Category Archives: Food

Old Fashioned Frosting

August 29, 2015Family, Food, RecipesMush

In which there’s a recipe from my grandma.

I came across the image below from a few years ago, remembered how really delicious that frosting was, and realized that I have no idea how to make old fashioned frosting.

So I googled it. Weird results.

(I mean, I’m off carbs right now, but it’s unlikely that I’ll never eat another cupcake. A girl never knows when she might be called upon to produce, you know, delicious treats for some event or another. Best remedy this lack of knowledge!)

So I emailed my G’ma and asked her for the recipe. This is what she said:

Somewhere out there there is probably a recipe for that frosting with accurate measurments but this is my way.

You will need powdered sugar, butter, or if you want white frosting use shortening, and some liquid.

I melt about two tablespoons of butter, add about equal amount of cream, and slowly add powdered sugar. A little liquid absorbs a lot of sugar, so add slowly mix until spreadable.

Then the fun begins, add any flavoring you like or spice, food coloring for fun. Powdered cocoa if you want chocolate. A tiny touch of mint is good in choc. Orange juice or lemon juice can be used instead of cream. Top with whatever.

I have used molasses in place of cream when frosting a spice cake. The more sugar used and liquid the more frosting you get till finally you can frost dozens, so that is why you add sugar slowly. After a few times you will have it perfect for your project.

Basically a procedure for making delicious frosting in any flavor in any quantity! And much better than that crap in a tub from the grocery store, in my opinion, although I have been known to eat that stuff by the spoonful on occasion.

Stovetop macaroni and cheese recipe

July 16, 2015Food, RecipesMush

In which sometimes you just don’t want to turn on the damn oven.

I had intended to pop over to the grocery store this afternoon, but by the time I was ready it had started raining and has been raining ever since. So I had to make something with what I had, so macaroni and cheese for dinner it is!

It turned out quite well, actually.

8 ounces uncooked macaroni
1-1/2 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
1 teaspoon steak sauce (I used Heinz 57)
3/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
3 or more generous dashes of hot pepper sauce (I used Crystal)
1-1/2 tablespoons butter
1-3/4 cups grated cheddar cheese
1-3/4 cups grated American cheese
2-3 oz crumbled feta cheese
1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 – Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add macaroni and cook for 8 to 10 minutes.

2 – While macaroni is cooking, heat milk in the microwave. Whisk in the mustard, steak sauce, salt, and hot sauce.

3 – When al dente, drain the macaroni and return to the pot. Stir in the butter and the three cheeses. When incorporated, pour the hot milk mixture over the macaroni.

4 – Simmer briefly over medium heat, stirring often. Then cook on very low heat until thickened. (No need to stir after turning the heat down, though, because it’ll just break the macaroni.)

—
This recipe is adapted from cafeteria macaroni and cheese, which I was going to make but didn’t have the ingredients for and I seriously didn’t want to run the oven.

Grateful

July 12, 2015Food, Gadgets, Life, Photography, ReadingMush

In which it’s a lazy Sunday.

It’s so shitty outside there’s a heat warning on! Stay inside, stay hydrated, check on your neighbors, that sort of thing! Temperature in the mid-90’s with a heat index of one hundred degrees! A big-ass line of storms tonight! Large hail possible!

So I’m staying inside with the A/C on. I’m so grateful to have access to air conditioning technology. And fans, too — we have two fans running, to circulate all that conditioned air (because otherwise it just pools by the door and does no one any good at all).

I stayed up super late last night devouring part three of Seveneves. Other than the agnostic science fiction writer’s silly dream that a catastrophe survived only by scientists would somehow end religion¹, it’s a really fantastic read. Being the jaded reader I am I’m loving being so absorbed in a story, since it happens so infrequently to me now.

I’d like to go look for curtains and wood glue and a few other needed household items, but I’m pretty sure leaving the apartment is a bad idea. Scott’s asleep anyway, taking a lazy Sunday afternoon nap.

I slept until two-thirty, then got up and made fried potatoes, Hollandaise, eggs, spinach, and toast for brunch. Not as good as the AMAZING Eggs Florentine at The Egg and I, but still edible. I also had a brilliant iced cardamom mocha breve with the last of the Radiance Dairy cream in it.

The bit of sky I can see under the blinds looks nice and blue, with fluffy clouds and a strong breeze ruffling the leaves, but it’s probably as damp as sweaty crotch out there. I’ve always maintained that the Midwest looks lovely all summer but feels awful.

Yesterday I installed Flickr on my phone and it worked. (It’s never worked on this phone before, and getting images off the phone and onto Flickr has been a pain in the ass since I got the phone last year.) It worked so well, in fact, it uploaded all 200 images in the phone’s gallery and now I have to delete them!

The credit union didn’t get ahold of me at the end of the week, but neither did they do so last time. I just don’t think they’re in a hurry about anything. Hopefully they’ll offer me a position next week! *fingers crossed* If they don’t, I’ll have to start looking for something else in earnest. I mean, I’ve applied for three jobs this week so as not to have too many eggs in one basket, but I’ll really need to buckle down before I run out of money.

Friday, I got my nails done because they looked awful. That evening, Scott went to a ball game (and watched Detroit lose to the Twins in the final inning) and I had the evening to myself. I drank some wine, then rode my bike down to Nicollet and ate at a Mexican restaurant.

Then I went home and took a nap, sprawled diagonally across the entire bed, with a fan blowing on me. It was a fucking glorious Friday night.

I just looked up to see that the blue sky is gone, and is now the gunmetal grey of a thick cloud deck. The last time I checked, storms weren’t due for five more hours. Maybe it’ll get interesting out there!

—
¹ We all want to end the bullshittery of organized religion, of course, but evolution and bureaucracy are part and parcel of human nature. Wherever there are human beings, there will be religion, because there will always be a need for jargon to describe the internal and the numinous, and there will always be weird little rule-following bureaucratic assholes making people miserable. Basically, every time a writer kills “religion” in a book, it just tells you that s/he has no idea what religion actually is beyond what it looks like on the surface.

How to make pudlas

April 19, 2015Food, RecipesMush

In which there’s a process more than a recipe.

A pudla [ pooda, poodla, puda, chila, cheela, chilla ] is a savory pancake made from lentils, rice, and/or flour. They’re cheap, easy, delicious, and I think it’s weird that I’d never even heard of them until last year. (Apparently they’re a breakfast food in India, sometimes served as snacks, or for lunch with side dishes. I don’t know why they don’t exist in every cuisine that uses lentils, because you can make them with any kind.)

To make some, you don’t really need a recipe so much as a procedure, maybe like this:

1. Soak 1 c. dal in 2 c. warm water for 2 to 4 hours

Get out your ugly pink bowl and put a cup of dal and two cups of warm water in it. (I used the last of the chora dal*, about 3/4 cup, and some toor dal to make a whole cup of dal. You can use any dal at all except maybe urad, and any combination of dals including urad.

Put your ugly pink bowl in the microwave to keep the heat in because it’s kinda chilly today and let the lentils soak for 2 to 4 hours. Check on it every so often; if the water gets cold just run the microwave for a minute.

The dal will have absorbed at least half the water and gotten larger. If there’s a lot of water remaining, drain some off, but this recipe isn’t picky. If the batter is too wet, the extra water just steams off during cooking.

2. Add desired flavorings and grind into a pancake batter consistency

I grabbed these things: turmeric, cumin, asafoetida, methi powder, garlic, jalapeno, onion, and ginger. You can use any, all, or none of these.

Add some spices to your soaked lentils: perhaps 1/3 tsp. methi powder, a dash of asafoetida, 1/4 tsp. whole or ground cumin, and 1/4 tsp. turmeric. Mince onion, jalapeno, garlic, and/or ginger in whatever proportions appeal to you and add them to the bowl.

Grind the whole mess until you’ve got yourself a pancake batter-like consistency. Add water if needed. You can use a blender or a food processor or an immersion blender.

Stir in up to a teaspoon of salt, depending on your taste.

3. Fry

Heat a griddle or a Teflon pan to medium-high heat. Add a little neutral vegetable oil.

Fry your savory pancakes. Remove to a plate (lined with a paper towel, if your pudlas are a little greasy).

Pudlas need to be cooked longer than regular pancakes because the dal is raw and needs time to steam fry, but the process is similar and will seem familiar: pour batter onto the griddle, smooth with the back of a spoon as you would with thick pancake batter, cook. Lift an edge to check for doneness, and flip when golden.

4. Eat

Eat a couple-three pudlas hot, with whatever condiment appeals to you. Green chutneys are often recommended — I like mint, myself — and coconut chutney is awesome with them.

Fry up however many pudlas you’re going to eat — they’re remarkably filling, so you’ll only need a couple — and put the rest of the batter in the fridge in a closed container. It’ll keep at least a week, so you can fry up a snack whenever you want.

More recipes:
Chora daal na pooda – http://enjoyindianfood.blogspot.com/2008/03/chora-daal-na-pooda.html
Chola dal poodla – http://www.tarladalal.com/Chola-Dal-Pudla-569r
Moong dal pudla – http://mayurisjikoni.blogspot.com/2012/09/healthy-snack.html
Stuffed moong dal chilla – http://www.archanaskitchen.com/recipes/indian/snacks-and-sweets/indian-party-appetizer-recipes/935-moong-dal-chilla-cheela-stuffed-with-paneer
Panchratna poodas – http://enjoyindianfood.blogspot.com/2009/04/panchratna-pooda.html

—
* ‘Chora dal’ is split cow peas, otherwise known as blackeyed peas, so it has a very low glycemic index which is what makes pudlas such an excellent bread substitute.

Basically the only hobby I indulge in anymore is cooking

January 7, 2015Food, WorkMush

In which I watch TV, cook, and hang out online. (WHAT IS NOT TO LOVE ABOUT THIS RIVETING CONTENT, I ASK YOU.)

Hi. Welcome to my day off. It’s pleasantly sunny outside, although the high is still ONLY ZERO DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. I am wearing sweats. They’re grey. The hoodie sports the logo of Scott’s alma mater. Because college sportsball or something. He gave it to me. I have no idea, to be honest, why anybody would have a college hoodie years after graduating, but that’s just me.

OTOH, maybe I should locate and buy an MIU (er, MUM now, I guess) hoodie. Because LOL MAHARISHI UNIVERSITY OF MANAGEMENT. I had a navy MIU hoodie with the logo on in gold foil; I wore the shit out of that thing. WHEN I WAS A STUDENT THERE.

I have a pot of quick-soaked kidney beans simmering on the stove. Eventually they’ll become rajma masala. I have a cabbage in the fridge and that’ll become cabbage thoran. I’m also intending to make tomato-onion raita, but we’ll see. I’m out of fresh ginger so I don’t know if it would be worth the effort without it.

I’ll probably serve Scott a steak and a potato. He eats Indian food but there’s a steak in the fridge that shouldn’t be allowed to go bad.

I slept until nearly eleven, then got up and rearranged some flowers. As you do when you’re living in a Victorian novel, or, apparently, my life. Had coffee. (I get Turkish-ground espresso at Big Lots, a used food/dollar store, for super, super cheap. Which means I drink fantastic coffee; much better than any of the crap you’ve had at a coffee shop in the past decade.) I ate some leftover homemade kichdi I’d pulled from the freezer the day before.

Then I got my laptop, put it on the lapboard, and settled my fat ass into the couch. HELL YES, DAY OFF. I’m not even going to make the bed or do that load of laundry I should do. I’m going to cook a little, but that’s it. Swear to God. I don’t even care that the garbage needs to go out, because it’s so fucking cold I’d have to get fully dressed to avoid death between my apartment and the dumpster. Fuck that. Been watching old movies on GetTV all day and surfing social media like an asshole. It’s what you do when you have no actual social life.

Wrote a long response to a Facebook post… a girl I knew in college is now a grown-up mom who writes for The Atlantic, and she asked, without irony (I paraphrase), “Why the phrase ‘making their kids organic baby food’ is used to indicate privilege or elitism.” I laughed, because I thought it was a joke, but then I read the responses from other moms she knows and realized that it wasn’t a joke. They were all genuinely miffed that people make fun of them and, even worse, consider them entitled and/or wealthy, when they know how hard they work and how little their portfolios are worth. They’re not privileged! Those blenders don’t wash themselves, nor do those organic bananas buy themselves!

I wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote my response for nearly an hour, because I wanted to get the point across (“only an elitist — someone with money to waste, in other words, who wastes it mainly to maintain an identity — would ask something like that, dear”) without sounding like a complete dick. I hope she doesn’t get mad, but seriously: popping an organic banana into a blender because you just KNOW it’s SO MUCH HEALTHIER than, say, a jar of Gerber’s? Really? Do you have any evidence for this at all?

Um, no. No, you don’t. And poor people know this, because they’re not stupid, just poor.

And how can you not understand how wealthy you are? You have: a house, electricity, the money to buy organic bananas, and the time to make your own organic baby food. Fuck yes you’re lucky. One might say elite, even. I personally know moms just as educated who work two jobs and just don’t have the money to shop organic produce or the time to prepare and feed it to their kids.

Eh. I’m paraphrasing a Facebook interaction on my blog. Holy shit. Apparently I don’t have a life.

One of the people in my department at work is transferring to another store, so guess what? I’m working 33 fucking hours a week again. It had gotten as low as 24 and I was really stoked, but apparently that’s over. Again.

I like the people. The work is okay. I FUCKING HATE THE HOURS. WITH A BURNING PASSION. I’m expected to blithely be available from 6AM to 9PM every single fucking day, and to not care when I have only nine hours off between shifts? Are you fucking retarded as well as greedy, corporate America?

I’m hoping my Comcast friend will give me tele-work, because I really don’t want to stay where I am until May even if I am beginning to make friends with my co-workers and they’re all pretty awesome people.

Anyway, I’m cooking stuff now so off I go. I’d write more interesting posts, but I’m just not that interesting these days. You know how it is, first year with a new man, you just hole up and snuggle and coo at each other, and literally no one wants blog posts about THAT.

Full English

December 6, 2014FoodMush

In which I LOVE THIS WEIRD BREAKFAST.

This meal makes no sense.

I mean, it’s basically bacon and eggs and toast, which is pretty normal, but then there’s tomato, mushrooms, and… beans? And the toast isn’t toasted, it’s fried.

It makes no sense, at least, until you read some very, very old cookbooks and discover “sops,” which are pieces of (one assumes) stale bread, revitalized by frying in fat, and over which is poured broth or stew or whatever. After you learn about that, the British whatever-over-toast thing begins to make more sense. And so somehow the inclusion of beans begins to almost make sense, too.

Except it doesn’t, really, because what the hell do beans have to do with toast? I mean, why on Earth do the English eat beans on toast? But then you eat a Full English breakfast and realize that HOLY SHIT BEANS ARE GREAT WITH EGGS AND BACON AND FRIED BREAD AND A GRILLED TOMATO AND SOME MUSHROOMS and that THESE BRIT NERDS ARE BRILLIANT.

Now, as a vegetarian, there’s no hope in hell of my ever getting a Full English at a restaurant, because even with the general acceptance of vegetarianism there’s never any fake bacon on menus. (Except maybe in some funky little diner in Eugene, OR, but they’d probably be fucking vegan or some shit and butter is essential for basting the eggs.) So I have to make my own.

This morning we slept right through noon and nearly until two o’clock in the afternoon. I got up and started doing dishes and sent my beloved off to the store for eggs. When he got back we had breakfast and it was GLORIOUS!

And then a couple hours later it was dark already. Which is kind of depressing, but the sleep felt great.

I found instructions for making a Full English somewhere on the internet. Basically, you cook the meat first and then remove it to a plate. (Which is what I do for Ader. In my own pan, I use butter and oil to fry my fake meats.) Next you fry the veggies in the fat with liberal applications of salt and pepper. Then you pull them out and fry the eggs “with a knob of butter,” which you spoon over the eggs to set the yolks. After the eggs are on the plate, you fry your bread in the remaining fat, plate it, add a scoop of simmering beans, and serve.

Truly the ugliest, heartiest, greasiest, most delicious breakfast EVER. Of course, the Brits use baked beans, but I just use whatever I have. Because I’m American. And vegetarian. And I use Ezekiel bread instead of white. And I’ve already bastardized the meal so much that the wrong beans hardly matters.

Point is, the eggs are amazing, basted in fat and butter as they are, and the beans are better than potatoes, somehow, and the fried bread is fucking glorious, and the tomato and mushroom is the most amazing accompaniment, what with being all juicy and tasty, and like I told Scott I could probably eat this meal twice a day for a week before getting bored of it.

It’s still pretty awesome with potatoes, but not quite as good. You really want some white or chili beans to make this bitch sing.

Fried foods

July 14, 2014Food, Whining, WorkMush

In which there’s a snack orgy for Sunday dinner.

I worked all weekend, of course, because nobody gives a shit that I MOVED TWO THOUSAND MILES TO HANG OUT WITH THE GUY I LIVE WITH AND NOT TO WORK AT THE FUCKING HOME DEPOT. Working evenings and weekends sucks.

Yesterday evening my beloved came to pick me up from work at seven and then suggested we grab dinner from Chipotle since our coupon was about to expire, and that way nobody would have to cook.

As we were standing in the always-bafflingly-long line at the closest Chipotle restaurant, my beloved pulled out his phone and proceeded to show me a cheese and jalapeno samosa, which led us both to agree that we could sure go for some delicious Indian snacks…

…and then we left the line and drove to the Indian food store, where we bought five different kinds of frozen Indian snacks and two kinds of chutney — coconut and tamarind — to go with the mint chutney we had at home.

Then we came home and I fried a huge plate worth of samosas, pakoras, tikkis, and kachoris and we ate them for dinner. Indian snacks are fucking amazing. India’s been snacking for thousands of years and they have that shit DOWN.

And Oh. My. God., the aloo tikki is a puck-shaped tater tot stuffed with super spicy lentils and it’s AMAZING. Especially with mint chutney.

Derivative food blogger crap that could only be interesting if I’d thought of it twenty years ago.

February 26, 2014BentÅ, Food, SoapboxMush

In which there are Mason, Kerr, and Ball jars.

I like jars. You can get a bunch of them for like twelve bucks, and use them for pretty much everything from juice glass to food storage to coffee brewing. They’re probably less awesome in kitchens with stone floors, but in general if you don’t drop them they’re lovely.

And now for some pictures of things in jars.

Portable breakfast in a jar:

Coffee brewing in a jar:

A sewing kit in a jar:

(Although, if you make one, do use a wide-mouthed jar, as this one requires you to pour all of the contents out in order to get a single item.)

More breakfast in a jar:

A jar transformed into a sippy cup:

And old jelly jar made into a soy wax candle, with an even smaller jar with sand paper glued to the lid holding matches:

My grandmother’s basement is full of old jars. It’s handy as heck.

. .. … .. .

I’ve decided not to buy plastic containers if I can help it, especially not single-use items. So much comes from the store in a reusable plastic container with a lid — Kalamata olives, cottage cheese, etc — that you really don’t need to buy storage containers.

It’s so weird to me that we throw those things out daily and then go buy GladWare, a product with lids that don’t even fit.

I have no idea why Mason jars are suddenly all the rage, but I feel it must have something to do with people’s reactions to the expensive, resource-depleting absurdity that is bottled water.

Parmesan-leek ‘chowder’

July 29, 2013Food, Recipeslow-carb, recipes, soupMush

In which there’s a soup recipe that freezes really well!

I made this soup a couple weeks ago and froze some of it. Friday I pulled some out of the freezer; Saturday I re-heated it and ate it and it was brilliant! I love this soup! It satisfies that “I really want a creamy chowder but I don’t want flour or potatoes” issue one has when one goes off refined carbs.

Not all soups freeze well, either. Some, especially those with dairy, separate and end up being really gross after a stint in the ol’ freezer, but this one holds up wonderfully.

Parmesan-leek ‘chowder’

Ingredients:

butter (2 T.)
olive oil (~2 T.)
leeks (2, halved, washed and chopped)
broth (5 c.)
cauliflower (1 head, chopped)
36% heavy cream (~1 c.)
basil (~1/2 tsp., dried)
parmesan cheese (1/4 c., grated)
salt and pepper (to taste)

Method:

1 – Sautee leeks in butter and oil until tender.
2 – Add broth and cauliflower. Add basil.
3 – Cover and simmer until veggies are soft.
4 – Remove from heat. Add cream, stir; add parmesan and stir well until it’s incorporated — making sure to do so off heat so the soup doesn’t separate.
5 – Cool until it can be handled; puree in batches in a food processor or blender until fairly smooth.
6 – Add salt and pepper to taste.

Variation: Add one clove minced garlic to the sautee phase and omit the basil.
Variation: The parmesan may be replaced with gruyere.

Other than containing some fat, this soup doesn’t really do much nutritionally. You’ll want to enjoy it with some serious protein!

Glass jars: inexplicably, I’m super into them.

September 25, 2012FoodMush

In which I write a post about fucking JARS because clearly I want to die alone.

I’m sure you’ve heard me praise the cuppow, which is merely a piece of plastic that turns a jar into a go-cup:

And you’ve probably seen my Mason jar pinterest board (which exists because I’m a fucking ‘tard).

I even backed a Kickstarter because who wouldn’t want a leather Mason jar cozy?

Then there’s the mayonnaise jar, which isn’t a Mason jar but which does have the same mouth and threading as a Mason jar:

You can even put food in jars, did you know this?

So basically there’s a pantry full of jars in the basement that I ignored for four years, then I found this little hipster-made piece of plastic and now I want to make Mason jar lamps and candles and shit.

But I probably won’t.

#dumbest_post_ever

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blogging for no apparent reason since 2001