June 09, 2008
new food obsession--elvis nachos
This one really reflects my personality when it comes to food: I *want* to be a healthy, crunchy-granola, flax-seed eating nutrition zealot.
But I am WEAK. Weak I tell you.
So, what I have eaten at least once a day for the last week starts out sounding wonderfully good for you, and then BANG, the not-so-secret last ingredient pretty much ruins it for being tagged as "healthy."
Quarter a whole wheat pita and toast it.
Glob (or dab, as you prefer) peanut butter on each toasted quarter. I like Skippy Natural.
Slice one banana, willy-nilly, over the top of the peanut-butter globbed quarters.
(And this is where the sane person would stop. Me = non sane.)
Take a handful of potato chips and throw them on top of the bananas.
The result is a plate full of nacho-like wonderfulness.
And of course: eat over the sink. Or, in front of your Google Reader, taking care not to glob the pb on your keyboard.
Posted by mryonker at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)
April 14, 2008
thanks, runningburro
I am now officially, OFFICIALLY, a vegetarian.
Officially.
Hole. EE. Crap.
Posted by mryonker at 11:29 AM | Comments (3)
March 28, 2008
what I'm eating
I know that if I was a blogger worth her salt I'd consistently post pictures of what I'm eating. But I'm also old-fashioned like my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Steinacker (or Steinbrenner, or Steinbergen-something) at East Butler Elementary School in Dwight, Nebraska. She berated her class of 7-year olds in 1983 that "not all books have pictures; in fact, smart kids can make the pictures in their HEADS, and you should be at the point where you're making your OWN pictures, not letting someone make the pictures for you."
/disclaiming preamble
1 ripe avocado. [Locally, the best are at Price Chopper right now, though you can't go wrong with Wegman's either. Stay away from Wal-Mart avocados. They will always make you sad, with their seemingly firm-yet-yielding resistance. You will bring them home and cry to find their innards brown and stringy.]
Mash the avocado with a few globs of cottage cheese and a generous generous sprinkling of garlic powder. If you have no cottage cheese, you can stick an ounce of cream cheese in there instead, though I'm trying to cut back on fat* so I'm doing a lot of substituting cottage for cream these days. Also, "generous sprinkling" of garlic powder is a bit of a euphemism; I tend to cover the top layer of the mash with garlic powder completely.
Spread on toasted whole wheat pita bread. Eat over sink. Use finger to squeegie remaining avocado from the bottom of the bowl.
*Yes, I know how fatty avocados are. But it's a plant, and in my world plant fat doesn't count.
Posted by mryonker at 09:12 AM | Comments (8)
June 28, 2007
the gross thing I'm eating today
Strawberries dipped in sugar.
This marks my resignation back to mostly-housewifery. Since B has been in school the past two years, I've been essentially free to do whatever I wanted, and could easily guilt him into doing housework and watching the kids whenever I wanted.
Now he's a working stiff again, gone from 6 until 4. I'm home, chasing kids and wiping butts and noses and watching Ellen. Eating strawberries rolled in sugar. Dang, Jon Bon Jovi is OLD.
Posted by mryonker at 04:22 PM | Comments (2)
March 11, 2007
great green
So, my push for a vegetarian week was easily thwarted last night. B and I every-so-unoften bribe the neighbor girl with cash to watch the monster children in my house so we can sneak off and eat a non-kid meal.
Last night we treated ourselves to a local eatery that we have not yet tried in our 5 years living in the north country, and after our meal we wanted to kick ourselves for not having stopped in sooner.
Not only did B order a prime rib, which I *had* to sample, I decided that my usual Italian favorite, eggplant parmesan, was not a special enough dish for our date night, so I ordered seafood pasta with garlic and olive oil.
O. my. god. So. good.
At any rate, this morning I realized I heinously compromised my vegetarianism, so I decided to throw together a split pea. I don't normally call it soup because, as with the dal, I really prefer it thicker than any soup or stew normally is. Split pea the way I know it is flavored with ham, hence the total break in my attempted abstention from flesh.
1lb split peas
1lb ham steak cubed (or more if you want more meat)
1lb carrots chopped (I really like the sweetness carrots lend, so I use a lot)
1 onion diced
celery salt
pepper
1 Tbsp Bragg's
[clean and sort the peas if you want--sometimes I'm too impatient]
Boil the peas in 2 quarts of water for 15 minutes, and then take them from the heat and let them sit, covered, while you prep the vegetables and meat. Crank the heat back up to medium and throw all the other stuff in and cook it down until the peas are mush and the ham is fall-y apart-y. If you want your carrots intact when all is said and done, wait to put them in until the peas are cooked, and then simmer it for another half hour or so.
Pretty easy. I end up cooking mine for about an hour and a half or so, and I do have to baby sit it a little bit to make sure the pea mush doesn't settle into a thick sticky swamp on the bottom of the pan.
Posted by mryonker at 05:17 PM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2007
masoor dal
I'm kicking off a vegetarian eating week. Yesterday I made a pot of masoor dal. As per my usual habit, I spent a good bit of time on the internets looking at possible recipes, trying to find one that included ingredients that I had on hand. Then, with an *idea* in my head of what the dish needed and how it might be cooked, I ambled into my kitchen and started throwing ingredients at my stovetop.
It turned out pretty good.
2 C masoor (red) lentils
2 small onions diced
1 head (6-7 cloves) of garlic pressed
Tb olive oil
heaping tsp garam masala
heaping tsp tumeric
heaping tsp ground ginger
shake of red pepper flakes
can of diced tomato
Rinse the lentils and then boil in 1 quart of water for 15 minutes. Add garam masala, tumeric, and ginger and continue simmering on medium-low. Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until soft, and then add the pepper flakes and the (drained) tomato and cook for a few minutes. Then dump the onion-tomato mix into the lentil mush and continue to cook down, until it gets as thick as you want it. I prefer it thick, so I cooked it down for another 1/2 hour or so.
Especially good with a dollop of plain yogurt. I was sad, though, that the dal did not stay the pretty pink-orange color of the red lentils.
Posted by mryonker at 07:48 AM | Comments (2)
February 24, 2007
grading/feeding frenzy
A list: things consumed while grading a huge stack of essays*.
1. Medium coffee, cream and sugar, from Dunkin.
2. Wild Berry Power Bar.
3. Countless Toasted Ritz crackers spread with braunschweiger**.
4. Reese's Pieces.
5. Can of Pepsi.
6. Enormous slice of homemade garlic pizza (courtesy the resident chef, B).
7. Handful of Lay's dipped in French onion dip (abandoned soon--too salty).
I have about 8 papers left (out of the 30 or so I started with), and I'm seriously contemplating the Samoas hiding in the freezer. And the only reason I don't completely hate myself right now is that we've got 13 on the training schedule tomorrow.
*This over the course of the day, of course, lest you think I am absolutely disgusting. Which, of course, I am. Since I also had lunch at Ponderosa today during Big J's hockey tournament. And I won't even tell you what I ate there.
**Liverwurst. No one I know loves it as much as I do, and I tend to think it's because I'm chronically anemic.
Posted by mryonker at 08:55 PM | Comments (3)
February 03, 2007
brian's boiled dinner
Until today, I've posted my recipes and general food posts under the "daily dilly-dally" or the "momness" category. Now there's an "eating" category so that if you're looking for a recipe I posted, you'll be able to find it there.
Last night we had nasty weather, and after I came home from working the book fair, I opened the door of my house to the wonderful smell of Brian's boiled dinner. I should interrupt myself here to mention Brian's culinary acumen *far* exceeds mine. He's intuitive about spices and unabashed with his use of olive oil and fresh garlic. Brian's boiled dinner is distinctly from the beach, like he is, which is nice when it's 2F out and the snow is relentless.
A quick caveat: I am reproducing this recipe from careful observation and interviews with the chef; I have never made it personally. And this batch will only feed two adults--assuming you have a potato or some kind of starch on the side. Our kids think it's gross (poor them), and it doesn't save well as a leftover, so we only make as much as we can eat when it's HOT.
Assemble*:
Two handsful of fresh green beans
Two handsful of baby carrots
3 or 4 ears of corn, broken in half
1/2 pound of peeled shrimp
1/2 pound of scallops
1/4 C Old Bay Seasoning
A stick of butter
*Your assemblage can be fresh or frozen; you'll have to adjust the boiling time accordingly.
Fill a large stock pot with water and dump in the Old Bay. Put in the stuff that takes the longest to cook first (corn, carrots). Work backwards from there, throwing the greenbeans in soon after, and waiting until the vegetables are nearly done (or done all the way) before dumping in the seafood, which only takes a few minutes to be done.
Melt the butter. Use a large slotted spoon to dip into the pot and fish out your choice of vegies and seafood (don't be greedy and take all the scallops like I do); plate it up. Drizzle with melted butter. You can also be disgusting and take your own personal bowl of butter and dip in each bite as you're eating, like I do. Try not to overeat or drip butter on your good jeans.
A note about scallops: you can use the small bay scallops and this will still be a tremendous dinner. However, if you can get some nice big sea scallops this can be even more of a treat. The problem is that they tend to be expensive. If you live in CNY, though, Wegman's sometimes has the large babies frozen for a a reasonable 7.99 a pound. Brian likes to quarter the sea scallops so they cook a bit more evenly--although I think he quarters them so it's harder for me to steal them all.
Posted by mryonker at 11:15 AM | Comments (2)
January 23, 2007
post full of gratuitous Zs
Here's what I'm making today: cherry chip chocolate cookies. I found the recipe in a haggard, ragged issue of Shape magazine at H's dance studio last night, and in hasty shorthand I copied it onto a subscription postcard. Since the picture is backwards and illegible (save for the necessary note to self : YUM), I'll reproduce it here.
Oven: 350
5 Tb butter (soft)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/2 C light corn syrup
1 whole egg + 1 white
dash of vanilla extract
1 C flour
1/2 C unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 C dried cherries (I chopped them in the food processor)
1/2 C chopped pistacios
Mix it all up (if you're retentive, you can combine wet and dry separately first, but I'm entirely too impatient for that step--it all goes into the kichen aid).
Bake on parchment for 10 minutes. They are good. I bet our beloved Mary (and you all CCR peops know to whom I refer!) would dig them.
A few quick disclaimers here:
I am not elise. I'm an ardent fan and reader of hers, but I'm not her. My photographing skillz blow AND my camera is on the complete fritz (above photo courtesy of Photobooth). So I'm sorry I don't have a pretty pic of the cookies. But they just look like chocolate cookie blobs, anyway, and it's a COOKIE, dang it, so they don't last long enough to look at.
I have never cooked with corn syrup or "Dutch-processed cocoa powder" before. Corn syrup is scary stuff. It looks like it's going to pour easy (because it's clear, and I was thinking it would be syrup as in maple syrup, which is pretty thin), but it's decidedly thick and goopy. But it's sugar, that's for sure. I think the recipe needs the corn syrup to make the fudge-texture. But anyway, don't flame me because I'm using corn syrup. They're COOKIES. They're not supposed to be GOOD for you. Wah.
As for the cocoa, I couldn't find anything that said "Dutch-processed," probably because I was at Wal*Suck and they pretty much never have what I'm looking for. They never have saffron, either. But I digress. I simply got Hersey unsweetened cocoa powder and it worked fine.
Finally, the recipe calls for nutz but I left 'em out this time. But I think ANY nut would go good in this cookie. Next time, I'll find some walnuts or something to throw in there. Pistacios are made to be eaten solo, in my opinion.
Posted by mryonker at 01:27 PM | Comments (4)
December 12, 2006
what's on my plate
I've posted before how I eat obsessively. I eat particular foods over, and over, and over until I'm sick of them and never want to eat them again.
This is a tactic I learned from a book I read when I was in high school. I don't recall the title and the author, but it dealt with managing eating habits, specifically for those of us who cannot. This book was really really great in that it taught me a lot of stuff I can't remember...I loved it so much at the time that I promptly lent it to someone and never saw it again.
At any rate, the one thing I do remember is that the writer argued the best way to squelch an obsession (with a particular food item) was to simply feed it. That, once you've eaten a gallon of raw chocolate chip cookie dough (and this was her specific example), you probably won't want to look at another spoonful of it for a long, long, while.
This tactic has worked well for me. The obsession I'm feeding right now is with Apple Oven Pancakes.
Melt 2 Tbs butter in a pie plate
Sprinkle a thin coat of brown sugar evenly onto the butter
Arrange one peeled, thinly-sliced apple onto the sugar
Pour over the top of the apples a quick pancake batter (2 eggs, 1/2 C flour, 1/2 C milk, 1/4 tsp salt)
Bake @ 400 for 30 mins
Loosen sides and flip onto big plate immediately
The end product is somewhere between an elephant ear and an eggy pancake with apples and the perfect amount of sweet.
I would post pics, except I've already eaten half of it, and it ain't pretty no mo'.
Posted by mryonker at 02:31 PM | Comments (4)