i think that i'm a farmer, but i'm not

birdseye view of romas

Here's evidence of why I don't post very often, I've been getting dirty. This summer marks my first serious attempt to grow a few edibles to bring to the table. Considering I have the smallest city plot that can barely be classified as land, I'd say my efforts weren't too shabby. I managed to avoid the plague of the stink bugs, at least up until now.

Lessons learned, gardening takes a ton of time and you don't always get out of it what you put in; plants need water and sun; baby stinkbugs will look cute until you realize they are stinkbugs and now you must commit homicide; and cats like chocolate mint.

a proud moment with a big cucumber and beefsteak tomato

I've dried some tea herbs already, and hopefully will make an attempt to dry more for the winter. I have enough garlic to ward off all the vampires in Western Pennsylvania. I perpetually have dirt under my fingernails and in the creases of my thumbs. Mostly I don't  make an effort to clean it off because I like how it reminds me that I'm a simple tiny human who thinks I can manipulate the humble piece of Earth I tend.

sideways upside-down view of cucumbers

a photographic moment of my first cucumber and tomato

blue's thought bubble reads, why are you making me stay inside while you're playing in the dirt?

More gardening things to come...stay tuned.

new orleans, city of sugar

In mid-February, I had the chance to shed my down coat and visit New Orleans, a city where its insane abundance of alcohol will keep you warm. Being a non-meat eater, I knew dining in a city surrounded by water and fed by aquatic creatures would prove to be a challenge. I decided the best approach to this was to invert my food pyramid, making sugar, fats and oil at the very bottom with a healthy 6-8 servings a day. I'm on vacation, right?

I dare you to meet a more delicious ice pop.

First up was this delectable frozen treat from the most amazing ice pop stand, Meltdown. In a sea of drunken crowds, strippers, cheap plastic beads and artificially colored drinks, this was our only safe haven in the French Quarter. There was a great selection of pops ranging from vegan, gluten-free, tons or gluten and dairy and fruit. Naturally, we went for the fattiest ones that were offered. The tan colored ice pop on the right is a bestseller, salted caramel. I intentionally elected to pass on this flavor, knowing I'd consume this delicious slightly sweet but also pleasingly salty treat in less than two bites. I decided on the saffron rosewater flavor without the slightest clue as to what saffron tastes like. I still have no idea, but I can tell you that it was the creamiest most beautiful frozen treat to grace my mouth.

A feast that could reasonably feed 5 hungry people.

What do you get when you put jerk seasoning on everything? Um, something wonderful. After crawling the sidewalks of Magazine Street and looking at enough antiques to make my eyes bleed, we needed lunch, and a big one at that. Wait, make that gigantic. We decided on a Caribbean taqueria called, The Rum House. Immediately we ordered the avocado mango dip, which you can see was completely devoured (empty green plate on top left). As always, vegetarian options were lacking, but that was ok because I would have been completely thrilled to eat a bowl of roasted poblano and manchego polenta (bottom center in picture). I still think about that polenta to this day. We both ordered the jerked veggie tacos, and they were great. The other side dishes that were almost as tasty as the polenta were jalapeno coleslaw (pictured center), fried plantains that tasted like butter (yum!) and coconut mango rice. You better believe we ate every last bite.

Sucré. Oprah loves it, why shouldn't you?

$5 sicilian pistachio gelato. It now lives in my thighs.

Sucré is a pretty hyped, highly publicized and endorsed upscale sweet shop. They are known for their authentic french macaroons. Everything is super decadent and unreasonably priced, but hey, there's edible glitter. They have some pretty exciting things on their menu such as every flavor of gelato you can think of, not to mention spiked gelato floats.

Beignets and au laits.
Excuse the poor photography, I was robotripping.

Café Du Monde is the place that EVERYONE says is a must when you go to New Orleans. A 24 hour/7 days a week bustling people watching spot, known for their café au lait and beignets. It made for the perfect snack for a chilly evening, while complimenting my random bout of allergies with a hacking cough. I enjoyed my sweet confection with a few swigs of cough syrup, straight from the bottle.

Our bill from Slice, a pizza shop. They either hated us or are just a raunchy bunch.

A little bit of Pittsburgh in every city. The Primanti Burger! Sounds gross!

The moment I had truly been waiting for.
Straight from my brain and into my mouth,
a champagne float

My last memory of New Orleans will be the beautiful creation of a champagne float that I have been dreaming of. I eyed the float list the first time I entered Sucré and just knew I had to have one. I'd been conjuring the idea to create such a thing at home, but never got around to it due to my severe laziness. The exact menu name of my treat was called, the Sorbellini, a seasonal sorbet and champagne. Other concoctions included the Grasshopper, vanilla gelato and créme de menthe; Life by Chocolate, chocolate gelato with shots of Godiva liquor and Bailey's; The Velvet Hammer, vanilla gelato, brandy and nutmeg; and A Bunch of Nuts, brown butter pecan gelato, Frangelico and praline liquor. A lushes dream come true.

And last but not least, a pair of sweet sister dogs named Sugar and Cookie.



r.i.p.

My house is pretty quirky. Although I'd like to consider those quirks to be charming, my 30 year old Caloric stove did not fall under that category. It sure was a cute little appliance, with it's retro clock in the center (the vintage blue colored hands may have been the sole reason I kept it around). I stood by its side for as long as I could until I found a great deal on a new stainless model. I had a bond with that little stove. So what if I have to strike a match every time I need to light the front right burner? Who cares if the oven temperature knob has absolutely no correlation to the actual oven temperature? My oven made me feel special, I was the only one in the world that knew and understood its demands.

Caloric, I tip my oven mitt to you. I may have scars from tragic pizza burns, but your basic oven/stove functions got me by and I have full bellies, happy eaters and nice times to show for it, so thanks.

r.i.p. little caloric, you did me well.

gluten freedom

Baking is sometimes a challenge in itself. One of the main reasons I love it though, is because of my slightly obsessive nature. It's one of the few times I can appreciate little room for creativity and a respect for authority (such as following a recipe from dear ol' Ms. Martha Stewart). I'd consider myself slightly practiced in vegan baking, but gluten-free? Not so much. Baking a diary/nut/soy/gluten free dessert? I was up for the challenge.

I went straight to my old faithful tried and true vegan blondie recipe. I figured if anything, how bad could an experiemental blondie be? Still has plenty of chocolate and sugar, can't be so bad! Two ingredients that needed subsitutions were the yogurt and flour. To my surprise, a few exellent alternatives to soy yogurt exist; a coconut and rice derived yogurt. I went for the rice yogurt, thinking the coconut would be a bit too sweet. Subsituting flour seemed easy once I hit the grocery store.

There are a ton of flour options; chickpea, brown rice, quinoa, potato, and the list goes on and on.
When using gluten free flours, usually a scant amount of xanthan gum is added to the flour to allow the ingredients to bind together.
After much delberation over the $12.99 bag of Bob's Red Mill, I decided binding wasn't so important to me after all.


The end result was a melt in your mouth, no need to chew blondie! No binding agent gave me the wrong texture, but I didn't care. Chocolate is good anyway, especially when consumed in excess and shared with good friends.

a tender yet chewey miracle

As the New Year is upon us, I've been thinking about my favorite edible creations and discoveries of 2010. Hands down, this notion goes to a little something I'd like to call miracle pretzels. These things will make you a believer. From this point on, neither the birth of a baby or the ability to walk on water will seem like an act of divine intervention. You'll have to make pretzels to experience a true miracle.

Pretzels: essentially a category of bread. Bread: the substance of life (or is that water?). It doesn't matter, water is a key component to perform said miracle, thusly confirming the fact making pretzels is equivalent to healing the sick or giving sight to the blind. Bread? Water? What's hugely important to remember is that pretzels are the basis of all life.

These doughy delights are simple to make and very impressive to those that are unaware of how easy they are to prepare. The true magic starts after you shape the pretzels, throw them in a crap ton of water and baking soda and watch them grow into beautiful voluptuous nuggins of awesomeness. Bake them until they're golden and radiant, then eat.

Lastly, make sure to use the most giant pieces of salt that you can find (as demonstrated in picture below). I used rock salt...just kidding.

Dear friends, I give you the gift of pretzels.

that's nutz

Another item included in my cooking fury mentioned in my previous post, were roasted cashews. It probably took several hundred dollars worth of purchasing various kinds of roasted nuts during my lifetime to finally realize, hey I could do this myself and it'd most likely taste better. I've made caramelized cashews with cayenne a few times. I have the same feeling towards this recipe of cashews as I do towards m&m's: they're not that great, but for some reason you cannot stop eating them. The maple syrup most likely makes them particularly addictive. Although, there's something about the zing from cayenne. Below is a photo of the little raw nuts. Cute, yes?

liquid gold

I am a bad blogger (p.s. I hate that term). It's been far too long since I last documented my kitchen adventures.
A few Sundays ago, I was a fiercely productive domestic debbie in the kitchen. On the menu that evening was my favorite, butternut squash soup! I've experimented with a lot of recipes, receiving different results each time. Are all butternut squash created equal? Roasting versus being impatient and just cutting up a raw squash until your fingers bleed? Mysteries I have yet to solve. I really wanted to make a butternut squash soup on the sweeter side. I found an Alton Brown  recipe with rave reviews that looked worth a try. Honey, ginger and heavy cream! Can't go wrong!


Is that a squash on your counter,
or are you just happy to see me?




First, I'd like to introduce my giant ass butternut squash. Giant ass squash, meet readers. Readers, meet giant ass squash. Seriously. Look at the size of this thing. Surprisingly, it was the "smallest" to select from at the store. I bought it during a pumpkin picking excursion. The farm has a country market where they sell produce and jams and such. All of their "homegrown" produce was unnaturally huge. I'm talking peppers the size of an infant's head. Typically I use two small butternut squash for a pot of soup. In this case, all that was needed was just one big giant ass squash.







 

1/4 of a roasted giant ass squash




liquid gold. yum.

 


The finished soup was pretty nice. Roasting the squash seemed to bring out more flavor. The soup was a little too sweet for what I was craving, I think the amount of honey I uncontrollably squeezed in might have had something to do with it. Adding some thyme to the top helped mellow the sweetness. Simple, quick and nice!