Posts Tagged ‘food’
18 items.
Hey here is a neat thing. It’s a music history and theory blog written by one of my imaginary friends (warning: he sometimes cusses). He seems to know a whole lot about what he’s talking about and I find his writing engaging. The music history is more interesting to me than the theory stuff but that’s because I’m lazy.
I am having a discussion with a dude about the difference between accuracy and precision. I am saying that accuracy is being close to true and precision is being consistent. He is saying it is the opposite. I think we are both partially wrong but it is important to argue on the internet.
You may have noticed a couple of changes, most specifically the Buy A Print option. Don’t think of it as selling out to the man, think of it as selling out to me who just happens to be a man. There’s also a bit of a fancier navigation system up there (more changes to that are in the works SO HOLD ONTO YOUR PROVERBIAL HATS).
Woooo ten of these! Woo, I say.
Amy is doing school related things at the school where she works and I am preparing dinner. I am preparing quiche which is probably the most complicated single dish that I personally can prepare with any degree of success. Here, let me share with you my recipe in the form of a chatlog with AN UNNAMED GUEST HOST:
GUEST HOST: hi
GUEST HOST: how are you?
adam: i’m well, you?
adam: making quiche
GUEST HOST: i’m okay
adam: like a boss
GUEST HOST: nice!!!
GUEST HOST: i’ve never made quiche on my own before :S
GUEST HOST: it’s so good. why haven’t i made it?
adam: it is so easy
GUEST HOST: do you make your own crust?
adam: you take a 9″ pie crust
adam: pft no
adam: i can’t be doing that
adam: it is beyond me
GUEST HOST: that’s where i get stuck
GUEST HOST: i’m not good at pie crust
adam: see i just buy the crusts
adam: they come right there in the pie plate even
GUEST HOST: and i can’t bring myself to buy them because i know i SHOULD be making them myself
adam: pft
adam: pfffffffft i say
GUEST HOST: i know
adam: you are denying yourself
adam: quiche
GUEST HOST: my stupid biases are keeping me from quiche.
adam: which is like the third or fourth best egg thing
adam: and certainly the most complicated one i can make
GUEST HOST: i do heart eggs.
adam: so basically
adam: what you do
adam: is get a 9″ pie crust BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY
adam: you cook up some fillings
adam: like vegetables
adam: maybe some bacon
adam: get something like 1.5-2 cups of this stuff cooked up
adam: just in a frying pan or whatever
adam: then get a bowl
GUEST HOST: k
adam: crack 4 eggs into it
adam: add some maybe cream if you’ve got it
adam: if not no worris
adam: *worries
adam: maybe a little cream cheese
adam: blend that up
adam: or beat it with a fork
adam: then tip in your cooked stuff
GUEST HOST: yummy cream cheeeeeeeeeese
adam: blend it some more with a fork
adam: add some spices
adam: to taste like
adam: grate in some cheese
adam: pour that crap in the pie crust
adam: bam
adam: 45 minutes at 350
adam: or until a knife/toothpick into the middle comes out clean
GUEST HOST: maybe i will be brave enough to try that tomorrow
adam: let stand 10 minutes IF YOU CAN STAND THE SUSPENS
adam: e
adam: then slice/dice/consume
GUEST HOST: i could try, but lets face it… if it works, i’ll just have to have a burnt tongue
adam: that is the price one pays for success
adam: actually the 10 minutes is to let it like congeal or some crap i dunno
GUEST HOST: yeah that makes sense
adam: this is basically going to form tomorrow’s post
adam: you are like
adam: guest host
So that is pretty much the size of it! I chopped up onion, mushrooms and peppers, sautéed them in a little bit of Greek salad dressing and baked the whole thing for a while. When Amy gets home we will see how successful it is. My hypothesis: AWESOME.
talking trash to the garbage around you
This evening for dinner, Amy prepared a really, really tasty new sauce comprised of peanut butter, sesame seeds, garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, soy sauce and some other stuff. She found it via Baking and Books (dot com) and you can find the full recipe right here. Be aware: the sauce/noodle ratio is all messed up. If you make it the way they say it will be a bit more like soup. We made about 2x the amount of noodles it calls for there but that was not enough. The sauce ratios were all cattywampus so we made some more noodles (totaling about 2x the recipe) and found that to be just right (I was calling the newspapers with both phones). It is also highly tasty to eat warm. The noodles of choice were Udon noodles which are basically my very very favourite kind of noodle in the world. If they are unfamiliar to you, they’re kind of a thick wheat-based noodle that is a bit chewy and you can probably get some at your local grocer’s Asian foods section.
Another best thing is gnocchi. It is apparently technically potato dumplings but it is usually offered in the pasta section of most grocery stores and on restaurant menus. I would call it probably my favourite or next-to-favourite starch. The best sauce I have had for gnocchi is a rosé vodka sauce though I cannot remember where I had it. Probably at an Italian restaurant of some description.
I had a third thing all lined up in my brain to add here because good things often come in threes. I can’t for the life of me recall what it was so I will go with… tuna. Tuna is pretty alright, though probably not the best (unless one happens to be a tuna in which case hello and how did you develop opposable thumbs capable of using the space bar and also cognizance of the English language. I, for one, welcome our new fishy overlords). AS IT TURNS OUT Tuna are some of the best things after all.
in the right light you look like shackleton
On Wednesday afternoon I was seized with a very, very strong urge to eat cheesecake. I am very rarely struck by such compulsions which is good because I also have very poor impulse control. This desire, however, would not be slaked by my telling myself to get over it. I required cheesecake. Not just any old cheesecake, either. It had to be cherry and it had to be potluck-style no-bake. Baked cheesecake is a great joy but it was not right for this craving.
Those who know me or have read of my other cooking adventures will immediately realize that I could not possibly invent a recipe for no-bake cheesecake off the top of my head and have it come out edible. I went to the Google, source of all knowledge that needs to be known immediately and isn’t required to be accurate or even really true. Canadian Living Magazine apparently has a forum and that was the most promising option. "GlenM" seemed a trustworthy sort so I jotted down his list of ingredients (graham cracker shell, eagle brand milk, cream cheese and 1/3 cup of lemon juice). As the Superstore is more or less on my way home, I resolved to collect my ingredients en route and create my dessert upon arrival at home.
It turns out that lemon juice is kept in the juices aisle but it is really high up and not well signed. This is a piece of information I expect to use exceedingly rarely. Eagle Brand milk is in the baking aisle with the cherry pie filling and the others are pretty easy to find. The lemon juice was the true kicker. I spent over half an hour looking for it and/or an employee who could point me in its direction. At last, success!
When I got home, Amy pointed me in the direction of graham crackers, lemon juice and cream cheese, all of which were already in the house. I do not keep any kind of inventory in my head and now we just have a whole lot of lemon juice and graham crackers (in case I decide to make this again, possibly in the middle of the night). The graham crackers are stored in the baking cupboard but it took me three tries to locate it. I am not known for my culinary arts and with justifiable reason.
I embowled the ingredients (Eagle Brand milk, by the way, tastes absolutely disgusting by itself) and sort of mashed them together with a fork for a bit and then turned to a whisk when that proved ineffective. I was concerned that the mixture was too liquidy but it worked out relatively well. Here is a tip for making a homemade graham cracker crust: Do not pulverize the graham crackers. When they are powdered (as I made them by using the meat tenderizing mallet which I am not too sure why we even have) and then melted margarine is added to them they become a sort of spreadable paste. I managed to make crispy graham crackers into a fine mush. Here is a second tip: When pouring the cherry pie filling onto the still-very-squishy cream cheese mixture, do it in small amounts and spread it around some. If it’s all poured on at once it makes a crater nearly down to the graham mush and it becomes difficult to cover the top in a balanced and complete kind of way.
After sitting in the fridge for a couple of hours, the underlayers firmed up admirably. It is not the kind of dessert that one will slice and serve (though I did prepare it in a spring form pan just in case). It is more a scooping sort of thing and looks like a disgusting mashy mess in the bowl but it tastes exactly the way I expected it to. I also figured that this dessert which we have been eating bit by bit for a couple of days is less than the price of two restaurant desserts (though to be fair to the restaurants, they actually make food that looks as though people might actually want to eat it).
Ingredients
A can of low-fat Eagle Brand Milk
About 350g of low-fat cream cheese
Graham cracker crumbs (enough to cover the bottom of whatever pan you’re using)
Butter/margarine (melted to make the graham crumbs stick to each other)
1/3ish cup of lemon juice (it sounds weird but it actually tastes pretty neat)
Pie filling or chocolate or whatever you like to have on your cheesecake I guess. It wouldn’t be great plain.
you don’t wanna call nobody else
We ate brunch (I guess? The meal you eat when it’s far too wet to eat any kind of breakfast at one’s campsite and you must eat something somewhere or perish) at The Old Fish Factory in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on Friday. I must admit to having some reservations about eating someplace whose name implies that they produce elderly fish on the premises but I decided to put that aside and trust to Fate.
Sidebar: I am writing this while sitting in the library and I just heard a little boy yell: “STELLA, DON’T EAT BOOKS,” to which (presumably) Stella replied “I was thinking!” Perhaps she, like so many, must gnaw on cellulose to spur the brain along. Also overheard: “The bathroom has a nice, big change table!” Regardless, let’s continue with the main event, here.
Amy and I have a similar aversion to putting fish in our stomachs first thing in the day. We went for a sushi lunch before consuming anything else and it did not go well. Fortunately they had a broader fare than the name above the door would indicate. It being terribly cold and damp out (maybe terribly is too strong a word. It’s about 17°C and about 300% humidity. Maybe terribly is not strong enough), I ordered a coffee to the amazement of all others present. My feeling was that it was the hot beverage most likely to include free refills of which I only had one. It was far from the best coffee I’ve ever had but certainly wasn’t the worst. It was warm and that was the main thing.
Amy ordered soup and sandwich and I got the pork steak sandwich. The soup was a sweet curried carrot affair. It was tasty but kind of unusual in texture. It was very definitely carrot soup, though. It was an orange commonly associated with exposure suits used by Air/Sea Search and Rescue workers. Her sandwich had nicely smoked ham, tomato (not smoked, fresh) and lettuce (slightly smoked). My steak sandwich was actually open-faced. It was more of a ‘steak on a piece of garlic bread’ than what I would call a sandwich but very tasty for all that. There was a sort of dill mustard that went with it and very good fries with malt vinegar.
Fries and other potato dishes are done really well out here, by and large. It probably has to do with the potatoes spending about 20 seconds on a truck rather than a couple of days. C&B had mushroom caps and split some kind of seafood platter which they seemed to enjoy. They had scallops which I think is sort of the tofu of seafood. They don’t have much flavour on their own merits but tend to soak up whatever they’re cooked near. I am planning to have bacon-wrapped scallops at some point (possibly tonight in Halifax) which is basically like eating a 2cm diameter plug of bacon without it stopping my heart right away.
As children, we had a “cookbook” called “Kids in the Kitchen” which was produced to make kids feel great about eating the swill that kids normally eat. I have since become good friends with the “Model” from the pristine black and white cardstock photocopy cover (aka the only 8 year old in that church at the time of production). But I digress (probably I’m just trying to impress you with all the famous people I know). It had recipes for old favourites like Macaroni and Cheese, which called for a box of Kraft Dinner and wrote out the instructions verbatim from the side of the box. It also had other foodstuffs that children ages 7-9 can usually be trusted to prepare and eat such as microwave hotdogs, and peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
Being precocious young chefs, my brother and I decided to throw caution to the wind and abandon the cookbook of our youth, deciding that cookies were the order of the day! We had eaten cookies before, and thus we felt totally qualified to now invent a cookie recipe. I knew that cookies had eggs and flour, but that was roughly the sum total of my culinary prowess. We decided all cookies should contain chocolate chips. Then we started personalizing it. Matt, being a lover of both peanut butter and banana, declared peanut-butter-banana-chocolate-chip-cookies to be on the menu. Reading this now, it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, but bear in mind we had yet to take ratios in school.
In the end it was a sticky goo with roughly the viscosity of honey. We put it on a pan and into the oven (at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes for those of you who are following along at home) largely because we had come that far and weren’t quitters. The heating served to slightly thicken the concoction to about the consistency of pudding. Not the generic British term inclusive of all desserts but the glutinous, saccharine, milk-based paste until recently plugged by Bill Cosby. I recall Matt eating it with a spoon, but I, being the timid child, probably just microwaved some hotdogs, carefully following the recipe so I wouldn’t screw it up.