I am not gone. I am not done. I am not eating palatable classic dishes. I am creating a real webpage.

I played with other names for the blog, foodshit.com lucylincoln.com (my porn name) but think I will stick with the inedibleating.

mom = "did you spell it right this time?"

I guess she doesn't get the ingeniousness of combination fluid text.

To be done by.. 8/19. Sure.

btw - last night I made sushi hand rolls stuffed with grilled shiso calamari and toped with a garlic umeboshi miso paste. They were delicious.

I will update with the actual site shortly (see above).

Booze with Things

So I decided along the lines of things that are easy to do with little brain power and little standing up I would infuse some booze. I bought gin and vodka cause those seem like good easy starters for mass infusion. Now simply put, infusing is just putting things in things. But, just cause two things seem like they would combine well, or even just adequetely, does not mean that they will taste remotely paletable. Here is what I made.

The most obvious one, the cucumber gin, was delightful. I left them in for about two days and then strained them out. You can kinda taste test as you go.

My favorite was actually the cucumber cilantro gin. This with some seltzer and lime.. BAM.

But then there were the others... Lemongrass and rosemary together in vodka taste like cleaning product. I don't mean tasted like a cleaning product smells, but tastes like they taste - my parents did not have child proof cleaning cabinets.

When I made the horseradish vodkas I tried them after five minutes and thought they tasted horseradhishy enough. But I decided to let them stay over night. My nose hair, which I never had because I'm a lady, all caught on fire. But here I was with two huge containers of horseracid vodka. I tried diluting with a 1 to 20 ratio but nothing worked. So if I were to redo it I would just dip it in.*

So not a total success. Which is ok. Because eventually it will lead to total success.

Roommate: "Remember when these were all full? I miss that day."

* I was going to insert a video of greens being blanched to illustrate dipping something into something, but then ended up watching Blanche Devereux mash ups. Good day at the office.

Ol' Bay Chocolates

So I forgot to update on the whole old bay chocolate thing. I remembered today while eating what turned out not to be oyster shooters but oyster sliders at Penrose. They were delicious. Even more delicious than if they were placed in beer with cocktail sauce, which is saying a lot because I love things in beer.**** Not that that has anything to do with the chocolates, just a side note. Another side note is that my sister-in-law beat Muhammad Ali's daughter's time in the triathlon today.

**** when googling food dipped in beer I came across this. Maybe later she can become a spokes person for beer ruptured colons.

Anyways here are some pictures of the old bay chocolates. They turned out pretty delicious and way better than the original batch. Trick is not just dumping things in things and calling it a day. Letting the old bay cook in the chocolate made the flavors combine and be present all the way through - you know, instead of chocolate, chocolate, OLD BAY.

Another trick... Don't place the chocolates in the freezer to harden because you are impatient and pretending you are busy (for me this means Sons of Anarchy to watch). They are impossible to take out this way. Putting them in the fridge makes them pop out quite easily. Bet there's some cooking chemistry in there.

This is me being very serious about my chocolate placing and clearly not wanting help.

This is the finished product - what you can't see is the mound of left over chocolates. I made five time the required amount to compensate for the 100% break rate I was facing before I realized you should cool chocolates in the fridgerator.

Btwz - if you go to Penrose I suggest the pickle martini because it is delicious. My only mistake was not ordering it by the pint.

Old Bay Chocolates

So my brother is having a lobster dinner (donate to him) for a good cause. He asked me to make a dessert. However, he rejected some of my ideas:

Lemon flavored icing on crab cupcakes

Old bay/lemon icing on chocolate cupcakes

Butter flavored icing (like popcorn butter) on old bay cupcakes

So I told him I would make vanilla /vanilla cupcakes because that sounds better and I make freaking ridiculously delicious yet boring vanilla cupcakes (it's all in the room temperature butter/eggs). However, I did not say I would not garnish the fuck out of the cup cakes.

I am trying to make old bay lobster chocolates. So far my roommate says they taste terrible. But 1. she does not like old bay and 2. she is sober. I'm hoping by the end of the meal 1. she won't be there and 2. everytone will be drunk.

Apparently you are not supposed to mix chocolate with butter. so don't do that. They do not combine. Just double boil and melt the chocolate and pour them in the mold. I did this. With some mfing overpriced chocolate. stir in some old bay and cayanne pepper while melting and you have whatever the hell I made. It kinda taste like good chocolate with an old bay after taste. I honestly don't know if it is disgusting or awesome. No idea. I'm going to take them to a bar tonight and see what people of my caliber say.

I tried first to make pink claws with butter (again doesn't work) mixed with white chocolate and beet juice (red coloring).

They crumbled and failed:

this failed and crumbled. So I remelted the chocolate chocolate (white chocolate is not real chocolate) and poured them again in the mold. A bit better, but again, may taste terrible. Tomorrow I will try again.

Yuzu & Shiso Leaf Soup with Tofu Noodles.

Some girls like to take all their classy upbringing and go shopping at Louie Vouton. I on the other hand always thought the logo was XL for extra large and the name was spelled Vouton. For me, my favorite thing is to splurge on is Japanese food. I guess it's not so much a splurge as a 1/16 of a L.V. keychain, but whateves.

I take the potentially life threatening freight elevator up to the sunrise market and feel like Augustus Gloop. It is better than anything ever.

I bought these things, plus other things:


Originally I was going to make soba noodles with some shiso leaf, or cook up the shishito pepers and eat seaweed and bean sprouts but then I decided I want to make something great. So I made a soup with everything* from my shopping included and very little left out.

First I cooked the tofu noodles which smelled like a very dead fish's mold bowl - a smell I am familiar with as I had a dead fish from 7th - 10th grade. I think my mom was teaching me a lesson about taking care of things and cleaning things. I took it as a lesson in tolerance to smells. One nice thing is that the directions basically apologized for the odor. However, apology not accepted.

I then heated up some cups of water, added the miso I've been stealing from my roommate, threw in some enoki mushrooms (which I read after eating you are supposed to clean or soak or something for ten minutes - whoops, it happens), soy sauce, garlic, yuzu, shiso leafs and seaweed. It was ok. What I really liked was the yuzu and shisho leaf together. Not so much the tofu noodles. I feel like I've had them before and really liked them. Perhaps I was focusing too much on figuring out how to describe their texture for the sake of this blog that I started grossing myself out (I came up with a combination of a slug and cartilage).



* Every time I see the word everything, which is every day, I get so bitter someone already acted on my idea that was going to be my retirement fund. Everything.

**I love shishito peppers. I also like that they are getting more play in nyc menus, not as much as bacon brussel sprouts which I think are becoming as common as the option of sparkling or tap, but still more. I like to order them from ippudo so I can eat the yuzu salt. With my finger as a utensil and saliva as a cohesive I can clean out the salt bowl in seconds.

DRINK PAIRING NOTE. I put some yuzu into my Stella (I found it in my fridge, I didn't buy it, so no judging) and it was awesome! Yuzu beer. Done.

Beet Curry Pickled Cauliflower

I took a class in pickling. I guess that's obvious.

A + B = C

A= Went to Bard
B= Live in Bushwick
C= Took a pickling class

I guess there's also

A+B= I know how to knit
A+B= I like dinner parties
A+B= I've gone a week without showering

I didn't really understand that much in the class, or maybe I understood everything and it just turns out pickling is silly easy. But I made like six jars during the course. One ended up with mold on it because fermenting is confusing, but the others turned out really good. One thing I should have noted is that pickling takes a while which goes against my natural nature of frantic eating. So I ate four of them within a day. The last I saved to enjoy with my cuz.

They were awesome.

Stuff in mason jar :

Cauliflower
Peeled, not chopped, garlic (like five)
Some shakes of curry powder
Pickling spice
Then pour in the vinegar/water mixture (I do not feel like explaining how to pickle right now, so do a google).

I cut a 1/4 inch thick slick of beet and put it on the top hoping it would color the cauliflower. I got this idea from an ex who would use beets to make water color. He once painted me with a flower arm. I don't know what happened to the painting, but I'm assuming it is lost amongst (NOT A WORD??!!) my bills from ten years ago and the cause for my current rodent problem.

This is what they look like:


This is what they look like next to cheese:


I took a shit load of pictures. THey were awesome. Ideas my cousin and I came up with
- put it in a martini (pretty much my idea for all salty crunchy things)
- marinate steak in the juices
- use less garlic

Other picklings that I ate were======
pickled brussel sprouts. awesome. pickled asparagus. kinda awesome. pickled scallions. not awesome. cucumbers. pickles.

I remember trying to can apple sauce and having to send out a botulism bullitin to my family so a few words of advice:

- sterilize the mason jar by boiling for 15 minutes
- you can just put the top on and keep it in the fridge for a few months and it will be fine, but if you are going to keep it unrefrigerated, or want to keep it for years, seal that shit. Which means water bath. Which means look it up.
- buy mason jars from Fishs Eddie cause they are cheap there. Probably cheaper if you do research and buy in bulk.

Tagafluff Sandwich

'nuff said.

My dinner before leaving for a party. BTWz.

Trash Soup

Trash soup is one of my favorite things. It makes you feel like you are doing something good for your body and environment - although I never make it to the compost drop off and therefore only do good for me.

You basically store all your food scraps in the freezer in a plastic bag. Put all veggie scraps in the bag.. you can keep fruit parts as well, but you don't want to keep flavorless stupid parts of fruit like stems, pits, avocado/banana/orange skins etc. No not edible things or things that seem like they shouldn't be part of a broth. You also don't really want to use citris fruits. You can put in bones and egg shells - if you add a splash of vinegar it supposedly releases calcium. I think a splash of olive oil is supposed to be good too. Oh - I don't use wax covered skins like rutabaga etc.

This soup is amazing. You can use it whenever you need water in a recipe, particularly as a soup base. It is really nutritious - my boyfriend used to drink it instead of coffee. Which I like in theory - not as much in practice. A kiss goodbye is not as pleasant coming from a mouth that just drank cold trash soup at 8am. But it made me smile.

Basically you put everything frozen in a pot and cover with water... as much as you can... maybe throw in a clove or two of garlic. Then let it simmer for like two hours. You can mush it around. Then strain it and BAM broth that is awesome and natural.

Examples:

Before:

After (not totally after cause you have to strain out everything but..:


Before:

After:


Before:

No After.

Matzo Ball Borscht

I made borscht tonight. I won't give a recipe because it is borscht. put some beets and things in it. I feel like that is enough. It was not very good borscht that I made tonight. It had no meat in it... I care for my vegetarian roommate. I suggested putting baco bits in it, but my roommate said that was a bad idea. I then suggested putting in some BBQ sauce, but again, she said no. Apparently the borscht she got in Greenpoint had a sweet taste. She suggested sugar. I used sugar. But then IT TASTED SUGARY. SO STUPID IS MY ROOMMATE.* Anyways. I won't include a recipe but I will say don't put sugar in it.

I decided to make matozo, matza machhhhtzoshevitzchhhh borscht. So I made matzo balls and put them in. In the balls I putt dill -- too many Ts in that word putt but I'm ok with that, I putt dill inside of the matzo balls.


This soup was ok. I ended up adding a boy-on-cube. which I wanted to avoid since otherwise the soup was so healthy and natural and whole foods (the store not the food trend) based. but that artificial, high sodium, eight year old powder was delicious. I gotsa say. the matzo balls were delicious in the beet soup. I ate all of them.


For dessert I had ice cream. there was something chewy in it which I imagine in actuality was some runaway dill. but I've had a lot of vodka** so I'm of the mindset that it could be a spider leg. I assume everything is part of a terantuala after a movie which caused childhood trauma.

Me: Liz, how do you spell terrantula?
Lis- tah-ran-two-la
Me: no really, not phonetics
Liz t-a-r-a-blahlha
Me: I lost you after tara.
Liz: ugh, t-a-r-a-n-t-u-l-a. I'm an excellent speller.



* she is not stupid, I Love her dearly.

** It's infused vodka so totally appropriate.

Something I woke up with.

I woke up the other day and had a terrible belly ache. My sheets were covered in some sort of yellow liquid and there was a bean in my hair. Now, if this was a piece of kale I'd be fine. I always wake up with a piece of kale in my hair after a night of drinking. It's my drunk food. I know. Anyways, beans are not my drunk food. Primarily because it is not something that you put soy sauce on and therefore something I want nothing to do with.

I went into the kitchen and found some curry powder about and a WHOLE bunch of pots. But still couldn't figure it out. Luckily I took a picture which allowed me to find a memory.

From what I gather, the recipe is as follows:

Onions - most likely sauteed.
Chow Mai Fun noodles - most likely overcooked
A can of black beans - hopefully strained
Soy Sauce
Curry Powder
Siracha
Olive oil - no idea why
And a fried egg on top.

Chia Grits

This morning I debated between my two breakfast options: Grits VS Oatmeal. I looked at the nutrition facts, pretty much the same thing besides the huge fiber difference... and the fact that you can put cheese in one. So my decision then became cheese or fiber.

I decided cheese. Then I decided both. At first I was going to just do a shot of chia seeds (fill a shot glass with juice add a table spool of chia seeds, wait a minute then shoot - this action makes me feel at home). But I had no juice so I decided I could probably just add it to the grits.

Make grits according to directions

Then Add:
Some Monteray (Monterrey/Monneray/Moneray) Jack Cheese
Salt
Curry Spice
Siracha
Chia Seeds

Vegetarian Lentil Gazpacho

I just had drinks with my biggest supporter of this food blog, my brother. As we sat there, him with his hot toddy, and me with my tequila and soda with pickle juice and hot sauce (totally awesome), I told him that at last I am starting the blog again. So starting it in fact, that I already started it a few days ago. I told him about the truffle asparagus on miso grits and a poached egg and he seemed so impressed that he was totally unimpressed. "That sounds good" he said almost disappointedly. Well this entry is for him. Although I have to say, this 'dish', not totally bad.

I was moving out of my apartment which I shared with five people into a normal person apartment. As I was finishing my packing I realized how hungry I was. I had already eaten all of the year old halloween candy from one of my roommates and had desimated my other roommates ramen supply so I decided to go deep into my old cubbord.

There was a can of lentil soup. Perf. I'll make lentil soup. Except it wasn't so much lentil soup as lentils in a can. Close enough.

Directions

Open lentil can
Pour in bacobits
Eat
Add more bacobits



I suppose you could heat it... I decided on more of a gazpacho brand. And if you really want to get fancy you could even use a bowl - but I had packed all those. Besides the can feels more rustic. Like camping.. maybe as I'm broke as hell I'll compare everything to being like camping... I like not having heat or toilet paper, like camping...

Miso-Truffle Asparagus over Italian-Soy Grits topped with a Poached Egg.

So I have decided to start this again. And start this off right. With a truffle-miso asparagus over Italian cheesy soy grits topped with a poached egg and roasted, maybe called fried, garlic.

I made this for three people and the rations were perfect. Perfect in the sense that they were the amount that people should eat and not in the sense of what people wanted to eat.

I tried doing something fancy which is slow poaching the eggs in their shell. To do this you are supposed to put the eggs in water that is 140-145 degrees (you should place either a baking rack or a steamer thing in the pot to put the eggs on so they don't touch the bottom of the pot). This is supposed to take 40 minutes. Bullshit bullshit and an hour twenty later no freaking eggs. I mean eggs, but just heated up versions of what they were before. So I freaked out a bit, fried some and then did my way of poaching eggs:

bring a pot of water to a boil. Put an egg in the pot. Wait a few minutes. Then pour everything into a strainer and don't give a shit about whether it looks cohesive.

For the grits I used slow cooking, ie 15 minutes instead of 5. I put about three cloves of minced garlic in with some herbs de provence (which after googling I discovered is not spelled herbs de provonce). This didn't taste too well because I hate herbs de provence. I hate saying it and I feel rediculous for typing it. I then decided it clearly needed soy sauce and miso, which would also make it compliment the asparagi.

Grits:
2 cups water brought to boil with three minced cloves of garlic and herbs de provence
1 tblespn red miso
1 tblsspn butter
1/2 cup Grits
splash of low sodium soy
About a 1.5 inch cube of Monterrey Jack (cause that's all I had left)
sprinkle salt to make up for low sodium nature of salt.

Oven at 350
cut off bottom inch of asparagi and peel the bottom inch that's left - only really if you have some thick ass asparagus like I did.
Line cookie sheet with aluminum then lay out asparagus.
Drizzle (read coat) with truffle oil and two - 100 minced garlic cloves, some salt and bake for like 15 minutes +/- for thickness of asapargus - don't over cook because asparagus without a crunch is stupid.

Put everything on the plate. I topped the poached egg with the remaining garlic that was on the pan with the asparagus.



Ok, so the picture looks disgusting - I probably should have taken the picture before I stabbed away at the egg. But this was one of the better things I have ever made.