Chia Seeds

The best thing that came from the excursion into vegan eating was chia seeds. I don't know if they derive from the friendly childhood friend which may or may not mean they sprout instantly in your stomach a scooby doo or homer simpson. But they are really yummy, well not really cause they have no flavor, but they are really good for you. Like possibly challenging my atheism type good for you*. They are these little seeds that when soaked in water absorb the water and get a gelatinous casing.

There are many things you can do with Chia Seeds. The first is to simply make a chia gel which you can add to smoothies, juice... really anything because it's flavorless. It keeps for up to two weeks and is made by combining chia seeds and water at a 1 to 9 ratio. You mix them together, let it sit for a minute, mix again and then let it sit for twenty minutes.

If you add the seeds straight to juice it will absorb the juice and become like miniature bubble tea - don't chew it, crunchy juice is gross, but you can do as I do and swish it back and forth in my mouth until people around me get nauseous.

For a meal:

1/3 cup of chia
2/3 cup water
stir, sit minute, stir, sit twenty minutes
Add one finely grated clove of garlic and about 3/4 inch of ginger and pour in two tablespoons of soy sauce (I use WAY more).



It's really really good. I recently learned that a serving size is actually like two table spoons and that by eating this you are consuming 127% of your daily requirement of fiber... so there's that. But I'm ok with it.

My roommate says it tastes like Emily Jello. And I appreciate that. In fact, if the jelly company wants to make soy sauce garlic jello I will promise to buy it and promote it as a part time volunteer position.

*
Magnesium – 15 times more than Broccoli
Calcium – 6 times more than whole milk
Omega-3 – nearly 9 times the amount found in Salmon
Fiber – more than flax seed & 2 times more than bran flakes
Iron – nearly 3 times more than spinach
Protein – more than soy

I should probably not mention anything about atheism -- for some reason the kids in my class are all mad that I called religion institutionalized psychosis**. Maybe it's also the whole referring to them as kids thing... or trying to explain what the definition of literally literally means.

** Really? That's a bit extreme. I said it for you.

Pea Soup Bread Bowl w/ Fish

I'm cooking dinner for my boyfriend Jeremy tonight and I want to make something that is delicious and that he will like. I know he likes bread bowls, but I don't want to make broccoli cheddar soup because it's not healthy and requires me shopping thereby getting dressed for the day and possibly missing a law and order. I've had a bag of peas for years in my cupboard because no one uses dried beans or peas (are peas beans?).

I added:

1 Onion
Too much Water
Bag of split peas
5 Cloves of Garlic
3 Seasoning packets by that company that does all the seasoning-- goya? something that was without anejo? annijase? I think it means without anchovies. Anejo is teqila? That would have made the soup better.
Two pinches Smoked Salt.

I boiled this all together for like two hours. I then added a tablespoon of baco bits. I would have added more, but I ate them all. I added a lot more salt and then let it boil out a bit. It was way too watery so I made a... coagulating substance. I added like 1/4 a cup corn starch which I combined with water before adding. It's called a roo.

I poured this in a par-baked sourdough boule.

During this time I was marinating four tilapia fillets in butter garlic salt and some herbs of sorts. When ready I put a bunch of lemon and more salt on them and baked them at 350 for like ten minutes.



Jeremy did not eat the fish. Regardless of my staring at his plate. But he did eat the soup after hesitation. Pea Soup in a bread bowl almost success!!

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.