Scenes from a Thanksgiving Kitchen

What a Crock

For my first crock pot recipe, I tried something on the sweeter side: Rice Pudding.  Heretofore a recipe most commonly used when there was at least 2 cups of leftover rice (already cooked) sitting in the fridge, I've now got a recipe that calls for raw rice, which takes a lot longer to cook in a slow cooker, and which means you can leave the house while it simmers.  My recipe is also a lot healthier than the ones that call for condensed milk, cream, or eggs.  Now that I think about it, it's actually vegan.  But don't let that stop you: it's quite rich and delicious.

3/4 c. short grain rice (you could even try brown)

3 c. soy milk (try vanilla-flavored if you've got it)

1/4 c. white sugar

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

3/4 tsp. salt

2 cinnamon sticks, or ground cinnamon to taste.

Put all ingredients into crock pot, stir well.  Cook on low for 2 1/2 hours, stirring once or twice if you're around.  And be careful: as is the case with regularly cooked rice, if you leave it on too long, you can over do it.  I was out running errands and came home to find my rice pudding quite firm and a tiny bit scorched on the sides.  It's still delicious, but I'll keep a better eye on it next time.  Enjoy for breakfast, dessert, or snack, chilled or warmed in the microwave.

Turkey Needs a Drink

Check out my latest science experiment: cranberry-infused vodka.  I spent a month fretting about those peaches, infusing and turning progressively browner with each day, and imagining that the whole thing would end up in the compost heap.  But last weekend I spent several hours filtering the stuff and once the peaches were dumped, the remaining spirits were clear and a lovely peach hue.  And more importantly, it tastes great!  Especially mixed with orange juice or lemonade.

So I started another small batch to share with my Thanksgiving company, this time with cranberries.  You know, in the holiday spirit and whatnot.  Check out the top photo, taken immediately after combining the alcohol with the crushed berries.  And the next photo is taken about five days later.  The vodka is a bright, zippy red and the cranberries look like maraschino cherries (yuck).  I added a little bit of simple syrup to this one, since cranberries are so sour.  I wonder what kinds of cocktails I should make with it.  Any suggestions?

On Being Loved

This afternoon I came home from my first professional conference.  Like many conferences that you hear about or see in movies, it was put on by an organization with a long and easy-to-forget acronym (AAWCC), and it's held at an airport hotel in one of those large, beige ballrooms.  But it was actually wonderful and action-packed.  AAWCC stands for the American Association of Women in Community Colleges, and surrounding myself with hundreds of women in my field was inspiring, motivating, and fun.  Some of the women there were total powerhouses, and they served as not-too-subtle reminders that it is imperative that I follow in their footsteps.  Not only for self-gratifying purposes, but because the country desperately needs well-qualified people leading its public schools.  Did you know that the United States is the only country where there is a regressive attainment of college degrees?  In other words, people are getting fewer degrees than their parents got.  In other words, we are getting less educated.  Which is not the case for any other developed nation.  

So I drove home with my colleague-- like me, a young, starry-eyed and ambitious lass-- and we spent the whole time figuratively, excitedly, rolling up our sleeves for the arduous careers ahead of us.  

And what did I find waiting for me?  Love and friendship coming at me on all sides.  Whoever said that there is no rest for the weary must not have been lucky enough to have loved ones.  For one, my sweet Adam had gone grocery shopping and cooked a lovely and healthy meal for us, consisting of stuffed roasted bell peppers and steamed artichokes.  You can see him below, chopping away.  Check out his new buzz cut!

And prior to that, I came home from a dog walk to find this lovely Crock Pot sitting on my front doorstep!  It came from my new friend Lynne, who had mentioned earlier in the week that she had seen a couple of these handy appliances on sale on our local classified webpage.  What with my plans for the conference and a day of feeling under the weather, I wasn't able to respond to the seller and figured I'd probably lose out.  But lucky me!  I've got a friend, a Crock Pot fairy, who doesn't want me missing out on a winter full of stews and soups.  So if you've got any good Crock Pot recipes, please let me know.  

The Existential Mess. Dirty Dishes.

Well, it has been a day.  When I imagine my best self-- you know, that productive, talented person that each of us wishes to be and somehow imagines we will become-- I picture a Saturday spent reading copiously, writing semi-copiously, and then procuring in a mere twenty minutes the dinner of a lifetime.  I'm sure you all have your own best imagined selves too.  Maybe you spend three hours in the garden on the ideal weekend day, or perfect your latest screen print, or paint the deck of your boat.  And these projections get so near to our hearts don't they, so important to our senses of self, that when we realize that we are not spending our spare time quite realizing our ambitions, it can be a bit of a crushing blow.

I received that blow a little bit today.  I don't read a book a weekend, and I haven't brought myself to write the sparkling, social commentary-saturated book reviews that I visualize myself being so good at.  But life was wearing big cushy boxing glove because when it hit me that there are probably not enough hours or days to accomplish every item on the Great To-Do List, it then occurred that I might spend my energy enjoying what I do do.  I mean, in other words, life is too short to fret over unattained goals.    

And so what did I do today?  I cooked!

First, Adam and I whipped up a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.  They are seriously easy, sinfully good, and outrageously fattening.  2 cups of sugar and 1 1/4 c. vegetable oil!  But worth every drop.  Anyway I've heard that applesauce is a good substitute for oil.  But as you can see, I've never bother with such healthy shortcuts.  Case in point: you see that round maroon mound on the bottom of the above photo?  My belly.  Find the recipe here.
Later, after finding three cookbooks on my front doorstep, thanks to a gift certificate to Amazon courtesy of my lovely Grandma, I got inspired to go whole hog and just spend the rest of the evening in the kitchen.  Without the hog, of course.
I wish this red chard translated better on screen.  It was a glistening ruby bouquet.  Inspired by Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse Vegetables, I sauteed some shallots, and then tossed in the chopped chard and braised it, covered, over medium heat for twenty minutes.  When it was done it got a little squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper, but that's all.
Meanwhile, at the direction of Mollie Katzen in her famous Moosewood Cookbook, which it has taken me five years as a vegetarian to finally buy, I made mushroom strudel and was inordinately pleased by how easy it is to make something with filo pastry dough.  Or is it phyllo?  Katzen spells it filo, the box said phyllo.  Tomato, tomahto.

Saute chopped mushrooms, and mix them with goodies like cottage cheese, yogurt, dill, scallions, bread crumbs, lemon juice, etc. and roll it all up in a log.  Bake, and then slice, as below:
Notice how the chard looks almost black.  Quite a meal.  I'll probably make a few adjustments to the filo next time I cook with it-- you need more oil between "leaves" than you'll probably want to use in order to avoid a thick, cardboard-like material; and next time I won't spend so much time draining the precious juices from the mushrooms, like Katzen directed me.  But, as you can see, the campers were happy.  And there were muffins for dessert.

So, life is short.  If I can't review novels for the New York Times, then I'll review cookbooks and my imagination for my blog.  I'm already happy anyway, so it's all the same.

Frustrated Foodie

Aaargh!!!  I've been trying to upload some apple pie pictures for the last few days, and Blogger is really letting me down.  Every time I select the file to upload, the little wheel just spins and spins ad infinitum until I give up and close the window.  I've started saving the photos much smaller (ie, fewer pixels) so I know it can't be a size issue.

What should I do?  All you techies out there, help!  I'll reward you with some sumptuous pictures of homemade apple pie.

Perhaps I need to start looking for a new host....

How to Clean Out Your Fridge Without Making Soup; Or, Casseroles 101; Or, If You Need To Fake It, Bake It

Some people are just cuckoo for soup.  Not me.  I did make soup this season as my faithful readership knows.  It even came out good, not to mention served as a perfect final resting place for some celery that was really starting to confound me.  But, there's something about soup that's just so insubstantial.  So... thin.  I like to chew my food.  So imagine my happy surprise when I discovered that a casserole is just as perfect a place for all the random tidbits in the fridge as soup is.  Even more perfect, really, if you're like me and don't love to drink your meals.  So the above three pictures are examples of casseroles I've made over the past couple weeks-- some were loosely inspired by recipes, but all were made mostly with what I already had on hand.  By the time I got to casserole #3, I was so intrigued by the possibility of baking something delicious without doing ANY shopping, that I deliberately stayed away from the store, even though I might have thought it would benefit from some this or some that.  Self-reliance, people.  That's what we're going for here.

Casserole #1: Rice (pre-cooked), crumbled tofu, chopped kalamata olives, spinach, some kind of cheese (I forget), a couple eggs for a binder, and chopped red onions and toasted chopped almonds both inside and reserved for garnish.  Except for the garnish, mix all of the above and bake in a large dish till crispy and golden.  This one got high marks for flavor, but low marks for moisture.  Next time I'll add another egg, maybe some milk.  

Casserole #2: This really is no different from potatoes au gratin, so I won't trouble you with how to make it, since there are probably several thousand such recipes available on the internet.  Three things I did somewhat creatively, and that I'd recommend: use Fontina cheese (a whole wedge of it, half mixed with the milk and poured in with the sliced potatoes, and the other half sprinkled on top 3/4 of the way through baking); season it with pestled cumin seeds; and garnish it with salsa.  It was a gorgeous, Latin rendition of a classic American dish.

Casserole #3: This one was by far the best, and I'm most proud of it because it was based on no recipe whatsoever, and like I said, I refused to shop for it.  Last night I prepped everything: I made 2 cups (uncooked) rice.  And the best way to make rice is to start out sauteing onions and garlic, then add the rice and water and prepare as usual.  I roasted chopped carrots and, after 15minutes, added green beans to the pan.  In a separate pan I roasted large chunks of tomatoes.  I went to bed.  

Then tonight when I got home from work, I put the rice in a huge bowl and dumped in all the roasted veggies (WITH juices!).  I whisked two eggs with about a half cup of sawdust parmesan (like I said, I refused to go to the store), a half cup of milk, some cumin, oregano, s&p, and then stirred that in with the rice and vegetables.  When the mixture is uniform, spoon it into your baking dish (which I deliberately hadn't washed after roasting the carrots and green beans in it).  Sprinkle with Panko and more parmesan.  Bake at 375 till golden!  Oh, man it was good.  Due to the roasted tomatoes and parmesan, it was faintly redolent of pizza, but is there anything wrong with that?

And just as an aside, I have to point out this tomato (see below).  This came from one of Adam's coworker's gardens, and I used it on the 4th of NOVEMBER.  This is a very late tomato, my friends.  It's an Election Day tomato.  Notice, too, how the tomato is in the shape of a heart.  As in, I (heart) Obama. 

Open Fridges Down Under

Hi Friends,

Check out the latest blog post of Confessions of a Food Nazi.  She has rounded up everybody's fridge photos, including that of Yours Truly.  Pretty Cute!

Love,

Megan.

P.S.  Don't forget to V-O-T-E tomorrow!!!