Day without MacGyver 3

One thing we have in common is that we start projects with much more alacrity than we finish them.  So I've filled the kitchen table up with yet more "inputs."  It was very windy today, so I bailed on most of the fun yard adventures I planned.

Filled the chicken coop with $11 of pine shavings which turned the tables for beleaguered 2.0.  She had lost some head feathers and looked a little raw, but seemed to be in pretty good spirits.  She has figured out how to use sympathetic Inky as a feathered shield between her and Blinky when things get dodgy.  With shavings spread, there was nowhere our dirt loving birds thought was safe to stand, but 2.0 had made herself at home in the deepest bedded corner.

On the same errand I also discovered Zuke's dog treats make a Chondroitin and Glucosamine supplement treat which I've started feeding to Kai in hopes her luxating patella won't er... luxate so much.  Two treats in, they come stampeding to the kitchen from anywhere on the property any time I move the treat bag to accommodate other inputs .

I was really craving shahi paneer which tops my list of comfort foods.  The problem with Indian Buffet paneer is that either they're chintzy with the cheese or someone fishes it all out before you get there.  So I might have tripled the amount of paneer called for to ensure an awesome lunch and 2 more for work (thank goodness for wide-mouthed canning jars).

I also rendered giant beet into something called Odessa Salad which I found in the Moosewood Cookbook (the only other option was Borcht of which I was only familiar with due to childhood viewing of Rugrats).  You basically bake the beet in foil for 45 mins at 400 degrees.  Let it cool.  Shred it.  Mix it in with chopped prunes, pineapple, walnuts, garlic, and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice.  The bit I grazed tasted pretty decent.

While waiting, I made some lip balm because I seem to have misplaced or dryer-melted every tube of chapstick in the house.  This was a recipe from a book BroEpic gave me for festivus.  5 tb castor oil (was using more for softer consistency), 1 tb beeswax, 2 tb honey melted in mom's mini-crockpot and finished with about 20 drops of peppermint essential oil.  I deliberated dumping some of my favorite/only lipstick (blood red Nars Fire Down Below) in for tinting, but figured if this became a communal pot, that particular shade wouldn't look so swell on MacG.  Incidentally, just applying castor oil is good for temporary ultra glossy lips.  One concern:  the oil is lighter than honey and didn't seem to fully blend.  Guess we'll find out how things turned out when it's chilled out.

I had also been allowing 5 liter "Schmidt" to ferment some seriously shredded cabbage for an indeterminately long time.  So long that I forgot that I had seasoned the kraut with hot pepper flakes for some extra kick.  Instead, I became convinced Schmidt was harboring some weird red acidophilic  bacteria and that the mortician would have to retrieve me from the house in a hazmat suit.  Schmidt and I avoided eye contact for several additional weeks after I began harboring this suspicion.  In actuality, the kraut I grazed while cramming the remainder into a not-wide-mouthed mason jar (grr)  tasted pretty decent.  I suppose we'll draw our own conclusions about whether the hazmat suits are necessary if this becomes my final blog post.  In the future, I probably won't let the food processor shred kraut cabbage.  It was a pain to fish all those tiny pieces out.  As a very tangential aside, I am saddened that the Munich Marathon no longer overlaps with the commencement of Oktoberfest because I was really looking forward to that dubious combination at some point in my life.

I also finished my book club read, Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic, which I only just now realized I could have watched as a mini-series on Amazon Prime for $4 and had all but 3 hours of my life back.  Although in fairness, it was a pretty amusing read.  A bit too far into the "absurd events coming full circle" Douglas Adams style of plot line for me to relish embarking on a whole series in this vein.  I guess I'm more of a non-fiction gal.  

What's still on the table-- a pie tin because our Hallows pumpkin has been hanging around for quite some time and I learned the hard way that I can't just blithely compost him.  Faux nutella to eventually go with the San Francisco sourdough starter I picked up (but am dubious I can cultivate at stably warm temperatures at present...  maybe in a carefully rigged crockpot...).

Weekend Cooking with Moosewood

My latest adventure is to attempt every recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook.

At first, I was a little perplexed by Katzen's decision to handwrite everything and include her own illustrations.  Wouldn't it be more Kindleizable if it were typed?  Maybe a high-res coffee table book of the end result we are shooting for so we know what's worthwhile to attempt?

But I eventually concluded that this approach made everything much lower stakes and diy friendly.  There was no Gourmet centerfold taunting you with how messy your creation had turned out.  Everything felt a bit more experimental-- no celery?  that's cool, carry on and see how it turns out.  If you mess up, you're not "wasting" food, you're getting the cheapest cooking training ever from a self-taught pro.  Plus the ease of use features won me over.

• For containing 254 recipes, most draw from a pretty limited set of ingredients which are available even in streamlined SKU grocery stores like Trader Joe's.  Spares you a gianormous, expensive shopping list and gives you a lot of options for cooking leftovers.  
• Ingredients listed in the order you add them in, so you've got a built-in progress bar and don't forget to add some critical ingredient because you were skipping the instructions 
• Optional ingredients and garnish called out as such explicitly
• Requisite skills limited to chopping, boiling, sauteing, stirring

I'm about 6% underway, so if you want to join, there is plenty of time to catch up.  Here are some tips I discovered on the way.

**recipe selection**

1. Lunchables.  It is unrealistic to expect that you will be game for novel cooking adventures after a 14 hour day at the office.  It is also completely unrealistic to expect you will be game for eating any let alone a healthy lunch during your 14 hour day at the office. I found myself gravitating towards soups I could bottle up and reheat at work.  
2. Risk portfolio.  You want to make a couple things so if one is inedible or you're not excited to eat it two days in a row, you don't completely abandon the experiment.  That said, you don't want to pick stuff that you can't parallel process or which require small amounts of entirely different ingredients which are only sold by the bushel.  I usually pick a "comfort food" which I know I'll eat (i.e. Split Pea Soup), a "this ingredient languishing in my fridge, cabinet, counter forever" dish (i.e. Mushroom Barley Soup), some adventurous new hotness which might later graduate to one of the 2 prior categories (i.e. Lentil Walnut Burgers), some easy garnish so that if everything else is a wash, I still feel a sense of accomplishment (i.e. Berry Sauce).  

**shopping list**

• Recipes and their corresponding page number on the top half.  You can fold this part over and forget about it unless you can't find an item and need to see which recipes are impacted. 
• Missing ingredients and the recipe #s which call for them on the bottom half (notice 4 call for onions!)
• Tick marks or other indications of quantity next to them
• Miscellaneous ingredients for other projects/staples on the perimeter like the pre/after thoughts that they are (in this case diy pickles and gladware seedling pots... 5 recipes above required a combined 8 ingredients)
• If it's Saturday, take this to the farmer's market first and see if you can knock the produce items off locally.  Free advertising for Dripstop coffee also available at my Farmer's market.
• If it's a pretty straight-forward list, take it to TJ's for everything else
• If there are semi-obscure spices, oils, etc. (usually misc. additions, not Moosewood) take it to an Albertson's or Ralph's that have more selection.

**Mis en Garde**

Many lessons learned here.

• Tiny $1-$2 spice boxes you get in the grocery > giant sack of paprika you buy on Amazon... unless you really go through a lot of paprika.
• Tiny containers with magnets super glued to the back keep spice in line of sight and encourage you to experiment with it... however, these aren't exactly dark and airtight ideal storage spaces -- in fact, I think I've applied more spice to the floor than to food because of the loose caps.  Work in progress.
• Spices arranged roughly by geographic location.  Hypothetically, I think if I compartmentalized every herb/spice, I should be able to grab a set from a proximal region and end up with authentic Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/Asian/South American/etc cuisine (i.e. garlic, basil, oregano)... more likely brutal if I grabbed all of South America-- chili, cayenne, chili pepper, chipotle...
• Garlic is empty because you will quickly discover it's easier just to buy a bag of peeled garlic on the Moosewood program.  Get a Chef'n Garlic Zoom to save you from endless mincing.  
• Basil, sage, mint, thyme, and cilantro are missing because they are growing outside and are better fresh.    
• Spices (bark, seeds, roots) intensify the longer they're in the mix, so add them first.  Herbs (leaves) can start tasting bitter if cooked too long, so add them towards the finish.  Oh, and if you leave spices in a marinade or sauce, that intensifies over time... so you probably want to eat your Ginger Carrot soup while its fresh unless you anticipate needing to clear your sinuses later.  
• Knives:  Tim Ferriss says real men don't use knife blocks-- bacteria can build up.  I'm conflicted on this because if I leave cutting implements in plain sight, MacGyver reappropriates them for unorthodox uses-- like electrical work, or shellacking the skylights with more roofing tar.  I finally took one of the "good" knives I'd ordered from Amazon out of hiding it from him for the last several months.  He does most of the cooking, so I'm not sure if this affirms my uber witch status or drives home the point that Swiss be damned, we are not chopping firewood with the Victorinox when Belle isn't looking.  It's amazing what you can do with spare magnets from your spice container project.   
• [not pictured] Wide mouth canning jars.  Don't buy these on Amazon because they charge a bundle to make sure they ship without breaking.  Some higher-variety grocery stores and *gulp* Walmart have these for cheap.  I started with the narrow-mouthed ones, because that was all that was stocked on the shelf.  That was dumb.  They are really hard to fill neatly (particularly with boiling hot chunky liquids).  They tend to be "taller" for their proportions, which is all good and well until you want to try canning and realize to cover them with an inch of water you need a very deep pot.  

Buffalo Wild Wheat

It's been a couple months since I ate meat.  A general desire to cut grocery costs, eat more veggies and less adulterated food products, and reduce my footprint collided with some some unanticipatedly graphic slaughterhouse footage in the vegan documentary I'd surfed to on Amazon Prime.  On the whole, I haven't looked back.  If anything, it's nice to have my lunch choices whittled down a bit at the cafeteria.  It's rad not to have a pile of questionably aged meat biding its time in a corner of the fridge.  

That said, The two things I miss from my carniverous days were 1.  bacon (which I sneak by proxy of having MacGyver fry breakfast zucchini hash browns, rosemary sweet potato fries, etc. in his drippings) 2. Buffalo Wild Wings "buffalo" dry rub sauce.  

Fortunately, you can buy the dry rub as a seasoning.  I've taken to dusting grilled tempeh (soy) cubes with it as a neater but just as tasty alternative.  Tempeh has become my default dry rub vehicle because it is one of the few meat substitutes I can find at Trader Joe's which isn't already dolled up as a burger patty, sausage link, etc.  I tried these with Seitan (wheat product), which was expensive.  Seitan showed promise, texture-wise, but I over seasoned the first batch.  A lot of meat products pick up a more intense flavor than their animal peers.  Now if only they'd let me "carry in" for the next BarCraft...