Dining Out: Yes, I had Christmas Dinner at Ikea

In my teens and twenties, I lived at Ikea.  Ok, in my teens I begged my mom to stop there whenever we were anywhere near Elizabeth, New Jersey, but in my twenties I lived close enough to a different Ikea to get there fairly regularly and I did just that.  I loved Ikea. I can walk into your house and name your Ikea pieces.  Who doesn't have a Poang chair or a Billy bookcase floating around?

A few years ago, I moved and now there is an Ikea at the end of my street.  Seriously, right there.

I took the head off a chicken

No pictures, but this is not a post for the super-squeamish.  Just a warning.

Like everyone in the mid-90s, I was a vegetarian teenager, which meant that I ate a lot of grilled cheese and zero beans or nuts.  I didn't eat tofu and had never heard of seitan or tempeh or any other vegan protein.  I was also once so anemic that I had to routinely drink the water spinach was boiled in for the iron (not recommended).  So when vegetarianism wasn't working for me, I went back to meat.  Sort of.

I'm the kind of meat eater who isn't looking to expand my horizons.  I have a friend who loves rabbit and duck, but the cuteness factor gets to me (my mom grew up with a pet duck).  I've never been able to eat anything on a bone, and this means Sous Chef Brian has used a fork to take meat off a chicken wing for me.  

So I don't eat a ton of meat, in overall quantity or in range. 

I'm also pretty upset about factory farming, so I try to buy meat from local farmers and feel like I have a sense of where it came from.  This is easy, with beef, we have great farms we can buy it from.  With chicken, the real limit is that at the farm stands and similar locales, most of the time you're getting a whole chicken.

So in reality, while I say I "make food out of food," what I actually do is make food out of vegetables.  I don't take meat from a non-food state and bring it to the table.  The meat I'm working with has generally been all fooded up before I see it. 

Like riding a bicycle, or a horse.

I'm mixing analogies, or idioms or something. Something about not forgetting how to ride a bike and then something else about getting right back on the horse. 

I blog pretty much in "real time," meaning that I don't have a backlog of foods waiting to be posted at any given moment.  Generally speaking, I'm writing about foods I've cooked recently.  I have one older post that'll go up soonishly from before we took our little hiatus, but usually, if I'm writing about it, it's from this week or so.  Usually there are still leftovers in the fridge.

So that means that when stuff comes up, there isn't content I can just push out automatically.  I don't have stock posts.  

How to measure and convert

The thing that stresses me out in the kitchen is measuring, so I try to avoid it.  Over the winter I made my version of the conversion chart/art "(ch)art?" I saw on The Kitchn, and that helps with some of it.

But there are other measurements that I keep having to Google*.  As I mentioned when I first posted that (ch)art - and I'm going to have to trademark that word and make it my own - I often have to Google the conversion from packet of yeast to jar of yeast (it's 2.25 teaspoons).  

Here are links to some nifty online conversion tools and printables that you can tack up on the inside of your cabinet door. 

Pancakes and the magic of home cooking

I've said before that pizza was the start of our personal cook-at-home revolution, and that's pretty true.  Once we realized we could make our own pizza, making our own [fill-in-the-blank] wasn't far behind.  If pizza was part of the solution, then pancakes were the problem.

A million years ago, pancakes were the big joke, because I couldn't successfully operate a box of Bisquick. There was a distinct tone of: "Rose can't even make pancakes," around here. I said it too, all the time.  

And even once I felt like I could handle myself in the kitchen, once I was making all my own salad dressing and nearly all my own bread, I still wasn't trying to make typical pancakes.  I loaded them up with flax and wheat germ and said, "No, they're not supposed to be soft and light, they're different from those pancakes." 

I have a song stuck in my head & Seitan Green Curry

I'm someone who typically has a song stuck in my head.  It's not necessarily a song I like, or a song I've heard recently, and this, I think, is fairly strange because I'm not all that into music.  The music I like, I like a lot, but other music, no, I really don't like other music, and whoa is there a lot of it out there.  So I'm weird on music, especially with the musician husband and friends.  I've been around a lot of music, for not really liking most of it.  Anywho, I get songs stuck in my head very easily.  I'll often turn to Sous Chef Brian and just say, "Black Hole Sun,"* and he'll nod, or he'll think back to the last time he thinks I heard it and let me know why it's in my head.  

Mexican Rice from the Internet

We had this little dinner party.  It happens a lot.  And I had a busy morning and other stuff to do so I thought we'd "just have tacos."  But you know, just tacos sounds lame.


So the plan was I'd do seitan and beef.  Beef like how I did the beef fajitas, and seitan that had spent some quality time with some canned chipotle.   


And corn spoon bread, which, if I had photographed it, I'd have written up for ya'll, but it was my first time doing it since I quit boxed mixes and I wasn't sure it'd turn out.  It did, and I'll make it again sometime and tell you all about it.


So two types of tacos, spoon bread, and some black beans.  Just beans and some bacon fat and cilantro and cumin and onion.  And then all the fixins, with the lime and the cheeses and the tomato and lettuce and the salsa and the guacamole.  Basically, what I mean is we had to use the dinner table, two fold out trays and a side table.  I cooked like my mother cooks, which is to say plentifully. 

Eating Seasonally and Whipped Jello

One of these things is not like the other. 

This is something called whipped Jello.  You take Jello let it set a while, and you whip it, then you let it set longer.  It is not food.

A friend of mine asked about a statement I made about having been eating seasonally for a few years.  We do, generally, eat our produce seasonally.  That means that while I buy tofu and chicken and mustard and couscous and kidney beans year round, I only buy tomatoes when they're here.  "Here" means that someone local (within a state or two) grew them and they're ready now.  

Back to the Start - That Chipotle Ad about Factory Farming

I didn't watch the Grammys, for several reasons.  The primary reason is that I've never watched the Grammys, and the next one I can think of is that I was very busy watching a goofy soap opera on PBS.


But I heard a little bit about them.  Well, mostly that the kids today don't know who Paul McCartney is, and of course, about the Chipotle ad that aired.

I Carried a Watermelon

I think I can safely promise that'll be my only Dirty Dancing reference on Saturday's Mouse.  Still, whenever I have a watermelon in my hands, or arms, (not that often) I think of that.   It's a damn near perfect expression of that awkwardness of being somewhere you might not belong.  Or at least you don't feel like you belong.  Which is totally unrelated to what I'm writing about, but I like to give the cheesy 80's movies credit where I can.  


I went to Headhouse this weekend, as I do most weekends, to supplement my CSA with additional goodies.  I got the cheese and butter that I love from Hillacres Pride, and some funky mini eggplants and some poblanos and raw milk with which to make ricotta.  That's a leap for me.  Raw milk.  


When I go to the farm market, I have to make sure I have cash, which is not standard for me.  I'm not into cash, I'm into cards, and reward points.  So I get cash and then, when I'm shopping, I need to think about how much cash I have in my pocket.   Can I get two 1/2 pound butter chunks?  Ok, but then I can't get spices.  I could carry more cash, but then I'd spend more cash. 


When I'm at the grocery store, that doesn't come up.  I get to checkout, and - especially if Sous Chef Brian is with me - it's a guessing game.  I have no idea how much stuff I shoved into my cart, or whether buying meat this week* has put us over our generally accepted threshold for weekly food expenditures.  I feel like I'm playing the slots. 


I'm aware of how irresponsible that is, and how privileged I am because I can shop like that.  Fair trade coffee, and the best of cheeses and locally prepared pasta and the occasional fig jam.   I would never shop for clothes the same way, or housewares, or whatever the hell else it is that I buy. 

Dining Out: Loving Hut

Sous Chef Brian and I have a pretty bad habit.  When we go grocery shopping, we often pick up lunch as well.  As though we don't have bags full of food we can make ourselves.   I mean really, there's no excuse.   


There was a 6-month stretch where nearly every Sunday we'd go to Whole Foods and then get Banh Mi Chay samiches, go home, eat, put away groceries, cook.  Now that our favorite samich place is gone, there's a bit more variety.   We tend to eat something halfway healthy, by which I mean, not a hamburger, probably because we're aware of the cart full of vaguely healthy stuff we're not eating.   


So this weekend, standing in line at the grocery store, we started talking about lunch.  Sous Chef Brian suggested Maoz, and I said, yeah that or maybe Loving Hut*.  And for the 14th time, Brian said, "What's Loving Hut?"  And for the 14th time, exasperated, I said, "It's the new-ish vegan fast food place just down the street."  But I mean, I can understand the confusion.  There's a lot of things that Loving Hut might be on South Street.  It's just 3 blocks away from this place, the highlight of every class trip to Philadelphia. 

Vegetarian Cat

I heard there weren't enough cats on the Internet, so felt compelled to post this.

I mentioned in the 100th post that I had posted several pictures of my cat over the last few months.  That's true, but it made me feel bad - like I only have one cat.  Sabrina is the one who is typically photographed with meat.  She's into it.  Ainsley, however, is weird.

We adopted Ainsley when she was too young, and I blame that for most of her problems.  Not that we took her away from her momma, we got her second-hand from someone who rescued her.  Third-hand, really.  Anyway, she's "off."  She's tense and skittish.

If we're eating or cooking meat or dairy, Sabrina is nearby, howling.  Ainsley is in another room, typically staring off like a depressed teenager (that's her thing).  But if we're making a salad, Ainsley is right on hand, waiting to catch whatever drops.  She doesn't know what's in her kibble, so she thinks she's a vegetarian.

Here's a fairly blurry action series of Ainsley, Sous Chef Brian, and a leaf of red leaf lettuce.  Ignore the messy office in the background, please.

She's into greens. Speaking of into greens... NYT recently had an Friday on Meatless Mondays, and the title cracked me up: Meatless Mondays Catch On, Even With Carnivores.   No, only with carnivores, right?  Because other folks are already going meatless on Monday and everyday.  So carnivores are your target population.   If you're working on convincing vegetarians to go meatless, you're doing it wrong.

If you haven't entered the Saturday's Mouse 100 Posts Contest yet, you're missing out.   We're giving away some fabulous kitchen goodies.  You have until Thursday, June 23rd, so get to it.

I'm an ass

Hi there.

It's not like I had anything thrilling to tell you about.   It's gross hot, and it's only early June, and no one wants to use the oven.

I actually tried - I made the two day whole wheat bread, but it rose too much and isn't bread-shaped.  One of the two loaves is usable, just made t-shirt shaped slices, but the other was too far gone, so I made two day bread crumbs and two day croutons.   

But really, other than that, recently cooking has meant busting out the melon baller or washing off some snow peas.   Because really, it's hot.

My CSA starts tomorrow.  I'm super-excited.  The first week is "farmer's choice," like a regular CSA, but after that we'll be choosing our own veg.  So I have no idea what's coming, which made shopping this weekend really interesting.  "No leafy greens, I bet we'll be overwhelmed with them."  "Ok, enough leafy greens to last us to Tuesday, but that's it."  Will there be cauliflower?  Will there be tomatoes?  But seriously, it's hot, so our menu for the week is like pasta salad and salad salad.

My plan is to get what I get tomorrow, tell ya'll about it and see if I get some awesome suggestions for what to do with it.  You'll help, right?  Then I'll post a few of those things throughout the week.

That's the plan, at least, but as above, I'm as ass.  Check out my recent Google search results.

Yeah.  At least it wasn't some once in a lifetime vacation photos.  It was asparagus. 

I don't have a paperclip, so I tried a leg from a binder clip with no success.  I'll borrow one from work today.  Thinking I was smart, the first thing I did was eject the CD drive, and I think I heard the computer swallow the SD card at that point.  

Slick design, Steve (or Jony Ive, or whoever) but there's only like 1/3 inch gap between the SD hole and the CD hole, and from the looks of the Googling, lots of folks do this.

So I'll post pictures and reasonable posts as soon as this is resolved, or start putting up iPhone photos again. (Eew).

Cough Drops and Take Out Lo Mein

It starts off all bright and cherry-flavored, but it finishes like Robitussin mixed with Listerine.

I didn't cook today.  I'm a firm believer in vegetable lo mein and cough drops when you're sick.  Actually, I don't care what you eat when you're sick - I'm a firm believer in vegetable lo mein and cough drops when I'm sick.  

Ok, ok, I care what you eat when you're sick.  Sorry.  Next time I'll make you some soup.

Also, I'm fully aware that every post here switches between "next you add the..." and "then I added the..."  all throughout.  What do you call that?  It's not a tense shift.  It's like a perspective shift.  Like a person-shift.  I don't know. 

Pulled Pork Milkshakes and Flexitarianism

About 10 people read this each day, so I thought it was about time to start alienating a few of you.

So Mark Bittman tweeted a link to this article about flexitarianism.  I like Bittman, generally.  But this is bullshit.