Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.

You know what?

If you put something on the lid of a Snapware(TM) or Tupperware(TM) or whatever, and then snap the transparent plastic basket part, or whatever it's called, right on top, instead of underneath the lid, well, it looks space-age.

Behold:

Also, the mousse is still delicious, the candy cups taste a lot better now that they've absorbed more of the chocolate flavor, and the whipped cream is somehow still solid. It's just whipping cream, too. No gelatin or egg whites, or any such thing. It's like it's enchanted, or something. Just staying up on its own in the fridge for so many days.

Frozen peas!

What are these? (What!)

These are peas! (Who?)

Were they frozen? Were they steamed? Is that some lemon on these peas?

And dill.

And a lot of butter.

Pie updates: Cheater, cheater, cheater

1. I forgot to mention this, but I used a garlic crusher to put crushed garlic in the beef pie filling.

2. I forgot to mention this, but while the pie filling was entirely just me doing my thing freehand, and the crust was store bought, the cooking time, temperature, and pie shapes were lifted from this:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/miniature-meat-pies

Mine were best after 10-12 minutes, instead of 12-16, though.

3. Dammit. I am eating the pies. I am eating three little pies for lunch. I are chocolate mousse with whipped cream for breakfast, and I am eating meat pies for lunch.

I started with the littlest one, in the name of scientific exploration. They're still good cold, even though I'm typically very picky about cold food. The rosemary is strong, but it has lots of "friends" to keep it balanced. (Friends like mustard, onions, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, peas, whatever.)

Seriously. I feel guilty about contributing to the rate at which my household goes through meat. I'm a little haunted by the memory of Thich Nhat Hanh's writings about ethical eating, and I feel like I've failed to live up to the examples set by André "3000" Benjamin and Kirk "I wrote about him last time, too" Hammett. I mean, I've obviously failed to live up to their musical legacies, but also their puported culinary legacies.

For what it's worth, once our grocery budget has refreshed, I'm going to buy vegetarian "meat" crumbles, and more pie crust, and I'm doing this thing right.

In the meantime, here are some justifications:

1. I need to better understand my handiwork. For example, I learned that the 12-minute pies weren't overcooked, and they were actually a little tastier than the 10-minute pies.

2. I did make the things, after all, and from scratch. That has to count for something.

3. Wrapping them in plastic to freeze them would require using disposable plastic wrap, and trying to freeze them without being wrappe up that tightly would destroy them, wasting food.

4. I do want to retain the ability to digest meat, and anecdotes I've encountered when socializing with long-term vegetarians describe having digestive upsets after eating meat, because their bodies have maybe lost the intestinal healthy bacteria needed to metabolize it, I guess? I'm not going to look it up, though. YOU look it up. Find out for yourself. Use PubMed or NIH. Don't use magazine-style blogs or actual magazines. Science says no.

But today, Appetite said "yes." 

For shame, for shame.

5. Seriously, just look at this. I can't condemn myself for the moral slip. If I'm going to cheat my beliefs periodically, as human beings are known to do, this is the kind of situation in which to do it:

It tastes even better than it looks.

Here is a photo of some milk! Because the pie goes well with milk, and if I'm taking pictures, I might as well just keep going.

THERE'S A PAPER LANTERN REFLECTED IN THE MILK!!! ISN'T THAT WEIRD TO SEE IN A PHOTOGRAPH?!?!

Part two: Because I didn't actually write about the meat pies.

I am married to an omnivore who likes meat. Who really, really likes meat. I like umami flavors too, but right now, if I jump in and have a meat dish, I'll inevitably encounter a vein, or a bit of crunched up bone, and then my gag reflex will flip out, like I AM EATING BODY PARTS?!?!?!? A total Charlton Heston Soylent Green moment, except that I eat soy all the time, because it's obviously not made out of people. Soybeans are beans. You can buy them, you can eat them, you can see for yourself.

But we had a pound of ground beef ready to go, which I wanted to stretch out into multiple meals by pairing it with flour and vegetables. And meat pies are the best meat dishes anyway, as far as I'm concerned.

I totally just made this one up as I went along, because I rock the fuck out of ground beef pie filling. It's my THING. I am going to apply these skills to a vegetarian experiment, to see if I can pull it off. But in the meat version, I am already a champ.

I bought some store-brand pie dough because FUCK NO, I AIN'T MAKING PIE CRUST FROM SCRATCH!!!! 

For the pie filling, I chopped a medium-sized yellow onion, so that each little flake of onion (you know what I mean?) was a little smaller than a postage stamp. I cooked the onions and browned the beef at the same time, in a pan greased with canola oil. I threw in a big handful of flour--Jesus, was it really a cup? it couldn't have been a cup. Maaaaaybe it was a cup--and splashed a bit of water and a bit of Sleighr dark ale in there.

Sorry if you're a bit squeamish about blasphemy done in the name of heavy metal, but come on. I have to illustrate the Slayer/Sleighr thing, because it's funny:

Please don't get weird about the clash of Christmas imagery going on in this photo. I am not waging war on Christmas, I am waging war on the absence of jokes about thrash metal. You can get squeamish about Slayer's discography and/or imagery, though. Go for it. As far as I know, the band is not anti-people, even though they write about people who are anti-people. They covered a Minor Threat song, and Minor Threat come from approximately the same scene as Bad Brains, and Bad Brains rule. This is what I tell myself. But on the thrash metal safe side, there's always good ole Metallica, whose (trivia time!) drummer married the Harvard Skylar who inspired the love interest in Good Will Hunting, because they were all going to school together at the time. So, how 'bout them apples? (You can argue that Metallica sucks, but I'll ignore you, because their therapy documentary is what first inspired me to consider a career as a therapist, and they weren't actually wrong in their prediction about the impact of music piracy on the music industry. And come on! Who can stay mad at anything ever, after thinking about Kirk Hammett? He's not only one of the best guitarists in the world, but he's Buddhist and vegetarian, and that brings us right back to talking about food again.)

ANYWAY! 

I only used a little bit of dark beer in the recipe, because I didn't want to overwhelm the other flavors.

I threw in a good amount of minced, fresh thyme from the garden:

That's gotta be, like, 2 1/2 tablespoons? Whatever it looks like in the picture. That's not a small knife.

But the real trick here, is again, Worcestershire sauce. Also just enough yellow mustard to give it that flavor that I think of as being very English, and that probably is very English? It's what I tell myself. I also used soy sauce. I used salt. I used the pepper grinder to grind some peppercorns. I forget what else I did. Did I already say "flour," already? Because I think that I already did, already. Already. But who has the time to scroll up and proofread?!? Ugh. So tired.

Here is an unflattering photo of the pie filling, which I swear is/was amazing:

It wasn't that beige in real life.

Now, while the pie filling is squarely within my comfort zone, this was the first time that I'd actually made little mini pies. So I felt a little lost when working with the pie dough. I remembered to coat them with a little bit of oil, and I oiled the aluminum on the baking sheet.

Behold, the bottom of the learning curve!!!

Behold, they came out very pretty, anyway!!!

They are also pretty when viewed under glass, from inside of a cute casserole dish!!!

AAARGG SO PRETTY

The leftover pie filling was used to make a shepherd's pie, because, obviously. Here it is, in the oven, with the red oven could still visible in the background.

The mashed potatoes were little red ones. I used heavy cream instead of milk and butter in the mashed potatoes, and I ate a lot of extra mashed potatoes while this cooked. The cheese on top is Tillamook vintage extra-sharp white cheddar, according to my memory.

And finally, LOOK AT THE MESS!!!!!

I didn't even work with the pie dough directly on this surface. I worked with the pie dough on a heavily floured, but cutting board. But flour got EVERYWHERE. The floor was slippery with flour, which was fun, because I got to slide everywhere even though my shoes were still on.

Finally, LOOK AT THIS HORRIBLE MESS OF DIRTY DISHES!!!!!!!!

That's not even all of it. I didn't want to show all of it. But the counter has a fucking mound of dishes, and because our kitchen is too small to give space to a dishwasher without sacrificing some of our other interests, I'm going to have to clean up after myself the old-fashioned way. Oy.

Little meat pies and vegan chocolate mousse in handmade "white chocolate" cups.

I read an article recently about, more or less, how the 40-hour workweek pushes people into exhaustion, which then pushes people into spending extra money to cram stimuli and convenience into the precious few hours available on weekends, evenings, and mornings, outside of work.

My Blogger app is still wonky about hyperlinks, so you know what to do:

URL:http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/your_lifestyle_has_already_been_designed/

(Copy and paste.)

The article compares the lifestyle of a nine-month vacation to the lifestyle of working full-time in a high-paying job. Both options might seem almost unimaginably privileged, but the basic points made, about comparing free time to its absence resonated with the observation I made some time ago, that a lot of "aging" that people complain about seems to kick in as soon as their freedom to engage in satisfactory self-care plummets. I've seen twentysomethings feel older than sixtysomethings, when the twentysomethings are sleep-deprived and professionally sedentary, and the sixtysomethings have considerably more flexible working hours, and richer lives.

This article gave me an intensified gratitude for the freedom of being on academic break. I'm struggling a little bit to keep up with grad school as it is, because my health is in questionable condition. My spouse is a producer for a video game company (currently making Never Alone! EEEEEE!) who works the notoriously long, salaried hours associated with that profession. Therefore, the financial stability of our household is best served by letting me revel in delights, on a flexible schedule, instead of attempting to work for money. My job is to do well as a student, with the ultimate goal of working flexible hours as a therapist. My job is to be to my spouse what that guy with the water at the corner of the boxing ring was to Rocky Balboa; to keep him operating as efficiently as possible while he pushes himself through the game creation process at a sprinting pace. To make sure that his birthday party goes well. To hand him food when he's too tired to cook, and to keep the kitchen stocked with ingredients for whenever he does have the time and energy to cook. 

Luckily, my father taught me well. My father works flexible hours, juggles several projects, gives himself time to be creative, is the king and keeper of his kitchen, and he throws huge, amazing parties. Parties with live music and over one hundred guests. My father caters family events, the weddings of loved ones (including the wedding of his administrative assistant), and he got his bartending license so he could mix drinks while coordinating dinners at the yacht club where he races sailboats.

I am the eldest child of a legend.

I am, more or less, Pippi Longstocking, really. 

So!!! In the spirit of free time, I drew from my upbringing last night, and trashed my kitchen while making the following things:

Several little beef pies

Shepherd's pie

Vegan chocolate mousse

Little serving dishes for the mousse, crafted out of white candy melts.

The first thing I made was the mousse. I followed the recipe available here:

http://www.gourmantineblog.com/silken-tofu-chocolate-mousse-is-it-real/

I hadn't intended to use a vegan recipe when I decided to make mousse, but my husband wanted to save the fresh eggs, so he could make us omelets this weekend, so the original plan I'd hatched when coveting the eggs was not to be. 

Just like the Gourmantine piece reported, this recipe is rich, chocolatey, without any tofu flavor or smell in it despite having a tofu base, and its only real shortcoming as a mousse is that it lacked the foaminess of a mousse made with whipped egg whites. I HIGHLY recommend giving it a shot.

Ingredients Used:

In place of the port wine or Grand Marnier, I used a cream sherry that cost me under $5 (on sale) at the neighborhood grocery store. After tasting the wine and wincing, I used it for only half of what the recipe called for, and substituted a very fine vanilla extract for the other half. (Penzeys, plus my better half thought to put a vanilla bean in the jar with the extract, which was a very good idea.) 

THE GOOD STUFF.

The cheap cream sherry I'm stuck with is not bitter, sour, or too acidic for my babylike palate, but it tastes a little like artificial grape jelly that's been spiked with extremely cheap wine. I realize that this makes me even more of a fancypants, spoiled, pretentious hipster, but I plan to only drink and serve this wine ironically. I have also learned my lesson when it comes to skimping on this sort of thing. I plan to invest in some decent port or sweet liqueur sometime in the future. 

Because it is considerably easier to buy "the good stuff" when getting a chocolate bar, I was able to spare no expense (dinosaurs!) and invest three whole dollars in some quality.

I used the best chocolate-chunks-for-cookies that I had in the house, to make up the last 20 grams of chocolate:

For the tofu, I used tofu:

For the sugar and water, I used sugar and water. (Not pictured.)

For the cocoa powder, I used Hershey's. (Also not pictured.)

The almond milk is not pictured either, because I bought a little carton of it, drank the rest while cooking, and recycled the packaging before I thought to take its picture.

Here's everything but the tofu, looking kinda gross while melting in a double-boiler:

I forgot to photograph the tofu. I don't have a food processor in my house right now, so I whipped the tofu in a Magic Bullet little blender. Not to be confused with the Magic Bullet brand of sex toys. When whipped, the tofu looked like Greek yogurt.

I poured some "not chocolate" into a two-part candymaking mold, for crafting little cups.

I scooped the mousse into the cups, and took a blurry photograph:

I made a TINY portion of whipped cream, because it struck me as being very funny to do so at the time. The whipped cream is not vegan. It's made from cows' milk.

I still find this method funny. Only one beater used in a handheld mixer, and I don't own a whisk attachment?!? I have a teacup?!? Who can handle such things as this?!?

I put dollops of whipped cream on the little mousse cups:

I tried to just pick one up and bite it. I got a lot of mousse on my nose and chin, and the candy dish cracked in half instead of shattering nearly as expected. Because it is June, but it's still Christmas year-round, I finished that mousse cup in a festive little holly-themed...shot...glass?...teacup...for...cider?...cocoa? I don't actually know what the tiny mug is called, but it is, according to me, comically small.

There is no real sense of scale in this photo, but I assure you, that mug is almost dollhouse tiny.

The candy cups look cute, and they're a great idea in the abstract, but I need to either learn to work with real chocolate, or I need to get some candy-making flavored oils to mask the taste of the stuff I used. No, I will not used alcohol-based extracts. Science says no. CANDY science says no.

I'm eating mousse--a larger, proper serving, in a ramekin--while typing this, and it would benefit from having a layer of chocolate shavings sprinkled very liberally on top, like the crust on a cobbler. I also think that this mousse should be served in layers, with whipped cream between the layers.

So, LEARNING took place. 

While the meat pies should probably be written about in a separate blog entry, I started out with the intention of writing about it in the same...no...my thumb is tired. Tuckered out from all this phone typing. Giving it a rest. This blog entry will be a two-parter. Fuck it.

Oops, I did it again: Heavy cream

Loyal readers will likely remember that time when I tried to drink a small glass of coffee creamer and it wrecked my stomach for about 24 hours afterward.

Well, today, history has repeated itself.

I was trying to whip heavy cream by hand with a whisk in my downtime while browsing through different chocolate mousse recipes, and, well, I drank it. It wasn't much. Maybe 1/8 cup. And it was frothy, which is why I wanted to learn about the texture firsthand.

And what I learned...was heartburn. Also that I should use a bowl with a rounded bottom next time, because it was hard to move the cream around enough to get adequate air incorporated into it to form proper peaks.

BOOYAH!

Also, in case you're wondering....which you probably aren't, unless you saw me go on about this with my private Facebook account earlier today...but yes, I was listening to that Peeping Song "Mojo,"--like with Danny DeVito in the music video?--when I came up with the title for this Painfully Enamored With Food entry. Because my husband is off working on a project, and that means it's Mike Patton time for me in the kitchen. Because only 50% of the two of us like that music, and I am that 50%.

Okay, resuming mousse. Wish me luck, my blog! (Blog: "Good luck!" Me: "Thank you!")

Oh, and I know that the song was quoting Brittany Spears lyrics out of context, but shut up. If we're going there, and looking for nods to outside art and whatever, "Neighborhood Spaceman" is TOTALLY about the first few seasons of the revamped Doctor Who, and that's amazing, and nobody who tries to convince me otherwise is getting through to me. It's my party, and there's no one but me in the corner, dammit!

Two Jambalayas and a Pepper Burn

I de-seeded a jalapeño pepper with my fingernails last night, and it is now morning, and I am in my 30s but I am sucking my thumb like a confused baby because there is STILL capsaicin under my nail and mashed into my fingerprint. Even though it's been 14 hours since the de-seeding. The tip of my tongue is unable to detect flavor anymore, and it's either stinging or numb, but I can't tell which. It's a very high-pitched (like sounds are high-pitched) sensation (like a terrible whistling?), and also like a blotch of bright white light with a neon red border around it, which means almost nothing to anyone but me, because even other people with synesthesia have different colors and shapes for stuff.

So...

Last night, I noticed that the tip of my left thumb and the tip of my left index finger both felt like they'd been burnt by steam, but no actual burn was visible. No blisters, not even that glossy, flat sheen that burnt skin gets. It was an invisible burn. A mystery burn. I suspected that it had been the peppers. But the burning only intensified when I ran my hands under running water, just like I feel when I have a temperature burn. So I concluded that if it didn't wash off with soap and water, it must be a temperature burn that I'd forgotten about. I steeled my will, and accepted that I would just need to wait it out.

But then, when I was finishing up my dinner, I started eating with my hands (as people do), and I realized that the "burn" was horribly spicy. So I started a marathon of trying to clean those fingertips cat-style, with saliva. I helped nurture my shocked tongue by nibbling ice cream. After a while, I fell asleep.

When I awoke and checked my hand, it was still burning, and it made my tongue feel weird, and GODDAMMIT, WILL IT NEVER STOP?!?!? IT STILL BURNS!!! 

While reduced to a tingle, it is still FUCKING THERE. For fuck's sake, what's up with that? The jalapeño peppers in American grocery stores are typically super-mild. This isn't my usual reaction to cooking with jalapeño peppers. My usual reaction is to forget that there's any capsaicin on my fingers, and to rub one or more of my eyes, and to then immediately run into the bathroom while squealing, to run my head under the tap with my eyes open. This pepper burned my fingers so much that I didn't forget about it. I only rubbed my eyes with clean tissue when I needed to rub them (which was a lot, because I'd also chopped onions), and I didn't get any capsaicin in them at all.

But in good news, I made two pots of jambalaya last night--one vegetarian and one with meat--and they both turned out delicious!

I don't believe that my Blogger app will facilitate adding hyperlinks, but whatever. Here's the address of the recipe that I used for the meat jambeliah, which is also what I adapted for the vegetarian jambalaya. You're clever. If you don't get a hyperlink to clock on...well...you can copy/paste the address into your browser's address bar. I BELIEVE IN YOU.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1167651/chicken-and-chorizo-jambalaya

For the meat dish, just do what that link tells you to do. More or less. As it suits you.

I couldn't find "Cajun seasoning" in the local grocery store, so I bought some "Creole seasoning" instead, and hoped for the best. I used it more sparingly than what the recipe calls for, because it was pretty spicy, and the peppers were spicy, and the chorizo was spicy, and because it wasn't even the seasoning that the recipe calls for, so, like, whatever.

I also had no idea which red peppers to use for "red peppers," so I used one jalapeño pepper and 1/2 of an orange bell pepper for each pot of jambalaya. Why not, right?

For the vegetarian version, I mixed Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay seasoning, Johnny's Seasoning Salt, water, and about 3 1/2 tablespoons of melted butter for the broth, because fuck it, right? I'll eat that. It was mostly Worcestershire and butter.

I used a brick of tofu instead of chicken, which I chopped up with a spatula while cooking. Tofu pretty much just does what it's told, so I trust it to do its thing.

For the vegetarian alternative to chorizo, I cooked and roughly diced two MorningStar Farms vegetarian "original sausage patties." These are amazing.

I know that my taste in tastes is untrustworthy at best, but goddamn. I genuinely made human-style food this time, and I feel really smug about it. Like, it's genuinely GOOD. I appear to have made two versions of right and proper jambalaya. 

Okay, here's a photo of the meat jambalaya:

Poorly lit, inaccurate color, and the spoon looks gross in the photo, but just COPE WITH IT!!! This ain't your MOM'S food blog, unless you are one of my cats. In which case, yes, this kinda is your mom's food blog.

Here's a photo of the vegetarian jambalaya:

The phone's shadow is visible in both photos. It adds to the charm. So much charm!!!

But if you want to, you can pretend that the tofu in the picture is actually feta cheese, or tonsil stones!

I'm going to choose to see it as it really is, though, because tofu is a nice way to boost protein and mellow out some spice heat, without overpowering the flavors of the seasoning, and I like it.

And I like it.

Screw it, I like mayonnaise

I like mayonnaise. I do. Of the people I eat meals with, I'm the one who likes it the most. 

I know a few people who are grossed out by mayonnaise. I think that it's probably more cool, more fashionable, to snub it? Or maybe, folks just genuinely dislike when eggs are whisked into oil and vinegar, or whatever mayonnaise is made with, I dunno. And salt. There's probably still salt in it when it's homemade. I could look it up, but if you're reading this then you're already online, so look it up for yourself, why don't you?

Depicted in this photograph is a sandwich that has too much mayonnaise on it, too much cheese, and too much salt. The bread and tomato were overpowered, and the whole thing was a disappointment, particularly when I reflect on the sandwich that almost was; the sandwich that could have been. I tried to add more tomato, but then the cheese started falling out, and even then there was too much cheese, so I doused it in salt for reasons that I fail to remember right now, and what I'm trying to tell you is that the whole thing was a disaster. It just unraveled very quickly, was killed by the little details that went wrong.

But "the sandwich that could have been" would still, you know, have fairly generous mayonnaise.

Here is a picture of the bottle of mayonnaise I used:

Here is the ingredients list, and the nutritional information, from the back of the bottle. It's blurry, but that's just life sometimes.

Here is a screenshot, after Googling this subject:

Don't worry, though. Of all the white people out there, I am probably the most mayonnaise-inclined white person I've ever met, but I do not actually eat sandwiches that just consist of mayonnaise on bread. I'm pretty sure that whole idea was just a dramatic liberty taken in the movie Undercover Brother. Pretty sure.

...I hope so, anyway. God, I hope so.