The Kitchen Scale

MIA

It seems that every couple of weeks or so there will be a random surge in traffic to the site, despite the fact that I haven't posted in forever. Who are these people and what are they doing... are they friends trying to procrastinate? Are they randoms who got lost? Was it a google search? A typo? Someone who wanted the name of the blog and decided to check it out?

Anyway. I will not lie, I miss my dear bloggie. But I have no motivation. For this, for class, for most things. One day there will be a windfall of pictures, stories, recipes, things that will make you cringe, cry, laugh, and tinkle in your pants (perhaps simultaneously, if we're lucky).

This is just to let you know that I'm alive and keeping tabs on nothing. Its sorta like I started painting a room and every couple of months in some act driven by some sort of desperateness I come in dab a little paint on the wall and leave. Except since I'm not even contributing anything interesting its like I come into the room a dab at the wall with a paint-less brush. Completely pointless.

I really don't understand this

If a friend of yours offered you cake would you accept it?

This is not a trick question. No one will judge you, would you accept it?

Heres the thing dear readers (which I'm pretty sure consist solely of my family and a handful of friends at most, and don't worry mom, I'm not procrastinating... just taking a little homework break...yeah, thats it, a break) I am making my oldest brother's wedding cake. Now this is truly an honor and has the potential to be very stressful. So I do what I tend to do when a potentially stressful event looms on the horizon (with the exception of finals, I'm odd like that), I prepare myself. I'm not 100% sure what it is going to be yet, I'm pretty sure lemon and vanilla are going to be involved. Possibly coconut. But there will be a large tiered cake and then a bunch of regular sized cakes.

Since I don't know what I'm doing I need to make practice cakes (this is the preparation bit). And obviously having a cake laying around is not conducive to weight loss. (By the way I am back on the wagon and lost over 5 of the 15 pounds I had put on since I took a weight watchers hiatus at the beginning of the summer.) So I am gifting cake away. But none of my friends really seem to want it.

Its free cake. Would my brother ask me to make his wedding cake if I couldn't bake a cake? Doesn't this say something about my cake creating skills? One would think. But since none of my friends want to take cake off my hands, I feel like that says otherwise. What is going on?

Now, a rational being would say that they are probably looking after their waist lines too. But come on, 20 year old boys have the metabolism of... some animal with a really high metabolism (horse?). Plus I honestly don't care what they do with the cake. They can pass it off as their own and impress someone special (although it would seem that they don't think my cakes are that great...). They can give it to a homeless person. Share with their room mates. Share it with a class. Have a cake fight. Throw it out. Whatever.

Why don't they want my cake. I'm having cake esteem issues.

Which is disheartening not only because my cake is being snubbed, but all I want to do is bake (which is probably because I am buried under an avalanche of reading). And who am I supposed to give baked goods away to? Should I really even pursue baking if I literally can not give it away?

And as a little administrative note, i still have to get a cable for my camera. So someday there will be pictures. Until then you will have to deal with my emotional cake roller coaster. Sorry.

A Word of Explanation

For the holidays I received a brand new computer. Its fantastic and shiny and new. And it doesn't have the proper USB port for my digital camera. So... there are no pictures. And I find excessive text without pictures annoying and boring. One day (hopefully soon) I will go on a mission to get a new cord. So you will have to excuse my absence. I will return with pictures and hopefully posts about cookies, reviews of some cooking light recipes, and some other exciting things too!

How to Salvage a Bad Day

Everyone has bad days. It's an unfortunate reality, but you are bound to have a bad day. I'm sorry.

Now there are varying degrees of bad days, and I, like many of you, have had many a bad day. But today was one of the most frustratingly bad days I've had in a long time. And most of it seems to have taken place in the first few hours of my day.

When I woke up this morning I was feeling less than stellar and very much under the weather. And I was running late for a last minute, pre-final study session. The only good thing about this is it was my last final. But it was one of my least favorite classes ever and the tests are just unpredictable and challenging for the most part- luckily today's test wasn't too bad.

Anyway, I was running late and decided to try to see if I could catch a bus to campus. As I was crossing the street I apparently forgot how to walk or something (perhaps ice, perhaps a small sprite tripped me?). And down I went, to greet my old friend The Pavement. Now I am hopelessly clumsy, especially lately (I fell last week too and hurt my shoulder).  Luckily only one person saw me crash down and he was very nice and stopped to make sure I was ok. (Last time I fell only one person acknowledged me, and she looked angry, like I was disturbing her intentionally with my accidental fall.) Now here is the gross part, if you don't want to read the gross part then skip down to the next paragraph. When I fell I felt three distinct things in my ankle move apart and then sorta come back together.

I totally thought I was fine, and I really wasn't. So I hobbled back home after sitting on some steps for a while and some how made it up the stairs. I tracked down an ankle brace (I told you, I'm clumsy, plus I have bad ankles), called my school's health center to make an appointment,  and called a cab. I got to campus and studied for a while before giving up. I took my test and soon it was over. Now I had to hang around on campus to have a very gross lunch with one of my friends and for my appointment. The doctor that saw me was very nice, and after asking some questions and poking at my ankle and causing further pain she told me that I had a badly sprained ankle. Now, I have sprained my ankle several times and this is the worst sprain I have ever had.

Overall my day was stressful and ruined. I can't do stairs easily so I could haul my laundry up or down the stairs to the basement to do laundry. I can barely shuffle around, so no errands for me. And little cleaning too. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but I am leaving tomorrow for a couple weeks to go home and I can't stand coming back to a dirty apartment. I guess I'm going to have to cope.

So after taking a nap and having a calming, ranting conversation with my best friend I was able to address a rather pressing issue. I had no food in the house. Or so I thought. I found that I had puff pastry in the freezer, cheese, blueberries, sour cream, a quarter of an onion, and some eggs. So I had dinner.

I adapted a Suzanne Goin's recipe for a spring onion tart that is deliciously rich with a ricotta/creme fraiche base loaded with onions and bacon and topped with chantal cheese, and served with an herb salad dressed lightly with lemon juice and olive oil. What I did was spread a thing layer of low fat sour cream (which hardly seems important since this is puff pastry). Seasoned that with salt, pepper, and a very restrained amount of chili flakes (mostly because I ran out). And added some moderately sliced onions and topped with shredded monterey jack cheese. I baked that in an oven around 375ish for 15-20 minutes and it was delicious. I do wish I had the herb salad to cut through the richness though. (Also, even though it seems logically that there is enough oil in the puff pastry that you don't need to grease the foil you still should, as I lost some of it to the wrathful gods of stuck on  food.  but as it cooled it wasn't as problematic.) That was good, but dessert was so much better!

I cut the remaining sheet into 9 squares and stretched them out a little. In a bowl I combined some of the remaining low fat sour cream, brown sugar, a cup of blue berries, salt, cinnamon, and eventually some granulated sugar. I placed a good sized dollop on each of the pieces of puff pastry (which is why some of the turnovers exploded). Using some egg I sealed them and crimped them closed with a fork. Stabbed each one so that steam could be released and brushed the top of each turnover with egg and a generous sprinkling of sugar. It was perfect.

Granted this meal is one of the farthest things from a weight conscious meal as you can get it was worth it and o so necessary. Take that MacGyver!

The evil of Finals

Not only are finals evil because by the time you get to this massive challenge of memory and you are so burned out on whatever topic it is that you are focusing on that when you take a break to watch a movie or your car gets towed you can only think of it as a puzzle- to figure out whose rights were being infringed upon, or what theory of war could best describe the situation. And on top of the inherent sleep deprivation that is completely unavoidable (as well as the impending doom of the end of the quarter body melt down/ failure/ cold flu plague hybrid), there is the challenge of nourishment.

I would love to make a curry with fresh vegetables and tofu, or a fruit salad studded with pomegranates that I saw at the store. Or maybe some butternut squash soup with apple and curry powder. Or some lemon sole with a green salad. But no, I can't. There is no time. I was happy when I was able to throw together some scrambled eggs with jalapenos and some questionable potatoes that I don't remember ever purchasing...

It's not even the time necessary to make the food. It's the time to go to the store, make the food, do the dishes (ok fine, I have not done dishes in a couple days and its driving me crazy to the point that i completely ignore the sink area). So what have I been eating? Bread, the bread of college students the nation over (pizza,  i don't even like delivery pizza that much), some spinach curry from my Indian Place, eggs, questionable potatoes, spinach (yes mom, be proud, a vegetable), the odd tangerine, lentils and rice, sandwiches, and cake. Now, it happened that I had everything in the house to make cake (or so I thought). I have a well supplied pantry (yet no pasta sauce!) and for once I had butter and light sour cream in my fridge. (It's really the butter thats the surprise, I admit I use some gross spray that makes me cough and sometimes olive oil.)

So I made a chocolate cake.

Now, if you'll recall I said I had almost all of the ingredients... well I didn't have milk to make frosting with. So instead, I took chocolate, butter, powdered sugar and port and made a little paste that I dabbed on the top of the warm cake and put in the warm oven so I could spread it out. It turned out really well and made studying a lot easier.

Note: I did not eat all the cake! I gave 3/4 of the total cake (a half recipe might I add) away as a holiday gift and this is whats left from Friday.

Back to studying about war now. Once I'm done with finals though and back home in my parents' beautiful kitchen hopefully I'll be able to post more.

Aahhhh I'm so lame AND late

So, I totally forgot to blog about the last day of my marathon Thanksgiving! And now I am in the special hell reserved for finals and a repressed cold, so just pictures this time!

Chile and Citrus roasted Sweet Potatoes, so amazing!

Tamales waiting to get steamed, don't they look happy and cute?

These were filled with a mixture of onion, chiles, tomatoes, and mushrooms. And they were so good that the next day we made more (some were roasted poblanos, queso, onions; cilantro, onions, queso; mushrooms with roasted garlic and queso). In fact, I doubled the recipe so my brother could stash them in his freezer. A couple days later when I talked to him he admitted that they were gone...

Just a little note...

The internet is a fantastic tool where there is a constant flow of information and ideas. It happens in the blink of an eye and it has become so common for so many of us. As a result new friends are made, debates of all sorts occur, access to educational tools increases, etc. There is also a greater chance for misunderstandings- tones can not always be easily distinguished, sarcasam isn't always evident, etc. And it often becomes easy to be petty or take things personally. That being said, I appreciate and welcome feed back, but please use the comment section of the blog for that. In addition to that, I would love to hear from any of you that happen to stumble across my little blog. Thanks.

Thanksgiving Part two

A multi part Thanksgiving inherently makes the actual day of Thanksgiving a little less than exciting. It was a slow day full of leftovers and cooking for the day. We had masa boats that became rafts and roasted tomato poblano soup which tastes amazing the next day.

Both the soup and the masa vessels required a roasted poblano raja which included roasted poblanos, onions, oregano, garlic, and a few other tasty ingredients.

Roasted Poblanos, sitting happily in a bowl.

After the rajas the dishes take very different directions.  For the soup I roasted a bunch of tomatoes under the broiler. Roasting things under a broiler generally frightens me as I do not want to burn my brother's house down. And for some reason I think that tomatoes can spontaneously erupt into flames after a little heat is applied....

Luckily I did not ignite these tomatoes.

From there I put them through the blender and added them to the cooking raja on the stove and let that cook down and then added in some stock, salt and spices. Easy Peasy.

And below is a picture of my failed masa boat that eventually became a raft.

I have no clue how the masa rafts are as leftovers as my brother ate the last one because it was sad and lonely. The soup is significantly better the next day and even better if the final product is send through the blender a little and topped with queso. But what isn't better once topped with queso?

Gobble Gobble Part One

Wednesday my brother and I went around to various markets to get everything on our grocery list at the best possible price. We went to the Mexican market, the Asian market, and the super market. And eventually we got everything we needed. Plus a few treats. My brother and I both have a love for inexpensive Asian cookies, we feel it's what proves our Asian heritage. So here is what we found:

For some reason the sweet on the left looks like a chocolate ex-lax equivalent, probably because of the "ex" part of the name. It was good, but not my favorite.  The Stikko is pretty good, but between the vanilla sweets I much prefer the Tahitian Vanilla Pocky. It smelled more like real vanilla and doesn't break like the stikkos do.

Anyway, back to the actual food cooking and preparing. My brother and I do non traditional Thanksgiving. He is a vegetarian and we are both the types of people who will make stuffing or mashed potatoes or whatever any time of year, so we don't need to get our fix at Thanksgiving. Plus it's more interesting this way. So this year we're having a three day Mexican Thanksgiving! Mexican because we were born in California and good fairly authentic Mexican food is a big part of what we're about. And three days because we couldn't decide what to make and it is just the two of us, so it would be a little excessive to make everything one day.

So day one. We made Red Chile Rice and Chile Rellenos. All of the recipes we use are from a Rick Bayless cook book, I highly encourage all of you to go out and buy one of his books if you like real Mexican food. Everything has about a thousand steps, but it all turns out well.  Since I'm making two things over three days I'll give you one recipe a day and pictures of the other dish.

First I made the Red Chile Rice.  First you will need to make Chef Bayless' "Essential Sweet and Spicy Ancho Seasoning Paste", for any of you deathly afraid of heat I wouldn't worry,  I didn't find the rice to hot. However, since I apparently can tolerate spicy foods I would suggest cutting back on the amount of paste you ultimately use, or serve it with sour cream or avocado.

First in a pan over medium heat (the suggested equipment is an ungreased griddle or a heavy skillet), I used a frying pan as my brother has three pieces of stove top equipment- a wok, a giant soup pot, and a frying pan. You want to roast 8 cloves of garlic, unpeeled. Just toss them onto one side of your heating surface. Then (you will probably need to do this in shifts) toast 8 medium dried ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded. Now as I'm looking over the recipe I will admit I did not stem or seed them. O well. Now the garlic will blacken and you want to turn it to make sure it doesn't ignite or completely turn black, you just want to roast them until soft. The chiles are going to toast quickly, only a few seconds on either side while applying pressure. There will be popping noises and perhaps a little smoke, don't worry you're still doing it correctly. Or at least the way I did it... and lets just ignore that little bit about me not stemming or seeding the chiles... Your kitchen will start smelling sweet as the sugars in the garlic caramelize and the chiles toast. They will start to smell like really fragrant dried fruit- like raisins or prunes.

Put the toasted chiles in a bowl full of warm water so that they can sorta come back to life. I put a saucer in the bowl to keep them from floating up. They can just sit there for a half hour while you get on with other things. Like this would be a good time to let the garlic cool and then slip the skins off of them.

In a food processor blend the chiles, garlic, 2/3 cup water or broth, 1.5 tsp oregano, 0.5 tsp ground black pepper, 1/8 tsp ground cumin, and a scant 1/4 tsp ground cloves. Blend this into a puree. (I feel I should tell you that we did take the stems off... we just didn't take the seeds out at this point.) It is suggested that you strain the mixture. I don't think we did that either (at the blending point I let my brother take over). Actually I'm positive we didn't strain it. Well, it won't kill you if you don't strain it. It may ruin your credibility as someone who can either a. cook or b. read. Now season with  some salt, keep in mind that you will later be adding this to some stock (with varying levels of sodium) so season accordingly.

Now you will not need to use all of this mixture. You can either halve it from the get go (since I apparently can't read I will not be doing the math for you), or you can reserve the rest and follow the suggestion of Chef Bayless- use it as a marinade. I imagine this could be very tasty on some pork or chicken that you could grill up to have a long with your rice.

In a large pot heat  1 T. vegetable oil over medium heat. Add 1 cup rice (medium grain is suggested) and 1 small white onion that has been diced. In another pot (or wok) heat 1 2/3 cups water or broth with 5 T. of the ancho paste. In the rice pot you want to push it around a little and let the onion soften and the rice turn whiter/chalky. In the broth pot you want it to come up to a boil. Once both have gotten to their individual destinations add the broth pot contents to the rice pot and stir to make sure all the rice is in the liquid then cover and turn the heat down slightly to medium low.

We cooked it for about 15 minutes and then I checked it and it was almost there and still a little while till we would finish the rellenos, so I took it off the heat and kept it covered. A little while later it was perfect. Feel free to serve it with sour cream, salsa, cilantro, queso, etc.

Now for Chiles Rellenos...

Jalapenos simmering in a pot of water, brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. On some of them you may be able to see the special T shaped cut.

And now an uber blurry photo of the filling which included tomatoes, garlic, green olives, cheese, and onion.

I was just really proud of myself for being able to whip egg whites into somewhat stiff peaks by hand, and pretty quickly if I do say so myself. So yeah, be amazed.

Frozen, floured jalapenos with the filling in the background.

Again, frozen, floured jalapenos, but this time with the batter in the background (egg whites, yolks, a dash of flour and a pinch of salt).

Glorious Chile Rellenos.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and stayed tuned for Day Two of a Mexican Thanksgiving! Adios!

P.S. The formatting of this post got wonky, I don't really know what happened and it won't let me fix it... so I'm sorry that it looks crazy. I guess the holidays do this to all of us.

 

Hidden Gems

I'm not quite officially on Thanksgiving break, its more self declared. I ducked out of class early today and took the train to my brother's house. I know its weird that I don't go home for Thanksgiving, and with travel time going home isn't really any longer (not that I've done the math, but when you travel that day is sorta shot anyways).  Since I went away to college I visit one of my brothers for Thanksgiving in Portland. Its nice because there is a certain amount of autonomy yet complete dependence. I can stay downstairs and work on my papers for school and he can be upstairs doing whatever it is he does (lately its cleaning fish tanks).

But really when I visit we do two things. Eat and watch movies. And thats what our days revolve around. Yeah we walk his dogs and go do some dog rescue stuff. Occasionally we'll shop (no sales tax!), but that generally revolves around food. 

My train got in around dinner time and I had half of a lifeless wrap for brunch, but I was starving by the time he picked me up. He told me that there was leftover pizza in the fridge and that I should help myself and that we would go by the store, but I should hold back for dessert.

Well my dears this is where the balancing act gets tricky. On one hand I have gained a little weight since my all time low earlier this year (+9). But last week I lost 3 pounds. I get the feeling I'm going to gain it all back while I'm here. And thats ok, I'll get back to it all when I get back to school. I know the devout dieters who radiate a holy carotene glow will shake their heads and recite the canon- "It is not a diet, but a change in lifestyle." Go eat some celery and leave me alone. This is our national holiday of eating. Its a holiday of eating! Holiday! Eating! It's our (un)fortunate patriotic duty to over eat and nap. I'm so proud to be an American. So with that balancing act in mind (which is not really a balancing act considering that all the weight- no pun intended- is on one side) I am on Thanksgiving Break.

So I kicked it off the best way I know how- carrots and tofu dip, cold pizza and a banana split. To be perfectly honest I don't think I've ever had a banana split and it was so good. My brother took me to this house that was converted into a dessert place in Portland. It was amazing. The front of the menu is their standard stuff and on the back they write in the specials and cross them off depending on availability. The place is Portland funky and overall completely inspiring.  But I have two confessions.

First, I'm not clear on what flavors of ice cream I had. I think there was vanilla, berry, mocha, and mint. But you have to understand it was all coated in different syrupy/berry/sauces that completely change the dynamic of the ice cream. Nonetheless I am fairly embarrassed.

Second, I don't know what the place is called or where it's at. I just follow my brother.

At this point, if you've even made it through this post you are probably wondering why I'm even writing. Well, because I need to get back in the saddle. The writing saddle, the diet saddle, the something other than political science saddle, etc. Now these are a lot of saddles so needless to say its going to be a bumpy ride.

Also, sometimes you just have to tell the world that you are just going to enjoy the ride and repercussions be damned , its time to smell the pumpkin pie scented roses. Which would be amazing!

But I am going to leave you with a promise for the near future- Mexican Thanksgiving. O it will be glorious, so stay tuned kiddies and whatever ideas you have about dieting, put them on pause if only for a day.