Category Archives: Play

Recipe: Easy Salsa

Recipes

In which I was out of salsa but, believe it or not, had all the following ingredients on hand, so I made some!

Easy Salsa

Ingredients
1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes, drained and juice reserved
1 small onion, finely diced
1 jalapeno, minced
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
juice of 1 small lime
3/4 tsp. ground cumin

Method
Add all ingredients to a bowl or pot and blend with your trusty immersion blender until desired consistency is reached. Loosen with reserved tomato juice, if needed, and just drink it or pour it out if not.

Add salt to taste (most canned tomatoes are salty enough, so you may not need to) and refrigerate.

You can reduce the amount of jalapeno if you don’t like heat (or even omit it altogether and substitute a pinch of cayenne or three). The salsa will get warmer as it sits and the jalapeno has a chance to blend.

Optional: You can also add 1/4 c. of chopped cilantro if your boyfriend isn’t a hater. You can also also simmer this salsa to smooth out the raw taste and then cool and refrigerate.

Recipe: My chai

Domestic Goddess, Recipes

In which there are a million chai recipes, but this one is mine.

Kitcheree and chai

My Chai

Ingredients
3 c. water
2 c. whole milk
3 black tea bags
2 whole cloves
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground true cinnamon
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
3 Tbsp.jaggery, or to taste

IMG_20140730_123223Method
Add all ingredients except jaggery to a sauce pan, bring to a simmer, being careful not to let it boil over and make a mess of your stove. Reduce heat and cook for about five minutes. Stir in the jaggery.

Strain and serve hot in large mugs. Enjoy!

Notes: For whatever reason, I rarely have ground cloves, so I use whole ones. If you have ground cloves, do use a pinch of them instead.

You can also use a chunk of fresh ginger, cardamom pods, and cinnamon sticks rather than ground versions of these spices, of course. This is just what I typically have on hand in my kitchen. You can use brown or even white sugar, but jaggery is so freakin’ delicious it’s totally worth finding some. If you don’t have access to an Indian grocery you can order it from Amazon.

Fried foods

Food, Whining, Work

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.

The only tomato soup recipe you’ll ever need.

Recipes

In which there’s THE BEST tomato soup recipe ever. You’re welcome.

There’s a recipe for homemade tomato soup online that’s written very strangely. It has half the necessary tomatoes and six times the olive oil and it confuses the hell out of people. I’m posting my adaptation of that recipe here, because prepared this way it’s my favorite tomato soup recipe evar!

Tomato Soup

Homemade Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

1 28 oz. can chopped or diced tomatoes
4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-1/2 cups broth (I use water and a Knorr bouillon cube, but you can use chicken broth)
1/4 c. white wine (I just use the cheap boxed pinot grigio usually in my fridge), optional
1 large bay leaf, torn
1 tsp. dried basil
2 tablespoons butter

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 450F. Strain the tomatoes, reserving the juice, and spread them onto a baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with half of the olive oil. Roast until caramelized, about 15 minutes.

I don’t know if the roasting step is crucial to the deliciousness of this recipe or not, because I’ve never skipped it, but I do know it’s a good way to warm up the house on a chilly day. (I imagine you could roast the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic along with the tomatoes and skip the whole sauteeing step, below, but I’ve never tried that either.)

In a saucepan, heat remaining olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the celery, carrot, onion and garlic and sautee until softened.

Add the roasted tomatoes, reserved tomato juice, broth, wine (if using), bay leaf and basil. Simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Add the butter and stir until thoroughly incorporated.

Remove the bay leaf. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until very smooth. Return to low heat until desired serving temperature is reached, adjust seasonings as needed, and serve in warmed bowls.

Optional: For cream of tomato soup, reduce the broth by half a cup. Stir in 1/2 cup of heavy cream after pureeing and reheat gently over a low flame.

My feet hurt so so so bad, you guys

Gadgets, Love & Marriage, Work

In which standing is apparently much healthier than sitting but it hurts like a bitch.

While I really enjoy my new job as I’m doing it, my feet hurt, the pay’s lame, and the schedule is horrendous. Don’t even get me started on the noise and the horrible lighting and the concrete floors, or the fact that everything is a three-minute walk from the service desk.

I miss my old newsroom gig. Wonderful hours, a pay rate that wasn’t an insult, and a feeling of accomplishment. Not to mention the relative calm and quiet of the office itself.

I honestly can’t figure out why people who are smart enough to do the service desk job in the first place stay in it for so long when the hours, environment, and pay are so comparatively bad. One of my co-workers has been there for fourteen years, I think she said. Maybe she’s making thirty bucks an hour by now; I don’t know, but there’s no other reason to be there. I mean, the people really are great, but I’ve worked a lot of jobs and there are great people everywhere.

So, in a nutshell, my 20-to-29-hours-per-week part-time job is now 35 hours a week (HEY GUESS WHAT! YOU’RE P/T BUT LOL YOU WORK NEARLY F/T AND HAVE NO BENEFITS!) with weird, unstable hours, and my man and I have been eating restaurant crap for lunch rather than homemade food because I don’t have the time or energy to cook.

I ate lunch at a Panera the other day. Naturally I expected it to be a total carb explosion, but there was sugar in the dressing they used on my goddamned sandwich. The next day, I grabbed salad bar from the grocery store and though I avoided their sugar-laden salad dressings and used vinegar and oil instead, there was sugar in the fucking cowboy caviar! Why does a bean salad need fucking sweetener added?

“Not having time to cook” these days is basically identical to WORKING ON MY CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE because everything is fucking toxic with sugar and various other hidden refined carbs. It makes no sense. There’s sugar in the canned tomatoes we bought, and in the canned black beans. There’s sugar in the Paul Newman’s salsa. What the FLYING FUCK is wrong with the food industry? I’m pudgy because I keep eating potato chips and making bechemel sauce; I do NOT need sugar added to everything else I eat.

Anyway, the weather has been milder than I expected. It’s warm and humid, yes, but not as swelteringly hot as I thought it would be by now. I hope it never goes any higher than the 80’s. That’d be perfect.

Home

We’ve had tons of rain, though. Lots of spectacular storms with thunder and lightning and hail! Half the state is under water!

My Kindle Keyboard up and died last week, so I treated myself to a replacement Paperwhite. I love it! Amazon makes such cute devices with such adorable operating systems! (The Paperwhite syncs to Goodreads, though, which offends me. Amazon should have partnered with the far more legit and nerdy LibraryThing. Word.)

Kindle Paperwhite

The person I live with is wonderful and amazing and fantastic. I’ve literally never been happier. He’s the best thing ever. (He’s working too much lately, too. So grateful we’re taking 4 days off next week to go see Amma in Chicago next week.) I love love.

New Crocs

There were random flowers in the living room when I got home from work yesterday, and my man had done the dishes. Best partner ever.

Flowers

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

Bentō, Food, Soapbox

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.

Sari yarn

Knitting

In which there’s silk!

I did the Bloggy Gift Exchange again this year and it was, of course, totally fun. I got to santa for a new mom who loves pink, and my own gift-giver was long-time friend VUBOQ, who spoiled me rotten. He sent me a fuzzy TARDIS throw and a handmade bowl/mug set that I love.

And yarn.

The yarn is made from recycled sari material and it’s beautiful to look at because of the vibrant colors. It’s also silk, so it’s not really the sort of fiber you want for scarves or hats or anything intended to keep you warm; it’s more of a cooling, slinky sort of fiber.

It’s also, well, what we knitters call clown puke. It’s fun to handle, fun to look at, fun to knit, but due to the uncontrolled colorway pretty much everything knit out of it looks like a clown puked all over it.

I spent two hours looking at FOs made from sari yarn: Pretty much universally ugly. Apparently this yarn is best for small things like mittens or gauntlets, or maybe a scarf knitted on large needles and worn against neutrals for a splash of color.

Because the yarn’s got such interesting hand I want to knit this stuff up sooooooo bad, but after swatching and looking at Pinterest pictures of completed projects, I don’t know what to make that won’t turn out fugly. I’m thinking fingerless gloves? Of course then I’ll end up with an entire unused skein… should I make a wrap or shawl instead? It’s really more of a spring/summer kind of fiber anyway…

Ugh. Thanks, Vuboq. Now I’m traumatized. 😉

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9″

Gadgets

In which I review my newest device, even though it’s already obsolete.

A couple of weeks ago I spontaneously bought a fourth Kindle — a tablet upgrade. My previous Kindle Fire worked fine and I didn’t need a new one. I knew they were probably going to announce a new model soon anyway. (Which they did. The very next day.) Pretty much the worst time to upgrade, really.

Luckily I found Amazon Warehouse Deals, which is the interface through which Amazon sells damaged, refurbished, and/or remaindered stuff, so I got the 8.9″ HD for less than a new 7″ HD.

amazon-kindle-fire-hd-8.9

The device is pretty awesome. The screen is great and the on-board speakers really are as remarkable as the reviews say. The device is thin and elegant. The opsys is stable. There’s a shitload of great content, especially if you have Amazon Prime.

But I hate the location of the hardware buttons. The power switch is right next to the volume rocker switch and it infuriates me to find myself pushing things multiple times just to get the device to turn on or off. The ports and buttons are horribly laid out: in order to charge the device while watching video (which you absolutely have to because the thing is a battery drain) you have to turn the device upside down. Of course the screen reorients, but then the buttons are on the opposite side… basically every time I pick the thing up I have to search for the on/off switch.

Ultimately my inability to memorize button layout is my own fault, but it drives me nuts.

The device I bought was returned or refurbished — the description wasn’t terribly clear — but it arrived in factory packaging and looked brand new save a few tiny cosmetic scratches I didn’t even notice until I’d had the thing for several hours. I love those little scratches because they knocked over a hundred bucks off the prices of the device!

I still use my older Kindle device, the Kindle Keyboard, for real reading, though. While the Fire HD is an excellent media consumption device — great for everything from email to social media and HD movies — it’s not half as comfortable for reading. The Kindle Keyboard isn’t backlit, is half the size of the Fire HD 8.9″, and is wholly superior for sucking down long-form works of text. With its nearly infinite battery power and the leather case complete with built-in reading light it’s an ideal reading device. (I would upgrade to the Paperwhite except I dropped a lot of money on that leather case and am not ready to make it obsolete quite yet. Also the thing is still receiving software updates and works just fine.) The Kindle Fire models are adequate for reading, but the size, weight, battery drain, and lit screen are all non-trivial issues by comparison.

Anyway, I gave the Fire 7″ to my brother. He immediately rooted it. I probably would have kept it and done the same myself — sometimes you really want access to the Google market — but I tend toward generosity when wine drunk and excited about new electronic devices.

I’ve ordered a Bluetooth keyboard to use with the thing. I don’t really need it, but it will make using the device for emails and blogging while traveling much more comfortable.

Update: It’s the last day of the year and I LOVE this tablet. Use the shit out of it. Still hate the button locations, but otherwise it’s a great device.

Parmesan-leek ‘chowder’

Food, Recipes, ,

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' (w/goat cheese-hummus lettuce wraps)

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!

Broken stuff + love

Gadgets, Love, Weather, ,

In which I break a couple of things and the long-distance relationship is great.

Yesterday, my 31 day-old phone died. Just up and goddamned failed, right in the middle of the afternoon. Six months ago, I probably wouldn’t have cared much about being phoneless for a day or three, but now my phone is my main source of communication with the Internet boyfriend so it really bummed me out.

In all my years of carrying various cell phones, I’ve never dropped nor broken nor drowned a phone, so I suppose it’s my turn for a catastrophic phone failure. The thing turns on but won’t boot, and it won’t turn off unless the battery is pulled. It occasionally boots into its version of BIOS or sometimes into a dialog that asks if I really want to install a non-standard operating system package, but other than that it’s just the blue TrackPhone screen. My brother looked at it and agreed: it’s fucking DEAD.

I need to get out to Walmart to exchange it; G’ma said she’d haul me out there this or tomorrow afternoon. I can’t find the receipt but I hope they replace it anyway.

~+~+~+~+~
The day before yesterday I went out to the garage to hop on my bike and ride over to the store, but I discovered the front tire was completely flat. I aired it up — having a compressor fucking rocks — but it was pretty low yesterday morning. I dropped it at the shop after work.

Today, after making the newspaper, I trudged over there in the heat to pick it up but they hadn’t gotten to it yet. So I had to walk home in the heat. Again.

~+~+~+~+~
Internet boyfriend is coming to visit in September. Soooo excited I could absolutely pop.

We’re smitten with each other. We spent ten hours in video chat last Sunday (not contiguous; there were trips to kitchens and stores and such, and I took a nap) and never got bored of looking at each other. This is par for the course. We text, we IM, we call, we video chat, we email. Constantly. The only time we’re out of touch is work and gigs, and even then we still text every few hours. I think we both agree it’s fortunate nobody else has to put up with us — well, except the NSA — because we’re in that really cutesy phase only charming if you’re in it.

He has a beard but it turns out there are dimples under there. DIMPLES. Y’all know how I feel about dimples.

Last night on Skype with him I spent a solid hour just crying with laughter. (He’s systematically destroying my refined left coast humor with his pedantic Midwestern humor. It’s a travesty. I cannot believe the shit I’ll laugh at if he says it.) I adore him. He also hits everything on the fairly negative and bitchy list I wrote a few years ago except for being a devotee part; interestingly enough Amma gave me double prasad at one of my darshans this year and I sent the extra to him; interestingly enough he’s keeping it in his freezer because he considers it sacred.

“Eat the chocolate, nerd, that’s what it’s for.”

“Oh, I will. But not now, bitch!”