Boo hoo hoo Cheese and Apples

Just an aside here, not a proper post:


I finished my apple (homegrown from a tree in my parents' garden, SUCKERS!) but still have cheese left.

Extra-sharp, aged cheddar from my husband's road trip to Tillamook. I love this cheese, but I have started to nibble on the apple core to compliment it. Because I really, really, really like to pair cheese with fruit. Observe:



There is a hole going straight through the apple now, like the mouth on a Jim Henson monster.

Creepy.

Oh, Hello Omelet!

I am eating an omelet, because I took the opportunity to build one for myself, for the narrow and highly specific purpose of eating. For myself. Yes. Indeed.


I used the three egg whites leftover from a recent batch of spaghetti carbonara, plus one whole egg. For the pan, I used my husband's gorgeous iron skillet:


(Skillet glamor shot intended to evoke a dark moon rising over a distant planet.)

For the oil, with which the pan was greased, I used olive oil because that's what we have 'round this here kitchen.

For the cheese, I used Tillamook smoked black pepper white cheddar cheese. Not all omelets use cheese, but mine typically do because I love cheese.


For the non-cheese, I used flat leaf parsley and green onion, because those are the fresh herbs that I had in my fridge at the time.


The eggs were only lightly whipped, and they barely filled the pan, so the omelet itself is thin--nearly the size and shape of a tortilla. While not the heartiest omelet of my life (four egg whites to one yolk), it is certainly greasy, flavorful and cheering. A perfect way to prepare for a day of hard work.

Huzzah, omelet!

Curbing A Murderous Sweet Tooth vol. 1 Simmered Apples

If you're like me (and because I have a somewhat limited imagination, I assume everyone is), you have a commanding sweet tooth that demands grim, sugary satisfaction beyond anything a human frame can safely consume.

Rather than fully re-orchestrate your palate to suit your true medical needs, compromises are sought. What can be eaten or be otherwise placed in the mouth that will reach that magical sensation of "eh, good enough" while leaving the mind and body intact?!?!?!?!

THIS is the subject of my "Curbing A Murderous Sweet Tooth" series.

Volume 1:
Simmered Apples

Apples aren't as cheap as I like to be when it comes to food, but an apple every now and then can fit between even tightly pinched pennies. (Wait, that metaphor doesn't make any sense...)

I'm partial to Fuji and Pink Lady apples, and Honeycrisp when they're on sale. I'm fairly certain that today's apple is either Fuji or Honeycrisp.

What I Did




I quartered my apple so the core could be easily removed--almost scooped out of each quarter--with a paring knife.

I trimmed the knobby ends off of each apple quarter and ate them. This was a good idea. In fact, if I were as cool as my husband (with regard to fresh fruit) I would have stopped at this step and just eaten the apple. But I am not, at least not today. I needed, I NEED, to be reminded of pastry. At least a little more than what fresh fruit can do for me this afternoon.

With the knobby ends gone, I was free to make thin little slices of apple, as is visible in the photo. This is a simple recipe that I'm sure everyone already uses an adaptation of, but the thinness of the slices are what lend it a refreshing novelty. Show off. You can be lazy in many areas of life and I will still love you. But for your own dignity and mine, don't neglect this step. Make thin slices of apple.

I layered the slices in a ramekin, filled the bottom with maybe an inch of water, and topped the whole business of it with powdered cinnamon and dark agave syrup. I "sealed" the ramekin with a wet paper towel and microwaved it for about 2.5 minutes.

It's true that the apples boiled over, rendering the ramekin horribly sticky. It's true that the microwave had to be thoroughly cleaned. But the apple slices and simple juice in the dish were worth it. The flavor was a mixture of home-cooking, autumn and Americana, contrasted with a hint of residual, summery, fresh, fruitiness.

My after-work-snack sweet tooth was domesticated, and I am grateful and relaxed. Bonus points are being awarded here for the fiber and water content of apples: anything inclined to fill and occupy the stomach is an ally when one is faced with sating an insatiable sweet tooth and snack drive.

A Note About Granny Smith Apples

Do you know how much sugar you have to use to make Granny Smith apples palatable?!?!?!

Too much!!!!!

It is my humble (and in this case, unsentimental) opinion that the sugar requirements for Granny Smith apples are entirely too much of a bother. Health and vanity concerns aside, who wants to spend that much money sweetening a kind of fruit that's normally sweet enough to use as a sweetener? Sugar is cheap, but it's not free, so bollocks that. Bollocks all other the place. (Bad at swearing? That's okay.)

Unless one is of an especially retro mindset, and is in the mood for a dish that is one half-step removed from candy (both legitimate whims), it's better to start baked apple sweet dishes with apples that are already sweet. I have spoken.

I Did Not INTEND To Eat Ducks

This is a story about a "young" woman, and some ramen, and a surprise.

Anticipating duck-themed bullion for broth, I--I mean, "some unnamed woman"--decided to tuck in and enjoy a new style of instant ramen. My--I mean, "her"--husband's off doing PAX stuff, so an instant meal for one is totally called for and fully allowed.

Sounds harmless enough, right? What are the odds that instant food would be full of actual ducks?

Oh dear. The odds are very good indeed.

And the ducks, so help me, are also very good. Indeed.

Why the anxiety about eating duck? It's not like I'm vegetarian. And given that ducks fly and are regularly obtained from the wild, it's most likely not unthinkable that these delicious ducks actually had better lives than the last factory-farmed poultry I ate this week.

But I hold a semi-firm taboo: "thou shall not eat thy pets, nor thy pets' kin." And as a youth, my family adopted two ducks from a farm store. We named one Theodore and the other Siegfried, after a scene in the movie "Four Rooms." They joined wild flocks, but would occasionally return to our family pond.

And now I'm EATING DUCK for dinner! I'd better honor their memory by eating it while it's still warm. My apologies, everyone.

Here are some glamor shots of the meal, including a curiously labeled pouch full of meat and delicious gravy:












See how good that meat looks? All marinated...

My apologies to ducks everywhere.

Hot Plastic Bags: The REAL Antifood

I had not planned for this to be a point-counterpoint sort of evening, but the facts speak for themselves. Exercise may help tilt one's calorie balance away from the pizza in one's mouth, but there is no Antifood in my immediate vicinity as overpowering as a hot plastic bag.

In a truly bold move (a Truly Bold Move), my spouse decided to try storing lettuce and rashes on the countertop like fruit. His logic stated that they were unrefrigerated on display in the farm stand, and therefore they could be stored unrefrigerated at home. In the summer heat. In plastic bags. In our kitchen. It was a bold experiment, and I respect a little risk-taking, now and then.

But just now, just this very evening, not minutes ago, I approached the produce hoping that his experiment had yielded the desired results--unchanged, room-temperature, farm-fresh salad fixins'.

Goodness no.

In a mere 30-something hours, the radish leaves had disintegrated impressively. The smell rivaled a cat box in organic horror, but was entirely vegetarian. I washed the radishes and put them in the fridge, but I cannot eat them. They will likely need to be replaced.

Oh, the horror.

Exercise: The Antifood

It's Opposite Day somewhere, so I'm going to seize this opportunity to wax semi-poetic in my food blog on the subject of Exercise: The Antifood.

For the past two weeks, my husband and I have gone on modest neighborhood hikes each evening after I get home from work. We live in an area full of horse trails, so these hikes are a practical way to get some enjoyable, regular exercise without having to spend money on a gym membership or personal machines (bikes, not-bikes, etc.).

I have begun to shrink. I have begun to shrink much more steadily than I did when I tried a food-only approach. I dream of going to comic book conventions dressed like Leeloo from "The Fifth Element." Ace bandages, ribs, orange hair, invisible eyebrows.

Mind you, the bodily changes that I have ACTUALLY undergone as a result of a mere two weeks of mild exercise are subtle enough that I'm sure only I can see them. Even my clothes are only vaguely aware of it. But I can see the changes, and I am prematurely smug, because premature smugness suits me so. (Even though I tentatively anticipate gaining the weight back once my husband's classes start up again next month, because he will longer be available in the evenings to join me. I will likely binge on video games, almond butter and "Torchwood" each night to numb my loneliness. But this is entirely enough of that kind of talk! I am here, writing right now, to discuss basic, daily exercise like it's some new thing I just found.)

I have concluded that exercise is antifood.

Similar to a specialized antimatter, in that it mathematically cancels out food. The food that one has already eaten; the food that one is eating right now; the food that one will eat later.

As with all things that refer ever-so-vaguely to numbers, this makes me smile.

Quinoa, Blueberries, Coconut and Milk

I am all about pantry cooking, and I am all about frozen ingredients. Today's "thing I am eating" is nutrient-dense, delicious, cheap, and was assembled out of stuff I had on hand. It has also helped to manage my rampaging sweet-tooth, which is a pretty scary accomplishment for a healthy food to achieve.




Step 1. Make Quinoa

It's more expensive than rice, but is a whole protein all by itself and is available in large containers for cheap-ish at Costco. Plus, it's gluten free, in case you're into that.

Cook it by boiling the way the package advises you to, which is basically the same method as cooking rice.

Step 2. Heat Frozen Blueberries

I lined the bottom of a microwave-safe cereal bowl with frozen blueberries and microwaved them for about a minute, because it's August and I wanted them lukewarm. Keep them frozen or cook them until hot if you'd prefer.

I know lining the bottom of the bowl doesn't look like very many blueberries, but the other ingredients will pick up their flavor. (This is a good way to make a small package of frozen blueberries last longer.)

Step 3. Add Cooked Quinoa

Spoon it over the blueberries. Use as much as you want, it should pick up the blueberry flavor pretty well. Think of an oatmeal-to-fruit ratio.

Step 4. Add Shredded Coconut

I used about a tablespoon of sweetened, shredded coconut, because that's what I have. I'll concede that using an ingredient that has sugar in it is kind of cheating, given that the dish is otherwise such a health-bomb... But your FACE is kind of cheating! Burn.

Step 5. Pour Milk Like It's Cereal

Pretty straightforward.

Step 6. Mix Together And Eat

This step is even more straightforward.

You're welcome.

Twin Peaks Sandwich

Today's lunch has been assembled using leftovers from a recent party:

1. Slices of brie.

2. Hoagie rolls of a decent quality.

I put the brie into the rolls, and in doing so built a sandwich:




But this is not just any sandwich!!! The roll isn't a proper baguette and I didn't add butter, but I am nonetheless eating a television theme meal right now, as I'm typing this.

Behold:



One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite shows.

Aww yeah.

Jerry Horne returns from Paris, and shares sandwiches with his brother Benjamin.

And I mean, if you can't take milk fat advice from dudes named Ben and Jerry, what's left in life? (Ouch. I just kicked myself for telling that joke.)

Cubicle picnic glamor shot:

Lindsay's Irish Cabbage

My dinner tonight is fantastic! I'm giving the blog spotlight to the cabbage.

Now, I'm Irish-American, and my research into the subject of traditional Irish cabbage preparations was half-assed. But WHATEVER it is that I'm eating, that I just made, is great.




Here's what I did:

Preheat the oven to 350 f.

Sauté 2-3 slices of bacon in at least 1/4" of olive oil the bottom of a soup pot until crispy. Remove bacon and the bacon-olive-oil, and set aside.

Quarter a head of cabbage and peel off the icky outer leaves. Fill the bacon pot with water and boil the cabbage until soft. Maybe 20 mins? I didn't keep track. You know how to boil cabbage.

Once the cabbage is cooked, put in a roasting pan. Drizzle a little of the cooking water over top, to keep it from drying out in the oven. Drizzle the bacon-olive-oil over the cabbage and crumble the bacon over the cabbage.

Roast at 350 f for about 40 minutes. It's done when it starts to brown and the edges start to crisp. Salt before eating.

Fantastic.

Toad-in-the-Hole, Girl Scout Eggs, etc...

Making breakfast for myself while my husband sleeps in means that I can have whatever I want, without collaborating along the lines of what he's in the mood to cook or eat.

Today, right at this very moment in time, I am having one of my favorites: Toad-in-the-Hole, aka Girl Scout Eggs.




Step 1: Cut a hole in the bread.

Step 2: Fry an egg in the bread.

Step 3: Make her open the bread. And that's the way you do it.

Wait, what?

Back to topic.

Normally, I butter the bread a little before pan-frying, but today I just used a lot of olive oil. A LOT of olive oil. It is oilier than a donut. It's crunchy and greasy and very heavy. I am so full, guys, omg.

This is good because, on occasion, I love a seriously greasy breakfast and olive oil is one of the better greases for serious ingestion.

This is also good because I want to feel as full and sated as possible without actually preparing very much food, because I want to postpone my next trip to the grocery store for as long as I can.

One egg and one slice of bread (170 calories together, ungreased) are magically transformed into a huge meal by frying 'em up in olive oil (120 calories per tablespoon, and my bread absorbed somewhere between two and four tablespoons--I drizzled generously without measuring).

410 to 650 reasonably health-like calories for under $0.25, and I feel so fed that my next meal can just be lightly salted vegetables boiled in a nice broth for all I care.

Nice.

Hello Panda, I love you

Hello Panda is one of my favorite brands of commercially produced cookies.





I like them enough that my husband will actually point them out in the grocery store when he wants to get an immediate, cheerful response out of me. "Hey Lindsay, they have Hello Panda!" "Yeah they do! I love those things." I'll even drop whatever I'm talking about to acknowledge them, which makes these cookies a useful way for people around me to initiate fast changes in conversational topic.

(Other, similar strategies include pointing out nearby small animals--"Hey Lindsay, there's a dog across the street!"--fish tanks, Doctor Who paraphernalia, novelty socks, etc. I try to keep a lot of conversational eject buttons conveniently placed in my behavioral programming, because they do tend to come in handy. Now back to the subject of cookies.)

It's true that I am at least a little biased by how TOTALLY ADORABLE the cartoon panda on the box is, but the cookies inside are also lovely independent of their cute marketing strategy.

Hello Panda Cookies Are Nicely Portioned

Each little cookie is modestly sized, approximately 1" x 1" x 0.5" which makes portion control much easier than with many other delicious, commercially produced, boxed cookies.

The internet (whom I am tentatively trusting, because Nabisco's website only gives Oreo calorie information by the gram, not by the cookie) states that a single Oreo cookie contains 70 calories. Quite a lot of cardiovascular exercise and/or austere eating elsewhere is needed to offset a stack of Oreos, making them something of a special occasion cookie.




Hello Panda cookies are 20 calories each, and eating 3.5 of them (70 calories) feels like considerably more cookie time than a single Oreo does. While they are still genuinely cookies for cookies' sake, they're still a more manageable choice for cookie time in normal life.

In defense of Oreos, Hello Panda cookies are not as suitable for dunking in milk. But different cookies are best for different situations.

Hello Panda Cookies Have a Lovely Balance of Textures and Flavors

I likened Hello Panda cookies to Oreo cookies because the flavors and textures are reasonably comparable. They're quite different foods, but familiarity with one can help build a fuller imaginary representation of the other.

Both cookies have wonderful, crunchy exteriors and pleasing (if a little confusing) creamy middles.

Both cookies have chocolate-themed elements that are not actual chocolate, and both seem to be full of sweetened, mildly dangerous shortening. (IS it shortening? It is shortening, isn't it. Is it? Is it?)







Hello Panda cookies have a perfectly crunchy and mild biscuit exterior, and they are filled with a creamy, not-actually-ganache "choco cream."

The consistency of the biscuit layer is similar to that of the snack food style of small, hard pretzels. (Which I am making a little too much effort to distinguish from the larger, soft, baked, traditional pretzels.)

The Hello Panda outer cookie is slightly more brittle than a pretzel. It's less tough, less salty, and is a little thicker and sweeter, without being too sweet. The biscuit exterior gently cracks and snaps apart when bitten, and does not bend under pressure. The flavor resembles shortbread, but is less greasy and intense. (Shortbread isn't particularly intensely flavored, but these cookies are still milder.)

As mentioned before, the cookies have a delicious, chocolate-themed filling, similar to ganache but more shelf-stable. Like the outside, the filling is not overly sweet. To liken it to other chocolatey products found in many American grocery stores, the texture is slightly harder than Nutella but slightly softer than the inside of a a Lindt truffle.

The combination of crunch with smooth, of flour-based flavors with chocolate-like candy/frosting flavors, is very nice. Perfectly suited to the not-quite-a-baked-good, also-not-candy role that I have for crunchy, commercially produced, boxed cookies.

That, and, did you see how cute the cartoon panda is?!?! Wow.

Homemade Ice Cream & Murdered Merangue

Two posts in one day! I just wanted to give a quick nod to last weekend.

My sister has decided to make a specialty of homemade ice cream. Her first concoction was the perfect execution of this recipe for blueberry ice cream. The lightly crushed and occasionally intact, fresh, raw blueberries were shockingly good--enough to disrupt some of my stereotypes about putting fruit in ice cream. (Like "the fruit must always be cooked first" and "the fruit will taste a little mediocre" and "raw blueberries are too sour for this.")

Her second concoction, the second night I crashed on her couch, was a recipe of her own invention. Apple crisp ice cream. She made a spiced apple compote in a saucepan, using fresh apples, and chilled it. She made a toasted, crunchy crumble out of oats, flour, butter and brown sugar. Both were stirred into the completely from-scratch vanilla ice cream batter, and froze right into it. It was amazing, and I hope to publish the recipe later if she'll write it down for me.





While my sister assembled the yolk and milk mixtures, I was left with two nights worth of egg whites. I stood in the kitchen with her, but my help was infrequently required. I decided to attempt a simple mousse without reading any mousse recipes.

Unfortunately, the available resources were a bit scant, so I found myself whipping the bowl of egg whites with a salad fork, for want of a mixer or whisk.

Check it out:


Actual, standing egg whites whipped in an absurdly low-tech way. I think it took me two hours.

Unfortunately, I made a fatal mistake immediately afterward. I folded the beautiful meringue into hot, sweetened, chocolatey milk without removing the scalded milk mixture from the stove. The egg whites cooked far too much (they actually boiled!!!), and my would-be mousse developed an unfortunate texture, a bit like it was full of tiny, sand-like grains of rubber.

Here is a photo of my dashed dreams and public shame:


Woe is me.

Luckily, my sister's ice cream was ready around the same time that I concluded that I could not keep eating my experiment. We watched Community and all was well.

Punk Rock Comfort Food

Practically everybody I know has their own different definition for what punk rock is, and there are frequent disagreements over the details when the subject comes up.

However, this is my blog, and I will write from my perspective. To me, punk must be vulgar. It must be, or appear to be, remedial. Not necessarily due to a lack of advanced ability, but due to an ethic that a sloppy half-effort is a liberating and equalizing effort. Punk also ought to set the stage for creating social links to other oddballs--a sort of mixed-up social slurry, a strange cultural catch-all for misfits. A supportive punk family/tribe/scene/whatever can make an essential lifeline in times of crisis, something that I have gratefully experienced firsthand.

Beyond this sociological understanding, there are also specifics regarding the punk rock art movement in its different stages over the last 40 years. These deserve thorough analysis at another time, in something other than a food blog.

Anyway.

I finally watched the movie Repo Man for the first time today.

I decided to eat a big meal while watching the movie, to help prepare my body for my scheduled blood donation this afternoon. Because of the movie, I was feeling proud of how playful, rebellious and vulgar I naturally am. I wanted to revel in my own not-giving-a-damn-about-the-rules-ness in a tangible and appropriately disgusting way. So this is what I did:







I hacked off part of a raw cabbage, covered it in shredded cheese and microwaved it for two minutes. It tasted like bad ideas and freedom.

I will definitely do this again, but with more cabbage and less cheese next time, so I don't clog my blood recipient's arteries too badly.*

Salut! To your health! Happy eating! Bon voyage!


*An interesting side note for those who may be curious: I was rejected by the blood bank for having a head cold today. I will try again next week. I hear that donating blood is a great way to get really, really drowsy, and while I already love naps and I sleep ok at night, I haven't had a proper knocked-right-out, serious sleep in a while. Maybe I'll be up to it next week!

Happy Welch Rarebit Day!

Somewhere between exercise and brunch this morning, I checked Facebook and was delighted to learn from the British Cheese Board (of COURSE I follow them on Facebook) that today is National (in the UK at least) Welch Rarebit Day!

Lacking the ingredients to make the recipe they provided, I decided to experiment a little. This wonderful brunch is what I came up with:





I sliced the heel of a baguette so that the bottom of a little baking dish was lined with bread.

I mixed about 2-3 heaping tablespoons of neufchâtel cheese with a drizzle (about 1/2 tsp) of A1 steak sauce with a smaller drizzle (about 1/3 tsp) of spicy brown mustard. When combined, this mixture had the approximate color of French vanilla ice cream.

After spreading the seasoned neufchâtel on the bread, I sprinkled a layer of shredded, sharp cheddar on top and broiled the whole thing until the cheese had melted and just started to evenly bubble and brown.

The result is fluffy, creamy and toasty with a slight crunch on the outside. The texture reminds me a little of roasted marshmallows.

When preparing this again, I will need to shift the neufchâtel to sharp cheddar ratio a little, in favor of more cheddar and less neufchâtel. I could stand to have more greasy crunch next time.

But all-in-all, I am satisfied. This was a wonderful Blue Monday brunch!