Coziness

I’ve been very inspired lately by the women over at the new blog, Habit.  It’s a great blog where each person posts a picture nearly every day with a brief statement about how the day went (or is going).  It always feels thoughtful and as though the day slows down just a little for them (most have young kids) and gives them a little space when they take the photos and write the posts.  I only wish I could be half as eloquent.  But I suppose this has never quite been that kind of blog.  I feel pensive sometimes, but it never quite comes out as thoughtfully here as I’d like.

But the other night with Mr. Pea still in California, I thought I’d take a stab at the sort of photos I like on other people’s blogs.  Shots of neighborhoods at dusk, when everything is starting to get that blue tint; cozy corners of homes, where people are clearly comfortable and happy.  So here are a few of my photos.  The first one is in the dining room–the Christmas lights that still remain, entwined around a a shelf of cookbooks.  This next one is the view out my kitchen window.

This is the corner of the couch, by my favorite lamp, where I spend a lot of my time.  It’s where I am right now, actually.

And this is the cat and I, about 12:30 the other night (a time I rarely see, but there was a dead car battery and some panicking and this made me very awake).  He kept kneading my sweater, standing in between myself and the computer, so I carefully opened Photobooth as best I could and snapped a couple pictures of him.  We were very cozy, indeed.

Project: Cat

Do not be swayed by the adorableness that is our cat, Tuesday. Tuesday and I have embarked on a project the last week which involves reforming some of his less than glamorous habits. Mr. Pea has been in California since Saturday, and while we had a houseguest for a couple of days (Tuesday does not dig houseguests), it is now just he and I and has been since Monday night. As such, we’ve been working on the project.

While Tuesday is all sweet and cute 78% of the time, in the other 22% of the time, he’s in the following position:

Licking. Washing. Endlessly.

Now I know cats love to wash themselves. I know it’s what they do for a good part of the day. But Tuesday here prefers to wash with one of us as his bathmat, right as we try to go to bed. This week I’m trying to get him to kick the habit. It’d be one thing if the baths only lasted 20 minutes before bed, but off and on for the last year or so these baths have grown so that they go on for more than an hour, and if you wiggle at some point before he’s soundly asleep at 2 am, he’ll start again. From the beginning. Yarg. He also shakes the whole bed when he really gets going.

I’d like to think he’s coming along, though. Last night I crawled into bed with a book and Tuesday hopped up on me and began to wash. When I was done reading, I informed him that he was done bathing and held his furry head still a minute. He sighed and went to sleep. And he would have stayed asleep a long time, I suspect, if I didn’t have to pry myself out from underneath him 2 hours later when I began to regret having a glass of water before bed. Once I climbed back in, though, he took a small bath, I held his head a minute, and back to sleep he went. Hmm. Maybe he’s finally learning.

Odds are, though, that since he’s a cat, he’s just being successful in training me, and I hate to think for what….

Cheese–Action Shots!

My cousin Sean has been here to visit for the past few days and really wanted to make cheese. This gave me a chance to get a few action shots for you. I’m not going to get into the process in detail–that’s what the cheesemaking kit is for!–but this is what it looks like.

Incidentally, the Kitchn had a post that went up this weekend about a problem making their mozzarella with what sounds like the same method. It looks like they may have used the wrong milk–if the milk is ultrapasteurized, it won’t work. Our cheese, on the other hand, came out fantastic. Maybe because I was a little stuffy the first time we made our cheese and I couldn’t really taste it so well; maybe I overkneaded it, or maybe because the proportion of the rennet tablet used was a bit smaller; for whatever reason, I found this batch to be much more cheesy-tasting. It was divine. Yum.

You start by heating the milk, which is mixed with citric acid. You have to stir constantly. Afterward you add rennet, stirring, and set it aside. You get a big ol layer of curd, which you cut and reheat.

Here are the curds, being stirred and reheated. The liquid you see is the whey. After you do this a while, you drain off the whey and melt your curds, which you then shape into cheese by stretching it, like this:

And that’s how you make cheese!

Ta daaa! Fresh Mozzarella!

Here is what remained of our fresh mozzarella when I went to make pizza last night. It had been in the fridge, in a bowl of water, for several days. Behind it you can see the kit for making it. In the near future I’ll do a post with how-to photos, but this will have to do for now!

Making your own cheese with this kit is really very easy, though I’d hate to do it alone. Having another pair of hands is very helpful. Mr. Pea and I made this ball of cheese together last week. It started as a gallon of milk. The butcher down the road gets shipments of milk from a local dairy, so I went there for it; a gallon was really inexpensive at $2.99. I poured the milk into a large stainless steel stockpot. The kit contains two main ingredients–citric acid and vegetarian rennet. A bit of each are dissolved in water and set aside. The acid is added to the milk right away; you heat to a specified temperature (the kit contains a thermometer), and then add rennet to make the curd. You let it sit, then heat it up, and stir your curd. Then the whey is drained off and saved to make pizza crust with a recipe in the kit; the remaining curd is microwaved to a specified temp, and then shaped into a ball, just like you’d get at the grocery store. Only better. And really, really cheap. Our local grocery store flyer has fresh mozzarella on sale this week for $6.99/lb; a $3 gallon of milk yielded just under a pound of cheese, and the kit itself makes 30 batches.

I liked the cheese best the day after we made it–fresh mozzarella is a very delicately flavored cheese, and it was a little more developed the next day or so. For several days I’d just pull the ball out of the fridge and cut off a hunk to nibble on. We also made three pizzas in addition to just munching on it. It gives pizza a different texture, sorta, than the shreds you buy at the store–because you really can’t shred it, you have to plunk little pieces down and you don’t get the cheesy mass pizza tends to be. I kind of prefer the cheesy mass on pizza and prefer eating the fresh mozz all by its lonesome, or, when the season changes, with fresh tomatoes and basil.

This time I used 1% milk; next time I’m going to try either 2% or whole and see if that changes anything. If you’ve ever thought about trying to make your own cheese, and you’ve got a friend to help you out or are much more coordinated than I am, you should give this kit a whirl.

In search of casseroles without soup…

This time of year feels like warm, yummy casserole season to me. As I start perusing recipes, however, many of them contain a can of cream of something soup. While I have used them in the past I haven’t in a long time, and am not a huge fan of them. So, then, I have a request for you–can you recommend favorite casseroles/hot dishes/bakes that don’t require a can of cream of mushroom or cream of chicken? I’ll try each and every one, so long as they don’t contain fish (ew).

Food for thought: brain food

I’m not talking about fish, with its supposed brain improving power here (incidentally, I think fish is nasty. My brain still seems ok). I’m talking about what we feed our brains, and by extension, the rest of us. The other day on a website I frequent, there was an excerpt from a magazine for “intelligent” optimists, which I guess are those who are not unrealistic in their optimistic expectations. The piece was about avoiding things which cause you to create negativity in yourself. Hm, says I, this sounds like me. I am a glass-is-half-full kind of girl, but sadly, lately, more prone to anxiety from external factors. The last year has been stressful for me, and only more so for a lot of other people; as a result, I tend to ‘feed’ my mind an overdose of information (ie, news) in order to feel like I understand and can control it, and instead sometimes find myself feeling like I’m swimming in an angry choppy sea.

The piece starts by talking about Michael Pollan’s writing, which I’ve talked about here before, and the idea of avoiding ingesting artificialities in food. I started really working at that over the summer, and even weeding out chemicals from my shampoos/soaps/makeup, etc. And then it says this:

“Just as you wouldn’t mindlessly slather on toxins in your skin care or ingest nasty chemicals in your food, please be careful about what your mind ingests. Look for positive, inspiring stories…movies and music to lift your mind and heart. Take joy in the blessings of health, family and friends. And if it is getting you down, turn off the news.”

Hey, that’s nice! And it makes so much sense! It’s not a call to bury one’s head in the sand, but to moderate what one ingests in favor of maintaining balance and sanity. Not bad advice at all.

And since I had toast for breakfast and we had lunch out (more shoddy weather=cabin fever=out for burritos), that’s your food fix for the day! Food for thought, not for your face

Credit here goes to writer Mark Arsenault of Ode Magazine.

Chicken and Edamame Stir-Fry

Last night we had this unphotogenic but very tasty chicken and edamame stir-fry for dinner. I wish I took beautiful food photos all the time, but I lack the eye and the patience for the most part. Plus I tend to photograph stuff in their ‘leftovers’ state, rather than when they’re shiny and freshly made. That’s the case with this stir-fry. Pay no attention to the bit of tupperware you can see. Just think of how many tasty vitamins there are in here! How easy it is to make! That’s what matters! The recipe, incidentally, is from an old backissue of Everyday Foods.

For those of you who might be wondering what edamame is, it’s a fancy word for soybean. Soybeans are tasty little numbers packed full of protein and fiber. Yummy and nutritious. You can buy them shelled or unshelled. They come frozen at the grocery store and a lot of people like them for snacks. Our Trader Joe’s only had the unshelled edamame, so this recipe began for me by nuking them until defrosted and prying them apart, popping out the little beans. My one-pound sack yielded just over a cup of actual edamame. The recipe initially called for 2 cups, but I that would be an overwhelming amount of beans. This amount was perfect.

Anyway, once that’s done, set them aside. Get a pot of water going–you’re going to cook 8 oz of linguine (half a box) for this. Timing, if you can manage, is ideal here–you can cook everything else while your linguine cooks and then add the linguine to the pot. I have bad timing, so my linguine sat in the colander a while. Whatever. It was fine!

Anyway. Slice half a 1-pound napa cabbage up thinly. Set that aside. Slice an onion thinly, and 2 cloves of garlic. Set aside.

Slice two chicken breasts thinly. Toss them with a tablespoon of cornstarch and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Heat up a big old skillet on medium to high heat. The recipe calls for nonstick, but since all my nonstick pans grossly began to flake, I’ve ditched them altogether. Add 1 T of canola oil to your pan. When hot, add half to all of your chicken (depends on how much space you have. if you have room, put them all in there. If not, don’t.) After a minute or two, flip. Mine stuck just a bit but I got them up with a spatula no problem. Remove from pan and set aside.

Now right about here the smoke detector went off. We have a very, very sensitive smoke detector and the little bits of stuck chicken smoked a bit and set it off. So I gave my pan a rinse and dry and opened a window. If you don’t set off your detector and your pan isn’t full of overbrowned bits, don’t worry.

Put back on medium-high heat. Add another T of canola oil. Add onion and garlic and cook 2-3 minutes until softened. Add cabbage. Stirring and tossing frequently, cook 2-4 minutes. Add edamame, linguine, chicken, 2 T soy sauce and 2 T rice vinegar. Toss, toss, toss. Add a little black pepper and you’re good to go. Yum!

Mini Chimichangas

When we lived in Boston we had a little Mexican restaurant around the corner from us that consumed most of our disposable income. We loved this place. Adored it. One of my favorite things to order there was the chimichanga. With that in mind I went looking for simple chimichanga recipes the other day. While this chimichanga tastes and looks absolutely nothing like theirs, it is still a tasty recipe to try out.

I should mention that these were not initially going to be cute party-sized versions of chimichangas. While grocery shopping I bought small flour tortillas rather than big ones. I figured we’d make tostada-type things out of them, but Mr. Pea insisted we could still make chimichangas. And voila. Here they are.

Now the first thing we did was make our own refried beans. I saw the cans of them at the grocery store and the truth here is that I didn’t want to pay $1.89 for refried beans when I could get a can of pintos for .99 cents and do it myself. And besides, who knows what’s in the refried can? Beans! Lard! Mystery ingredients! Probably not, but that’s how I justify making a lot more work for myself.

There are oodles of recipes out there for refried beans; I was looking for one that didn’t involve so much frying, and went with this one, skipping the cheese and pureeing the whole thing in the blender for a much better texture. I then just set it aside, trying not to eat it. It’s pretty tasty.

Then we began the chimichangas. The recipe is based on one on Recipezaar, modified for the things I forgot at the store. The recipe should make 4 full-sized chimichangas, and we got some uh 10 (I think) little ones.

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 t olive oil
8 oz refried beans (we used about a half cup–I’d cut back some when I make these again)
3/4 c salsa
1 c cooked rice (we had white rice from Chinese take-out in the fridge that we used–original recipe calls for brown)
1 16 oz can black bean (I like the low-sodium ones by Goya)
1 t cumin
1 1/2 T plain yogurt (it originally called for sour cream, which I forgot)
3/4 c grated cheddar
flour tortillas (burrito sized for full-sized chimis; we used 6″)

Start by sauteeing the onion and garlic in the olive oil until softened and a little browned. Mix these with everything else, except for the tortillas. Warm up the tortillas in the microwave (cover with a wet paper towel and nuke for 30 seconds or so). This makes them more pliable. Place some filling in the center of the tortilla (3/4-1 c for big chimis, much less for minis–about half) and fold up on all four sides. Place on a cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Bake in a 400 oven for 15-20 minutes until browned. They will be extremely hot inside when you take them out of the oven–I burned my tongue on my first couple of bites.

Garnish with any extra cheese and refried beans.

D’oh.

Today I made mini cupcakes with a kit my brother’s family gave us for Christmas. They provide the dry ingredients with adorable written instructions by our six-year-old nephew, and we provide the wet. But I forgot to grease the tin. Now we have mini cupcake tops and separate mini cupcake bottoms. I also whacked my knuckle when trying to rotate the pan while it was baking against one of the oven racks. I have a nice tiny blister there now. Let’s hope the bread I just started goes more smoothly! Yikes!

Oatmeal bananas foster?

I’m not sure yet how I feel about this one. It’s tasty, but kind of funky. Definitely heartier than my usual oatmeal. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Get the oatmeal going:
In a small pan on a medium-low burner, add 1/3 c oats and cover with water. Bring to a simmer. Cook five or so minutes until done. Add 1 tsp of brown sugar, 4 or 5 pecan halves, chopped, about 1/4 t of cinnamon, pinch of salt, and one chopped banana. Stir to warm through.