Date: 2008-05-07 21:20 Subject: Those who dare Public Music: Otis Redding—Just One More Day Tags: food, mixology, nick is doing something impractical

“You know,” said robertcalvin, “my favorite thing about martinis is the gin-soaked olives. If they sold jars full of them, I’d just get drunk on that.” “Shit yes,” said 2ce. Here are the lessons they subsequently learned:

• You can’t just use a martini’s worth of gin on nine or ten olives, even if you’re giving it two hours to soak. I’m not sure what the ideal ratio would be; one might be able to get five olives per martini. Maybe.
• Related to this, don’t add any olive brine, because you want the gin to be as concentrated as possible. Yes, I know you or one of your co-conspirators likes “dirty” martinis, but trust me, this one is going to be pretty filthy as-is.
• Go ahead and give it more time than you think it’ll need. They were markedly improved by the time we got to the last few.
• Use good olives. (Mine were kind of so-so.)
• It turns out that the failure mode isn’t as good as either plain olives or proper gin-soaked olives, so limit yourself to small batches until and unless you perfect this.

As you can tell, we had decidedly mixed success. Further experimentation will be necessary.

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Date: 2007-08-14 22:10 Subject: Everyone knows how I roll Public Music: Aimee Mann—This Is How It Goes Tags: food, recipes

Here's a "recipe" for the pasta sauce I made for dinner tonight!

• 1 big jar of the stewed and reduced garden tomatoes that your mom put up last summer
• 1 can of diced tomatoes, or some fresh ones if they're ready
• huge dollop of olive oil
• several cloves of garlic... I dunno, four? six?
• some diced onion, call it a double-handful; preferably from the garden, but mix in some of that store-bought one if you gotta
• a handful of diced bell pepper
• a big ol' double-handful of various herbs from the garden, including three types of thyme, plenty of rosemary, fresh basil, and some of that oregano that's integrated itself into the lawn and is now impossible to get rid of, not that you'd want to
• about a palmful of ground cumin
• a spritz of red pepper flakes
• two or three generous sprinkles of ground cinnamon
• several fat pinches of salt

Heat up the olive oil in a pot; use the garlic press on the garlic, because this house happens to have one and we're in a hurry. Dice and chuck in the onion as the garlic starts to bubble, then roughly chop or tear all the herbs except the basil and pitch them in, along with the cumin, red pepper, and cinnamon. Add the bell pepper whenever you can be bothered to. Stir around, let the onions get translucent. Dump in last year's reduced tomatoes, use a fork or a slotted spoon to get the diced tomatoes in there without too much of that water, add the basil. Stir, bring to slow boil, simmer. When it's pretty much done, salt to taste.

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Date: 2006-11-11 18:44 Subject: 闇コーヒー Public Music: Broken Social Scene—Cause = Time (live) Tags: food

I noticed it too late to buy any (got one of the on-sale regular blends instead), but at the Wedge, they have "Mystery Coffee" for sale. It's like four bucks a pound (AKA less than half price), and consists of all the stuff people abandon in bags and leave in the grinder, all mixed together.

No way can I resist that temptation. I think that's what I'll be drinking from here on out.

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Date: 2006-10-16 16:25 Subject: Everybody Walk Public Music: Rebecca Pearcy—Poppies Tags: food, recipes

It's Dinosaur season again, and hallelujah. ( Here's lunch. )

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Date: 2006-09-10 10:02 Subject: (no subject) Public Music: Belle & Sebastian—You Don't Send Me Tags: food, lulu, writing

Hey TC people: Bananers are 33¢/lb at Rainbow right now. Or they were yesterday, at least, and there were a bunch left. And they're greenish now, too, so they're easy to get safely home.

In addition to being filling and stocking me up on lovely potassium, they gave me a great idea for a two-bit plot device in Lulu and the Second City. (You know, my side project. Think of it as an extremely low-stakes Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except that two thirds of the way through it turns into the Odyssey.) There are these makeshift golems that are terrorizing the high school, and in the process of trying to figure out what they're looking for and who sent 'em, Lulu, Ox, Brad, and Scary figure out that, instead of the name of YHWH, they're bound and animated by the banana stickers on their foreheads. "Peel and keeeeeel," says Scary.

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Date: 2006-09-05 15:58 Subject: Lentil Rice Cakes Public Music: The Kinks—Tired Of Waiting For You Tags: food, recipes

Hot damn, I’m loving these lentil + brown rice cakes. Time to share:

Lentil Rice Cakes

Simple Foods for the Pack, by Vikki Kinmont and Claudia Axcell. (First edition, 1976.)

Makes about a dozen.

• 2/3 cup brown rice
• 1/3 cup lentils [ed: I’ve only made these correctly with the red kind.]
• 3 cups water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• 1 small carrot, grated
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 tablespoon parsley, minced [ed: I don’t think we’ve EVER had parsley around for these.]
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 tsp. tamari soy sauce

Season with one of the following:
* 1 tsp. cumin, ground
* 1/2 teaspoon rosemary, ground
* 1/8 teaspoon cloves, ground

[I overspice these with cumin, cayenne, and garam masala, because that’s how I roll. You can also add some shredded ginger, and some other veggies, but don’t go overboard, because cohesion is important.]

Cook the rice and lentils in water with salt, for about 45 minutes (all water should be absorbed), and allow to cool. [You want it thick. The last little while, you’ll have to take the lid off and stir constantly. You’re done when there are big, goop-flinging explosions bubbling up, even on low heat.]

Mash well with hands, then add rest of ingredients and mix well. Form into patties, place on cookie sheet, and bake at 300° for 30-45 minutes. Turn once to allow underside to cook. [The flipping process is always really tetchy. Wait until they’re at least 2/3 done before trying, and if the patties break apart, put ‘em back in for a while before trying again. There will still probably be some really goopy stuff on the bottom that sticks to your spatula, but there’s nothing for it; just scrape it off and put it back.]

Ideally, serve with hummus or lemon-tahini dressing.

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Date: 2006-07-28 03:02 Subject: Dinner Public Music: They Might Be Giants—I'm All You Can Think About Tags: food, recipes

Dragoon Salad

Make sure you got:

• Tofu
• Oil
• Paprika
• Thyme
• Garlic (super-fresh)
• Ginger
• Onion (maybe)
• Lettuce
• Tomato (kinda-sorta optional, but not really)
• Annie's Goddess Dressing
• Hemp seeds (best) or ground flaxseed (passable and hella cheaper)

Why? Usually because it's too damn hot out for carbohydrates, but the sun's been down long enough that people won't necessarily hate you forever if you turn the stove on.

Heat oil in a skillet. Cut half a pound of firm or extra-firm tofu into strips (~1/3 inch thick), squeeze and shake each strip over the sink to get the extra water out, and put them in the oil to fry. Dust with heaping quarter-teaspoons of thyme and paprika, and add half a handful each of diced garlic and ginger once everything's been sizzling for a minute or three. Add a few slices of onion if desired; don't if not. Cook tofu, flipping occasionally, until very lightly browned; then cut into smaller strips with edge of spatula and cook for just a little while longer. (This is basically my recipe for tofu, period.)

While the tofu is cooking, clean and cut some lettuce and dice some tomato; mix into salad bowls and chuck in the fridge until tofu is done. Dump tofu chunks and the crispy garlic/ginger/oil slurry over the top of the salads. Pour Annie's Goddess Dressing (or equivalent tahini/lemon/garlic-based salad dressing) over the whole deal, and top with hemp seeds or ground flaxseed.

Serves two-ish; scale up as necessary.

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Date: 2006-07-15 18:22 Subject: Flying on the concord Public Music: the current Tags: food

I get this mysterious nutritional deficiency sometimes. This started in Cork, and it's popped up a few times since, and I'm not quite sure exactly what it is that I'm missing. But sometimes, I just get really distracted and fretful for long periods, with an accompanying case of the gnawing munchies. (In particular, I can't seem to keep raisins in the house.) It always takes me a while to notice it, too.

Anyway, the food that reliably contains whatever it is that I'm missing—the thing that'll make that irritating distracted/hungry state finally go away—turns out to be grape juice. The stainy purple stuff. I kind of have to remind myself to breathe when I'm chugging down my first cup after a long dry spell. Once I've had my fill of the stuff, I generally feel calm and full, and I tend to eat a lot less for the next day or three.

My diet's generally pretty balanced; I've got a really good mix of veggies, grains, and legumes, and I take my B vitamins. The one thing I tend to neglect a little bit is fruit, since it's kind of expensive, but there are always some raisins or a bottle of lemon juice or something hanging around, so I'm not some kind of scurvy risk case. Does anyone know what I could be needing that mostly comes from grape juice?

Regardless, I should probably just be smart about this and make sure there's always a can of concentrate sitting in the freezer.

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Date: 2006-06-03 12:55 Subject: Gazpacho! Public Music: Tom Waits - Warm Beer, Cold Women Tags: food, recipes

Greg and I got together tonight last night and made some damn gazpacho. Science hasn't yet devised a cure for 90-degree weather, but I tell you what, gazpacho and baguette and beer with your friends makes for a very humane treatment.

Oh, and I have a blender now, courtesy of Steeple People. I think it needs some lubrication, because you could definitely smell it working harder than it should have been working. Nevertheless, it did a heroic job on our ingredients, leaving us with basically the most perfect gazpacho we could have asked for. Plus it totally fits in with my kitchen kitsch fetish. Oh yeah, baby—goldenrod. Pictures later.

So how do you make gazpacho, much less perfect radiant hero gazpacho? Well, I relied on this recipe and this one for shopping advice, but we basically freestyled it, and ended up with LOTS of leftovers. We probably could have fed four or five people.

Let's do this one backwards:

Gazpacho Avec Whatever

Directions:

1. Cut some fresh tomatoes* into little cubes and set aside.
2. Blend up everything else in a blender. (Cut it into slightly smaller pieces first, but don't sweat it too hard, it's just going to end up in a blender.) Do it in batches, including enough tomato juice in each blenderload that it all comes out liquid without causing you any grief. Then stir it all together in a big ol' plastic or glass mixing bowl.**
3. Stir in those diced tomatoes.
4. Put the whole thing in the fridge (covered) and let it chill for at least twenty minutes. The longer it waits, the better it gets, peaking at somewhere around the "overnight" mark. Don't sweat it too hard, though; half the point is leftovers.
5. Serve. You can put some parsley and fresh thyme on top, if you want. Go ahead and have some baguette and beer, too. Don't worry about protein: that's for morning, when you don't feel like sweating your internal organs out. Tonight, we party.

Ingredients (most of which are optional and all of which are fungible):

• The aforementioned fresh tomatoes.
• A big jar of really good unsweetened tomato juice. You can get the 32oz jar of the R.W. Knudsen stuff for 3 bucks at the co-op in the juices section. Do spring for the decent stuff, because it is seriously the ingredient that makes or breaks your soup. V8 is for when you're A.) at 15,000 feet or B.) too drunk or dehydrated to tell the difference.
• Several cloves of garlic. Hardcore fresh. It ought to smell juicy and sharp, not musky and dusky.
• A big, sweet-ish white or yellow onion.
• A jalepeño.
• A milder green pepper. Bells work, but only if they come from someone you know; if you're just buying from the store or the co-op, spring for a poblano or something; I don't think they sell edible bells in stores anymore.
• Half a stalk of rhubarb (impulse buy. I'm convinced it did something magical).
• Two or one stalks of celery.
• A cucumber.***
• Some parsley!
• Some fresh lemon thyme.
• Some fresh basil.
• Some chili powder.
• Some vinegar (wine vinegar is probably good, but we just used rice vinegar and it turned out fab).
• A splash or three of lemon juice (as always, the good stuff in the glass bottle—trust me, you'll find something to do with the rest of it.) (Or, you know, just use some lemon).
• A pinch or three of salt.
• A pinch or three of coarse black pepper.
• A huge dollop of decent olive oil. (We totally forgot about this.)
• Some hotsauce. (Several drops. We skipped this, too.)

_____
* If they don't smell like pure moonshined summer when you hold them four inches from your face, just leave 'em out of the recipe entirely. Local, in-season tomatoes are a sensory adventure, but the second-best thing is high-end packaged stuff that was picked and parsed at the right time of year. Plasticky long-haul shipping tamaters are only suitable for shitty burgers.
** I am told that stainless steel and other metals are a serious no go. Something to do with acids and corrosion and your soup tasting like metal.
*** Holy shit, this is NOT "it's safe to buy a cucumber at the co-op" season. TWO BUCKS FIFTY FOR ONE DAMN CUCUMBER. If I'd been in less of a hurry and watching the prices, I'd have just hit one of the Nicollet Asian groceries on the way home. Damn.

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Date: 2006-04-14 20:18 Subject: Inevitable dump post Public Music: MC Frontalot - Which MC Was That? Tags: alcohol, food, music, stop posting, twin cities

1. TEMPEH SANDWICH MOTHERFUCKERS. With some young Dinosaur to back that shit up. Too bad I don't have any sourkraut or cheese.

2. I love the amount of free-association that goes on on The Current:
7:54 The Dining Rooms - Destination Moon
7:59 They Might Be Giants - Rest Awhile

3. I've noticed that I have a sort of nonsensical distrust of wines that aren't named after one kind of grape, and it's time to put the foot down on that. I mean seriously, what? I don't have the budget to buy anything better than plonk half the time anyhow, so why not go for a bastardized blend that'll maybe taste a little better than a cheap-ass shiraz? So I bought "white table wine" today. Hurray!

4. Garage sale season is definitely ON, but man, it is hard to buy furniture without a truck. I found a desk and a coffee table today that are FUCKING PERFECT FOR THIS APARTMENT, for 30 and 10 dollars, respectively. Deal of the century, right? But I might not be able to move 'em. Balls.

EDIT:
5. Hurray for meeting the neighbors, finally!

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Date: 2006-02-23 20:36 Subject: (no subject) Public Music: They Might Be Giants - Spiraling Shape (Live) Tags: crows, food

That's just a whole 'nother level of savvy entirely.

Lisa Padol: Avram Grumer told me once that crows have been observed using another kind of tool: cars. Well, cars and nuts, to be precise.

The crows dropped the nuts in the middle of the road. Cars would run over them, opening up the shells. So far, so good.

But the crows did not try to eat the nuts. They waited for the squirrels. The squirrels tried to eat the nuts. Several of the squirrels got hit by cars. The crows then ate the roadkill squirrels.

As Avram pointed out, this is serious long term thinking for the crows.

EDIT: FUCKING YES! Sichuan Peppercorns are BACK, motherfucker! The baggie I smuggled home back in '04 managed to vanish sometime during the course of the last year, and I've been missing the little varmints.

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Date: 2005-09-28 23:32 Subject: (no subject) Public Mood: The DJ will play the Pixies at a time of his choosing Music: The Pixies - Where is my Mind Tags: alcohol, cork, food, garden

I totally just accidentally just hit Stephen in the head.

EDIT: Since I have to stay up until these tomatoes boil down anyhow, I might as well get drunk.

STATUS UPDATE: ( WHATEVER, I'm obviously totally trashed. But click anyways, because it was only two beers what did it and you know you want to know what can fuck me up that bad in only 24 ounces. )

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Date: 2005-06-15 19:38 Subject: Back by popular demand: Food LJing. Public Music: Jethro Tull - One White Duck Tags: food, recipes

I just had the bombest tofu sandwich, for the second night in a row. Tonight we went ahead and made four copies of it so everyone but mom could have one. (For those who don't know my mom, no, we're not being mean or anything. Her tastebuds just tend on the conservative side.)

This started off as an attempt to duplicate some of the qualities of a Quicky's* sandwich. As Robert is about to point out, it's not going to replace the real thing, but as I'm about to point out, it's pretty fucking good.

( Instructions follow. )

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Date: 2005-04-25 22:00 Subject: (no subject) Public Tags: food

Check out my dinner:

( Cut for food porn )

I've christened this the Kabocha Cobbler. Naturally, I never get this creative when there's an abundance of ingredients around - the impetus was a huge tupperware full of baked squash that I had to find some purpose for, and paucity of a few staples.

This would have been good with cheese, but I mixed some silken tofu in there, and made a cream sauce with some soymilk and nutritional yeast, and it's doing a pretty good job at it. I don't know if I can give a recipe. But the bulk of it is dry, orange, baked squash, and some of the guest stars include broccoli, carrots, onion, garlic, jalepeño, spices (corriander, cumin, cayenne, basil [I know it's secretly an herb]), tofu, soymilk, nutritional yeast, parsley flakes, and breadcrumbs from that tin on top of the fridge. Oh man, SO good.

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Date: 2005-03-16 08:22 Subject: (no subject) Public Music: Mirah - The Dogs of Buenos Aires Tags: food, photos

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Date: 2005-01-13 14:42 Subject: No pumpkins for me. Public Tags: food

So entering the house, at the ungodly hour of not-quite 2 in the afternoon (I promise, it's less godly after you've been up for 30 hours), I was somehow still awake enough to notice the deflated remains of my erstwhile pumpkin. Broke my fuckin' heart, I tell ya.

I hadn't had time to make that pumpkin bread before break started, and was hoping to finally get around to it once I got back. It would have made a nice welcome-back-me present. But alas, 'twas not to be, and plus the kitchen stank pretty bad right in the vicinity of the ricemaker. What I figure is that it should have been able to keep, since it was in a drafty part of the house (and seriously - winter squash), so what probably happened was that the mice gnawed a little way through the shell, allowing it to rot from the inside. The little dry orange crumbs seem to corroborate this.

Anyway, I just cleaned it up so that I didn't lose my appetite as soon as I got back from getting groceries, which I am going to do now.

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Date: 2004-10-06 23:49 Subject: (no subject) Public Mood: Mmm, apples and homework. Then comics. Music: What, I dunno. Some Dar maybe? Tags: dumpsterdiving, food

Whole Foods is evidently in the grip of some sort of fantastic apple apocalypse, in which all will be revealed, old alliances will fall, new heroes will be born, and none shall emerge unscathed. This is only speculation, of course, but something's up, 'cause the number of nearly-saleable apples I've been fishing out of the garbage there is simply unreal. Really all I wanted this time around was something I could stir-fry, but the apples were pretty hard to resist, so they got most of the bag space. Scored some fingerling potatoes, an onion, and a summer squash, though.

No dice on the Carabou Coffee or Mississippi Market tonight. Guess I'll try again later.

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Date: 2004-10-05 01:25 Subject: (no subject) Public Mood: absolutely fucking bushed. Music: er... Tags: dumpsterdiving, food

I swear, the Whole Foods produce dumpster is a source of neverending mirth.

Me: Doot de doo, lots of bananas. Hmm, let's check the other bin.
Officer: [with flashlight] HELLO.
Me: (to self) Wow, this is new.
Me: Er, hi. Do I need to leave?
Officer: What are you doing in there?
Me: Um. Scrounging some food.
Officer: What?
Me: Scrounging some food.
Officer: There's been an alarm.
Me: What, really?!
Store owner: Yeah... he's not what's going on here. They come in here and do that.
Officer: (to store owner) Is he allowed to do that?
Store owner: Well, they can.
Me: (to no one in particular) I'm just gonna finish scrounging.
Store owner: (to officer) Anyway, we figured out what happened. They locked a guy inside, but forgot to turn off the motion. They've got a switch that they can... [fade into distance]

At any rate. 3 bunches of bananas and about 10 apples, most of which shall get sauced, but several of which are crisp and delicious. I also learned tonight from one of the V-coop's current complement that 1. Mississippi Market has comparable dumpsters, and are theoretically even more chill about them, and 2. Caribou Coffee throws away BAGS OF COFFEE BEANS. So it's looking like a mission over there later in the week, since I ran out of grinds about halfway through September.

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Date: 2004-09-30 23:29 Subject: You only know three fruits? Public Mood: Applehappy. Music: Neutral Milk Hotel - Untitled Tags: dumpsterdiving, food

I've been getting this wierd gnawing hunger, lately - real bad case of the malignant munchies. Typically, this means that there's something rather specific that I'm not getting enough of - tonight, I ended up deciding that it's probably fruit. (This washes with the fact that pasta with tomato sauce seems to partially, but not quite completely, fill the hole - there's fruit in the sauce, but not the amount I need.) So anyway, it's 10:30 pm, the Daily Show just finished, and your warrior needs fruit, badly - what are your options? Assuming one writes off whatever dodgy-ass, overpriced, and watery fruit salad-in-a-capsule the Grille has, we're left with either Kowalski's or the Whole Foods produce dumpsters. One guess, dudes.



Granted, most of those need some amount of debruising, but as a habit from growing up, I tend to slice apples up anyways, so no loss. I figure I'll eat about half of them within the next day or three, and stew/freeze the rest so that I'll have some applesauce around for those lean weeks.

(Confidential to Mom - pics of my place are still in the works, before you ask.)

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Date: 2004-09-25 00:09 Subject: Chow. (This is not the post you're looking for.) Public Tags: dumpsterdiving, food, recipes

I'm making Tomato Sauce ála Fnord and grilled polenta cutlets tonight. On Monday, I went to the Whole Foods "discount bin" again, and found something like 4 pounds of perfectly good organic tomatoes. (The type still on the vine, even, if you can believe that.) The rest of the haul included 3 apples (one of which was this big fat divine Honeycrisp and one of which I'm positive was a September Jonagold, so Nick had a very happy Tuesday and Wednesday), 2 pears, 2 oranges, a grapefruit, one decent jalepeño (or equivalent) pepper, and 8 potatoes (mmm, hash browns). But the tomatoes were still hanging around, so I thought I'd convert the bulk of them into a less perishable form. Luckily, Vegweb.com had my back. ( Details behind the cut, and results on the other side. )

This was easily the best midnight snack I've had in months, and it left enough remainders to stick around for a week. I highly recommend the sauce, which yielded about 2 jars worth and turned out chunky, subtle, and fresh, and anyone who has ever subsisted on pasta for periods of undisclosed duration (there have been some times, alas) should totally add polenta to their repertoire. Assuming you have 40 minutes in which you'll be somewhere near the kitchen, making the initial base (of which about 1/6 of the recipe filled me up) for later frying/grilling/baking is a no-brain, and it's a very nice change of pace to go with pasta sauce. It's also better for you (probably - since it's a whole-er grain, right?), considerably more filling (see previous, plus because of the oil that soaks into it when you fry it), and much more attractive, which, depending on your choices w/r/t presentation, can rocket it into the realm of Date Food - YMMV. The jalepeños definitely added to it, incidentally.

Total cost: about $4, and $2.50 of that was the 1/3 of a bottle of wine. God I love the dumpster.

The line of the night: "Hold on, I gotta deglaze this shit."

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