pepperpot weather

The weather forecast said there was a chance for snow on Christmas Eve.  The weather map showed a contradicting and disheartening green over Philadelphia, indicating that we would have to make due with rain for Christmas.  I still spend every December hoping for a white Christmas, even though I can count the number we've had on one hand, so imagine my delight when I looked outside around 5pm on Christmas Eve and saw fluffy white flakes of real snow falling steadily from the sky!

It snowed but didn't stick, which was fine.  I was happy to see some snow on the actual ground when we made our journey an hour outside of the city to spend Christmas Day at my parents' house.

Today it was dark and gloomy and freezing cold with a bit of happy white snow in the morning that lasted about 10 minutes before turning into big globs of miserable cold rain.  In my little isolated world that unemployment creates, this was the perfect way to spend the day after Christmas, but I'm sure everyone who had to travel to work disagreed with me.  Mister and I drank plenty of warm coffee and stayed cozy while trying to be at least somewhat productive, but eventually, the chill invaded our home and my bones.

I hid in the bed for about 15 minutes before Mister found me... and decided to hide with me.  We enjoyed our warm little cave a little longer than we intended because warm + cozy = accidental nap.  Once we forced each other out of that dangerous nest, I decided dinner was probably a good idea.  I was totally fixated on making a pepperpot.

I wanted something rich and hearty, something that needed time to cook, because it was just a slow-cooking kind of day.  I have a recipe for a pepperpot stew, but I wanted something with texture, something that we could really sink our teeth into, something that felt warm and nourishing.  Coincidentally, it turns out pepperpot is a Christmas food, entirely because it does require a good amount of time to cook correctly.

Post-Christmas PepperPot
about 5 servings

2 Tbsp olive oil
14 oz extra-firm tofu, cubed
1 tsp salt + a sprinkle
1 tsp smoked paprika + a sprinkle
black pepper, to taste
1 Tbsp vegan worcestershire sauce
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
15 oz petite diced tomatoes, undrained
cooked rice to serve (I used Basmati)

First, drain the tofu and gently squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands.  Don't worry - you won't get it all, you just don't want it dripping all over your cutting board.  Once you've squeezed "enough" water from the tofu, cube it and lay it over 3-4 paper towels to drain a bit while you wash your veggies and peel your garlic.

Make no mistake, I very specifically had my mind set on making something with tofu tonight.  As a quick aside, for the past year that I've been enjoying my All-Clad cookware, one thing only has marred my delight; trying to cook tofu in stainless cookware is kind of like supergluing a little green army figurine to your bathtub and then trying to push him loose with your Daisy razor... not happening.  So I've been cooking my tofu in my old Cuisinart nonstick saute pan and transferring it to the other food once there's enough liquid in the pan to prevent an adhesive reaction.  Not the end of the world, but it's just another [unnecessary] pan to wash.  Enter my Christmas present: a nonstick 4-qt All-Clad saute pan.

Anyway, once all your veggies are ready to be chopped, heat the oil in whatever pan makes you happy (but it should hold at least 4 quarts) on medium-low heat.  It's ready when you plop a cube of tofu into the oil and it sizzles.  Add all the tofu and make sure it is in one layer, give the pan a little shake to make sure the oil is evenly distributed, then cover and cook undisturbed for about 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, stir the tofu so the cooked side is showing (which means an uncooked side is now facing down in the pan), give it a minute, then sprinkle a little bit of salt and a little bit of paprika over the tofu and mix well, until evenly coated with seasoning.

Stir in the celery and garlic, cover and cook for another 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid burning.

Stir in carrots and both bell peppers, cover and cook for 3-5 minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, teaspoons of salt and paprika, as well as your preference of black pepper, and the worcestershire sauce. Stir very well to ensure the seasonings have coated everything in the pot.

Cover the pot and reduce the heat to low.  Set your kitchen timer (or whatever far more technologically advanced device you may have) for 25 minutes.  If you're using white Basmati or Jasmine rice, now is the perfect time to cook it.  This way your pepperpot and your rice will be ready simultaneously.

It was so good.  It was exactly what I wanted it to taste like.  Honestly, I could have happily just eaten the tofu and given Mister the veggies (though they were also very good) because the seasoned juices from the peppers and tomatoes perfectly braised the tofu to exactly the flavor and texture I was craving. This is a great wintertime meal and I hope you make it and enjoy it and remind yourself that you can always go back and have more later (no need to continue the holiday habit of stuffing oneself until bursting!).

snowtober??

One thing I have to admit I love about news & weather websites/TVstuff is how easily and frequently they sensationalize any possible divergence from "normal" weather.  Last winter, we had a "snowpocalypse" and I will admit, last January saw way more snow than I can remember in the last 15 years - in fact, the only time I remember more snow was January 1994 when they were cancelling school by the week and I actually only had three days of school in January.  That was, as you say, epic.

So, enter today.  Well, last night, actually, weather.com started predicting a snow storm with actual accumulations along the northeast corridor, including Philadelphia.  By the time I left work, they had updated it to the season's first Nor'easter.  If you are unfamiliar with the term, let me break it down like this: really really sucky windy storm that usually comes down from Canada to mess things up real good between Virginia and Ohio and up to Maine, generally involving heavy cold precipitation of some sort.  Now, I like snow a lot, but a nor'easter was not what I wanted to hear.

So I wake up this morning to my alarm, believing I can probably head out to the suburbs and teach before anything serious starts, if it's even more than just crappy rain.  I'm lying there for just a minute before rising and I hear it:  tap, tap, ping, tap, etc.  I think to myself, "No...it's not freezing rain.  Not yet," and get up, pulling my bathrobe warmly around me as I head into the kitchen for breakfast.

Angst is in the window, smacking at the snowflakes.

Yup.  Snowflakes.  In October.  I mean, for heaven's sake - it's not even Halloween yet!  Everyone was freaking out all over Facebook, swearing they were going to move if we were in for another winter like last year, or worse.  Me?  I'm kinda hoping for it :)

Anyway, because it's so unusual for snow to start so early in the season ("normal" first snowfall in Pennsylvania - with any accumulation likely - is mid-December), everyone, including weather.com, is now talking about Snowtober.  I guess that's kind of clever.

In case you were wondering, I did not ride the train a half hour out to the suburbs for the privilege of teaching at least three students who didn't bother practicing.  Instead, I watched really awesome make-up tutorials on YouTube by this angelic little English girl, Klaire de lys, and then completely neglected to paint my own face.  Poor Mister.

Eventually, I got it together to make dinner, which really couldn't have been anything other than Black Bean Soup with Kale and Rice from Vegan on the Cheap.

I was so relieved when the soup came out so chunky and substantial, because I know Mister's not a fan of soup dinners and he didn't eat much all day, but he seemed pretty happy about everything except eating his dinner with a spoon.  I had forgotten how rich the broth is, and what a fabulous mouthful all the ingredients come together to make.  Some sweetness from the carrots, creamy black beans, chewy rice, bitter kale, and tangy tomatoes were all brought together and spiked with a savory broth with simple spices.

Nevetheless, I knew Mister would be craving something more to eat later on, so when I was washing up the pot afterwards, I put a stick of Earth Balance out to soften.

Right now, my home smells incredible.  I started out with the intention to make Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting, also from Vegan on the Cheap, but decided I had very little interest in the frosting.  I started to just make chocolate cupcakes, but then decided to "doctor" them a little, resulting in a cupcake version of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which were always among my favorite [Trick or] Treats.

It was a simple alteration, really.  I started by filling each cupcake tin about 1/3 of the way

then I dropped about a half teaspoon to a scant teaspoon of peanut butter (I used chunky 'cause that's what we stock, but you can use whatever makes your little heart sing) into the center of each future cupcake, pressing down very lightly to set it in place.  The dough is actually pretty stiff, so you shouldn't have trouble.

Once the PB was safely nestled in a little chocolate nest, I plopped the rest of the batter on top, filling each cupcake paper almost to the top, taking care to ensure it fell completely around the glop of PB, encasing it.

After teasing Mister and I with a luscious smell for about 25 minutes, these little beauties were finished cooking and ready to cool as much as we would allow them to...

Back to Klaire de lys for a few minutes...ah, so that's how they did the make-up for Black Swan.
And other stuff I don't really need to know.  Thank you, YouTube!

Okay, back to the cupcakes.

So good.  Seriously.

There were a couple of things I'd like to tweak in order to make this recipe completely my own and utterly scrumptious.  Cooking Light got me in the habit of mixing up my flour to lighten it and then gently spooning it from the bag to my measuring cups before leveling them off.  The idea here is that you use less flour = less dense baked goods = fewer calories.  I think I need to abandon that for these cupcakes, in order to make them the dark, dense, fudgy outside I want them to be.

I think they could hold a little more peanut butter, too.  I think a full teaspoon, maybe even heaping, would be in order here.

I also need to remember to check how much cocoa powder I have before committing to a chocolate cupcake recipe.  I didn't have exactly a half cup of it left and I think that was to the cakes' detriment.

Believe me, these will be made again.  And again and again and again, especially if we have a really snowy winter.  Once I've "perfected" them, I'll share a recipe.

snowpocalypse: the beginning of the end

How's that for an epic title?

We got a whole ton of snow here in Philadelphia - I think the final numbers were around 15-16 inches.  Today began the great dig-out, so I moved through today to the soundtrack of shovels scraping the pavement.  That's right, folks, I got another snow day after all.  I wish I'd known ahead of time, like I did in high school, so I could just sleep in, but I think I got a lot more done than I would have if I'd gone back to bed.  I really did think I was going to work this morning, despite my desire for another snow day; however, there's not much you can do when all the buses have stopped operating and every train that would take you to your destination is being canceled.  Since the sidewalks were a hideous mess and cabs were sliding into the curbs, walking to the train station to wait for a train that would never come kind of lost its appeal.

So, thanks to Snowpocalypse 2011, I have begun the process of moving, which I will probably document here as a pitiful excuse for my interesting meal stories diminishing.  Believe me, my pots, pans, and everyday dishes will be the last things packed (besides the cat), but I fully anticipate:
a) some take-out dinners in the last part of this process and
b) packing taking priority over posting.  I'm only here now because my new bottle of Beaujolais, picked up when I was harvesting boxes from the wine store, was singing its siren song and I needed a short break from wrapping every(fancy)thing a person could possibly drink from in newspaper.

I spent most of the daylight hours hunting down boxes since I can't get them home from my office.  Between Essene, the wine store, and a few other places, I've managed to procure 14 boxes.  So far tonight, I've filled two, but it's only 10:30, so I have time!  I also traded some books for $33 of store credit at a used bookstore beside the thrift store that will soon inherit some wine glasses, bowls, and decor I've outgrown.  This packing-n-purging thing is going really well.

By the way, if anyone was wondering the outcome of last night's quandry, I was strongly encouraged to consider baking cookies by Mister... I really didn't need that much coaxing.

Plain Jane chocolate chip cookies, but boy were they good right out of the oven.  I got so into making these [wonderful] bizarre fusion cookies that I forgot how magnificent it is to bite into a gooey, melty chocolate chip cookie.  Don't be alarmed!  I've remembered.

As my own form of repentance or a spectacular display of irony, tonight I made Pasta Con Broccoli from Appetite for Reduction.  Those cookies are the reason cookbooks like this must exist.

It was delightful, just like last time, although the broccoli got a little mushier than I wanted it to be and I really feel like 1/4 cup of sliced garlic should have a more obvious contribution to the meal.  Perhaps I've been spoiled by the bite of raw garlic in my recent recipe testing, but I could barely tell there was garlic at all!

Anyway, the broccoli got mushy because I let it steam too long while I was trying to clear the table for dinner.  Putting 14 boxes at the table seemed like a good idea when I was bringing them all home...

I think the hardest part of, well, anything, is starting.  Just like I always have trouble deciding which recipe to make first when I have a fresh menu, I had more than a small amount of trouble trying to figure out where to start packing.  Obviously, I would start with things I use infrequently and as the next 16 days progress, I'll move closer to the things I use regularly.  Two weeks from now we will absolutely be eating from takeout containers.

Finally, I decided the most logical place to start was by packing the things I never ever use.  Also, there is something in the restaurant downstairs that vibrates sometimes and causes these beautiful teacups to make very annoying clattering noises.

This is one of those family heirloom stories - I have very few of them, so I cherish those I have.  Aside from the rightmost teacup, these teacups (and the ones in the first picture) have been passed from my mother's mother to her, and from her to me.  As a result of my love of these pretty things, my dear friend and my mother-in-law are helping me to build my collection.  The rightmost teacup in this picture was a Christmas gift from my friend back when I lived in my ghetto apartment.  She gave me another one this year and my husband's mother has given me teacups the last two years for Christmas; for my bridal shower, she gave me a whole tea-set, including the teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl.

This "shot glass" is 108 years old.  You may or may not be able to see in the picture that it is cut crystal, with red tint and two thin gold bands bordering the white stripe in the middle.  I have four and I cherish them - they are what is left of six original glasses with a small crystal pitcher that I inherited from my father's father when they were almost exactly 100 years old.  The reason I know their precise age is because they were apparently a "parting gift" at the 1903 Republican National Convention.  My grandfather was born in 1913, so although I inherited them from him, he must have inherited them from his father.

I love old things.  My design ethic is completely bizarre and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out in the new home (where I'll actually have space to decorate and design).  I admire the sterility and order of modern design; as I believe I've mentioned once or twice, I am completely in love with IKEA and have no issue designing my home to look like their catalogs (I've already begun plotting my kitchen improvements for the new place).  On the other hand, I adore old things and the aesthetic of antiques.  I have very Victorian leanings, but dear heavens does that create clutter!  I love my grandmother-mother's teacups and my grandfather's souvenir shot glasses (I'm pretty sure they're actually stemless cordials) because they link me to a far off past and join me to my family in a quiet, subtle way.

Speaking of subtle, I think the last sip of my wine is the quiet prompt to get back to packing.  I think we'll do platters and plates next.  See you tomorrow!

snow day(s)!

It seems the last couple of posts have incorporated a plural noun..."fortunate locations" or "comforts of homes."  I'm hoping the trend continues and that I have more than one snow day purely because I made my title plural.  Well, I guess the blizzard outside can play some part.

I have a really strong urge to bake but I really can't just bake every time it snows....can I? We'll have to come back to that later.

I spent the better part of yesterday reassuring one of the managers at work that the snow wasn't going to be that bad and it would probably be fine.  I have very little faith in the weatherguessers, you see, so when they get all excited and put up a big red warning for 4-6 inches, I'm not inclined to believe them until I see it.

I got up this morning, bright and early, figuring I'd head out to work, possibly get delayed by a few minutes, but be at work before any serious snow started.  That way, at least I'd show my face before probably leaving early, before the train tracks froze.  I put the teapot on to boil and started to make breakfast and prepare my matcha.  It was only then that I looked out the kitchen window and saw, to my unabashed surprise, a decent accumulation of snow!

While eating breakfast, I checked out weather.com and discovered that the forecast was now calling for 6-8 inches, mingling with some freezing rain for some nice snow-ice-snow Oreo action.  I was surprised that there were no tweets from SEPTA regarding delays in transit, so I kept moving toward the goal of going to work, despite the foreboding forecast.  After showering, I found that the snow had gotten huge and was falling at a far heavier rate than originally forecast.  Upon checking the weather again, I found a big mea culpa from the weather folks, saying that we were getting heavier snow than anticipated and upping the total accumulation expected to nearly a foot!

I'm sure you know where this is going.  Much hemming and hawing and pacing the apartment later, I did one more evaluation and upon seeing that trains were running 15-25 minutes behind, buses were being detoured, and people were slip-sliding all over the place in their cars, I decided to keep Angst company.  I wish I'd gotten some pictures of him earlier - the snowflakes were probably about the same size as his paws and he was sitting in his window just batting at them (and hitting the window instead).  He got himself all worked up - it was quite a sight.

After another unsuccessful attempt to buy shoes, I started dinner.  Mister didn't have any opinions since he knew he would like anything on the menu, so I made Seitan Cacciatore from The Accidental Vegan.

I've made this a few times before, although this is the first time I used homemade seitan, so it looks a bit different since I cubed the seitan.  Also, I'm pretty sure the seitan I buy (Ray's, Michael's) is simmered, not baked, so it has a different texture.  As it was coming into its final five minutes of simmer-time, I realized I hadn't made anything upon which to serve it.  I wouldn't say I panicked, but I was a little worried about how Mister would take it - we've had a couple of conversations in the past about the necessity of a grain/pasta/carb-of-some-sort as the base to our meal and how he can't cope with a meal made of only vegetables and a protein source.  I wished with all my heart for couscous to magically appear in the cupboard, but it did not happen.  There was not enough time for rice and I used up all the bulghur in the stew...

Fortunately, between the pepper "noodles" and the big "meaty" chunks of seitan, Mister didn't even reach for bread!  I guess it passed muster, but I'll still make a grain with it next time.

I was not nearly as productive today as I wanted to be and the snow got heavy way later than it was supposed to.  I'll be interested to see what that does to the morning commute.  I'm not going to deny that I'm hoping for another snow day... but for now, I have to answer a very important question:

to bake or not to bake?

lessons learned at the cutting board

Call me a lifelong student or simply a student of life; I love learning things and applying the things I learn.  When I was actually in college and grad school, you couldn't shut me up once I got going about something I had learned or read and once I had babbled all about it to one person, the information was with me - learned.  There is something about sharing what I learn with others that helps me to more fully understand it myself.

It was really difficult to make myself go back to work yesterday - I had a three-day weekend because of taking my birthday off and at least half the country seemed to have yesterday off because of Martin Luther King Day.  I tried to give myself a pep talk by asking myself, rhetorically, I thought, what on earth I would do if I didn't go to work.  Unfortunately, I was prepared, and started listing things I would do if I stayed home.  Ultimately, I convinced me to go to work because I knew we were in for some nasty weather and I wanted to leave myself the option of calling out today if it really was bad.

That's exactly what I did.  I'm pretty sure it was fate or possibly predestination (in other words: I had predetermined to take the day off if the weather was even remotely hazardous to travel).  After thawing out from my walk home in 20something degree weather since the buses felt the best way to honor MLK was to make sure Rosa had to walk, I started making dinner.  As I was shredding my cabbage and boiling the farfalle, Mister drew my attention to the little sparkly bits of snow dancing around in the streetlamps' light.  By the time I put dinner on the table, there was actually a coating on the roads which surprised the heck out of me - I didn't think we were actually supposed to get an accumulation!  Through dinner and clean-up, the snow continued to fall - just tiny little guys, but enough of them that the 20-degree streets didn't stand a chance - and then they got bigger.  By the time we were heading to bed, the snow had turned from fluffy flakes of happy to ominous drops of freezing rain, ricocheting off the windows before coating the snow-covered streets with a layer of ice.

I got up in the morning and it looked like the rain had cleared up most of the streets, so I had some tea and breakfast, but as I listened to the moaning of the wind outside, I became more than just a little curious about the state of things, so I visited weather.com and decided now was as good a time as any to follow SEPTA's tweets and was I ever right.  For the next twenty minutes, as I hemmed and hawed about whether to risk a relapse of my fragile health to go to work today, I was bombarded with updates on this bus being rerouted and that one being cancelled, while this train was late and that one is only going half its normal route, and let's not forget about the trolleys being stopped because of "smoking manhole covers."  I decided the apocalypse was manifesting itself through public transit and said to myself, once again, "what will you do if you stay home?"  This time, though, I made a list of all the ways I would be more productive at home than at work, and when I hit the bottom of the paper, I called out.  It took a minute, including writing time, by the way.

What on earth does all this have to do with learning, you ask?
Well, nothing really, aside from allowing me a little extra time to cook dinner and forcing me to be introspective about something I thought I'd left mostly in my past for the sake of helping a student with her homework.  So, on to dinner!

Since I was well-rested (yes, I left out the part about going back to bed after leaving the list to be completed upon re-waking), I had plenty of energy to devote to making Chickpea Piccata, served on a fluffy cloud of Caulipots, both from Appetite for Reduction.  Here are some things I learned:

1. If Isa wants to help people lose weight, she needs to stop making her recipes so darn tasty.  I have not had trouble keeping my promise to my mom yet.

2. Thanks to Isa and Dynise, I have become much more daring with garlic and with shallots.  There was a time, about a month ago, actually, when I couldn't fathom preparing garlic in anyway that did not involved pressing it so that it would more or less dissolve innocuously into my food.  Now?  Check out these huge slices of garlic:

3. Shallots make me cry.  I've seen some funny pictures of onion goggles, but I've never really had any problems with onions, green onions, shallots, or garlic making me tear up...until tonight.  It was the weirdest thing; I was slicing the shallots and all of a sudden, I noticed my eyes were stinging and about to tear up and I stood upright and allowed myself a moment of confusion - it's not like tonight was the first time I'd sliced shallots.  I think the difference tonight is that I was wearing my glasses, not my contacts - can anyone else confirm this or am I just a freak?

4. Angst loves when I stay home, but he doesn't like to share.  He demonstrated his defiance tonight by hopping up onto Mister's dinner chair while I was filling our bowls and making himself very comfy.

Look at that scowl!  He was very clearly saying, MY chair.  When Mister came to sit for dinner, Angst just gave him that same angry look, as if to say, "find another chair. This one's taken."

He scrammed when Mister made like he was going to sit on him, though.

The Chickpea Piccata was absolutely fabulous.  From the minute I opened this book for the first time, that was high up on my list of things I wanted to make, and it did not disappoint.  I want to share Isa's intro because it perfectly sets you up for the amazing flavors about to meet and mingle in your mouth:

A plate of piccata is like an instant fancy dinner with all the stops.  One second you're just sitting there, all normal-like, but the moment that first forkful of lemony wine bliss touches your tongue, you're transported to candlelight and tablecloths, even if you're sitting in front of the TV.

I served the piccata over Caulipots, as Isa suggests.  Mister and I love the way this girl thinks; one of the things we missed the most after "going veg" was mashed potatoes, which doesn't make any sense, since potatoes are not an animal.  We realized, though, that there are very few things in our diet with which you can serve mashed potatoes.  Isa has changed all of that, though, with her genius scheme to used mashed potatoes as the starchy base, rather than the standard rice/grain or pasta - we love her for it.

The caulipots were unbeatable - they were just a little lighter than regular mashed potatoes, but packed a powerful punch, flavor-wise and nutritionally.  I used only two Tbsp of broth in the mashing, yet the whole batch was perfectly seasoned from that + olive oil + little bit of salt.  This may very well become my standard "mashed potatoes" recipe.  If I haven't said it yet, please do yourself and everyone you cook for a big favor: break open your piggy bank and head to your local bookstore to get yourself a copy of Appetite for Reduction.

chili; it's not just for dinner anymore

I know we're not quite a full month into "official" winter, but I have to say something:  I am really getting tired of the bitter cold.  I can't remember a winter being this consistently painfully cold.  I am truly fearing February, especially since it seems to rain a lot, too.  Rain and cold are quite possibly the worst combination, aside from rain + cold + wind.  Yup.  That one's definitely the worst.

Anyway, the great thing about winter is that it snows!  I love snow and it never stops making me happy.  I love snow so much that I chose to walk home, a mile, through it last night.  I feel like I should make some smarmy comment about going up hills with no shoes on, too, but I'll stick with walking a mile in the falling snow.  By the time I got home, I was covered - my hat, my hair, my coat, even my purse - covered with "snowflakes that cling to my nose and eyelashes."  Yes, they did that, too, as well as stealthily flying up my nose.  I could have done without that.

I stopped for a couple of pictures because it just looked so beautiful.

freezing at the train station.
it always seems colder there.

 

walking home through Washington Square

After I shook off the coating of snow that had accumulated on me during my traipse through the city, I changed into my Cozy Clothes - yoga pants, slippers, and a hoodie.  The problem with changing into Cozy Clothes, though, is that frequently I lose my motivation to cook once I'm comfy and warm.

So last night, we heated up the Potato-Spinach Curry and basmati rice that had been hanging out in the fridge for one day short of Too Long.  Having given it time to let the flavors thoroughly meld, I have come to the conclusion that it needs a lot more salt, maybe 1.5 tsp, but we'll see what happens next time I make it - I think a little improv is in order.

Tonight, I returned to dear Isa for our dinner:  Classic Black Bean and Veggie Chili from Appetite for Reduction

this is what dried out limes with no juice look like:
fuzzy flowers, like lime asters

I don't know what went wrong with the lime, but I cut it open, massaged it a little, but when I tried to squeeze out the juice, I might possibly have gotten ten drops from then whole lime (both halves).  Instead, the insides just turned out and created a dry little fringe around the edge.  Despite my dismay that my lime was dried out, I thought it looked pretty neat, so I took a picture to share, in case you've never seen this before (I know I haven't!).

Mister and I agreed that there was too much broth.  Very, very good chili, but we both prefer it to be less soupy because according to Mister, if utensils are involved in chili at all, they must be forks.  But normally, we just use tortilla chips to help the chunky chili to our mouths.

It was a little hotter than I might like to make it in the future - I keep forgetting that Isa is one of those people who likes things spicier than me.  Next time, I'll use 33% less chili powder and 100% less broth.  I don't think it was necessary at all - the juice from the tomatoes should be sufficient.  It was a great way to defrost from tonight's walk home, though.  Since my Spicy Threshold is pretty low, despite years of training, when I eat food like this it really warms me up, making it a perfect meal to repeat often between now and the Great Thaw (aka late Springtime).

baking in the witching hour

Some time over the summer, a friend helped me name my imaginary public access cooking show (which will result in unimaginable fame and wealth, eventually).  Because he couldn't believe how frequently I bake at night (probably 95% of the time), he suggested "Late Night Baking with Natalie K" but I think I prefer the title to this post.

Although I suppose there could be some debate over the exact time of the witching hour, my scones were safely baking as the clock struck midnight, foisting my baking adventures officially into tomorrow. 

Banana Chocolate Chip Scones

Let's build up to the scone/overinflated cookie story, though, shall we?

After a deeply satisfying night of sleep (the first of many, I hope), I wandered, sleepy-eyed and wanting coffee, into my kitchen.  Once I had gathered my wits and looked out the window, I was profoundly disappointed to see not a flake of snow floating gently down from the sky.  There was a light dusting on the street, but not at all what I was expecting.

Never fear, rapt readers - it did not take long for snow to join me in welcoming the day.  Before I poured my second cozy cup, little glittery flakes had begun their descent from the low, grey cloud cover to cold, black pavement.  This continued throughout the day and I watched giddily as the snow began to accumulate on sidewalks, cars, and my husband upon his return from Steve's Steaks, veggie cheesesteak in a brown bag, canister of lemonade mix under his arm.

It seemed fitting that the only item left on my menu (and by default, the only thing I had the ingredients to cook, which is why Mister went out for lunch) was Warm Chickpea Ragout with Swiss Chard, Carrots, and Harissa from Vegetarian Times: Fast and Easy.

The advantage to having such an extensive (and growing) cookbook collection is that I repeat dishes so infrequently that I'm [almost] always as pleasantly surprised as I was the first time I made something.  This was no exception.  The heat of the harissa is just right - it intensifies the flavors of the dish without traumatizing my tastebuds too severely (unless I accidentally inhale an unmixed dot of the stuff...then I choke and my eyes tear and Mister laughs at me... no matter how sick he is). 

I served it over what was left of the Coconut Rice I made with the Jerk Seitan oh-so-long ago.  Between the subtle sweetness of the rice and that which is coaxed out of the tomatoes as they were fire-roasted, the whole dish has a surprising but perfect undercurrent of dulce.  It balances the heat of the harissa and the creaminess of the chickpeas in a way that made me contemplate every single bite I took.  This, surely, is the road to mindful eating.

After dinner, the snow was still going strong, despite my newly kindled internal fire.  Every time I hear a plow or shovel outside, I want to chase away the one who wields it, screaming something insane like, "Leave my snow alone!"

Instead, I occupied myself by making these incredible scones.  VegNews directed me to the recipe and I thought it seemed very much like single-serving banana bread, so I jumped on it.  I was a little worried when I started plunking down the batter - I can't call it dough - it spread a little much for my comfort level.  In the end, they came out looking like huge banana-chocolate-chip cookies.  The texture is somewhere between a nice, soft, right-out-of-the-oven cookie and the top portion of a muffin.  Divine. 

I really shouldn't have another....should I?

in the bleak midwinter

Actually, we are slightly more than two-thirds through "winter", but this has been a serious winter so far and anyone who has paid attention for the last decade or so that I've been paying attention knows it doesn't actually get [consistently] warm in Philadelphia until May.

It's snowing again. Honestly, it never gets old - I am as happy looking out my window today as I was during the first snowfall in December. I just think it's beautiful, especially in the city where you can watch the flakes dance and swirl in the halo of the street lamps before they lay a velvet carpet on untrod sidewalks.

Today was a great day to just sit inside and be cozy and lazy, so it is very fortunate that it just happened to be my day off from work. I was supposed to do productive things like get my taxes done and go grocery shopping, but why ruin a beautiful day? I'll admit, I pretty well wussed out because of the wind advisory from the National Weather Service making me afraid to drive to my taxes appointment, and when I saw metal signs wiggling around on their posts, it didn't exactly entice me to step outside my door and join the others who were fighting the wind for their scarves. Besides, I work hard enough to justify a day of watching Amy Lee be perfect while mourning that more than three years have passed without a new release from Evanescence.


So I made myself a nice snowy day lunch - leftover French Lentil Soup with a substantial and tasty salad (spring mix, sprouts, broccoli, carrots, kalamata olives).


That was actually last night's dinner - lentil soup and a mega salad with broccoli, spring mix baby greens, mixed sprouts, kalamata olives, and dried cranberries in lieu of clementine segments. I figured that the 3 I ate as a snack at work probably covered my citrus requirement for the day.


I am so impressed with how pretty salads can be if you take five minutes to construct one that doesn't require dressing. I think it's the dressing that messes up the pretty. By the way, for the more observant among you, I did not try to eat my salad with a spoon - that was for the soup. There is actually a fork beside it, it just didn't make it into the picture. And yes, I know the spoon goes on the right and the fork goes on the left, but I wasn't throwing a dinner party, I was just having dinner alone while checking out some amazing artwork in a magazine shared with me by a colleague. He and a friend thought this painting looked like me:


Anyway, with the help of Smirnoff's Grand Cosmopolitan, I constructed this week's menu after my little dinner last night. At the time, I had every intention of shopping for the necessary ingredients today, but when you see the snow blowing from left to right, rather than merely floating peacefully downward, you might not be overly enthusiastic about going to a grocery store where you get to fight the frenzied omg-it's-snowing-I'll-never-eat-again mobs. I know I wasn't.

1. Kedgeree from The Accidental Vegan because I still haven't made it. That's tonight's dinner.

2. Spanish Veggie Stew with Spanish Rice also from The Accidental Vegan because it looked interesting. I actually almost turned past it, but something made me flip the page back.

3. Seitan Cacciatore also from TAV. I made this before, full of trepidation because it borders on warping a traditional recipe, but it came out so well I was craving it again.

4. Cajun Red Beans and Rice also from TAV. I don't know why I'm so attracted to Cajun Beans and Rice recipes, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for. (hee hee - you're going to have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day...)

5. Pomegranate Saute on Cinnamon Bulghur from my little holographic gold book of chicken scratch.

6. Spicy Stir-Fry with Clementine, Asparagus, and Tofu from Vegetarian Times: Fast & Easy. I was hellbent on including a tofu-based recipe in my menu because I accidentally bought a tub of tofu a couple of weeks ago that needs to be used up ASAP. I also happen to have half a bag of clementines left, so all I actually need to buy for this recipe is the asparagus!

been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding

Okay, that isn't completely accurate. I've been to a few states in the USA, I visited Canada briefly 20 years ago, and I went to Cancun (Mexico) with my sister-in-law 9 years ago. So I haven't been around the world, and I don't think my in-laws, AKA parents-of-my-nephews-and-nieces, are stupid, but sometimes it seems like the stupider people are the louder they speak, doesn't it?

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but it has been bugging me for a few days and I need to share my inane discovery with someone. That Someone is You, lucky reader.

I was trying to get through the last of the Great Pile of Magazines that had gradually taken over a music stand I used to use as a cookbook holder. The majority of magazines living there were Health magazine. It was one of those "since you already subscribe to this magazine, we're going to give you an incredible deal to subscribe to this other magazine" kind of situations, and since there are two faces to my foodie nature, it filled the space left by the other publication. Those two faces, in case you were wondering, are the creative (and piggly) part of me that loves making (and eating) new dishes with a twist of something a little bizarre, and the nurturing side of me that shows love for myself and my husband (and anyone else I have the opportunity to cook for) by serving food that is not only tasty and attractive, but also full of nutrients and the things a body needs for fuel.

Anyway, I was reading through the News You Need feature in one of the editions, I came to this article: Orthorexia: The New Eating Disorder. The short article is both intriguing and utterly disgusting in its displayed ignorance of food lifestyles that are built around ethics and health. It is intriguing because only a few sentences in, I thought to myself, "they could be talking about me!" Primarily appearing in women over the age of 30 (ahem), orthorexia is an obsession with eating only healthy food and can be manifested in a vegan or raw food diet. I don't know if I would call myself obsessed and I certainly do not adhere to a vegan or raw food diet as strictly as I might prefer, but it is very important to me that I fuel my body with primarily good food. I prefer organic, but sometimes buy conventionally grown produce. I prefer seedy whole-grained breads, but I have been known to buy a loaf of finely-milled wheat bread. I yearn for salads, raw vegetable crudites, and fruit salads throughout the winter months, but I have no issue with making a meal completely from pantry items. I don't eat crap: no Twinkies, no Smuckers (read the label and be appalled), a rare Dorito or kettle-cooked potato chip, but no Little Debbie danishes or honeybuns for me and keep those Fritos where I can't smell them. I'm not perfect, but I try not to pollute my body. I'd rather get fat from protein and omega-rich peanut butter than a Snickers bar.

Regardless, the implication in this article or at least what I took away, is that people who restrict their diets as severely as a vegan or raw foodist would have an eating disorder. I think it's ludicrous that there would even be an eating disorder that starts with someone being committed to eating healthy food. It demonstrates to me just how off-kilter the paradigm of this country, in which 66% of the adult population is overweight, is. Ironically, people who follow a macrobiotic diet (which does include meat consumption, ordinarily) are not listed, yet I have a hard time thinking of a more restrictive diet.

You should know by now that when I say "I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this," it means I have been obsessing over the subject for days and need to babble until everything falls out of my brain. Which usually means I will spend more time on it than I intend. I just think it's straight-up retarded to label someone as having an eating disorder because they are vegan or a raw foodist. Rant done.

Today began The Great Dig-Out. I must give Philadelphia some props for their serious stance on snow removal - they had construction plows and dump trucks today! I don't know where they took the snow, but it's not on the/some streets anymore. It is still very much on the sidewalks - I think it's cute how some merchants figure that as long as there is a path through the snow, it doesn't necessarily have to be all the way down to the pavement. Apparently, there is nothing hazardous about carving a path of about 3 inches of compacted snow and ice that you will need a metal hoe and/or chisel to break through, because it's not melting until June. I slipped and slid my way to and from Whole Foods and Superfresh today because there was nothing else to turn into a meal here, unless you take me up on my offer to make a gourmet meal from kitty kibble.

First, I'll give you the menu, then a short and sweet dinner story:

1. Two-Tofu Shepherd's Pie

2. French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme from Veganomicon, because I can never get enough of this soup. Judging from the two and a half pounds of French lentils I got at WF today, apparently I also cannot get enough French lentils... oh, the shame of self-serve bulk containers.

3. Curried Udon Noodle Stir-Fry also from Veganomicon. I can't remember if I made this before or if the recipe just looked familiar because I know I should have made it before if I haven't.

4. Garlic and Greens Soup from The Vegan Table. After a week that was split 50/50 with soup and "solid" dinners, I tried to stay away from soup, but when I saw this recipe I just couldn't resist it. I mean, seriously - it calls for an entire head of garlic!

5. Red Lentil Artichoke Stew also from The Vegan Table. I have definitely not made this before and it looks both fun and different. Plus, we haven't had anything with red lentils for a while.

6. Orzo Pilaf with Roasted Red Peppers and Peas also from The Vegan Table. I intended to make this from the minute I pulled the book off the shelf. It's tasty and fast and you need that sometimes...like tonight.


So, I practiced my balance and grace by wandering around the frozen and barely salted tundra this afternoon/evening while Mister got some cardio in by digging out my car. Needless to say, we were both kind of starving, so rather than saving the fastest dinner on the menu for some night after work and cooking one of the longer and more labor-intensive meals on my day off, I made the Orzo Pilaf tonight. Don't you love my strategic menu-planning?

It is very photogenic and I think it is very tasty. It very much resembles risotto because orzo is rice-shaped pasta and I sauteed it with garlic before adding the full quart of broth. It lengthened the cooking time a bit, but the fully plumped orzo and creamy texture of the reduced stock was well worth it.

Mister wasn't as excited as I was. He agreed with me that it was very pretty and looks like Christmas, but I guess it was actually a little too close to real risotto for his liking. I love how he is starving before dinner and then pushes his food around and kind of picks at the peas until I ask him if he doesn't like dinner, to which he smiles and responds, "It's not my favorite." My answer to that is, "Pizza is your favorite." We pout at each other, then laugh and move on.


My hope, though, is that someday he will learn to tell me the first time I make something that he doesn't care for it.

my brain: use it or lose it

It is Still snowing in Philadelphia. This is now officially the snowiest winter on record - all we needed from this snowfall (which started around 7 pm yesterday and is STILL going strong at 10 minutes to midnight today) was 9.5 inches, but current estimates put total accumulation at 14 inches in Philadelphia, more in outlying suburbs. That's 14 inches on top of the 28.5 we got over the weekend. I haven't seen a plow yet and while that is fortunate for my poor little snow-covered car and what remains of its paint, it doesn't exactly fill me with optimism about the condition of the streets I am supposed to drive on tomorrow to go to work. Even when the streets were plowed on Saturday night/Sunday morning, it was still a slippery mess.

Since there was already an inch of super-fast accumulation when I got home from work last night, it seemed appropriate that the last dinner on my menu was a soup dinner. I made the mistake of changing into warmer, comfier clothes and then sitting down before strapping on my apron and could barely muster the energy to make Turkish Spinach and Lentil Soup. Fortunately, I knew the majority of effort I needed to expend was on peeling garlic cloves, so I managed to convince myself to put about 5 minutes of work into what ended up being a very tasty and satisfying dinner.


One of the reasons I wasn't too enthused about it was because I had forgotten just how tasty this soup is! I think I owe a lot of the flavor to the new bouillon cubes I picked up at Whole Foods last week. I used to use Rapunzel bouillon cubes all the time - they are far more cost-effective and compact than boxed quarts of premade broth - but after I had two boxes of gross, rancid-looking, melty cubes, I ditched them in favor of the Swanson broth I've been using for at least six months. I picked up the vegan bouillon cubes with sea salt and they have the most amazing savory taste!

Now, I'll admit - I really did not think the snow was going to come down as heavily as it did. Granted, the National Weather Service had issued a Blizzard Warning and more or less implied that you would be risking life and limb to leave your home today, but I guess I just didn't believe them. I spent all day today looking out the windows and laughing because the snow was still coming down and it really did look like a blizzard. This seriously interfered with my plans to go food shopping, though, so I comforted myself with the knowledge that the crazy Chinese people who have a restaurant that is literally a 10 second walk from our front door were open today. However, by the time "dinner time" came around, neither Mister or I wanted to leave the comfort of our warm, snowless home.

I had been thinking the other day about my culinary adventures. I'm addicted to recipes, and even when I do something on my own, I approach it in the same manner I was taught to compose music: I write it out first, then "play" it. However, having spent the past several years learning how to cook, and at least the past year really paying attention to how ingredients work together to create certain tastes and/or textures, I had a revelation. Theoretically, I should be able to just grab some random ingredients and put them together in a way that results in something tasty (or at least edible). In culinary schools, this is known as the Basket Test. Students are given a "basket" of seemingly unconnected ingredients and must find a way to create something edible (and amazing) from them. Mister inadvertently presented me with that challenge tonight and I am thrilled with the results!

My "basket" was made up of a few half-empty bags of frozen vegetables, a couple of cans in the cupboard nearing their expiration date, and a few half-empty bags of various grains. I always take comfort in my extremely well-stocked herbs-n-spices collection, though, and I figure I could probably make a gourmet meal out of Angst's Meow Mix with their help, if I had to. Lucky for you, I was so excited with how tasty my invention was that I wrote it down and will share my first recipe of 2010 with you!
Naked Burritos
2 cups broth
1 cup Basmati rice
1 Tbsp canola oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp sea salt, or to taste
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup frozen corn
2 cups frozen whole leaf spinach
14 oz vegetarian refried beans

Cook rice in broth on very low heat (covered) for 20-25 minutes, until all broth has been absorbed.
Meanwhile, heat oil on medium heat in a large saute pan. Saute garlic and carrots, covered, for about 5 minutes, stirring often. Lower heat to medium-low, stir in cumin, chili powder, and salt. Add corn and spinach, cover and cook 7-10 minutes, until heated through, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, in a smaller skillet, warm the refried beans with 1-2 Tbsp water. Stir and heat until steaming and smooth, adding another Tbsp of water if necessary.
To serve, lay a bed of rice at the bottom of a wide, shallow bowl. Spoon on 1/4 of the refried beans and top with the vegetable mixture.

You could use brown rice if you wanted, but you would need to increase your cooking time to about 45 minutes. Since I ran out of brown rice and since Mister was threatening to have more junkfood as an appetizer, I went with quicker-cooking white Basmati.

Of course, an all-day snowfest is a great excuse to make cookies, even if no one found and unearthed your car for you... so I whipped up a batch of Chocolate Agave Trailmixers from VCIYCJ. They are so good and SO rich. I like soymilk with cereal and as an ingredient in something, but I've never been able to just drink it plain. If you can, or if you drink another kind of milk, nondairy or straight from the cow's udder, you'll want a tall glass to go along with these chunky treasures. One of the add-ins are sweet-tart dried cherries and it never fails to astonish me how well the tartness of the fruit brings out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Enjoy! I know Mister and I did!

harissa: the ultimate in snow removal

Okay, harissa may not be quite hot enough to melt the snow piled all over the sidewalks, street corners, and parking spots in my neighborhood, but it can make me sweat when it's only 20 degrees outside! I read somewhere that in North Africa (not exactly a cold climate), locals employ harissa the way Americans [over]use ketchup. It took me years to put ketchup on my fries, much to Mister's confusion and horror. I cannot even fathom dipping fries or vegetables or ANYTHING in a little pot of harissa - bad things happened when it didn't blend all the way into the broth tonight and I ended up with a significant amount in my mouth. Significant = Barely Visible Speck.

Anyway, let's back up to last night. After a snowy, frosty weekend and a slippery trek to my car, I managed to make it to work yesterday. It wasn't until I was putting a present for Angst (also known as food) in the backseat that I noticed the new beauty mark on my car. Remember how I was worried about the Dueling Backhoes crashing into my car or otherwise harming it? I'm trying to think of the perfect thank you gift for the City of Philadelphia right now - what's the best way to express this sentiment? "thank you for finally clearing the streets in my neighborhood. It's much easier to navigate my car through the half-plowed icy death since you helped me lighten it. I never realized how much the paint on the left side of my car weighed it down until you helped me get rid of it. Here's some flowers." Yes, the Abominable Snow Removers left me a scar in the form of a scratch from the middle of my back driver's side door, across my gas cap, up to my brake light, and it's all the way to the metal - no paint left at all. In fact, it's even indented.

So, I celebrated my great fortune by making The Mariners' Pepperpot Soup. It involved a great deal of chopping, which always helps when you are speechless with excitement about the new detail work on your car. It's a fun soup to make, although I always panic that it doesn't look chunky enough to satisfy Mister. It's fine, though, because what I can't see is that all the rice and a great many of the vegetables are hovering just below the shiny, spiced surface of the broth. It made for some fun picture-taking, though:
When I made the Chickpea Apple Curry the other night, I made extra rice and scooped out one cup to add to this soup. It held the shape of the measuring cup and when I added it to the pot, it just plopped into the center. I found the Rice Meatball pretty funny, so I snapped a picture.

look at how excited Angst is for pepper soup!

not really.

a rainbow of savory goodness

Keeping with my trend of alternating soup dinners with solid food, tonight I made Winter Vegetable Curry despite my strong desire to avoid chopping the head of cauliflower in my fridge. It had to happen sooner or later, though, so tonight was the night. Besides, in an obvious attempt to steal my affections from my husband, Old Man Winter is sending me another Imminent Death Snowstorm tomorrow night. According to The National Weather Service, we're expecting another 10-18 inches between tomorrow afternoon and then throughout the day Wednesday. Sounds like perfect weather for our final soup dinner!
I think it has actually been since last winter that I've made this tasty little curry. It is so good I spent at least half the time I was eating it thinking "you stupid - why don't you make this more often?" Then I remember how much it sucks to chop the whole head of cauliflower. There has to be an easier way to do this that I just don't know. If anyone out there has any ideas, I would love for you to leave me a comment with detailed instructions!
I've been intending to add harissa to about half of the dinners I made this past week, so I'm quite pleased that I actually remembered to stir it in to replace some of the curry paste in this recipe. The recipe calls for 3 Tablespoons of curry paste and 3 Tablespoons of mango chutney. I have discovered that neither Mister nor myself are big fans of mango chutney, so I substituted apricot preserves and that added a nice, surprising sweet bite here and there. In place of the curry paste, I did 2 heaping teaspoons of my now-beloved Frontier brand curry powder and 1 conservative Tablespoon of harissa. It was much hotter than it has been with just the curry powder (I'll admit, I'm a little afraid of curry paste), especially when I got an unmixed chunk of it in my mouth by way of a caulifloret.

The recipe, by Rachael Ray, is one of her [few] vegetarian 30-minute meals and once you've made a mess of the cauliflower...well, chopped it, it comes together very quickly. I'd say there's a total cooking time of almost 20 minutes. I cannot recommend this recipe enough - it tastes great, it's relatively easy to assemble, especially if you cheat and use frozen cauliflower or pre-cut cauliflower. If you go the pre-cut route, be sure to use the cauliflower the same day you buy it or buy it the day you intend to use it - it doesn't keep well. Happy chopping!