Working lunch

Just a quick post on my lunch break.  We got fennel, butternut squash, and apples in our CSA.  It turns out that I don't actually like fennel because it tastes like licorice (you know, the gross kind, not the strawberry Twizzler version), so I needed a recipe that masked the anise-y flavor.  Enter: another version of butternut squash soup.  This one is super easy and it's just a chop and dump job, requiring a knife+cutting board, a pan, and a stick blender.


Butternut squash soup with fennel and apples
2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 2-2.5 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 in cubes
1 fennel bulb+ stems, diced
3-4 smallish apples, diced
3-4 c chicken stock
0.5 t nutmeg

0.5 t cayenne pepper (or more if you really like it spicy)
1 t smoked sweet paprika

s+p to taste


Heat up evoo in a large saucepan/stockpot.  Add fennel, butternut squash, and apples and sautee until the butternut squash can be easily pierced with a fork and everything is a little bit browned. 


Add in nutmeg, cayenne, and smoked sweet paprika, and stir to coat.  Cook for ~1 minute to let the spices toast a bit.


Add in chicken stock.  The amount sort of depends on how big your squash is, but make sure that there's enough liquid to stick blender it without it being too thin.


Season with salt and pepper to taste.

P.S. Check out Randi's post at Community Supported Home Cooking! :)

I've started another one

I have yet another blog.  This one is called Community Supported Home Cooking and it's a collaborative blog with all the people with whom I'll be collaboratively cooking.  Our first exchange is Monday!  I'm hoping to post recipes and ideas for what makes for good, home cooked meals to share amongst friends.  I'll be posting my first recipe soon!

Ode to Big Lots

why yes I did just buy 15 pieces of tupperware

My parents were never into buying off brand products or going to discount stores.  It wasn't until I started to pay for my own stuff that I embraced Target clothes and non-designer label shoes.  While I refuse to shop at Walmart for social justice reasons, I've come to really enjoy bargain hunting. No store is better for this than Big Lots.

I had a really crappy day today and needed some retail therapy to make my world right again.  Normally I head for the nearest shoe store, but this cshc idea has really been screaming to get out of my head and into practice.  We went to Target to look for containers for the food.  At first I was going to get the flimsy plastic almost throw away ones, but they all looked like they wouldn't last for more than a few cycles, so we started looking for nicer containers.  Nicer containers are expensive, especially at Target, so off to Big Lots we went.  We found 9 cup Rubbermaid containers with snap lids for $3 a piece.  Comparable containers cost almost twice that at Target.

So now instead of being mopey about my shitty talk, I'm just super excited to start cooking.

Community Supported Home Cooking: Potlucks for busy people

I have to give a talk tomorrow.  I should be working on it right now, but I have an idea rolling around in my head that is trying to get out into the ether as quickly as possible.  I've wanted to start a supper club for the past several months, but it's a big time and resource strain.  I cook several times a week and usually I make waaay too much food.  The first night it starts out as the most amazing thing I've ever eaten and by the end of the week, I never want to eat (fill in the blank) evAr again.  So why not share those extras with some friends?

Here's how this community supported home cooking works with four people:

1) I make my overly large dinner that would serve a family of four with leftovers.

2) I eat dinner from it.

3) Those extra three portions? I pack those up in community tupperware and bring them (in my case) to school the next day to give to the other three people doing this.

4) The other three people also bring their leftovers to pass out.  We hide them in the refrigerators in the offices because sometimes the maintenance people (we think) steal food from the community fridges.

5) I take home dinner for that night plus two more nights that I don't have to cook from scratch and so do three other people.

My thoughts are that this would happen every other week.  This averages to having a home cooked meal two times each week.  This should work, in principle, because everyone cooks and no one needs to host a potluck every two weeks.  The only "cost of entry" is purchasing some cheap tupperware that you don't mind sharing with the other people.

The other side of that is that it takes the social aspect out of cooking for others, but to remedy that every 6 weeks we'd all go to one person's house, bring our contribution and eat their contribution that night.  Everyone who attended would get to leave with two more dinners worth of food and the person who hosted now gets three more dinners.  This amounts to hosting a super low key dinner party every ~6 months.

Obviously the dinners would have to consist of meals that re-heat well, but a lot of food does.  Off the top of my head I'm thinking of really good casseroles, Indian curries, and yummy stews.  The potluck nights would allow everyone to make something that doesn't *have* to transport and reheat easily (like, say, pizza).  My thought is that four family units is the perfect size (so Colby and I are one unit) because then you don't have to eat super old leftovers, but you still have interesting food waiting for you.

So what do you think?  Has anyone tried this?  Does this sound interesting?  Would you like to join me?

The Accidental Vegan... Pancakes

One of my friends took over my house last weekend to make a short film.  I think it's going to be really hilarious, but I'm definitely happy to have my house back.  I spent the weekend helping another one of my friends cook for everyone in the cast and crew and it was a lot of fun.  Perhaps my calling is actually to run a family-style catering business for small events.  Or maybe I'm supposed to be an astronomer.  The two jobs are so very close in description that it's really hard to distinguish the two.  Right.

So I've been ogling this Mark Bittman recipe since last Thursday, with no room to make it.  Once everyone left, I was planning on making it, but I had no milk or pine nuts, so I put off making it until tonight when I finally caved because I was really craving something carb-y and sweet.

Veganized Bittman Cornmeal Pancakes

1.5 c cornmeal

1.5 c boiling water

0.5 c soy milk

0.5 t kosher salt

1 T sugar or honey or maple syrup

1 t vanilla extract

2 T grapeseed oil

1/2 c chopped almonds

Whisk together cornmeal and salt.  Add in the boiling water and let sit for 5ish minutes or so to let the cornmeal really absorb the water.  Stir in soy milk, oil, sugar, vanilla extract, and almonds until smooth.  Don't worry about over mixing because there isn't any gluten or chemical leaveners in these pancakes.  Cook in a hot nonstick pan until golden brown on one side and then flip.  Since there aren't any leaveners, there won't be bubbles, so you sort of just need to let the pancakes sit there for awhile (perhaps 3-5 minutes).

nomcakes

The results?  Dense, delicious pancakes that also happen to be gluten free.  Bittman suggests to serve with honey, but I really liked my version straight from the pan.

This is for Colby

My birthday is fast approaching and I'm just about through compiling my wishlist.  I have pretty much the easiest birthday to remember if you're a dude: Valentine's Day.  I can't tell if this is a blessing or a curse.  On one hand, there's only one day to not screw up.  On the other hand, there's no making up for a bad birthday with a good Valentine's Day.  I've decided to make it easy on Colby this year and post my birthday wishlist here.

Everyone needs a good pair of black shoes, right?  These Tsubo Acrea are super cute and totally work appropriate.  And by "work appropriate" I mean that they look like I can walk more than a block in them without wanting to fall over in pain.  Unlike these.

The Cooking Channel has to be my favorite channel on TV.  I've definitely become a Nigella fan and Nigella Express has become one of my favorite new (to me) shows second only to...

Bitchin Kitchen.  OMGWTFBBQ I love Nadia G.  Her show is awesome and the food looks even better.

Everyone also needs a good right hand ring.  Right?  Right?  And amethyst is my birthstone and Colby loves Costco... so I'm pretty sure that getting this would be a match made in heaven.  Yeah.

Additionally, everyone needs at least one good, sharp knife.  I actually prefer santoku style knives to traditional chef's knives because I'm a rebel like that.  But really, my hands are small, so I find chef's knives to be too unwieldy.  This Global knife is pretty awesome.

In keeping with the overall theme of this list, most of what's on here is an essential.  What's more essential than a classic strand of akoya pearls? 

And finally, I'd just really like to be able to sous vide cook at home.  I have a rice cooker and two slow cookers now and all I need is a PID controller.

Warm fuzzies.

Apparently, I gave Colby my death flu. He's not nearly as whiny about it as I was but he seems to be going through a milder version of what I had.  As a result, he's sleeping with his three favorite accessories: a hunter's orange hat, fuzzy scarf, and warm puppy.

Dinner was a success tonight, and I might modify the menu for this week because we had so much left over.  This chicken stew didn't taste exactly like the one at the restaurant, so I'll be working on this recipe to make it even more flavorful, so stay tuned. 

One of my new year's goals is (obviously) to lose weight.  No January is complete without a new diet, eh?  This time, my goal is to try to make things from scratch and cut out the processed junk (and make my own junk food ;)).  This week's menu is a good start, though I felt the need to publicly profess my intent. The past two years included brave attempts of weight loss that lasted into March and even April, but my calorie intake was so low that I was tired all the time and eventually got so sick that I had to abandon my diet and then never got back on the wagon.  My hope is that by making food from scratch with whole grains and lots of fruit and vegetables, I won't get crazy sick and will easily be able to stick to something that is delicious and healthy for the wallet as well.  My guidelines are as follows:

No eating after 11 PM

Cook with whole grains whenever possible

Always have a vegetable with dinner

Fresh fruit every day

Drink a glass of water before anything flavored

I suppose I'll update with my progress here, since being publicly accountable will make me less likely to holy crap cheat. :)