Internet can be an annoying thing

I've tried posting quite a few times between my last post and this one. Everytime I get it all typed up, my internet connection disappears. I wrote this a while ago, but here it is for you pleasure:

I am in heaven, or what I might imagine it to be like, if I believed in it. My kitchen is once again functioning. I am once again cooking for myself (not just having raisins and popcorn for dinner - yes, there are times when I consider that dinner). I went grocery shopping this weekend and bought a lot of staples and a few things to try.

A few weekends ago I went to my brother and sister-in-law's for the weekend and she made this awesome marinara sauce. I asked her for the "recipe" and sucessfully made that Sunday night, but I embellished the meal a bit.

Marinara Sauce

a good amoung of olive oil
1/2 head of garlic, cloves peeled and crushed
1 large can whole, peeled tomatoes
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Heat oil in a sauce pan over medium heat.
Once oil is hot, add the garlic and stir until starting to brown.
Add the whole can of tomatoes (juice and all) and stir.
Turn to medium-low heat and let simmer, stirring occasionally, for a half hour.
Add black pepper and stir.

To serve:
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook enough fresh pasta to feed the number of people eating (obviously assuming you made enough marinara to cover said servings of pasta).
Drain pasta, divide into serving dishes.
Spoon marinara sauce over the pasta.
Serve with fresh basil, allowing each person to tear off as much basil as they would like.

I added a good scoop of ricotta cheese to mine as well (who can pass up a chance to add cheese?)\

[ETA: I used this base and made a spicy version the other night, cooking real pepperoni, sliced, in the oil for a bit with some ground black pepper and crushed red pepper before adding the garlic. It was good!)

Last night I made Indian food. Dal and curried eggplant. It was perfect. I'll also admit here that when I make ghee (very simple to do), I use salted butter. I'm a bit of a salt addict and I prefer the taste of this to the unsalted ghee. I will probably face further shame when I admit that I also spread the browned bits at the bottom of the pan on bread. It very salty and very tasty and I don't really care how bad it is for me; it's fabulous.

Tonight I made cajun salmon. (First time ever that I successfully cooked fish without overcooking it. I'm very proud of myself.) I also attempted to make cornbread (sweet version), but discovered that I must not have cleaned all of the oven cleaner off the heating elements in the oven. The fumes were horrible. I gave up (must fix that problem; first my oven was filthy - honestly why do people live like pigs and leave the next tenants to clean up after them? - now it's a cess pool of chemicals). Instead, I cooked the batter like pancakes. It worked very well for a last minute fix. I also made fiddlehead ferns for the first time ever. I'm in Maine now, and it's the season. I followed my lovely guide to produce's advice and cleaned the ferns, boiled them in salted water for five minutes, drained and seasoned with lemon juice, butter, salt and pepper. I must say, I like ferns. They're yummy.

I love having my kitchen back.

The Sad Cook

My new company was very generous and set me up with an apartment for the time that I'm in between cities. Unfortunately, that apartment was supplied by someone who obviously cooks absolutely nothing. The knives are dull, the cutting board is glass (glass! ugh! loud and the answer to why the knives are dull), the can opener is broken, I had to buy a spatula, there are no measuring spoons, and (for me) there aren't nearly enough pans and bake ware. It's sad, and it makes for a sad cook who barely cooks. I guess I'm also hindered because I don't have all the staples I would normally have to make a wide variety of foods. But, simplicity also created this salad.


It was based on a Japanese cucumber salad that I had made before, but I added lentils and red bell pepper. It turned out really well. It's been a really long time since I made it, so I'll guess at how much I put in it.

Lentil, Cucumber, Pepper Salad

1 c dry lentils
1 cube vegan "chicken" bouillon
plenty of water
1 cucumber, scrubbed, seeded, and sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced
2 tbsp brown rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cracked red pepper
1 tbsp finely chopped red onion

Put lentils, vegan "chicken" bouillon in a pot and add plenty of water (2-3 cups).
Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and let simmer until tender.
In a bowl, mix together the brown rice vinegar, honey, olive oil, and cracked red pepper.
Add the cucumber, red bell pepper, and red onion.
When the lentils are done, rinse with cold water until cool.
Add lentils to the rest of the salad.
Let sit for at least 1/2 an hour before serving.

Honey Mustard Sauce and Excuses

I'm afraid that both parts of this post will be boring. The more boring part: excuses:

For not posting often enough:
I'm preparing to move across the country and have been extremely busy.

For not having photos:
I'm lazy, plus see the note above.

For not having my homework ready to hand in:
I did it, I must have left it on the kitchen table.

The less boring part: my experiment with making a honey mustard sauce:
I suppose the easy thing to do would have been to find a recipe in a cookbook, but after shopping all day Saturday (I hate shopping, except for shoe shopping or when I have a specific item that I NEED to buy. The latter has a maximum time limit of 2 hours to ensure that I don't lose all brain function) and then moving my boxes out of the attic for a good part of Sunday, I didn't even think to look in a cookbook. I just took the pork tenderloin and butterflied it. I dry roasted some yellow mustard seed (about 1 tbsp) in a small cast iron pan, allowed it to cool, and crushed in plastic wrap with a meat mallet. I fried a large white onion in a pan, added the crushed mustard, then added the tenderloin to brown. I figured it was cooking too quickly, so I put two cups of chicken broth and a quarter cup of honey in the pan. It was at this point that I realized that I was near ruining pork tenderloin.

Luckily, mom was there to save the meal. She took the pork out and put it in a dry cast iron pan to brown (and get rid of that porky smell). Then she instructed me to start the sauce separately because the pork had left nasty little balls in the sauce (gross). This time I started with 1/3 cup of prepared Dijon mustard (the other stuff hadn't even smelled like anything), slowly added 2 cups of chicken broth and then whisked in 1/4 c honey. I think I added salt and pepper as well. When it had boiled a bit, mom deglazed the browning pan with a bit of water and added it to the sauce. Then I added a bit of cornstarch/water mixture until it was thick enough to glaze. We put the pork in the sauce and allowed it to sit, covered, but without heat until we were finished preparing the accompanying dishes (corn and mashed potatoes).

Perhaps it was my mood that made me not love this dish, but my dad seemed to really like it. I'll have to try again, perhaps with tenderloin that is grilled (tenderloin tastes best grilled) and using the sauce as an accompaniment rather than the sauce in which it cooks.

An Unmitigated Disaster

That was dinner the night before last. I ran out of time as I thought of endless meals to which we were missing at least one key ingredient. In the end I found some brats from our "local" butcher* and decided to boil them, broil them, and make potato pancakes. Hello cholesterol, goodbye arteries. But, our arteries were saved because the brats had gone bad. In the freezer, yes. This is the only drawback to using a local butcher, they don't use nearly as many preservatives as the mass producers. I'm not complaining. I should have realized. My fault, not theirs. I appreciate the lack of extra preservatives in my food. While my father undauntedly ate two of the offending brats, my mother sat silently swearing at me in her mind because she had had a rough day and was tired and hungry and dammit, dinner was a failure. She said it was alright, but it was the "it's alright" of a very disappointed and famished person. I don't blame her. (See post on teasing hungry people below.)

My shame led to a very successful dinner last night. I had my honor to defend here. On the menu:
Green salad with homemade Italian dressing
Italian roast beef
Marinara sauce over bowtie noodles
Individual banana cream pies

My reputation has been saved (further proof and details to come soon).

*I quote "local" because while this is a small butcher, we have to drive about 40 minutes to get there. But I suppose it isn't any further than our preferred grocery store. Unfortunately, our actual local grocery store has dismal produce, and when that is the bulk of your shopping cart, you pick your grocery store based on the quality of their produce. I refuse to shop somewhere that sells me onions that start sprouting and rotting within the week, celery that is rotting in its bag in the store and shrivelled green peppers.

I also mutter outside the kitchen

In fact, if anyone comes within audible distance of me while I'm doing most anything they will inevitably ask, "What?"

I grumbled and muttered a lot while making this skirt from some material I bought while in Japan for a friend's wedding. I loved the fabric, and now I have a skirt I love. I took a full skirt pattern and shortened the main body of the skirt. Then, through much trial and error, I figured out that in order to make the border I had to extend the part I cut off by 1 1/4 inches at the top and 5/8 of an inch at the bottom. I hemmed the skirt and both sides of the border and then sewed the border to the inside of the skirt. I also discovered the reason you stay stitch curved edges, especially on long narrow pieces like those. The original cut pieces were way too long once they stretched out of shape. Luckily, I bought enough of that fabric to cut more pieces (just barely, though). Now I just have to find a shirt that looks good with it. The sweater in the photo is okay, but the collar (which you can't see) isn't quite the right style.

This skirt will not be worn while I cook. I have ruined many-a-clothing item wearing it while cooking. I am a MESSY cook. Even when I try to be neat, it doesn't work. I can use a splatter screen and the grease will still coat the entire top of the range. That's why I have a clean up crew (my mother). I don't think she minds too much, seeing as I do most of the cooking while living with them. It allows her to actually enjoy cooking when she does it, as opposed to while we were growing up. Every day we posed the question "What are we having for dinner?" To which she would reply, "I don't know, what sounds good?" The perpetual answer..., "I dunno. Food?" The woman (or man) who does all the cooking for the family is a tortured soul, especially when they cook only because nobody else will or can.

Which reminds me, I don't have to cook tonight. We have split pea soup. I'll post a picture and recipe tomorrow. I thought I might add a dessert of stuffed chayote.
I actually knew what I could do with this vegetable thanks to The Field Guide to Produce by Aliza Green that I got for Christmas from my brother and sister-in-law. They also got me the Field Guide to Meat and the Field Guide to Herbs and Spices. Hopefully this will lead to more creative cooking on my part.