Cruel and Unusual

My step mother gave us a cookbook full of tapas. The best part about it are all of the wonderful pictures, beautifully taken, that make your mouth water! The drawback? It's entirely in SPANISH! Now I can decipher the ingredients list with a bit of time spent on Google. However, the process, and technique for cooking is a little harder to understand. Now with the help of Google, I can find recipes for some of the recipes, but many of the recipes aren't exact. That, or they come out in Spanish. It's so sad.

Too tired to blog

Group kick-boxing class kicked my butt. To say nothing of showed me that I have no ability to follow instruction.

Starvation post work-out was avoided with this simple yet delicous recipe:
7 oz Salmon filet
1 TBSP barbeque sauce
dab of oil
several large handfuls of mixed greens
2 TBSP ceasar dressing.

Preheat the broiler, oil the salmon and coat the top with the BBQ sauce. Broil for 6-10 minutes.
Meanwhile wash the greens, and remove the excess water. If you don't have a salad spinner, a really easy way to get the water off the leaves (and make you significant other/roommate think you've lost your mind) is to put the wet leaves in a clean kitchen towel, grab hold of the corners and spin the bundle over your head. Be ware, you will probably spray some water all over the kitchen, and if you lose your grip, there will be salad everywhere.
Pour salad dressing over your greens, and place the salmon on top.

Don't forget, no matter how starved you are, remember to chew your food...

Mayonnaise and Tequilla

Mayonnaise, you terrify me. You're white and creamy in all the weirdest ways. You are chemistry, unlike the biology of sour cream. Two liquids make an egg congeal, and zip, you have something to put on a sandwich.
The first time I tried to make mayo, it came out rather well. A little tart, a little spicy, and a pale golden color. I was actually rather impressed by the fact that I liked it!
Tonight I wanted to make a recipe that called for mayo, and decided that I would attempt to make it from scratch. I forgot the golden rule, add the oil S-L-O-W-L-Y. Never thought I'd see eggs curdle.


To make myself feel better about the world, I have turned to easier recipes:


Almond Tequilla Sour:
Juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup water
1 oz El Ultimo Agave Almond Liquer
Mix ingredients in a shaker, serve over ice.
YUM.

For those of you horrified by the thought of Tequilla, the alternative would be to substitute the lime for a lemon, and use Disaronno Amaretto instead of El Ultimo Agave. And yes, that is in fact an Amaretto Sour. (Generally though you would add more sugar to the mix. However, too much sugar mixed with alcohol gives me one heck of a hangover.)

Miso Soup

For someone who was afraid to try Japanese food until she was about 18, I find it funny that my favorite comfort food is Miso Soup. Generally speaking when you think of miso soup, you probably think of a small bowl that the sushi restaurant serves prior to your meal, however once you know how to make the base, the options are limitless.

Here's the variation that was dinner:

3 cups dashi (recipe to follow)
2 TBSP black bean paste (miso)
1/2 cup enoki mushrooms
a few pieces of smoked salmon
green onion
a couple cilantro leaves

Combine miso, green onion and dashi; bring to a boil (don't worry if the miso doesn't dissolve right away), add enoki mushrooms, and salmon. Boil for about a minute. Garnish with cilantro leaves, and EAT! (A nice addition to this is some left over noodles, or a few pieces of silken tofu)

Dashi:
4 cups water
1 leaf kombu seaweed (a piece roughly 4x4)
1/2 cup bonito flakes (fish)
Place kombu into a pot (do not rinse it, you want the salt that's stuck to the outside), cover with water and bring to a boil; immediately remove kombu (you can save it to make a second batch). Add bonito flakes, let it come to a boil. Remove from heat and carefully pour through a strainer.
If you want to make a second batch to save for later (called Second Dashi) combine another 4 cups water, with the bonito flakes, and kombu, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Sewing project!

So, I will not take credit for this idea, since I have seen several rather amazing versions of this skirt. However I decided to make one for myself.
11 ties later, I am mid sewing process:

End result:

Lifestyle section

I find it fitting that Barnes & Nobles puts Mother Earth News directly between it's porn and tattoo magazines;   because for me, all the homesteading, farming, rah rah outdoor living, is kinda like porn. (Technically Mother Earth News resides in the "Lifestyle" section) However, I always forget that this is where this magazine resides, so when I went to pick up this months issue, I couldn't find it! It wasn't with all the health, yoga, organic magazines. It wasn't with the home and garden magazines. It wasn't anywhere near the farmers almanac. So I tracked down a very friendly sales clerk to help me look.
Here I am watching her dig through all of the shrink wrapped Jugs, Pentshack, and Hustlin' magazines, and I mean REALLY digging through them. I wonder what she thought the magazine was going to look like? Naked hippies?
Long story short, we found this months issue of Mother Earth News, and I am now drooling over all 112 pages of it. YUM.

Curried Beans

My husband and I love Indian food. I mean L-O-V-E. We have a great little Indian restaurant near our house, but eating out adds up to trouble. In an attempt to curb some of the costs we have been trying to learn how to make curry, is sort of tricky. The list of spices in it of itself is daunting, and I seem to have this idea in the back of my head that Indian food is food made with the slow food method, of cooking for hours and hours. Frankly that's why the food tastes so freakin' good.
However, I refuse to be chased out of the kitchen by a style of cooking. So here are a few ways I have found around these roadblocks.
Spices: ethnic food stores are amazing. Not only do you find all sorts of goodies to try (candy, soup mixes, etc) but you can also find spices for a fraction of the cost. I stockpiled a bunch of spices for the purposes of making spice blends as Christmas presents, and barely made a dent in the stash.
Time: Well, with the 30 minute and under dinner craze there are also Indian cookbooks out there that speak to that vein. I have this book, and at first glance through it's pretty good. I'll be getting into trying out some recipes soon. I promise.
"But I'm scared!": well, a lot of companies have gotten their act together and came out with premade sauces, where all you have to do is add some meat or tofu, boil and serve over rice. This works well, and we've had some rather nice success with these, but it's not as gratifying.

Anyway, I found a recipe for Rajma, which is kidney bean curry, and then totally cheated.

Sort of Rajma
2 cans of beans (kidney, black, pinto, whatever you have works)
2 TBSP dried onion flakes ground to a powder
1 TBSP garlic powder
1 tsp ginger powder
2 TBSP olive oil
2 TBSP butter
1/8 tsp pepper flakes
3 whole cloves
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
2 canned tomatoes
1 tsp honey
1 tsp garam masala

Heat butter and oil in a pot, add all of the spices and honey, mix so that the spices are evenly distributed and not clumpy. Add the canned beans (including liquid), and the tomatoes. Bring to a simmer and cook for about half an hour, stirring occasionally.
Serve over rice.

How did I miss this?

My husband and I got rid of cable about 3 years ago, my goal was to try to kick a nasty habit we had developed of spending several hours a night watching TV. It would have been one thing if we were obsessed about a show, however it was mindless TV starring. Unfortunately once we got rid of cable we discovered Netflix and Hulu. We still have a TV problem.
However, when we had cable, I never really watched that much of the Food Network. The idea of watching a cooking show always seemed silly to me. I can't keep up with the host, who flies through a recipe in 30 minutes, skipping all the waiting and clean up! Also, I've always had kitchen envy.
This weekend my husband and I dog sat for his parents, who have cable; and I discovered Alton Brown. Oh. My. I'm hooked!
The only draw back has been that the show was canceled last year, and started airing so long ago that it's not available online. Boo.