Sick weekend

Is it bad when your eyes are already burning by the time you get home? Don't answer that. Actually, John's been sick, and I had an idea that I was catching his sick too. Then we put it together. That grey on the horizon? That's from the fires. That's why John is sick and I have burning eyes. That's it. Fortunately, the air is supposed to be getting better now.

So. Sickness makes John not hungry at all. That's how I ended up eating an entire batch of Vcon spicy tempeh rotelle with broccoli rabe (or in my case actual broccoli) over the course of three days. It's a good thing it's DELICIOUS. The tempeh marinade was done in a totally ingenious way: by braise! No marinade! You have to admit that this business looks disturbingly like very seedy marinade (if, you know, seedy marinade disturbs you), BUT NO. It is very seedy braising liquid instead.

The especially genius part of this was the fennel seeds. If you ever want to make anything resemble sausage, I now recommend fennel seeds. The finished product actually resembled my muscular pasta with fake sausage crumbles pretty closely: pasta, olive oil, spicy protein. The Vcon business was a lot less oily, though.

All of my pictures of the finished product are muddy and unremarkable, but look at the delicious tempeh!




When John did want food, he wanted soothing and indulgent business. I gave him a list to choose from, and he circled this.

Pea and cheese risotto

onion/garlic
olive oil/butter
arborio rice
hot broth on the stove
frozen peas
salt, pepper
grating cheese if you want it

I made this one with half a red onion, some garlic, and romano cheese.

Chop the onion/etc and soften it in olive oil or butter. When it's starting to turn gold and melty, throw in a cup of rice and a cup of hot broth. You want a thick, sloppy liquid. Turn the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently but not necessarily 100% of the time. Add more cups of broth as the previous cups absorb into the rice. This should take four or five cups at least. When the rice grains don't have a hard white core anymore, taste one. If it's cooked, or near enough, dump a bunch of peas and a last half cup of broth into the pot. When the peas are warm and the broth is absorbed, take everything off the heat. If you want cheese, grate it into the pot. Add a pinch of salt and lots of fresh ground pepper, stir the business up, and eat it.

Afterward, have tea and lie down on the couch to watch Battlestar Galactica.

Snacky green vegetables with sesame

Sometimes you don't want much of anything for dinner. This was the case a couple days ago, when I was wandering around the kitchen essentially saying "bleah" to everything I saw. Fortunately, someone nice offered to make me a nice bowl of green niceties.

Green snacky business

shallot
butter/flavorless oil
edamame
broccoli
sesame seeds
water or tea
soy sauce
hot pepper sauce (sriracha)

Skin and mince a shallot. Soften it slowly in butter or oil. We used butter. Maybe add a tiny bit of sesame oil if you want.

Add a bunch of edamame, either shelled fresh or frozen. If yours are frozen, don't bother to defrost them: the melting ice will give them some liquid to cook in. Add a little water in addition. John used some of my cup of tea, hoping it would give some tea flavor to the finished business, but no. Maybe a stronger tea would work.

Let the edamame simmer for five minutes or so while you chop the broccoli into pleasing florets. Then toss in the broccoli, along with a little dab of soy sauce and hot pepper sauce. Add a handful of sesame seeds as well. Sesame seeds are delicious: use lots. Stir everything together, cook for another three or so minutes, or until broccoli is barely cooked through, and serve.

Have some tea. I had iced jasmine tea. There's been a shocking amount of iced tea around here lately, partly because it's summer and partly because I bought a 1-liter carafe specifically for it.

Butter and shallot actually worked very well with the soy and hot pepper. Sesame always works well with everything. There's also this experience: it seems like you're eating just vegetables for dinner. Then you realize some of the vegetables are soybeans. Then you're full.

We do eat sweet things occasionally.

For instance, the other night we were celebrating having finally decided where to move, so we walked to the store, picked out the best fruit there, and came home to make milkshakes.

Startlingly decadent mango milkshake

a ripe mango
some decent vanilla ice cream/soy cream/etc

Basic fruit milkshake: Clean and chop fruit, add ice cream, and blend. In this instance, peel the mango and cut it into chunks. Stick it in a blender, add a roughly equal volume of vanilla ice cream, and blend.

Eat it with a spoon, since there's no way you could get something this thick through a straw. If you want thinner business, add some milk or yogurt in place of part of the ice cream. Or you could use all yogurt instead of ice cream for a smoothie version. Plain yogurt will create more of a tangy lassi, while vanilla will make a sweeter version.

This makes two small milkshakes or one gigantic one.

Other variations:
- Use any soft fruit you have lying around, skinned if necessary: peach, strawberry, blueberry, cherry, banana, apricot, plum: anything you like will turn out great.
- Use any kind of ice cream, sorbet, or other etc. you think would be good. We were considering ginger ice cream to go with the mango. Lemon would be really great with practically any fruit.
- For that matter, add some candied ginger, citrus zest, or chopped mint leaves.

Speaking of ginger, how about some gingersnaps?

I went through the dessert binder to find a gingersnap recipe for which we actually had all the ingredients. Lo, I discovered that two of the recipes were nearly identical. Further internet search revealed even More identical recipes. So I decided to go for that basic outline and just shift the spices to accommodate what I had.

I also used up all the brown sugar and most of the butter in the house making these. This meant that afterward we had zero sugar in the house! Well, there's some molasses, but still. The way is clear for AGAVE.

Gingersnaps are good brand gingersnaps

3/4 cup butter/earth balance
1 egg
1 cup sugar (brown in my case)
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour (wheat)
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
spices: up to 4 tsp total of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, or allspice.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Normally you'd make cookies by creaming the butter and sugar, adding in the egg and molasses and beating some more, then gradually mixing in the dry ingredients. You can do that. In my case, the butter was frozen and the brown sugar hardened into one horrifying block. So instead, I got out a pan and put it over low heat. I chopped off the right amounts of butter and sugar, threw them in a pan with the molasses, and waited for everything to melt. When things were sufficiently melted to mix, I took them off the heat and stirred them up, crumbling the sugar with a spoon.

This worked admirably. Baking experimentation points for me!

In the meantime, put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix them gently. If you have a sifter, go for it. I use a spoon. At this stage, consider spicing: what do you like best? What do you have? I was nearly out of ginger, so I just added every bit I could scrape out of the jar. Then I added about a teaspoon each of cloves and allspice. I am not particularly into cinnamon, and like it cut by lots of other spices, so I added only about half a teaspoon of that. You can spice however you want: experiment and see what you like. More baking experimentation points!

When the sugar and butter mix had cooled down, I added it and an egg to the dry business. Then I just mixed it all up. If you do this my way, make SURE the sugar and butter are sufficiently cool before they come in contact with the raw egg! You don't want any scrambled business. Well, probably your butter is not frozen and your sugar is not hardened into one big block, so it's probably not an issue.

Roll the dough into inch-diameter balls. You can roll them in sugar if your sugar is actually crystalline. I left mine plain, since I wasn't about to start grating the rest of the block just for a sparkly coating.

Bake for eight minutes, or until cracks have appeared in the tops and the cookies have acquired a solid crust. Give them a minute to cool on the cookie sheet, then stick them on a rack to cool entirely.

Eat. These cookies want some ice cream of their own, preferably smeared onto their flat side with a spoon. Any leftover mango business would work well, because mango and ginger? Yes please. I have a vague plan to make these again, but to flatten them with a fork for optimal ice cream sandwich creation.

Tea is also a good idea.

Oh no! It's too delicious!

I was reading the foodblogs and came upon Kamutflake Girl's dinner overflowing with (among other business) all kinds of delicious Veganomicon food. I wanted it! I had the tofu. I even had beets! But alas, I had no other things. I guessed I would just have to console myself with the hot sauce tempeh instead. Oh no!

I didn't want to use hot sauce, though. I wanted to use barbecue sauce: deep dark delicious five minute Joy of Cooking sauce that had been languishing neglected in the side door of the fridge.

This was easily accomplished. I subbed barbecue sauce for the hot sauce. I also used broth for the wine, since we aren't drinking right now and the cooking vermouth was out. I imagine that wine in this would be pretty killer, though. It was pretty killer even without.

Isa also has you parboil the tempeh before cooking. Interesting. I hadn't ever done this before, and to be honest, didn't notice that it made much difference. Of course I had never made this with non-parboiled tempeh, so there's that.


A tomato cracked in my bag coming home. I guess I will just have to have delicious tomato salad. Oh no!

a good tomato
a bowl
salt

Cut up your tomato and put it in a bowl. Sprinkle a little salt on it. Eat it with a fork.

More mint for hot morning

It's so hot. I should make some more of those spring rolls. I am going to try the dipping sauce over here. That looks closest to my honey and vinegar ideal.

Here is a thing to have for breakfast when it is hot. It's actually cool and refreshing. It also requires zero heat application of any kind.

Labneh crispbread

crispbread
plain good yogurt for labneh
honey
fresh mint

Drain plain yogurt in a fine strainer or coffee filter overnight to make the labneh. In the morning, when it is still nice and cool, get up. Get the cold cold labneh out of the fridge, along with the end of your bunch of mint from the other day. Get out some crispbread or neutral grainy crackers: something that is crispy and nicely textured without requiring heat of any kind. I like Wasa light rye. Get out some honey.

Spread labneh on the crispbread. Scatter torn mint leaves over. Drizzle the business with honey.

Eat it. Have iced tea. I had jasmine.

Some things you could add or exchange:
- dried fruit: cherries, apricots, cranberries
- fresh fruit: figs, apples, actual non-dried apricots
- some thick, fairly tart jam
- chopped almonds or pistachios
- sesame seeds

Now don't go out of the house all day unless you are going to the pool.