Two Posts in a Day?! Adapting a Mark Bittman Martini

Okay, okay, okay, okay. So, like, some friends were really encouraging when I shared my post from earlier today, so I'm taking another break from my adulting to write myself some blog content! Whaaaaaaaaaaaat! (Warning: I don't want to plagiarize the New York Times, or its most famous food columnist, so I don't actually provide the recipe in this blog post. If you want to LEARN, go somewhere ELSE today!!! I mean, stay for the entertainment, but leave to Google/library/bookstore the recipe.)

I've only had about 5 gin martinis in my whole late-30s life so far, because they're pretty new to me. But now that I know what they taste like, I've decided that I quite like them! But in particular, I mean dirty gin martinis, because I am surprisingly smitten with olive brine. Who knew I'd like a savory drink?!

So, I don't own any cocktail books yet, but my copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has a basic martini recipe in it, so I decided to assemble one tonight in the spirit of writing to entertain my friends. Because what's a hobby without an audience?!? (I joke. I know plenty of folks who have hobbies without an audience. I'm just very social and like to entertain my friends, hence this blog!)
Full disclosure: I created the martini before sitting down to write, so I feel a little tipsy while I'm writing this, which is normally not how I do things. I am usually so sober it's like I'm double-sober! So sober!!! But right now, I am tipsy. Which is okay, because I'm not in substance use recovery and even my pharmacist has said it's okay for me to have a drink now and then. Besides...

OLIVE BRINE IS PROBABLY VEGAN!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not vegan, but I'm trying to consume more vegan foods throughout the day, to try to water down my milk-and-cheese habit. I love cheese dips, I love cream sauces, I love brie, I love mac and cheese, I love quesadillas, I love nachos, I love pizza, I love certain yogurts, I love various ice creams, I love that cheesy salad dressing I wrote about earlier today, and etc etc etc it all affects my cholesterol profile, which is elevated due to - according to my doctor today - medications that I take for some stuff that I don't want to write about here. So this cholesterol kick I'm on is... is... is probably not a good way to justify enjoying a bit of gin, and I really don't want to ruin this evening for myself, so let's just say that I know it's hypocritical to, like, um. Hang on. I don't want to write if I'm going to write about this! Time to reel myself back in.

Ni kcab flesym leer ot emit.

As it were.

Okay, getting back on track!

So, imagine that you were me like twenty minutes ago, when I got some really encouraging feedback from some friends, and then I remembered that I bought some martini olives and I didn't know exactly how to use them. So I got out my cookbook and got to "work" making myself a small martini! Mark Bittman's recipe didn't use olive brine, but I've SEEN martinis with olive brine in them get prepared, and I've sipped those martinis happily, so I assumed based on some other Googling that I should use the same amount of brine as vermouth. It didn't really taste like enough of either of those, so I just dumped in a ton more olives and told myself to learn to love the drink, which I learned pretty quickly, because it's a fucking fancy cocktail, and I'm not known for being particularly picky. Like, a little picky sometimes, but not suuuuuuuper picky.

Anyway!

Here are some photos:

Umm, how do I pour the 3/4 cup of gin into the tiny cup?!? Rather, THIS is how I did it. Yay!

So, like, I added a lot of olives, okay? Think of Pepper Potts in Iron Man I requesting all the olives in her martini. I think even SHE would be confused by the number of olives I selected in this drink! So, I've done something even more extreme than even the pilot of Rescue armor would do, when you think about it, really. (Comic books!)

Glamor shot of the martini next to the cookbook!

BBQ Jackfruit, Cheese Sauce for Greens, and Edamame Fettuccine

Blogger didn't update their app for my phone, so I'm writing this on my laptop, which almost never happens. This laptop is for work and school, not for fun! But I can break that pattern for a moment, to update this food blog, because I have stuff I want to say about food!

Soooooo, I've been trying some new foods lately, because I kind-of, sort-of, sort of passively want to eat a bit healthier, in the hope of lowering my cholesterol, increasing my feelings of nutrient-having, and maybe losing some excess body fat, because I have more body fat than I technically need.
In the spirit of breaking out of patterns more generally, I recently tried these three products for the first time, and I had a variety of different reactions!

First and foremost, I want to address why I have heartburn right now. Specifically, Upton's Naturals Bar-B-Que Jackfruit has disappointing BBQ sauce, according to my palette. (Hopefully if you try it you will love it! It's vegan and it seems to really want to be a good food. Look how cute the packaging is!) Unfortunately, to my mouth it is spicy without offering the kind of savory, smoky, rich BBQ flavor that I was hoping for. Maybe it needs MSG? Maybe I need MSG?

The jackfruit itself was alright, but I wished it had been in a different sauce. I actually caught myself wishing that the jackfruit was in a banana pudding instead of in BBQ sauce, because it didn't taste like pulled pork to me, even though it looked kind of like pulled pork. I'm happy that I gave this a shot, but I am sad that the shot that I gave it gave me heartburn. I wanted this to be a vegan lunch, but it needed something like mayo, and I didn't have Veganaise (which is amazing but pricey) so I used regular mayo, and that helped the flavor enough that I ate two of these sandwiches in a row this afternoon. But I didn't totally eat all of it, and I blame the sauce for that. I may likely buy more of this stuff later on, but I'll probably rinse off some of the sauce and season it myself (starting with a different store-bought BBQ sauce?) if I do.

On the other side of the bougie "I bought myself something nice at Target" scale is Organic Girl's White Cheddar Ranch Style Vinaigrette. It tastes like something my dad would make! (That is a compliment, my dad is great.) Sour cream, white cheddar, um, sour cream, white cheddar... I know it has chives and vinegar maybe, but I mostly just perceive it like a cheese sauce when I eat it. Which has, like, exponentially increased my salad eating! I had salad for fucking breakfast today, when I would have normally skipped breakfast or eaten a piece of toast. It turns out, I love salad greens in general, but I'll actually eat them all the time as long as they're so coated with cheese sauce that they're basically mac and cheese at this point. There is cholesterol in this stuff, and I eat too much of it for it to be a low-cholesterol food in my tummy. But at least I'm eating something other than cookies or actual mac and cheese? Kind of? My dressing-to-greens ratio could stand to be more joyless and stoic (is that really what eating fresh produce feels like, or am I just a jerk?) but in the meantime, this satisfies my hankering for green whatever with my stomach and mouth's belief that everything I eat should be cheesy. In the past, it's been pizza or mac and cheese with a green smoothie, when I want cheese and green foods, so this is like a half-step in a self-improvement direction, maybe.

And finally, speaking of pasta, here is some literal pasta! Seapoint Farms Organic Edamame Fettuccine is so good! Somehow the only ingredient is soybeans. It is chewy and feels cheesy in texture, and if it wasn't hard to find I would eat it frequently. Instead, it's a special occasion food that I buy off of the internet. So, if you live near a store that sells it, or if you're willing to eat things from the internet, and you can have soybeans and this is a food you want to eat and can have, then I encourage you to give it a try!

And these are the three foods I set out to describe here today. Ta-dah! I described them! Thank you for reading.

I Microwaved Frozen Salmon and It Was So-So

UGH.

So, I microwaved a microwaveable salmon TV dinner thing from Trader Joe's with high hopes, because some of their microwaveable TV dinners are just magical. For example, their soup dumplings are wonderful for days when I want to spend about 50 cents per soup dumpling in my own home instead of over a dollar per dumpling in a restaurant, like at my beloved Din Tai Fung. (Seriously, though, I am of the opinion that everybody who can should go to Din Tai Fung and get the soup dumplings if you're able to. They're pork based and have flour and cost money, so not everybody can eat them. But if you can? They're totes a thing to go eat, and they have a bunch of branches in the Seattle area. Mostly in malls, but it's still a very nice restaurant to go to in the mall.)

This salmon dinner thing, though. It came out undercooked, I think? Like, perfectly steamed in half, but then squishy and tough in the other half, so I didn't eat all of it. I'll eat raw salmon under special circumstances, but not like this. At least, not like this today.

The orzo salad with mint and whatever had its heart in the right place, but freezing didn't do it any good, either. I think it it wasn't slimy, it may have been really nice? I don't mean to sound ungrateful for getting to eat food, but I wasn't able to finish this, in part because I can eat other foods later so it's not an emergency.

Of course, I should add that while I won't buy this again, I will still buy other frozen meals from Trader Joe's when I have the time and money to do so. Like, their palak paneer and tikka masala paneer meals make me really happy! And, like I said before, I like their soup dumplings. I also like many of their frozen pizzas.

Here is a photo of my shame. Shame in not finishing it, shame in eating so much even though it was kinda gross (except for the well-cooked salmon, which was delightful).

Milestone: I Ate More Kimchi Than I Could Handle

Today (well, June 22, 2017, although it's past midnight) goes down in my personal history as the day I over-ate these amazing kimchi pancakes with my friend Paula at a cool Korean restaurant in Lynnwood, Washington. I was then surprised to discover that despite my gusto, my body was not ready to digest so much fermented cabbage in one sitting. (I also ate a great deal of bulgogi and a delicious fried fish.) It was not literally my first time tasting kimchi, but it was my first time eating a ton of it in one go. I overestimated my abilities.

It's about time I get back to writing in this blog, so instead of just making this a private Facebook post, I'm making it a blog post. I'll then share a link to it on my private Facebook page, in the hope that it will pop up in my memories every year around this time, to remind me of what has been a life-altering learning experience. I was bested in the art I thought I'd mastered: eating delicious things in a casual setting with friends.

I still want more kimchi pancakes, but I might need to drink an Oreo milkshake first (for some reason, that's what my gut bacteria is perfectly calibrated to), and then eat smaller portions of the pancakes next time, so my all-dairy-all-the-time tummy can figure out how to eat healthy, fermented, probiotic, spiced plants.

Here is the fish I ate, after I ate most of it:

I ate uncooked alligator today and bought used vinyl

I attended a small dinner party tonight where alligator was served two ways (as ceviche and fried, topped with homemade pepper jelly), followed by wild boar ragu, followed by rabbit cassoulet, followed by strawberry shortcake. 

It was an evening of firsts! I had not eaten rabbit or wild boar before, and while I'd eaten fried alligator on a stick as a child, today was my first time trying alligator meat raw. (Well, sort-of "raw" anyway, because it was also sort-of "cooked" by the lime juice.) My life is broader for the experience, and I am grateful.

Now that I am home from the party, I am cleaning the cat boxes and playing the $3 Patsy Cline album I found at my next-door neighbor's garage sale. I played "Walkin' After Midnight" just a couple of minutes after midnight tonight.

I think I procrastinate very well, and I AM procrastinating a little as I write this, but I did reach almost all of my homework goals for the weekend. Just one paper left to write before Friday to finish the quarter properly. I am living as well as I know how to. 

HERE ARE THE PHOTOS

These are the records I bought! Six albums for under $20. Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" is one of them, and Heart's "Dog and Butterfly," and an Al Green Christmas album, too! Willie Nelson's "Always on My Mind" (he covers "Whiter Shade of Pale" on it) and, heaven help me, I decided to buy "Sports" by Hughey Lewis and the News. Maybe I will throw a Patrick Bateman theme party someday? Although this was genuinely one of my favorite albums when I was a kid, it freaks me out a little bit nowadays, because it reminds me of American Psycho. But that's art, right? Art changing art.

The pink stuff is uncooked, cold alligator meat, made edible through the science of lime juice. It was delicious but unsettling.

This is the fried alligator topped with pepper jelly, which the party hosts topped with their homemade pepper jelly. I recommend it!

Here is a friend cutting the fried alligator with a knife and fork.

This pasta dish is the wild boar ragu. I appreciated it for being interesting and well-made. There was capsaicin in the sauce and it was too spicy for my weak mouth, but I ate about half of my portion and took the rest home to try again later.

This is the rabbit cassoulet! It was marvelous. I hope that the rabbit lived a comfortable life and had a very quick death, with minimal suffering. 

And there you have it! These are some photographs of my evening. And what an evening it was!

Eat an envelope of apple juice!

One of those rectangular envelopes.

Seriously, though, I am going through such a juice boxes phase!

Kona Kitchen Spam Musubi Is Delicious

I found a place close to my house that serves really good Spam musubi! And it costs less than $3 per serving!!! 

Kona Kitchen, on 5th, just a few blocks south of the Northgate Mall.

I am eating lunch here to satisfy my "eat really good food while writing final papers" requirement, because it's finals week in grad school right now. Two servings of Spam musubi, followed by a slice of rainbow cake. (I haven't tried the cake yet.) Getting Kalua pig and cabbage take-out (under $10!!!), for tomorrow's lunch.

If you know me (hi, Mom!), then you know that I visited Maui for a week last year. Like lots of people, I ate Spam musubi while I was there, and I loved it, and now I want to eat it often, because when it's good, it's really, really good. I tried the Spam nigiri at Uwajimaya, but found it too sweet. The Kona Kitchen Spam musubi is as of right now my go-to for it.

Yeah, you WISH you were eating this right now! (I assume.)

Pie Filling For Dinner!

Shepherd's pie filling for dinner, anyway.

I will serve bread rolls on the side, because I have not yet made potatoes, and it is late. I will assemble and roast the pie tomorrow.

Fanciest goddamn pizza rolls YOU've ever seen!

Lookit that, aww yeah.

Those are just Totino's Pizza Rolls that we had in the freezer, and grocery store limeade, but now it's SO GODDAMN FANCY! And I sliced the apple, cut out the core bits, and reassembled it JUST LIKE THAT! WHAT?

I can't quit you and I can't quit food, obviously.

I tried to quit this blog, because people in my future line of work are encouraged to keep minimal to no social media presence, by one of the professors in my graduate program.

But here we are again. I can't quit you, you big pile of my own writing, you. So here we go.

For late breakfast today, I ate a big bowl of homemade beef and barley stew. For lunch I had a bowl of vegan ice cream because coconut fat is full of bad cholesterol and now so am I. And for dinner, I ate the most Spartan dinner ever (for me). Iceberg lettuce salad (for the kitsch) with cilantro dressing from Trader Joe's, apple slices, and whole-fat cow's milk yogurt with a handful (~200 kcal) of raw almonds in it. I feel adequately full of food, but over-the-top smug about it. Being smug feels good.

And now I feel like I've earned some kind of award. Like, I'm all, "where's my medal? Guys? Guys?"

Reasons why I want to give myself an award:

1. Because I fried my husband a pork chop for his dinner, and a second one for his lunch, and I didn't eat either pork chop. 

2. For a minute, right after dinner, I wanted to congratulate myself for going vegan for a day, just like the Vulcan T'Pol on Star Trek: Enterprise, who is very vegan all the time. But that would be absurd because I just ate yogurt, and I had beef for breakfast, and it seems like there was cheese in the salad dressing that I ate. But I WANTED to believe that I'd been vegan for a day. I wanted to believe!

And while I am giving myself lots of credit (too much credit?) for selflessly eating a modest bowl of vegan ice cream for lunch, that was only one meal, and T'Pol would never eat that much sugar in one sitting, unless maybe it was pecan pie and she was trying to better understand the ship's engineer Trip Tucker. Which was left unresolved, because the episode ended with her meditating in front of a slice of pie that had only one bite taken out of it. What did she do with the rest? Maybe I will know one day, but I do not know right now. 

But I did go vegetarian for 2/3 of my meals today, so at least that's something. And because I'll self-congratulate over anything, I'll self-congratulate about that. Wahoo!

3. The ice cream has "Galactica" in the flavor name, and I love that show. 

Here are pictures:

(Coffee) Roast of Christmas past

I just wanted to make that pun. Don't worry, I usually buy whole beans and then grind them a few seconds before brewing coffee because that's awesome. But these were ground beans for...reasons. Still delicious.

Of note: I'm not paid to endorse this, or anything so far. I have not (yet?) made money off of Painfully Enamored With Food.

Note to Self: Buy "Spelt Risotto with Vegetables and Chickpeas" from Trader Joe's again

Aww yeah, frozen food.

I didn't do this, but it rules: "Cook Your Comics"

http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/category/lifestyle/cook-your-comics/

Hey, look who's app allows links!!! That's right, we're super-fancy now.

And speaking of super-something, this link provides helpful recipes and tips for cooking an elaborate Thanksgiving meal that's inspired by superhero comics.

Disclosure: I don't know this writer socially, but Rachel Stevens is my friend and she does write for Women Write About Comics. I don't actually think that this constitutes a conflict of interest or anything, though. I'm mostly just using this disclaimer as an opportunity to brag about knowing Rachel, because she's awesome, and you should read her stuff, because she knows a lot about Transformers comic books.

You should also read the stuff that I actually linked to here, too.

Paneer cheese is no replacement for whipped cream, when served with pie

In good news, I still have a little pie left, and it's still delicious.

Everything else is bad news.

I think I've figured out the rules of my own vegetarianism?

Okay, so for right now, this is what I have:

1. I go 100% vegetarian about 95% of the time. That means pectin candy instead of gelatin candy, puddings from scratch instead of gelatin-based pudding from a box, and also grilled cheese sandwiches or whatever, instead of steak.

2. That was not a confusing use of percentages.

3. I am currently trying to cut down my dairy consumption, and I do my best within my budget to buy locally produced dairy, and lower-cruelty eggs. So, caged-free eggs at the least, and eggs from folks' pet chickens at best.

4. Death comes to all life, and minimal-cruelty slaughtering practices matter. Even when I'm not buying meat, I still want to encourage the best possible practices be applied when animals are harvested for their meat. I also come from a rural background, and I respect well-run, minimal-cruelty farms very much.

5. I will sometimes break my vegetarian prohibition of the consumption of meat, for culturally important occasions, although I still prefer to fill up on meatless dishes. 

For example, one of my cousins is from Oaxaca, Mexico, and he works in a restaurant, and he prepared chicken mole tamales for the family and friends on Día de los Muertos this year, and you'd better believe that while I filled up on the homemade black bean soup that he similarly prepared from scratch (he is a badass!), I also ate a tamale, because of course I did. I will also, a couple of times a year, eat a burger from Dick's Drive-In, because they take good care of their employees, and I consider that to also be a higher-good thing. This is higher-good kinda stuff, right here.

6. While I try to stay within close proximity to vegetarian sources of protein, if my blood sugar is dropping, I might eat meat if a meat eater offers some of their food to me.

7. I also taste meat dishes when I'm cooking for omnivores, which is especially important because from what I've observed, my husband reports feeling uncomfortable if he goes meatless for longer than about 18 hours at a time. 

8. I don't really know what to think about eating fish. I definitely have a strong taboo against eating cephalopods, because they're too much like cats. (Google that.) I'm originally from a very small island in the Pacific, just a little bit off of the coast of Washington State, way north of Seattle. So I respect fishermen. But right now I don't fish, because killing fish wigs me out. And I haven't eaten fish for a while, because I just haven't wanted to. I still eat mollosks when my family prepares them. My dad has an excellent technique for grilling oysters, and they're too much of a tradition to take lightly.

9. Tofu is genuinely fun, according to me. I also grew up eating tofu, prepared in ways adapted from the recipes of the American South, so it's a sentimental comfort food for me.

10. I don't have a prohibition against eating foods that were prepared alongside meat. For example, I love it when my husband makes breaded and fried cubes of extra-firm tofu for me while he's making breaded, fried chicken for himself. It's REALLY GOOD.

PIE DISCOVERY! 5 OUT OF 5!!!!!!

I FIGURED IT THE FUCK OUT!!!!!!! This, my fifth post about the same fucking pie, is the conclusion of the story about this pie. I think.

The pie was undercooked. I gave it another hour or do at 425F, and the peaches are now squishy instead of crunchy, and the whole thing looks WAY more like a pie than it did the first time that I took it out of the oven.

It also expanded and got way bigger, so eating two undercooked slices was a pretty crucial step in the process, because otherwise the thing would have kept boiling over into a soufflé-like science fair syrup volcano. Next time, I'll use 2lbs of peaches instead of the 3lbs advised by the recipe.

I feel a little sick. I'm not gonna lie about that. Eating a hearty sample of undercooked peach pie made with underripe peach slices is not the road to health, as far as I reckon. But I did it. I SURVIVED.

And this is the goddamned pie I deserve, for taking this hero's journey:

Thankee mightily, for joinin' me on this adventure, Reader. It's been quite a ride! A ride with lots of naps happening in the middle. My kind of ride.

FOUR PARTER!!!!! HOW BIG CAN I MAKE THIS STORY?!?!?

The crust was also undercooked, except for the pretty past if the top crust. So I think that the problem is one of the pie just being undercooked.

Gonna try to put it back in the oven. I will keep eating pie to test how done it is.

This may become a five or six-part writing extravaganza! 

Last post felt incomplete? Pie feels incomplete.

So, doing a meandering three-parter about not really thinking it through, during a pie experience, is exactly what I want for my food writing today. I have recently discovered my writing formula, and I've decided to experiment with it a little.

As for PIES, though...I don't think that I will ever cook "partially thawed" peaches straight into a pie like that again. Next time, I'm going to try cooking those fuckers into gooey pie filling in a pot on the stovetop before even putting them into the pie crust. These peaches are even a little crunchy.

I'm eating my second slice of pie, mind you. I may even eat a third, in a few hours. Who knows? So it's not BAD-bad. It's just...the pie did not reach its full potential.

Also, I am eating it off of a plate with raw flour on it, which just HAS to be a bad idea. *guitar solo*

The pie is just okay.

It's photogenic, though! Like, godDAMN, that's a photogenic pie.

But the peaches aren't mushy, they're still firm, and some of them occasionally have little bits of peach pit stuck to them.

The apple pie from earlier this week was one that I just kinda winged, but I had way more control over the fruit, and I feel like it came out better.

This pie isn't BAD...but I feel like starting with fresh, definitely ripe peaches that I cut carefully myself would end up producing a way, WAY better pie than this.

I still plan to eat a lot of it, though.

Even better pie today

So I made a pie a few days ago. Then I didn't want to bother with pie crust, so I made an attempted crumble with frozen cherries. I didn't use thickening starch, though, because I wanted to see what would happen. The result was some weird oatmeal cookies fused to the top of a cherry soup. Good flavor, but not what it was supposed to be.

(THE CRUMBLE WAS ALMOST PERFECT!!!!! But I didn't use any thickening starch. Oh man.)

()

I decided that today, I'd use a recipe as faithfully as I could, instead of just winging it again. I haven't really done the recipe thing before. At least not this week.

This is the pie recipe that I used today:

http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/peach-pie/e09fbe68-5291-4642-aa1e-4686fcf17c4e

...Regular readers should remember that I have some technical whatevers with making hyperlinks in my app. But a simple copy-paste will let you follow the link. Sorry for the inconvenience! 

Except that really, should I be sorry for that inconvenience? 

This is not a blog about doing a good job. There are lots of food blogs about appearing competent. THIS, on the other hand, is a blog about surviving mild failure, and about the occasional moments of success that still happen when the ratio of fail to non-fail is heavily skewed towards the "fail" side. Yes! Embrace the process! Embrace and cherish your mortality! Life finds a way...INTO YOUR FACE!!!!!

So.

This is the pie that I just took out of the oven. I wrote "PiE" on it. How cute! I find it cute. I'm my own audience. My audience thinks it's cute, because I am that audience. I am 100% of that audience, and that means that this pie received a 100% approval eating from its target audience.

YEAH, I WIN AT THIS ACTIVITY!!!!!!!!!!

I can't yet speak to the quality of the frozen peaches that I used, but as far as I know, they're the most wild wildcard in it...assuming that the cooking time was still correct, even though the peaches were only kinda-sorta thawed when it went into the oven...

Okay, this is too much stress. I'm going to take a nap.