Trio of Kale

I recently decided it was time to cleanse. Cleanse from the nightly chicken wings and pizza, cleanse from the midnight bacon egg and cheese and cleanse from the sports team worth of baked goods I was consuming. So I will take things slow and do totally vegan organic. I remember like two years ago trying this crazy cleanse that involves drinking charcoal five times a day, taking lots of pills and drinking droppers or putrid gag inducing liquids. I found the box in my closet that contained these two year old supplements and decided to give it another whirl. This time I will not include meat or booze on the cleanse, pretty extreme. I have a suspicion that the pills may have expired as they caused a really bad burning sensation in my chest and face, but oh well... I found that if I took them right before bed I typically wouldn't wake up from the burning.

I don't really understand vegan cooking, mostly because it lacks butter and bacon, but I want too. I am writing this retrospectively, and in the end I am so happy I did it, because it turns out there are loads of foods I've never heard of (CHIA SEEDS). I will be updating periodically, although as the trend currently stands, that's about once every five months.

Kale Chips!

These things are really good and easy. My theoretical children all named Owen will eat these instead of potato chips.

Basic recipe.

Kale washed and hella dried. like in a spinning drying contraption. Put a drizzle of olive oil on it and some salt. Rub it all around so each leaf is shiny but not soggy. Then make sure to separate each one and lay them flat on a cookie tray. Put them in the oven at 350 for 7 - 10 minutes. You should start sampling at 7 mins so they don't burn.

Yummy - since they kinda replace potato chips I decided to try teriyaki and salt and vinegar kale chips.

Done.

I added teritaki instead of oil on one batch and splashed some vinegar on the other. The vinegar didn't get to enough of the kale as I had hoped, and the teriyaki chips needed oil as well to make the sauce stick better. But it was good.

BTW - kale chips get really in your teeth.

Pictures will be provided.

Purple Velvet Cake w Buttermillk Cream Cheese Icing.

It's my roommates birthday and she is turning a really big number. She's getting in from Maine and wanted to have a beer. Lame. I am throwing her a surprise party. I don't know any of her friends but I do have facebook.

Ruth Enters
Me (alone): SURPRISE
Ruth: What the fuck is this
Me: You are having a surprise party in two hours
Ruth: Who is coming?
Me: I don't know. Some of your friends.
Ruth: I have plans in the city
Me: I'm not hanging out with your friends.

So overall it worked out well. At least I boosted it with a delicious cocktail and cake. I made this crazy drink with lemons/limes/simple syrup/gingerale/Jack D/triple sec. Turns out this crazy drink is called a whiskey sour.

I made her favorite cake... kinda.. Purple Velvet cake. I misestimated how much food coloring is required. whatever.

This may not make sense but I'm not good with fractions so I have to be wasteful.

Sift three cups + 8 tblspn of flour with 8 tblespns of corn starch. Then throw out 2/3 cup.

Blend 1.5 sticks of butter with 2+1/4 cups of sugar. Blend for a really long time. 4-6 minutes. Then add three eggs one at a time. Reminder: When baking use room temp eggs.

I combined 2 tblspns of red food coloring. I thought that the two containers would be at least five, but apparently tablespoons are REALLY big. So I decided to throw in a tablespoon of blue. Not a good idea. My thinking was red velvet cake is really just normal cake with a shit ton of food coloring, so maybe what people like is the chemically taste. Well I was hoping for purple velvet cake. What I got was black non-chocolate cake.


So take however much of whatever food coloring and whisk it with 3 tbspons unsweetened cocoa and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Add that to the rest of the batter.

Add 1cup.5 of buttermilk (my new favorite thing) and 1.5 teaspoons of salt. beat beat beat. Then add the flour stuff slowly.

I don't know why I did this but it was suggested - stir together 1.5 teasp of cider vinegar and 1.5 teaspoons of baking soda. I'm pretty sure this is how volcanoes are made. Add this to batter

Bake in three different pans for 30 minutes on 350. I used one glass and two metal so I took the glass out first because glass stuff bakes faster. Let it cool for an hour then dump it on a cooling rack.

Icing--
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese softened (I used one low fat one regular because that makes all the difference)
6 tblspoons of butter (softened)
2 teaspoons of vanilla
5.5 cups of confectioners sugar
3 tble spoons of butter milk (add slowly and only add as much as creates the consistency you want.


First I just iced the layers, then I used an icing decorating bag to make it drip from the layers. Really high tech.

Cilantro Meat Sandwich

Cilantro - bunch. cleaned. chopped.
Rosemary Ham
Pastrami
Tomato
Cheddar Cheese
butter

Ordering:
Cheese-Ham-cilantro-tomato-pastrami.
When I put the ham on I realized it was really slimey, probably due to being old and in a non-sealed bag. I remember my grandma said that you should rinse off fish to make it less fishy, so I rinsed off the ham to make it less decomposed.


Once combined I buttered the outside. I then put it in a pan but wanted to press it down so it would grill to perfection. I didn't feel like standing there with a spatula so I came up with this contraption. Totally works.


The sandwich is good. Needs some Franks. I wish someone would genetically modify cilantro* so it wouldn't go bad within a day. I want bombshell ready cilantro. The spamification of cilantro.

Do foods get genetically modified? Do plants have genes to modify? I guess they do, but I don't like it.

Buttermilk Eggs

Typically I do not believe in scrambled eggs. I used to tell people I was allergic to them - not to fried, boiled, omeletted, just scrambled, the taste is kinda wrong. But this morning I made buttermilk scrambled eggs.

3 Egg Whites
2 Whole Eggs
a few dashes of adobo
a few dashes of fox point
Beaten together into one.

I put a one inch chunk of butter in a pan and then poured the eggs in. Let it sit for a minute then push it around. Let sit, push around - repeat. Then when about half way done add about 1/4 cup of buttermilk and mix together. Make sure not to over cook. Fucking fluffiest shit ever.

Delightful just like this - but I put them on English Muffins and then put some muenster cheese on top and ovened them at 300 for like six minutes. Served with Algae juice.

Sharshuka

I recently returned from Israel after doing the birthright. One culinary highlight was the Jerusalem grill which consisted of chicken hearts, livers, gall bladders, intestines etc in a pita. I made it half way through until I ate a particularly large heart and could feel the arteries burst and spurt in my mouth. I was then done. Well, I was at least closer to being done. I love eating shit.

At one point, homeless and in Tel Aviv, a few of us were wondering about looking for a beach to sleep on (when you're in a foreign country, danger does not exist). We found an airport, considered it for a minute and then moshed on. Somehow after a lot of 2am disturbances we found a familiar soldier who allowed us to sleep over. In the morning we woke up and his pretty incredible girlfriend made us shar-shu-kah. Mother of god incredible. She served it with bread and inevitably a vat of hummus. I watched her closely in order to figure out what she was doing. However I still kinda failed in comparison.

Chop up one onion and saute it in olive oil for like three minutes. Then add two chopped red peppers and cook like three more minutes. Then add the chopped tomatoes. I threw in three table spoons of tomato paste and let it cook like five more minutes.

Next you make little hole pockets and drop in the egg. Continue to cook for like ten minutes, but don't break the yolk.


I have to say. Pretty bland. So I went back. I added some adobo and salt, a dash of red pepper flakes and instant delish.


I don't get why her's was so much better. Maybe birth right is wrong; I am not Israeli and there is no ticket in my belly.

Cream Cheese Burrito

It's time to go grocery shopping* (*update). All I have is icy frozen food. I made an annie's burrito, but then realized I had no cheese. no sour cream. no salsa. BUT THEN I REALIZED... Veggie Cream Cheese is the exact combination of the three! So I smothered. Really great.

I also cooked up some frozen pees, buttered and garlic powdered the shit out of them, and ate each one. I love pees. Seriously.

Almond Chocolate Coffee Cake

So no more stir fry writings, however, as per every day of my life, and my sodium infused, rising in pressure blood, I did make stir fry as a precursor for my three-hour marathon cake. I learned one delicious, and one endearing, thing.

Delicious Thing:
Awesome rice =
3 cups water
1.5 cups brown rice
2 bay leaves
1.5 teaspoons five spice
Salt

Endearing thing:
For the stir fry I was unable to start with the base garlic/ginger/onion situation. Why? Because I asked my boyfriend to bring me a onion and he brought rutabaga. His eyes screamed a effort, knowledge of failure and sweetness while his veggie filled hand screamed I don't know shit about cooking. Say La Vie, when life gives you a turnip make a salty mushy turnip side dish.

Almond Chocolate Coffee Bunt Cake

Sift two cups flour with 1 teaspoon baking soda. I don't have a sifter, but I did have a metal strainer and a bowl. So I sifted, slash rubbed this through. I then was supposed to melt 6 ounces of semi-sweet, however I only had unsweetend. So I double boiled 3.5 ounces of dark choco and about six splendas as well as 2 ounces unsweetened. Then like 2 more splendas.



Double boiler = pot of boiling and a frying pan. My technical creations:

Then I blended two sticks softened butter with one cup of sugar for three minutes, no more, no less. so fluffy. Eat some of this, because buttersugar is delicious. You know how I know this, I one time walked in on my roommate eating a stick of butter that was periodically dipped into sugar. She screamed "WANNA BITE", I did, I ate. Maybe not so much her screaming wanna a bite but me yelling "GIMME" but whateves. Try it. Like a mother shitting sugar cookie.

Anyways, add three large eggs one at a time - but they should be room temperature. Add the melted chocolate. Add flour stuff slowly while mixing after each time. Add one cup of milk, again in like fourths mixing after each. Then... add I don't know, some almond extract, how about 4 teaspoons, and, because I own it, four table spoons of Kaluah. Have the oven pre-heating to 350.

Butter and flour a bunt pan. I don't know the difference between 8 and 10 inches, which is why... actually I won't go there... but the pan was too small... that's not what... sorry. Pour in, cook 45 mins, let sit 20 and flip. I had a lot of extra batter and made some cupcakes. When I ate them I said ew. BUT when I ate the bunt cake I said fuck yeah. That shit was moist and almondy and delicious.

Also, as with all baking, frost everything. 1 box confectioners, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 stick of butter, 3 table spoons milk*... blend with mixer. This time it was liquidy, but that's because I think it wasn't a full box, I can't remember what I used the sugar for, but then again I can't remember most of what I do. Juuuuust kidding (except between 2005-2009).
*Follow the recipe on the side of the box


I'm not proof reading long posts. I'm very busy. As in I have cable and the Kardasians are on.