S+S Valentine's Day #1

semi-heart-shaped pizza

cheese-y but cute

cheese-y but cute

leeks/garlic, red bell pepper, provolone

note the neti pot box in the background

I like this pic

a different kind of couple

Egypt

pic from the NPR website

Today the Egyptian president didn't resign afterall, but Jerry Sloan, the coach of the Jazz, did. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Update: not that anyone is getting world news off of my silly blog, but Mubarak finally resigned.

Clean Burning Stoves / NPR

Very cool story.

Hendrik Coetzee / Outside Online

Really fascinating article. He was a kayaker who pioneered alot of routes on rivers in Africa.

More Food Politics from Mark Bittman

Ever since he retired from his minimalist column Bittman has been on the warpath about the crap food many Americans eat. The most recent one has a couple of real nuggets:

The goal is not universal veganism, which is pie-in-the-sky; it’s health and sustainability

The truly healthy alternative to that chip is not a fake chip; it’s a carrot. Likewise, the alternative to sausage is not vegan sausage; it’s less sausage. This is really all pretty simple.

The eating for one or 6 billion article is good, too:

“Revolutionary” diet books flood the market this time of year, promising a life changed permanently and for the better — yes, in just 10 to 30 days! — but, as everyone knows, the key to eating better begins with a diet of real food. The problem is, real food is cooked by real people — you! — and real people are cooking less than ever before.

Janam

Sara really wanted to see these guys, and for 5$ at the MCC I was in. Was a fun show, a mix of songs from Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Turkey and then a couple of bluegrass tunes (Cuckoo Bird, Wayfaring Stranger, Deeper Well from the 1995 Emmylou Harris album, and an original) so every once in a while you could understand the lyrics :) The singer had a great voice; drummer had a Balkan drum -- a double sided marching-band-style drum with a different drum stick for each side; string player used a fiddle, a mandolin-like instrument (may have been an actual mandolin), and a guitar-like instrument with the body being much more spherical; and the clarinet player was groovy -- it looked to me like he was break dancing while he played. There are 5 people in the band pic, but the 5th guy (accordion) didn't come down from SF for the gig.

Light vs. Dark Meat / NPR

Good story last night, interesting looking recipe, too. The money quotes:

Why do we like chicken breasts so much — and how can we cross over to the dark side?

That first question is pretty easy. "People don't like to be reminded that when they eat meat, it's actually part of an animal," food writer Nadia Arumugam tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "When you have a chicken leg in front of you, there's no denying that's an animal limb."

Shoppers may also perceive dark meat as fattier and less healthy. There is a little more fat in legs, Arumugam says, but only a few calories worth. On the plus side, dark meat is rich in nutrients like iron and vitamin B, Arumugam says, "so you're really getting a good nutritional boost with dark meat."

"There's a whole rest of the world that loves dark meat," she says. That includes Russia, where, until recently, America's unloved chicken legs were being sent.

Meat is such a weird thing, I think she's right on. People want meat, but don't want to think about the animal at all. If they did the whole feed lot industry wouldn't exist! I was present (didn't help much...) when my friend Ben killed a rooster. We had an amazing fried chicken dinner. But I really haven't eaten much meat since.

Taking the Politics out of Climate Science / NPR

interesting interview with the most rational sounding republican I've ever heard.

Sarsoon ka Saag

with yogurt, dal, and rice

a.k.a. Mustard greens cooked with a little cornmeal, punjabi-style. I picked a bunch of greens at the garden, purple osaka mustard and chard from Sara's plot, and went looking for a recipe. Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking hooked me up. I sorta followed the recipe [was supposed to use fenugreek greens instead of seeds, fresh chilies, and it was supposed to be more soup-y, so you are supposed to add cornstarch], and it sorta tasted pretty good :)

Sarsoon ka Saag:
2 lbs mustard
1 lb chard
fenugreek seeds
1/4 c corn meal
couple of dried chilies
asafoetida
2.5 c water
salt
ghee
1" piece of ginger
couple of cloves garlic

Chop up greens, I used the stems, too, but wasn't supposed to. Fenugreek, cornmeal, chilies, asa, water. Cook for a while, stickblend. Salt. In a skillet do the ghee, garlic, ginger, pour over the top.

Licorice Tea Crème Fraîche Sherbet

Not as epic as the lemongrass one, but still pretty damn tasty. Stash Tea, licorice flavor (2 bags) in 1.5 c water, 8 oz sugar, ~2 Q crème fraîche. Simple.

The full sorbet list.

Sleepytime-Cherry Frozen Yogurt

the red bits are from the cranberry sorbet

This didn't start out to be what it ended up to be. I am loving the lemongrass tea crème fraîche sherbet that I've been making, and wanted to try a little more subtle tea, celestial seasonings sleeptime herbal tea to make the tea syrup. Well, it wasn't very interesting. So I soaked some dried cherries in the syrup and made tea/cherry frozen yogurt instead. Now yogurt doesn't have anywhere near the fat content of crème fraîche, so I had to add a bit of booze to it, some homemade vanilla extract and some orangecello if I remember correctly. Anyway, it's still only ok, but it was worth trying... 1.5 c tea (2 bags), 8 oz sugar, ~2 Q yogurt, ~2 T booze. stickblender for sure.

The full sorbet list.

Wild Garden Seed -- Philomath, OR / NPR

Interesting story about the fight over GMO crops and cross breeding in the Willamette Valley. Organics won in a court case, yea!

Canning / NPR

nice

Matilija Satsuma Tangerine Marmalade

Sara and I went to the Matilija Creek area in back of Ojai last weekend and there was a roadside Satsuma bin, 8 for a buck. We got 3 bucks worth, really we should have bought them all! Sara is on a marmalade kick, so I gave it a whirl, using various preserving cookbooks for inspiration. This is what I came up with. 1st, I wanted to make my own pectin, so boiled up lemon seeds and the strings on the fruit and also lime pits and rinds; got about 1Q of pectin-y liquid from that. I added 1Q of water because I was using fruit, + a lot of collected rinds. So all told I used 2 lbs of satsumas, about 15 rinds from satsumas, a grapefuit rind, a small lemon, and 4 tiny lemons. And then 2Q of liquid. And then 2.5 lbs of sugar. Combined fruit, rinds, liquid, let that sit for a day or so. Cooked it up, let it sit. Added sugar, let it sit. Cooked it up. I didn't can this batch, think we'll just eat it, but will can in the future. I think I used too much sugar, but Andrew, who's dad is British, thought it was about right.

Tangerine Marmalade on a toasted Sour Skon. Yum.

Buffalo / NPR

I love me some buffalo. Good story.

Speaking Prairie Dog / NPR

A radiolab story, very cool. Note: I hope to hell those cute prairie dogs aren't that closely related to ground squirrels, cause man-o-man do those squirrels do damage to the garden; I hate them, almost as much as pocket gophers.

Burgers

cheeseburgers, grilled onions and peppers, and avo

A whole foods dinner, my first visit to the one in SB. Not that exciting, whole-paycheck pricing being in full-effect, but we got some lamb, some buffalo, ciabatta bread, some good cheddar, and a nice beer.

yum

yum

action shot

Cranberry Sorbet + yogurt

pretty, tasty

Lemongrass Crème Fraîche Sherbet #2

Looking at the first time I made this, I didn't change much, but liked this one more. Very simple. Brew up some strong lemongrass tea (steep lemongrass cuttings in near boiling water for ~10 min). Use ~1 c tea, 8 oz (1 c) vanilla sugar to make a simple syrup. Cool. Mix with ~2 c of crème fraîche. You don't need a stick blender for this one as it doesn't freeze very hard. A worthy update to the sorbet chronicles.
Sara wanted to try it with a grating of chocolate over it... I think it was just fine plain, but it sure makes for a pretty picture.

Cranberry Sorbet

Straight from a David Lebovitz blog post, I didn't make any changes. Quite good. It didn't quite go with the other thing I made (lemongrass crème fraîche sherbet) but the potential is certainly there.

Vietnamese Beef & Broccoli

Pretty simple. Garlic, onion, ground beef, broccoli, sweet peppers, a little bit of mustard greens and mint, fish sauce. Butternut squash on the side, nuoc cham poored over.

I use the macro setting + LED light for indoor photography cause it gets rid of the dreaded yellow tinge. But it's not very wide, so Sara had to hunch over to get in the frame...

Nuoc cham. I love this stuff.

Tartine

Sara visited the bakery Tartine in SF in December and really liked it, and got their cookbook from her mom as a gift. She made brownies the day the book came, lemon bars the next.

eyes closed, but cute

brownie crumbs and ice cream, yum

Christmas Break Soup

A bit of a kitchen sink job. Turkey stock from the thanksgiving turkey, white beans, adzuki beans, barley, homemade pimiento peppers preserved in olive oil from the pantry, a can of anchovies, chard, onion, carrots, garlic, leeks, thyme, homemade egg noodles. Tasty + frugal + bottomless.

New Years Eve Butternut Dal

The Bee came back for New Year's Eve! I think I fell asleep and she had to wake me up for the midnight thing but c'est la vie. I made a pretty tasty dal for dinner, typical technique with cooking the lentils with turmeric and cooking the onions with asafoetida, but used french puy lentils and added butternut squash, so it was a little different. Tasty. She bought a bottle of Tequila Corralejo that came with sweet homemade-style glasses and juiced some oranges and we had cute little cocktails...

Horchata Tang

My brother brought this back from Baja last year. Actually fairly tasty.

Food Product Pics

Scary that both sugar and corn syrup come before the popcorn...

3 Food Icons / NPR

I listened to these stories when they were broadcast, but forgot to post the links. Nice stories on Madhur Jaffrey, Marcella Hazan, and Jacques Pépin. I knew most of the JP anecdotes, because I've read his book, but all of the radio stories were great, and there's extra online content, too.

Udo Kier / Onion AV

This really made my day. I just recently got a deal on Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula so just watched them and then watched them with commentary. He's such an interesting screen presence, and I love his voice.