give some conscious thought to the menu, though. A co-worker mentioned recently that commercial chickens - these are the dead kind, shrink-wrapped and chilly - live only 6 weeks before rendering flesh for American tables. I looked it up on the internet and discovered that 6 weeks is a normal lifespan for broilers, which are not fed hormones and steroids, but couldn't find a similar statement for hens, which is what I brought home from Publix yesterday before doing this intense research.

The mutant's leg bones were a midget 5" long at most, yet this baby was a fat 6 pounder. Most chickens I've seen are around 2.5 pounds, making last night's dinner el gordo in comparison. The hefty shrink-wrap devoid of soothing lingo like farm raised, free range, and never fed hormones should have tipped me off. This foul fowl must have been the recipient of a constant drip of hormones. We have a lot of leftovers - come get some!

mad about RAY

2007-08-14T19:36:00.006-04:00

My sisters visited last week, bringing carloads of children to the glorious murk of Florida's East Coast. Wherever two or more sisters (we had four) are gathered in the Petralia name, there's invariably some sort of trip down memory lane, so we pulled out all the stops to attend a gala marching band event at Palm Bay High School, drive the kids to Del's Freeze (where legend has it the attendants spit in the soft serv) in a sweaty old bus, fish off the causeway at midnight, and grind beach sand into every recognizable orifice our babies' bodies had to offer.

Now we're all mature, so we refused to do a few things from our past, like drink Natural Light from flimsy plastic cups on the side of the highway, squirt beer out of bathtub kegs while our friends play poker in the dining room clothesless, and puke unidentifiable substances onto our mother's driveway. Another side effect of having lived 25 years past high school (some of us, anyway) is that now when we go to the beach, we aren't just crazy little kids running around with half a bottle of Sun-In on our heads - we have developed social consciences that don't quit.

So yeah, you see that ray in the picture that apparently represents the theme of today's post? Well, we saw one that looks nothing like it at Cocoa Beach last week. A fisherman hooked one - a bigger, really magnificent one - accidentally ('cause no one wants to hook a ray. I'm not even sure the fake scallops people make from them taste good and besides who has a cookie cutter that small, or that sharp?) so Eileen put her baby down to help the guy release the poor bugger. She was serious about getting that ray back into the water. Okay, so her intentions were grand, but the surf rod she held the ray's tail down with was a bit ineffective, allowing the tail to flip up a couple of times, which was frankly kind of scary to the salty dog messing around on the mouth end. The guy - he was wearing one of those t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, I think it was teal, which frankly scared me beyond my level of comfort - went to get a set of pliers - good idea. When he came back, he showed Eileen where to hold the tail down, then started sawing away at the tail with his knife. The crowd that had assembled around the ray to admire it and wish it good luck emitted a collective gasp and backed away almost instantly - we couldn't believe it.

iWant

2007-08-02T19:23:00.002-04:00

I want an iPhone. Yeah, I know, it's too new and I should wait for everyone's first generation iPhones to break because the next batch will be even better, but I really just want an iPhone. How badly do I want one? Well, I spent about 25 minutes today doing the math required to figure out if it's more cost effective to buy some other brand of qwerty keypad phone plus an 8 GB iPod, or the damned first generation, overpriced, media sensationalized iPhone with iPod, Safari, and cool Macness already built-in.

Oh hell, do you really think I accomplished any math in 25 minutes? I guessed at every math question on the GRE. I laughed at every math question on the GRE! I think I was actually guffawing! I think it's a good deal to buy the iPhone!

meme meME meme me

2007-07-27T19:37:00.003-04:00

Laurel memed me...nine days ago. I think now's a really good time to respond to this honor by meme-ing some other people that I love. Who gives a wig that I don't technically know them all? To repeat the rules of this meme: I write seven facts about myself that you may not know and tag seven other bloggers to do the same.

First let me say that, scientist that I am, I had to look up meme in my favorite scientific resource, Wikipedia. Yeah, it's too much for me to read so I'm just going to play along and try not to contemplate the validity of the word meme as a gerund too much.

I am allergic to wine. Oh that's stupid, everyone knows this because I complain about it every time I order a beer.
I idolize my grandmother. Anybody with the tenacity to marry my grandfather at age 14 and outlive the bastard deserves respect. Besides, the woman could birth a baby on the kitchen table after breakfast and feed all 10 kids off of it that evening.
I hate bullies. I want to slam them into lockers and watch them cry.
I have eaten Spam. Say no more.
I made clothes, soap, necklaces, purses, bug spray, and liqueur, all before it was fashionable to be a hippie.
I laugh at movie gore. Zombies are freaking awesome.
I have 40 pairs of shoes but I only wear my squeaky Doctor Martens boots.

And I meme:

Ian at Lawsuits of the Damned
Peter and Brian at Adventures in 01524
Ayun Halliday at Dirty Sugar Cookies
Jacob at i'm all for it
Skot at Izzle Pfaff
Joe at Joe's World
Steve who will maybe get a blog someday

It will be fun to see if any of these people know they've been scientifically memed.

please let me hold your hand

2007-07-23T17:46:00.004-04:00

Because I'm an internet freak who can't be without access during the 8 hours a day I'm humpin' it for the man, I'm on a mission to make my sites cellphone friendly. The PBHS site is there - looking fab in miniature - and this blog is on its way, thanks to the realization that Peter and Brian's blog displays perfectly on the old Cingular 2125... Yeah, I stole their template. Only it's a different color, isn't that original? I'm just hoping they don't try to manhandle their individuality back by changing their template to a handheld-unfriendly design 'cause then I'll have to wait until 5pm to stalk their gorgeous lives. Oy. That won't do.

Ian's probably sorry he helped me figure out WTF is up with css for different media types, but I'm not. I holed up in bed with the laptop most of the weekend, geeking out for absolutely no profit, instead of playing his new totally amazing laser battleship game (or something) with him. It was awesome. Ian is awesome.

Marty's kombucha is on its way to Maryland. I sent the new, pretty mushroom and some directions for brewing it up. Don't be afraid to drink it, Marty, and make sure you give some to your folks because it's good for them, just like green beans and broccoli, yo.

fly lice

2007-07-17T22:35:00.008-04:00

Holy crap, I'm tired but I wanted to post this fried rice recipe while Bobby's "is this burned rice?" comment was fresh in my head. Yeah, I know my title's not PC. I'M TIRED! I already TOLD you.

Anyway, this rice is better than the soggy crap you get at a lot of mediocre Chinese restaurants even though it just looks like a lot of brown with a few orange spots it in. The green onions really are necessary. We had it for dinner with some weirdly sweet/hot kimchi made of baby vegetables like cabbage and corn and sliced lotus root, which looks really cool.

I listened to a compilation cd that came in the mail last week and I really like the Gogol Bordello track. Maybe I can get Ian to dig up some whole cds of Gogol Bordello. By the way, did you know that Eugene Hutz played a nice Russian boy in Everything is Illuminated? Liev Schreiber directed and wrote the screenplay, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote the book it was based on.

super-fried rice

1 TBSP toasted sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 TBSP fresh ginger, minced or grated
1 lb chuck or 7-bone steak, cut across the grain into strips
superior dark soy sauce from the Asian market
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 carrots, sliced
2 cups green cabbage, sliced

2 eggs
3 or 4 green onions, sliced
1 TBSP toasted sesame oil (I buy it by the quart)
3 cups white rice, cooked, leftover, just-made, or from the Chinese take-out

In a wide frying pan (this and eggs are the only things I cook in a non-stick pan) on pretty high heat, fry up the garlic and ginger in the sesame oil. You don't want any burning going on, but don't cry if things get crunchy.

Add the meat and stir it around to brown it pretty quickly - almost HI is the temperature for you. Splurt some soy sauce on to season it and stir for about a half minute more. Dump what's in the pan into a big bowl.

Add a tsp of sesame oil to the pan and let it heat up. Fry the carrots and cabbage on pretty high heat, pretty quickly. They'll get good and brown. Dump them on top of the meat in the bowl.

Whip the eggs in a small bowl with a fork until they're foamy. My mom does this like a demon possessed. Fry them up in the pan, you don't need any extra oil this time. Don't worry that they're ugly and brownish, but don't let them cook too long - they'll cook a little more when you add them to the rice later. Put the cooked eggs in a clean bowl for now. Chop up the green onions and put them with the eggs.

Add the last TBSP of sesame oil to the pan and fry the rice in it for a minute or two. Color it up with soy sauce, adding it gradually and tasting, so you don't make it too salty. Keep frying so that some of the rice gets crunchy - it's better that way and it keeps Bobby entertained with comparing it to burnt foods of all sorts. Dump the stuff from the bowl into the rice and stir it around so everything gets hot. Taste it to make sure you have enough black gold (I think the superior dark soy sauce is black gold, isn't that great?) in there. Stir in the eggs and green onions last.

It might seem boring, but it's delish and makes enough for 6 people to satiate themselves.

not your mamma's chili

2007-07-16T19:22:00.011-04:00

Oh, lawdy I'm making chili.

2 TBSP olive oil
1/2 a head of garlic, smooshed or minced
a big sweet yellow onion, chopped
3 lbs boneless chuck steak or roast, cut in cubes
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp super fire hot pepper like the habañeros my mamma grew in 1999, ground up
1 tsp salt (to start)
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 TBSP flour
12 oz. beer, a malty one if you have it
4 cups water or enough to fill the pot
a batch of white rice
some sour cream
some limes, cut in wedges

In a big pot on pretty high heat but not all the way HI, sauté the first block of ingredients a few minutes. Don't let anything get brown, just soft.

Add the meat and let it brown. You'll have to stir often to keep the onions from burning, but you want the cubes to sear on the outside. If you're using ground chuck, you just want it browned, not shrively. Drain a bit of the fat (not all of it) from the pot, using a strainer to catch the meat that's going to fall out into the sink no matter what you do.

Mix together the spices and flour - be sure to use a teacup, because it's just nice. Dump it into the browned chuck and stir it around a bit. It will get thick and dry pretty quick ...

Dump the beer in NOW, then add the water. Use your judgment - if you like thick chili, use less water, blah, blah. Turn the heat down to medium or medium low. You want the chili to simmer, not splurt out of the pot. Put a cover on, but leave it ajar so steam can escape. Simmer the chili at least an hour, but longer is better. It needs time to become chili and not just meat and salty water like Jacob said about his first soup. Check it every so often to make sure it's not burning.

The meat should fall apart a little and the chili should thicken a bit. If it seems watery, make a roux (that means put a big TBSP of flour in the teacup and stir 1/2 a cup of water in to make a smooth goo) and pour it in. Stir it well and cook a few minutes longer.

That's it. Serve the chili in bowls with a blob of rice in the bottom and a blob of sour cream on top. Squeeze a lime wedge over top. Delish.

TO MAKE SOME RICE: Put some rice in a pot and add water so it's one knuckle above the rice. Add a tsp of salt and a tsp of rice vinegar. Turn the heat to HI and bring just to a boil. Stir the rice and turn the heat to the lowest setting which is probably LO. Put the cover on tight and let the rice steam (without lifting the cover) until it smells like rice - about 15 minutes. When you lift the lid, the water will be absorbed and you'll have little pockmarks on the top of the rice.

YOU COULD PUT tomatoes in it, and you could add beans, but then you'd probably be making your mamma's chili, wouldn't you?

Makes enough chili for 4 people to scarf down in one night.

kombucha!

2007-07-15T13:55:00.004-04:00

Is ready! After a 9-day ferment, I have a whole crapload of kombucha to convince my kids to drink. Ian's home tonight and I'm thinking he'll try it - if only so he can get in on the making-some-more process when this batch runs out.

I ended up with a really pretty mushroom baby. Can't really say that about the mother, which became an ugly yeasty wedge (don't take it personally, Merritt, it was lovely for a while). According to Günther Frank I can throw it away, so I'll add it to the loquat, squash, and persimmon seeds in the compost bin. Uh huh. That's right. My compost bin is an incubator for living things unlike some others that eschew life and all its weeds.

road trip!

2007-07-15T01:24:00.008-04:00

Since our new bus is so damned fun, Mark devised a plan to load all our friends up and drive to SAK Comedy Lab - a brilliant idea. So we did, and Rachel, who is apparently all our friends, Mark, and I settled in for a solid hour and a half of sweating like my second boyfriend's palms to pick up our tickets just in time for the show. Rachel and Emily met us there and we laughed our arses off between the blasts of pee pee that occasionally wafted our way. We thought the pee smell was weird (and gross) until we realized that Urinetown was playing next door. Talk about subliminal marketing.

After SAK, we had some drinks at the Peacock Room, where a hot hot-panted lady held Rachel and me in thrall and where I was thrilled to spot Laurel and Kate and chat a bit about the obvious planetary misalignment causing so many of the Orlando circle's relationships to fling off course. The trip home was much cooler, attributable not one bit to the martinis but to the fact that the SUN was indeed DOWN. Mark took advantage of the darkness to spurt way too believable siren noises from his self, scaring the shit out of his gracious driver.

All that driving has so made me a pro at following that elusive gear-shift pattern for reverse.

coffee roast

2007-07-14T11:14:00.006-04:00

I've been geeking out for 2 days with high school contact lists. I made our website for a tech writing class I had in 2003 - it was muy uglier then - and never stopped messing with it. I somehow made myself the contact person and then roped some other people into geeking out with me. At least our planning meetings are fun and involve alcohol.

WEEK ONE of the new job was spent scrambling frantically for my former confidence. Now that I can find my way in and out of the building and to the hot water machine from varied stairways and access points, I feel like I belong there, man. It's a place I think Ian fits in more obviously than me - but give me time.

Okay, so the hot water machine is a behemoth death trap that spews small or large blobs of free coffee, espresso, the aforementioned hot water, and conceivably mochaccino, though so far there's no evidence of anything resembling chocolate or frothy milk coming out of that thing, into your very own Anne Taintor coffee cup . I know, it sounds amazing, but the rip-off is that this machine isn't one of those awesome tiny cup machines, like the one Geoffrey gave us when he split for France, it's filled with the same terrible underwear broth I ingested at TWO former companies! I can't even find it on the internet so I can ridicule it justifiably! What are the awful chances of that?! I've been sticking with tea.

and a beer

2007-07-06T19:44:00.005-04:00

Nothing says vacation like a bunch of beer. Dan helped me polish these off between scary pyrotechnics on the 4th while Rachel sipped away quite daintily at her white merlot spritzer.

I'm back to work on the 9th and looking to maximize my laziness this final weekend. I think instead of making yet another soup here at home, we'll head to the Vietnamese restaurant for some pho and a dose of abuse from the resident reticent waiter. Hell, I can't even think about pho without laughing at the hilarious tendons!

I got my kombucha mushroom situated in a vat of sweet green and black tea. If I did it right, I should have something drinkable in 5 or 6 days, although Hannah's a bit skeptical as to why anyone would want to drink it. I'm hoping it will make me feel like a hundred bucks.

time to make the doughnuts

2007-07-04T19:22:00.002-04:00

Since Ian's gallivanting around the old country and I've done all the shopping I can reasonably justify while on sabbatical from paychecks, I spent today opening Ian's mail. Damn, this guy gets a lot of mail. I'm glad he's not here to file away these goods, because I found some lovely stuff. Of note: Grandaddy Excerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla, Suzanne Vega Beauty & Crime, a signed Guided by Voices Suitcase 2, Billy Bragg's 2006 Reissue Sampler, Sigur Ros Takk, and my fave, Sonic Youth Goo, Deluxe Edition. How long has this mail been in the garage, anyway? Don't worry, baby, I'm just going to listen to them and then they're going right back in the box for you to do that Ink 19 stuff that you do. Yeah, all except the Suzanne Vega, because we got two. Score.

Dan and Rachel are coming over to drink beer with me and slur requests at Dylan, who is in charge of firing off the works I bought yesterday while I was still letting myself buy stuff. The guy at the fireworks store steered me in the direction of the Primo ARTILLERY collection. I got the Assorted Color and Assorted Crackling varieties (buy one get one!) which he assured me Dylan would love and I'm pretty sure he was dead on. I'm glad the Primos were so well received, because apparently I risked maybe being towed by the proprietor of the beer + cigarette place next door, where I parked my car without noticing the sign at the front door stating Generic Beer + Cigarette Store Customer Parking Only - You MAY Be Towed, to bring those bad boys home. Don't worry, I got some pretty fountains and a box of those strobe light things so we can all dance when we're good and lit.

decadent. lazy.

2007-07-02T11:41:00.007-04:00

Okay, those two books: Falling Boy by Alison McGhee, which is lovely - a 194 page poem, and Manhattan Loverboy by Arthur Nersesian. At some point in the reading of the latter I realized I had read something else by Nersesian - he's crazy - only can't remember what.

Just got back from Gainesville, where I traveled solo to celebrate Ruby's BIRTHDAY (if you're my Flickr friend you can view the beautiful chaos there), read The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin, and decided that for this week I will subsist on cabbage and white bean soup. I have heard that cabbage is an amazing metabolic speedball of death. To fat. Sounds like the cure for what ails me.

Have you seen this? Netflix hasn't heard of it. I think Ink 19 needs to request a review copy, don't you?

Week two of vacation, this one being a surprise gift as Harris Stratex made me an offer I couldn't refuse on Friday so I quit the job I hadn't started yet to accept it. Orient in a week - that's the decadent and the lazy part of this post. In anticipation of having to bust ass to get up to speed at the new job, I'm laying low in the "get things done" department here at home. Suhweet.

cabbage and white bean soup

2 TBSP olive oil
a big white or yellow onion, not a sweet one, chopped
3 carrots, I don't peel 'em, sliced
a small green cabbage, nothing fancy, cut up somewhat
1 tsp caraway seeds

4 cups water or enough to fill the pot
2 tsp salt
some black pepper
2 or 3 tomatoes, chopped

1 can of white beans like cannelini, navy, garbanzo
2 TBSP cider vinegar, rice vinegar will also do

Saute the first block of ingredients a few minutes - this means saute whatever you've got chopped while you're chopping the rest of it, toss in the seeds, and move on.

Add the next chunk and bring to a boil. Let it roll for about 20 minutes.

Add the beans and vinegar and just warm through.

It seems too simple to be good, but it is. I've substituted all kind of tomatoey things for the tomatoes - I think the original recipe called for tomato paste, I sometimes have leftover jarred spaghetti sauce, even ketchup will work.

Makes enough soup for one person to subsist on for a week.

Wayne the Pool Guy

2007-06-01T11:22:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I threw the book I've been reading in my pool for my son to fish out, sodden and terrible. Buy it if you're in the market for mediocre "entertainment" (in quotes because I'm being sarcastic). I then flew off in a huff (Tom Perrotta isn't reponsible - I was insulted by the dishes my kitchen sink held) to Barnes and Noble to buy books worthy of buying - I found two. I don't remember what they are, I'll tell you later.

Watched The Oh in Ohio, a sincerely entertaining movie that Rotten Tomatoes gives a 20%. What do they know? Paul Rudd and Danny DeVito were funny - I think that's the funniest I've seen Paul Rudd be, and Parker Posey can do whatever she wants. I love her.

Bang Bang Maxwell

2007-05-30T08:44:00.002-04:00

I received news yesterday that Brandon Maxwell is well pleased with my review of his awesome video.

everything is illuminated now

2007-05-20T10:23:00.004-04:00

Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss are married.

"...names are basically the only thing that dead people keep." from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Poke Her

2007-05-19T09:17:00.004-04:00

I won $4 at poker last night. My strategy involves mostly holding onto my chips - especially during GUT, which Mark insists is a German acronym for "Game Under Tin", which is ridiculous but quite entertaining to watch, especially when Steve is hellbent on winning back ALL his money from his nemesis, that tall guy. I think he bought in, like, 25 extra dollars.

Hey! Did you know that in the absence of perfume, borrowed from a generous perfect stranger at barside so as to un-stink yourself for visiting your newly heart-attacked and off-his-meds husband in the hospital, you can swipe or slather yourself with a lemon peel borrowed from a bartender who you probably know pretty darned well since you practically live in the bar and who would probably love it if you would just take your stank ass off someplace, preferably closer to the street? Yeah. Some lady asked me for perfume last night at Meg's. I suggested a lemon from the bar. She was incredibly grateful and wouldn't stop telling me so. I think Steve was afraid.

Ssh!

2007-05-16T20:38:00.002-04:00

Looks like I'm in at FSU. Gonna finally validate the girl-with-glasses appearance and get a Master's degree in Library Information Science. Parker Posey, eat your heart out.

Some boots.

2007-05-14T21:21:00.004-04:00

I'm reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The main character, Oskar, talks about things that make his boots heavy. What a great expression. It feels like he inherited it from his parents, but he says it like everyone else does, too.

We ate this chocolate last night. Citron et poivre. Holy crap, it's good.

Taste stop here.

2006-08-19T18:02:00.001-04:00

My blog. Named after a poignant bit of writing I read on an Asian food package.