Demented Ramblings

Obviously, I am the last human on earth to discover this, but last night I learned that if you roast a jalapeno it actually becomes HOTTER! I’m quite sure that there’s some science involved here, which I will look into at a later date.

Last night I threw together a quick bean salad for my picnic date with my pal Kelly tonight. Which, by the way she has canceled out on. She’s letting a little rain scare her away. The wonderful boyfriend and I will still have a picnic though. Manicdad will also be happy as this means that some of the bean salad will be coming home for him tonight.

Ysha’s Black Bean Salad

1 Finely diced small onion
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 roasted jalapeno
Red wine vinegar
Kosher salt
Juice of 1 lime
cilantro
2 cans black beans, rinsed
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed

Dice the onion first and allow it to “bloom” in a little red wine vinegar. This is the term I heard used for it on the Food Network, otherwise known as “let it sit for a minute” in Yshaspeak. Toss in the other ingredients and mix, adjust seasonings to taste. This salad is good if it has time for the flavors to “mingle”.

Once again, this summer, I have fallen in love with the almighty Garlic Salad. In order to make an Yshastyle garlic salad, one starts with a bowl of leafy greens. (I use bagged salad, because I’m lazy like that.) Rough chop some mushrooms and toss on the top along with some diced onion. Red onion is especially good, but lately I’ve been using Vidalia because I have a huge bag of those. Mince a clove or two of garlic (per salad! awwww yeah!) and put that in the bowl. If you are Manicdad, then at this point you add a whole chopped tomato to your bowl, juice and all. Sprinkle with some seasoned salt, a little olive oil, and a healthy bit of lemon juice. “Waller it up” and enjoy. Don’t forget to drink the juice in the bottom of the bowl, it’ll make you shudder but it’s great!

Ah, the burps that ensue after this. Raw garlic! RUN AWAY! I have found that it is superduper gross if you follow up your salad with a dessert of something chocolatey.

I will soon have to pare back my forays into the garlic salad, after too many of them, one starts to smell like a salami. Nice if you work in a deli, not so nice when you have an interview coming up. I’ve been doing my best to only have them once or twice a week though.

Garlic’s healthy, right? Keeps away the cancerous vampire or something.

I’ve been experimenting lately with Indian spices. Earlier in the week, I made tandoori marinated grilled chicken breasts that were great! Today I decided to play around a bit more with the spices that I bought at the Indian market.

I am trying to find more ways to enjoy chicken. It’s much healthier than beef and I’m feeling the need to eat more healthy foods. At the suggestion of one of my livejournal buddies, I went looking for ground chicken. The idea in my head was some sort of Indian spiced stuffed peppers, as I had 3 lovely red bell peppers in my fridge. I went by Wal-Mart (yes, I know that it’s the devil, but they have cereal much much cheaper than Kroger) and they did not have ground chicken. I didn’t feel like making two stops, so I went with ground turkey.

I dug through the fridge and found most of an onion and a few mushrooms. Sadly, the salad I’d planned on having with dinner had already gone brownish, and I won’t touch lettuce that is at all brown. I am picky, I admit it.

First, I dug in the cabinet for the last of the wild/brown rice and added a bit of basmati to round it off to a cup. This I put into a pan to cook with a can of beef broth and a wee bit of water.

I rough diced the onion, the mushrooms, one of the bell peppers, and 3 cloves of garlic. I preheated my largest everyday pan (gotta love that Calphalon!) with a little olive oil and tossed in the turkey and all of the veggies. To this I added 1 tablespoon of garam masala and a teaspoon of paprika, and sauted/fried/whatever until the meat was done. Turkey never seems to brown, but the spices gave it a browner color and most likely my dad would have never known that it wasn’t hamburger if I hadn’t told him.

While all of this cooked, I mixed up a tahini garlic sauce. I used 3 tablespoons of tahini, 1 clove of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, the juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon of yogurt and a bit of water. It tasted rather bitter, so I tried adding a bit more yogurt and some paprika. It was still a bit on the bitter side, but I decided to let it be.

When the rice and meat were pretty much done, I dumped the rice in with the meat and veggies. To this I added an eight ounce can of tomato sauce and a bit of white wine. And plenty of salt.

Then I started the creamed corn. I cheated and started with a frozen log, but it’s some really tasty corn. I added some rosemary and turmeric to the corn while it heated.

Meanwhile, back in the other pan, there’s no way that all of this mixture is fitting into two lonely little peppers. So, I sliced them up into strips and arranged them on top of the filling mixture. Then I covered the pan and let the peppers steam while the corn warmed through.

When it was all done, it tasted wonderful. I spooned the meat and rice mixture onto a plate with some of the steamed pepper strips and drizzled it with a little of the tahini sauce. Beside that I put a spoonful of the creamed corn. It was so yummy that I could have eaten myself silly. No pictures, because it turned out looking like one of those pre-chewed dishes. Seems that most brownish colored dishes with rice included turn out like that.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about my mother, and most especially about her kitchen – the things I learned from her. Sometimes I think that I’m still a teenager at heart, rebelling against my mother, striking out on my own and testing the waters. In very few ways have I ever been able to escape her reign. Those of you who’ve known me for any time at all know how much those apron strings choke me but that no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to free myself, she wields guilt like a weapon reigning me back in when I pull too far away. In the kitchen however, I am completely my own person.

When I was young, my mom actually cooked things. She made biscuits from scratch and real mashed potatoes and sit down dinners. But with every passing year her interest in cooking has dwindled. I truly expect her to declare it too much trouble to heat things up any day now and I will find her eating cold soup directly from the can. A woman who loves a shortcut, why make a cheesecake when Kroger will do it for you? I will admit to occasionally using those packaged shortcuts, especially on a work night. But when I set out to cook, I dive into it completely. However, my greatest kitchen shame is this – I can not make a macaroni and cheese that I like as well as what comes from the blue box, especially when made with butter and cream. I have tried repeatedly, but always wind up with a glompy mess that lurks in the back of the refrigerator until it is unrecognizable.

It’s funny – my mom loves food, loves to try new things. However, she’s rarely been able to bring herself to break away from the familiar in the kitchen. Myself, I love to branch out into uncharted territory and experiment in the kitchen. I’ll bring home vegetables from the farmers’ market just because they were “pretty”, having no clue what I will do with them. Then I’ll break out the stack of cookbooks and find some recipe to play with. And if it turns out badly? So what? That’s why we keep peanut butter and bread around the house.

Dad and I are creatures of habit. It probably took us 7 years after mom left to rearrange anything in the kitchen, and most things are still kept exactly where they were when it was her kitchen. Some things may have shifted up or down a shelf, but I believe that everything is still in the same cabinet it was always in. It isn’t her kitchen anymore though, it is mine. Sort of. It’s mostly dad’s, but he doesn’t do much of the cooking anymore.

Someday I will have my own kitchen again. One where I can put all of my gadgets (instead of hiding them away in stuff jail) and where the precious kitchen aid stand mixer will once again have a permanent spot on the counter instead of having to be lugged up and down the hall and stored in a closet. That boy is durned heavy.

I know, not one peep in almost two months.

Have I stopped cooking? Nope. I’ve even made a couple of completely scrumptious things. I’ve just not taken pictures. I guess I’m too lazy to be a good foodblogger.

Did I stop crafting? Nope on that one too. I just haven’t taken any pictures of anything. I’ve only finished a couple of things, but have lots of stuff in the works. Hopefully I’ll post one big schmear of pictures later.

Work is sucking my will to live on a daily basis. I’ve spiraled into a good solid depression again. I go home and don’t have energy for much, but I do lose myself in lots of hot baths, good books and the occasional project. I just don’t have a thing to say.

Hopefully, I will soon start to pull back out of this.

Since the weather had decided to cool off and the calendar finally said October, I spent yesterday baking. I made a turkey with all the fixin’s, all fine but unremarkable. What was remarkable, however, was dessert. I tried out a recipe that I got from the local paper a couple of weeks ago for Oatmeal Cake.

This cake may be the death of me. It is spendid and I can not stop eating it. I have already declared that I must make another one later this week to take to Mimi’s for our knitting evening. (She’s going to teach me what I’m doing wrong, and we’re going to start Harry Potter scarves for ourselves.)

I thought I’d share this one since it is so very tasty, but I will not post a picture, because I burned it. Learn from my mistake and watch it carefully while it’s under the broiler. This is not a good time to wander off for a soda.

Oatmeal Cake

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup quick rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 stick butter
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
Frosting (recipe follows)

Add boiling water to oats and set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream sugars and butter. Add Eggs, flour, cinnamon and soda. When all is blended, add to oatmeal mixture. The cake mix will be runny. Pour into a greased 9 by 13 inch pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

Frosting

6 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 cup coconut
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and pour over warm oatmeal cake. Put Cake under broiler until frosting is bubbly and lightly toasted.

It’s funny how a food item can be wonderful one day and crap the next.

Tuesday night I made myself a salad: iceberg lettuce, cheese, mandarin oranges, lemon pepper tuna, homemade croutons, and russian dressing. Nirvana in a bowl.

On thursday, I made practically the same salad. And wound up throwing most of it away because it tasted awful to me. *shrug* I’ll never understand the subtle quirks of my own palate.

Last night I drove home craving salad. I’d asked my pop to pick up a head of lettuce at the store and I had a jar of homemade russian dressing on the counter. I’m still craving that salad, pop can’t remember more than one thing at a time without a list. Of course, it’s not like I have room to talk, I’ve needed a new shower curtain for months and keep forgetting it. I’m also the same person who forgot pretzels from one end of WalMart to the other.

So, I get home and there’s no lettuce. Yesterday was every single bit a Monday, so I didn’t feel like going back out into the world once I’d finally escaped. So, I started throwing things together from the cabinet.

I started off boiling some whole wheat noodles. While those were cooking I looked in the fridge and found the asparagus I’d already forgotten about buying 2 days ago. I grilled the aspargus and chopped it into small pieces. Added a package of garlic & herb tuna, a can of black olives, a roasted red pepper, and some chopped green olives. Topped the whole thing with a little red wine vinegar and olive oil and tossed.

Verdict? Not bad. Not great, but not bad. It fulfilled all of the requirements of a monday night dinner – it wasn’t terribly difficult, it was something different, it filled me up, and it didn’t make the tummy hurt.

Partly, it was too many different flavors. Maybe next time I will leave out the green olives.

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We have GOT to clean out the chest freezer. It’s got such big gobs of ice near the top that I can’t move the hanging baskets around to really look beneath them. So, this weekend, I am planning to cook that turkey breast that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

Maybe I can master Nana’s dressing.

The Perkiest Man Alive once told me a story about how his grandmother would make a separate pie for each and every member of her family on thanksgiving. When you arrived at her house, there was a table absolutely groaning under the weight of pies, each of them with a name tag beside them. It didn’t matter if both you and your cousin liked the same pie, you still each got your own.

Since then I’ve had a vision in my head of that table full of pies. I would like to make one of those myself. Maybe not one pie for each person, because I like variety and I might want to try some of those other pies (sharing is a must!), but at least one pie per person, with each person’s favorite pie being there plus a few extra. Key Lime, Mississippi Mud, Mixed Berry, Pecan, Butterscotch and several others that aren’t currently popping into my mind.

So, tell me, what’s your favorite kind of pie?

I used to have this officemate who loved key lime pie. Every time he would mention it, I would reply with “I have the best recipe for that…” but never brought him either the recipe or the pie. I’ve been saying to myself for the past year that I was going to make key lime pie and take him some, but I just haven’t done it. I probably haven’t made it in 3 years or longer.

Tonight I decided to change that. And, since of course “pies come in twos” as my pop says, I made two of them. One for pop and I to scarf and one for Steve. Sharing a cubicle wall with Mr. Grumpy Pants has made me miss my crazy whistling roomie, the perkiest man alive.

I even remembered to copy down the recipe for him, so that hopefully he can get his wife to make it next time.

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