My senator is a good man. Please support him, and tell him that you appreciate his efforts.

I'm still alive!

I did my podcast episode on peanuts, which I'd been meaning to do for a long time. Finally, it's taken care of, and I've explained things as best as I could in a short time. I had to make it quick, because my battery was dying! What a mess I can be, right?

But! It's there, and I'm back to my food rambly self. Hopefully, people will like the new episode, and will want to listen. I'm still trying to work on saying "um" and "uh" a lot. It must be super annoying for you lot to listen to when I say it. But that's kind of how I talk, y'know? And of course, as anyone who's spoken with me on the phone can tell you, I can talk a /lot/.

I should catch up with my amma, but I don't know that I'll have too terribly much to say, seeing as how things are at a bit of a standstill at work. At least things on the personal front are cool! My friends are coming over on Saturday for an eating/cooking bash, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. I think I have three that are confirmed, so it's certainly exciting.

Then, I have a baby shower for a friend in Jersey later this month. I'm looking forward to seeing that bunch again. They're all sweethearts. It's going to be a pretty cool rest of the month, I think.

Aside from that, not much to report. I've gotta fly!

Really cool story about a couple with a child, who didn't feel right about being a boy. So they said, "Let him be her." Sacred Chow: good luck katie!

I wish all parents were that enlightened.

Court, boo

Had to go to MTA adjudication building to fight a bullshit ticket. Obviously, the matter isn't completed. They have to now send a summons to the cop who wrote the ticket, and send me the court date in the post via certified mail. Then, I have to appear AGAIN at the court house to present the evidence. Then, I have to wait for them to complete their decision. And if it doesn't go my way, I have to file an appeal.

All for a bloody $50 ticket. Sorry. Not going to buckle. I'm fighting this.

Stretching the Fat

Stretching Cream

It may sound like an obvious proposition, but if you're looking to cut back on the amount of fat and calories you stack up when you're using things like coocnut milk and coconut cream in recipes, you'll want to use as little as possible. Furthermore, coconut milk and coconuts aren't exactly cheap. I get my coconut milk from a wonderful Chinese market out in Queens, for about 89¢ per 15 ounce tin. This is drastically less expensive than my grocery store, where it goes for at least $1.25. And that's cheaper still than the grocery stores in Manhattan, where that same amount of coconut milk can easily go for up to $3.

Suffice it to say, these things are best used sparingly. Furthermore, they're best used as a finishing ingredient, rather than an integral ingredient. That way, you get the maximum flavour impact of the freshness of coconut coming through loud and clear. When you cook the coconut for a long time, the freshness starts to dull, and the character of the fat changes. As I've said a few million times by now, it's best to avoid cooking the coconut fat if you're trying to eat it in a healthy way. If you're making a bechamel, the hell with health, and go nuts.

So. What is the easiest method of making the fat stretch?

I find that for the most part, starch does the job really well. This can be either potatoes, flour, cornstarch, or rice, depending on the application. If you're working with a stew or something similar, and it's got lots of hearty vegetables, and you have like a backnote of cream going on, what I find works really well is to mash together the coconut milk and some cooked rice. Mash it well and vigourously, much like you were trying to make very smooth mashed potatoes. Once it's in a nice mashed mass, slowly incorporate the cooking liquid from the stew into the mash, so that the rice and coconut get dispersed in liquid. If you were try to put that ball of mashed rice directly into the pot, you'd end up with some fairly unpleasant blobs of rice floating around. Definitely not good. Once the rice and coconut are sufficiently liquidy, feel free to pour that stuff directly into the soup. Bring everything up to a full rolling boil, then drop to a simmer for about five or ten minutes. It should thicken up quite nicely. Adjust for salt at the end, of course.

If you're looking to do something more like a soup, wherein you have a smooth consistency to maintain, I find that either a roux or a slurry works well, but finely mashed potatoes don't interfere too much. Take vichyssoise for example. It's creamy all by itself, without the addition of any cream. All it is should be potatoes, leeks, a bit of oil, and salt and pepper. Anything else is a bonus. start off with about a pound or so of leeks, sliced as thin as you can get 'em. Sauté them in a bit of peanut or other vegetable oil. When they turn translucent, dump in about two pounds of new potatoes (not the starchy kinds, the waxy work better, in my opinion), peeled and chopped roughly. Stir the potatoes and leeks around in the fat for about five minutes or so, being careful not to brown the potatoes.

Add just enough water to cover the potatoes, and bring everything up to a boil. Drop down the heat to as low as it'll go, and let it gently bubble away for about 15 - 25 minutes, depending on how large you diced your potatoes. Once it's done, grind it down to a puree in a blender (if you want to grind it when it's still hot), or in a food processor (wait for it to cool down a bit, and use a fair bit less liquid to grind it), or a stick blender (if your food processor and/or blender are small, and you want to do it all at once). You won't need anything more, but a few tablespoons of coconut milk will just push it over the edge.

The vichyssoise is just an example of how powerful potatoes can be at thickening stuff. You don't quite have to go to the trouble of combining it with leeks every time (even though it's stunningly delicious). A shortcut is to nuke the potato for about four minutes (for a medium spud) on high power, and then peel it when it comes out of the microwave (be careful, it's hot!), and then mash the potato extremely well. Hell, if you want, pitch it in the blender with some water, crank that baby up, and bust out with improv potato "cream" with which to thicken your soup, stew, or whatever else. Then, at the very end, add just a fraction of coconut milk that you normally would, and watch the whole pot become creamy by association.

By the by, this also works with the ground nuts cream that I have in my book, if you don't have coconut milk.

Late to bed, later to rise

I got to bed FAR too late last night, and of course, ended up sleeping till 11. If I'm to get to work on time, by around 12, I need to get moving from my house around 11:15 or so, so that I have enough time to get to the subway, wait for it to arrive, and then get into work. Sometimes it takes five or ten minutes to come, if it's running late, or if there's some sort of heavy train traffic. Very annoying, indeed.

Any rate, I got out of the door around 11:25 or so, and really hoofed it. I made it to the subway station pretty quickly, but as soon as I got to the platform, and somehow the train arrived immediately! On the train I go. Somehow, I managed to make it to work not only on time, but early! That was so unusual, but quite nice nonetheless. It really gave me a bit of a boost throughout the day. I also managed to finish work on time, and got to the train station. Again with the subway arriving just as I got on the platform!

It's a minor pleasure, but when things just go well, everything seems so much nicer. :)

Dear Senator Serrano:

I was under the impression that this great city celebrates and rejoices in the diversity of its people, but I feel like my diversity isn't being respected. There's been some grumbling and mumbling going down about the Marriage Equality Bill not happening as it should have happened years ago, for all people. Please, if you have any compassion for those of us who have no rights to be given the respect that we deserve, please do your best to ensure that this bill passes. I came here from Florida to escape people who hated me for who I am. Please hear my voice, and know that people like me need those rights, so that we can have the same benefits that our straight married friends have. My partnership of four years is no less valid than anyone else's and I hope that you'll agree too.

I have attached a photograph of me with my beautiful husband, so that you'll see that we too have a face, an a voice, and are real people.

Thank you for your time.

Dino

The senator's email address: serrano@senate.state.ny.us

If you're a registered voter in New York, please, send the good senator a message. :)

Speak Softly, and Carry a Notebook

It happens so often that I wonder if I'm really alone as I think I am on this issue: great idea comes, you get distracted for a fraction of a second, and all of a sudden, the muse has flown off towards new heads. All of a sudden, you're slamming your brian against your skull to try to shake loose whatever that inspiration was from whichever dusty corner it sits in. Nothing.

It happened to me this morning. I had a pretty nifty idea for a blog post, but had to go to the washroom immediately. One flush later, and my idea was swirling along with the amber liquid and the rapidly rushing stream of water down the drain. Poof. Gone. Never to be realised now.

I used to be in the very good habit of carrying a notebook with me wherever I went. Then, when something just had to be said right now, I could reach for it, along with its pen (who sat neatly inside the spiral) and jot down whatever it is I was thinking. I would then get on with my life, and come back to that idea once it's had a chance to stew in my brain's juices, and pick up flavour and texture from the ambient noises that are always going on in there.

It's part of the reason that I digress so many times in conversation and in writing. My brain isn't a linear being; instead, he charges out in all directions, at a nice steady pace, in neat, parallel lines. Think of it like a koosh ball. Then, imagine each thought folding back in on itself, to come back to the middle. And while they do that, they rub up against each other, and create new thoughts, and new ideas, and different places to explore, all within a fraction of a second. It's not as chaotic as it sounds, mind you, but it works for me.

This is why it's so important to have that notebook at reach. If I don't have some place to put those fleeting moments of brilliance (stop rolling your eyes at me like that!), they'll constantly be escaping. And if I'd had the sense to be near my notebooks, as I used to be, you'd be reading an interesting piece, and not the insane ramblings of a crazy person.

Still Cold

I called my mother yesterday. Unfortunately, the conversation was only about an hour and small change, but I did get to have my boss join in on it, which was nice. We all got a chance to chat about work, and dumb people, and all the rest, and it was definitely nice for him to hear a voice that's not mine. I know that I talk a lot, but it's part of my charm. Right? RIGHT?

Fine. Be that way.

My father's book is coming along swimmingly, although I haven't the time to edit it quite yet, because work has been filling my days and the rest with so much to do! It's good in one way, because it means that there is so much to get done, and we're not sitting around and scratching all various and sundry body parts. It's also good because it means that we're forever trying to improve ourselves, and reaching for the highest and best that we can do.
It's not so good, because we're not lounging on a beach somewhere with cocktails.

Storing Grains

My mother had a problem with bugs, which she told me about. All her grain products, and many of her bean products had developed those little needle nosed bugs that some people call weevils, but are really Tribolium confusum, or the so called "confused flour beetle." Yes, it's a species of beetle. They're fascinating little creatures, and have a standard life cycle of egg, larva, pupa, and adult. They can survive on the tiniest amount of grain, and can even survive the freezer.

However, the people who typically give advice on bug management tell you to do horrible things, like put the grain into the freezer for extended time, so that they can be frozen to death. I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on the cold, and freezing to death doesn't sound like my idea of fun. I think that the best way to avoid eating bugs (although it's funny how squeamish people get about eating bugs, when they have no problem eating other animals, but that's for another day) is to prevent their access to your food supplies in the first place.

This is dead simple to do, as long as you are fastidious about it.

1. If you already have an infestation, don't buy any new grain until all the old grain is completely consumed (by either you or the bugs). I'd suggest just letting the bugs have at, because the eggs are small enough to pass through a sieve, and are too small to be seen easily by the human eye. Better to start fresh, so that you're not taking any chances at all.

2. Clean out any vestiges of grain products left in open surfaces, such as on the counter, in cupboards, pantries, or other storage areas, and any other place you think some grain may have fallen. Thoroughly vacuum your kitchen, to pick up any stray pieces. Go over everything with hot water and bleach. It'll take a while, but it's well worth it if you're looking to start over fresh.

3. When you buy grain, beans, or anything else that these critters like to attack, store them in air-tight containers with as small an opening as possible.

I'll repeat that, in case you missed it: store them in airtight containers with small openings.

What do I mean?

Juice bottles! You know those bottles of cranberry juice or apple juice that you buy from the store? (Or, in some cases, bottles of liquor with a screw on cap.) Those are perfect for keeping out bugs, because you can close them tightly, they don't cost you anything, and they store a LOT of grain.

I can easily fit a 20 lb bag of rice into a couple of one gallon juice jugs. I prefer the clear containers, so that I can see what it is that's inside the container, but you can use any bottle you have.

If you've ever visited my apartment, you'll see bottles of rice, split peas, and other random grains on top of my fridge, bottles of spices in my cupboards, and bottles of other grains in my pantry. The easiest way to get your stuff into those jars is to visit a hardware store, and buy one of those cheap plastic funnels that have a very large opening on the bottom, so that your grain flows through evenly. Once they're in there, it's very easy to dispense.

Those funnels are usually used to get oil into a car, but they work just fine for grain. If you find that the opening that rests in the bottle is too small, grab a serrated knife, and saw off the bottom tip until it's wide enough to admit the grains, but narrow enough to fit the mouth of the bottles. Sand it down a bit with your sharpening steel, some steel wool pads, sandpaper, a nail file, an emery board, or whatever else you have lying around. The point is that you want to avoid the little bits of plastic getting into your food.

If you'd rather not spend the $1 - $3 on the plastic funnel, grab a newspaper, and roll it into a cone with an open end. Secure it with a staple or two, or some tape, and go to town. Or, use one of those party hats, and snip off an end. I used the same party hat for about six months while I was trying to find a better way, and it worked just fine for me.

In fact, I find it awkward to use my grains without pouring them out! The smaller containers are much easier to handle than those messy bags that they come packaged in.

This goes triple for sushi or basmati rice. Both are extremely expensive, and I'd sooner miss out on the attractive packaging that they come in than lose out on the rice itself.

If you have friends that also discard their used juice and water bottles, ask them to save the bottles for you, so that you can reuse them.

WARNING: Ensure that you wash and thoroughly dry the containers before putting any grain into them. Any leftover moisture will encourage the growth of fungus, and will spoil your stuff. Make sure that it's completely dry before using the containers. It's important to was the juice containers, because the leftover sugar will attract ants and other critters. Best to avoid it in the first place!

Why recycle when you can reuse?

Happy Mother's Day to all the lovely moms out there!

I sent my mother a letter this morning, letting her know how amazing she is. If you haven't done so yet, better late than never!

Here's to all the lovely moms out there. You make our lives better in so many ways.

I have no Junk Drawer

I don't have a junk drawer, and I'm quite happy that way. It goes in direct opposition (one of the very few times that I do diverge from her) to my mother's way, which is to have a junk drawer, a junk purse, a junk closet … you get the picture. The point is that people who tend to hold clutter tend to have these parts of their lives that are … junk.

What prompted me to give everything the ol' heave ho was an early morning while I was puttering around in my kitchen, making something for my darling husband. I don't recall which spice it was that I couldn't trace, but it was ever elusive. Fenugreek. That's the one. It's one of my favourite spices to use, both for its savoury aroma, and for its unctuous mouth feel when added to a soup towards the beginning of the cooking process. It was fenugreek.

At that moment, I started rifling through the pantry, the shelf above the stove (which is infrequently, if ever, used), the shelf above the fridge (which is damn near never used), and in all the drawers in the kitchen, starting with my spice drawer, and ending with my junk drawer. It dawned on me that while my computer files are neatly organised by project, and I can generally find things without the search feature, the rest of my life was slowly coming unglued, because of the chaos that I allowed to permeate everything.

Something had to go, and it sure as heck wasn't me.

Out came all the contents of the pantry, the shelves the drawers, everything. I arranged the whole mess atop my counter(s?), the stove, the floor, anywhere I could find another scrap of spare space. Then I attacked all the shelves and drawers with soap and hot water, to clean out the accumulated dust and debris that naturally builds over unkempt storage, like so many petals from the cherry blossoms on the ground during the first blush of Spring.

Then, slowly, methodically, and determinedly, I began to throw away anythingthat seemed remotely useless. The menu from the local eatery? They have a website. Gone. The random receipts from the grocery store? That food is long past eaten, and the paper has gone yellow with age, and become wrinkled. Yes, I got a fantastic deal on those strawberries, but this is surely not the way to enjoy that! As expected, most of the stuff in the junk drawer was exactly that: junk.

Anything else, like tools (hammers, chisels, screwdrivers) went to its own little storage area. No more office supplies in the kitchen. No more random scraps of paper that have no business existing, much less taking up valuable real estate on my tiny space. No more JUNK. All of it is gone now, and my pantry, although not the model of perfection, is organised, and easy to search. The shelves, although not strictly perfect, are still devoid of any random flotsam.

And for the record, there was no more fenugreek. I'd finished the last bit on a soup the week before, and had forgotten to make a trip out to the store to pick up some more. Never again.

And again, with the going back to the freezing.

So here I am, waking up on yet ANOTHER freezing May morning. Dude, what's going on? In Florida, we'd have nice, toasty sunshine by this point. Here, it's still grey and windy and miserable. I don't think I like this plan very much.

In other news, some nice lady from Pom sent me a bunch of the juice. It tastes pretty good, but so far I've only used the first bottle on cocktails. ::cough:: I can pretend it's healthy! I think I'll try and be more creative with the next bottle, and see if I can't come up with something interesting. I'll let you lot know how it comes out.

Emily, Mike, and Steve all helped make lunch on Saturday go really well. It was a whole lot of fun, because we got to sit and chat, and eat. And eat. And eat. We made roasted cabbage, daikon/carrot/ginger/miso that was baked in the oven, roasted swiss chard, and rice. Then, we had little mini pizzas on pita bread after everyone was done. Oh, also green beans, south indian style. There's a recipe in the book, I think.

Now, after that much food and chatting, the conversation always picks up, because everyone is full and happy and the rest, right? FINALLY, after all these years of having said fun conversations, I brought in a microphone so that we could record some of it. And as usual, topics ranged from food, to food politics, to animal rights, to stupid omni questions, to joking and being silly. I did try to get everyone to speak up a bit when they were waning, but it is what it is. I uploaded it as a new podcast episode, so I hope you lot give it a listen.

Aside from that, my mother currently has no phone or internet for a few more days, while the respective companies get off their behinds and set things up. Mind, my sister and brother in law have mobile phones, but those are prepaid. My father has one from his work at the temple, but that's a work phone. Either way, I won't be able to catch up with amma for a while, so I'm just kind of saving up all the experiences in my head.

Boo Cold

What do you think you are doing, New York? It has gotten chilly all of a sudden, and I am decidedly displeased. Please to return to your original weather patterns of warm and breezy and beautiful outside. Thank you.

Amma

I apologise for the long absence. I've been at work, and been working on a major project that's so exciting that it's been taking my considerable mental (and physical) energy, and channelling into making it a success. However, that doesn't mean that I've forgotten my friends on the internet here. I was thinking of my mother (as I often do).

Amma.

It rolls off the tongue. Um-maaaaaah. Tamil speakers the world over instantly recognise it as one of the first words that they learn to say. It means mother. It's also the word we use to describe Gauri, who is the wife of Shiva, and the mother of Ganesha and Murugan. The supreme mother.

Somehow that word in itself just wraps you up in a cushion of comfort and peace.

When I hear someone else calling her or his mother "amma", it immediately comforts me, because it means that all is right with the world. For you to call someone amma shows the utmost of love and respect. It's not a word that's used casually.

It's funny though. Friends of mine who used to play at our house would end up calling my mother Amma too, because that's the only thing they ever heard her being called in the house. And amma she was to all of them. She'd be just as comfortable feeding, comforting, or hugging any one of the parade of children who tromped through our house as she would her own children.

I found out later in life that it's a fairly common occurrence in the homes of other Tamil speakers, whose last names can get rather long (Venkatasubramaniam, anyone?), and the simple expedient of amma would often fill that role quite comfortably. But I'd like to think it's because a Tamil mother is a woman who has the skill to make anyone call her amma.

Thanks, Mrs. Hudson

I had a teacher in Middle School, named Mrs. Hudson. She had assigned us a drawing of the different layers of skin for homework. We were to take what they did in the book, and copy it, and make our own version of what was there. I came in the next day, with mine, looking fairly horrible. I'm an awful hand with a drawing pencil, and can't make what I have look anything at all like what's on paper. That being said, I did give it a valiant effort, and coloured it like it was in the book.

The next day, as the teacher was collecting our assignments, she paused at one student's desk, and said, "Now why didn't I ever think of that?" The student had coloured her drawing of skin (the surface, of course) a pretty chocolate brown. Looking back on those textbooks, it dawns on me that the "norm" was the beige coloured skin tones of my teacher, and a couple of other students in the school, whereas the browns and chocolates of the other students were never represented. I don't know what made me think of it, but I'm glad that my teacher called to task the book which was engaged in the Invisible Backpack, which was a term I didn't learn of until a few years later.

Quickie Ramblings from Ask Dino

A couple of friends contact me via email, to ask me various things. In those cases, I'll hop onto a chat program, and we'll talk in real-time, and get the questions answered. Here are the results of some of those conversations. My friend Sz recorded it, and made it coherent. Sometimes, I type quickly, so I don't always make sense.

To do coconut cream
Get a tin of coconut milk. Store it in the fridge, right-side-up for 3 days. Then open the bottom of the tin very carefully. Then drain out the coconut whey. And then, shoomph. Wad of fresh, thick RICH coconut cream. It's about as thick as butter. My mother told me to use it in place of butter, when it's needed for spreading on bread or over noodles or whatever, and it's quite delicious.

The best way to toast nuts
EXACTLY 10 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven. And make sure the oven is perfectly preheated. This is the same for sunflower seeds to, for the record. Also, feel free to rotate the pan at 5 minute mark.

Pesto Spinach
Start with some olive oil in a skillet, put the WHOLE washed spinach into said skillet, liberally sprinkle with minced garlic. Sauté till most of the water is evaporated. Wait for it to cool to room temp. In the bowl of a food processor, add some chives, basil (STEMS INCLUDED), oregano and walnuts. If you don't like walnuts, cashews or pine nuts will do just fine.

(If you use almonds, blanch them in the microwave to remove the skins) Then pitch in the spinach. Then a few cloves of raw garlic. THEN just grind it down. It'll become a smooth fine paste. And you wouldn't have spent a forutne on all that basil, because the spinach extends it. And you wouldn't be wasting the stems. Then the next time you make it, cut back on the herbs. Continue to cut back until it's mostly just spinach.

It's woooooooooooonderful over steamed basmati rice or over pasta or mixed with bulgur and tomato and radish and cucumber or quinoa with black beans and grated carrots and a dash of olive oil to finish it.

Kale
Kale is really easy, when you have coconut milk. All you have to do is chop it up roughly (and chop up the stems finely).
Then rub everything with a bit of oil and curry powder. Then throw it in a large casserole dish. Then dump in a tin of coconut milk, and 1 tin of water (wash out the coconut milk tin, that is). Bake at 350, covered, for about 25 minutes or so, till it's tender. When it's tender through, top with minced garlic, chopped onion, and let it sit under the broiler till the onions are brown. So. Freaking. Good.

You can't just dump everything in. You have to sort of /rub/ the seasonings and salt into the leaves. Because you know how the edges of the leaves are crinkly and tickle your throat? Rubbing it HARD makes that stop doing that. You have to be very rough with the kale.

When you're doing beans, try this next time:
As they simmer, prep your veg.
Celery, onion, carrots, tomato, ginger, garlic, bla bla bla

Then about 30 minutes before the beans are done cooking, do a quick sautee of the celery, onions, and carrots. Add in a good heaping tablespoon of any of your favourite spice or herb blend. Herbs de Provence works well for me, but regular ol' mrs dash will do, right?

Then add another heaping tablespoon or two of chili powder (not the ground chiles, the one with the garlic powder and cumin and all that junk). Add in a bay leaf or two, and let the whole thing sautee for another 5 minutes, or till the veg are softened and browned well.

THEN add the garlic, onions, and tomato. You want to wait till the end on the garlic because then you get MORE garlic flavour.
It'll be much stronger, and you use up less. Ditto with ginger. (and it needs to be fresh ginger, plz)

So anycow. When the tomatoes have cooked down, add in a good slurp of vodka or red wine or whatever.

Once that's thoroughly cooked out, your beans should be done cooking. Then add that crap to the cooked beans.
If you're in the mood for it, feel free to pitch in some tinned or frozen corn too. And all will be well.
Let it boil for about five minutes to let the flavours mingle. Your house will most assuredly be smelling quite delicious.

Stock for Risotto

My friend Chuck reminded me about risotto in the previous entry, which does certainly need a stock, because the whole darn thing /is/ just a rice that's cooked in fat, to which stock is added to make a sort of gravy. So, there are times when you use stock for cooking, but not use stock as a cooking liquid, which is an important distinction. I'm fine with people using stock in a gravy, or risotto, because it's a specific flavour component.

That being said, cooking stock over the low and slow method can be a pain in the butt. If you want to shortcut it, do the lazy way. Chop up a celery rib, an onion, and a carrot into fairly small pieces. In a pot, heat up some olive oil, and pitch in all your vegetables at the same time. Add in a clove of garlic, pitch in some italian seasoning, Mrs. Dash, fines herbs, herbs de provence, or a mix of sage, rosemary, and oregano. Suffice it to say, the herbs are immaterial. You can use whatever you have, or make up your own. If you feel like it, add a teaspoon (or so) of chile powder (the kind with all the spices in it) for extra flavour. If you have it, add a teaspoon or so of fenugreek, which you should start doing for any vegetable stock, as it lends that silky unctuous texture and savoury taste to any liquid.

Once all the vegetables are softened, pitch in about a litre of water, about a cup or so at a time, allowing the water to come up to a boil between additions. This shortens the amount of time that you're standing there. When the final addition goes in, let it boil for about five minutes, and you're pretty much done. Strain it if you wish, or leave it as is. It'll be fine either way.

If you want to turn that stock into a soup, feel free to throw in some peas, some chopped frozen veg, corn, spinach, collards, kale, what have you. Just make sure to brighten up the flavour at the end with a healthy dose of parsley. Hope that helps!

If you're really quick at chopping veg, the whole thing should take no more than about 15 minutes or so in total.

Stock Rice

If you're cooking rice in stock: eff you. I can't tell you how many places I've been to, where the only ostensibly vegan thing on the menu was the rice, and they cook it in some dodgy stock. Meanwhile, next time you make plain rice, taste it, then taste your rice that you've cooked in stock. Tell me if that stock really added all that much to the dish, with regards to flavour, texture, or colour.

"Oh, but Dino! Stock isn't supposed to be strong tasting. It's supposed to be very mild."

Don't you love it when others make your argument for you?

I've ranted about stock long enough on the podcast, so I won't bore you again, but suffice to say that I think it's an utter waste of time, and vegetables. And, if you're talking food sensitivity, you really do want to avoid an ingredient where you've dumped a bunch of different things into a non-discriminate pot, and boiled it.

Here have been the results of my rice + stock experiments thus far:

Vegetable stock, fresh: No flavour, colour or texture change noticed.
Vegetable stock, from concentrate: Mild salty flavour, no colour or texture change.
Kombu dashi: No change in flavour, extremely mild change in texture (it became softer), change in colour was negligible
Kombu dashi with miso: Salty flavour, slightly softer texture, mild colour change

My point is, for my money, I'd sooner taste whatever it is I dumped into the rice pot to cook it. I can tell you right now that in those cases when I was fed rice where the host "forgot" to tell me that the rice was cooked in chicken stock, I really couldn't tell. So why did you do it in the first place? If you want to add more flavour to your rice, there's a couple of really simple ways to do it:

1. Add salt. When you add a bit of salt to the cooking liquid of any starch (rice, potatoes, pasta, noodles), it imparts a salty flavour that is consistent throughout the starch. This is doubly true when using brown rice, where salt in the surrounding food takes longer to penetrate the tough grains.
2. Toast the uncooked rice in a little bit of oil in which you've popped some cumin and sesame seeds. The cumin, because it's a spice, does best when it's toasted in a little bit of fat, and the rice will smell nutty while toasting, and have a more separate texture. That tiny bit of toasting imparts a more nutty flavour. It's quite pleasant to smell cooking rice that's been toasted.
3. Start your skillet off with a bit of oil. Pop some cumin seeds and coriander seeds. Then add a bit of onion and ginger. Sprinkle on some salt and turmeric. Sauté until onions are browned. As of this step, feel free to add some frozen peas or corn or those mixed frozen vegetables, and cook over high heat until they're not frozen anymore, and browned to your liking.

Add the uncooked rice, and toast the rice in the spices and vegetables (if you used any veg) until it smells nutty. Then add to your rice cooker, and cook as normal. Alternately, add water directly to the skillet, and allow the water to come to a boil. Once it comes to the boil, drop down the heat to as low as it'll go, slam on the lid, and allow it to cook for 20 - 45 minutes, depending on what kind of rice you have (brown, white, sushi, basmati, etc.), until it's tender and cooked through. Top with toasted nuts of your choice.

Rice is a flavour junkie, and will take whatever you can throw at it, and absorb it. Unfortunately, that means that you have to factor in that your rice needs to be flavoured strongly if you want for the flavours to show through. This means that those wimpy flavours, like stock or soup, won't come through. Look at any culture that knows how to eat rice, and how they cook their rice:
- Jamaicans love their rice and peas, which is a combination of rice, beans, scallions, allspice, thyme, scotch bonnet chili, and coconut milk. All of those flavours are very strong, and they come through in the end.
- Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans alike adore their gallopinto, which is a mix of ginger, garlic, onions, cumin, coriander, fresh cilantro, peppers, all of which are cooked together before adding the beans, and then the rice.
- Sweet pongal, which is eaten during festivals, is cooked with coconut, palm sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and clove, and then rice.
- Venn pongal (it's in the book) is the cumin, ginger, turmeric, split peas, and then rice.

The point I'm getting to is that if you want to have one-pot rice with plenty of flavour, go ahead and do so. But please, for the sake of my sanity, put the stock away.

Cleaning up.

It's my least favourite part about having friends come over: the aftermath. I usually end up cooking a fair bit of food, and realised that I could make my life easier by skipping the middle-man. This will not work for everyone, and this will certainly not work for a full on formal meal, but it did work for having a few friends over, and eating a casual, potluck style dinner. 

What I usually end up doing when people are coming over is that I'll do the long cooking things in the morning, when I wake up, then start the rest of the dinner about an hour and a half before everyone shows up. Since produce doesn't take too terribly long to prepare, it's usually just a question of getting it all together, and making it happen, then seasoning everything in the last 15 minutes or so, including the slow cooking things, like beans. What do I mean?

Say for example that I'm making a split pea soup. I'll start cooking the split peas in a slow cooker early in the morning. I prefer for mine to be cooked till they fall apart, which is why I prefer to give it as long as it wants. Others may prefer less cooking, and can do it in an hour or so. Then, I go about my day, just clearing up the house, or relaxing. Let's say that everyone is set to arrive at 7 PM. Around 5:30 PM, I get up off my duff, and begin prepping the vegetables for cooking. I do my washing, chopping, and salad-y type stuff first. Then, I season up the beans, so they'll have time to simmer with the spices, until my guests arrive. Then, I do all the vegetable cooking itself, which will take me from around 6:20 - 7:00, give or take. Then everyone arrives, I bring out the food and the eating stuff (plates, spoons, forks, bla bla bla), and set out everything on the table. Everyone takes what they want, and eats until she or he is full.

For something sweet, if everyone has room, I'll usually slice up some fruit (pears, apples, whatever), and serve it up. Usually people are too full for anything more by this point, so I often never reach this point. 

Then, when everyone leaves, I put everything away into the boxes I have to get them in the fridge or freezer. Then, I have to do the cooking dishes. They're often too large to efficiently go in my dish washer, and by now, the food has set in, because the hot food has been cooling in that pot this whole time. Meanwhile, the dinner dishes are still sitting there. By then, I'll usually feel too tired to bother with anything, and just leave it for the next day. The next day, my counter is still a disaster area, and the dishes are staring at me ruefully.

Let's be honest. You still don't attack them. I generally heat some leftovers up in a plate or bowl, and watch TV for a bit, to recuperate from the previous night. Then, when I find that the entire sink is still full of dishes, and I have to wash my eating dish, I realise that it's time to get some work done. By now, it's probably well into the next afternoon (around 3 or 4 PM). I do all the dishes at once, and stuff the dishwasher with whatever I can get in there in terms of dinner plates, glasses, mugs, spoons, forks, knives, etc.

Around 7 PM or so, I'm about done, and now the counter top, the stove, and the kitchen floor need to be cleaned. By then, I'm pooped, so I go make Steve his dinner, and set a pot of rice on again. 

Around 10 PM that night, I'll be done with cleaning the counter, and that night's dinner dishes. Then comes sleep, and the next day, I'll usually finish off the floor and stove by around noon~ish.

All for a single dinner event.

There HAD to be a better way. This time, I used those oven safe pyrex dishes that can go directly in your fridge. I cooked everything I needed for Saturday's dinner on Friday. Then, I put the food away into the pyrex containers, and kept them in big enough portions for four people. Because I was immediately putting the food away, the cooking pots were very easy to clean, and that job was done in about thirty minutes or so. 

The next day, I just heated everything up in the oven, did some last-minute jobs. I had plenty of time to get the kitchen back in shape by the time my friends arrived. Everything was piping hot from the oven, and tasted great. If you have microwave safe plastic food storage containers, this would go even faster, because you'd just have to nuke everything for a couple of minutes to reheat it to the right temp to get on the table. Then, when dinner was done, everything was already in the storage containers, so I just put it back in the fridge, and dumped the dinner dishes in the dishwasher. It was so much less work. The next day, all I had to do was some final touches to the kitchen, and it was nice and clean again. :)

Had to make it happen, and fast.

My microwave is a rather nice one, and lets me set certain foods (like potatoes) to cook, based on the weight in ounces. I'm fairly certain that your microwaves (the ones with the fancy buttons) have the same feature, so I'd encourage you to read the manual, and figure out if such a thing is feasible.

So I was home yesterday, doing some cleaning, and catching up with myself, and I noticed that it was suddenly 6:30, by the time I cleared out the dishwasher. In a blind panic, I opened up the fridge to see what was in there.

1 cup of cooked mung beans (already seasoned, of course).

This is not good. Steve can easily pack that away in one sitting, and still be rather hungry. And this is where those time-saving devices really show their mettle. The first thing I did was to set some brown rice to cook in the rice cooker. That barely takes a couple of minutes, because the measuring is made brainlessly simple via the little measuring cup that came with the rice cooker, and the little lines marked on the inside, that tell you how much liquid to fill to.

Then, I scrubbed off four medium sized potatoes, and weighed them on the kitchen scale. 1 lb and 5 ounces, or 21 ounces. I threw them in the microwave, and set the weight to 21 ounces, and hit the start button. Then, out came a beet. The peeling and dicing of said beet barely took another couple of minutes or so. I had refrigerated my beans in a microwave safe container, so all I had to do was add the beets into the same dish as the beans. I also tipped in about 3/4 cup of leftover coconut milk I had (from some other recipe), and washed out the tin with hot water twice.

In that went as well. Finally, once the potatoes were baked, I switched out the potatoes for the casserole dish, and set the timer to 4 more minutes for the beans and beets. While that was going, I chopped up the beets, and let them wait for the beet/beans mixture to cook through. I wanted the beets cooked, but not mushy.

The whole lot came out, and in went the potatoes. I just let them sit in the dish, and microwaved for another minute, so everything cooks together. All in all, the whole thing only took around ten minutes, and the rice was well on its way to getting completed. Just minutes before he walked in, the rice cooker beeped its completion message. I quickly set a pot on the stove, and tipped in the beans/beets/potato stuff, and cranked the heat onto high heat. The whole thing came up to a boil, which is when I added some finely chopped up green thai bird chiles to the dish, and let it boil for a minute or so.

Steve walked in, saw the red soup, and smelled the freshly cooked rice, and was about to get himself a snack (because he thought it was going to take longer to cook), when I said, "Soup is ready, and rice is ready. Dig in." He looked infinitely relieved, and dug in heartily. While he was eating, I sliced up some pears that were nice and ripe, and arranged them on my block of Himalayan salt. It's this large slab of rock salt, with a pink colour and white marbling throughout. It lends just the slightest hint of salt to any dish. If you don't have such a slab, just the scantest tiniest sprinkle on sea salt will do the trick. This way, when he was done eating the fiery hot food, he could tame the tongue with the fresh, juicy, ripe pears.

If you stop for a minute and think about it, we barely use a fraction of the gadgets that we own, with a tiny fraction of their functions. I'm not one to condone cooking in a microwave exclusively, but there are times when you're in a hurry, and want something quick. The newer microwaves also have loads of nifty time and food saving features. That preset cooking time based on weight thing is ideal.

When the potatoes came out, they were fork tender to perfection, without being overcooked. The only reason I knew of the feature was because I read the instruction manual for the model, where it explained how to make sure the food you put in there gets cooked right. This goes double for my rice cooker, which has the lines for all different kinds of rice (plain white, brown, sushi, sweet, and no-rinse) listed on the inside. It just takes seconds to measure out the rice that I want, and add water up to the line on the pot. And every time the rice comes out of the pot, it's cooked to perfection.

If for no other reason than to get a good working knowledge of your appliances, get out those manuals, and read them (or at least skim them), so that when you are in a hurry, things don't go horribly wrong.

Concerto for Flute and Harp

These people managed to mimic the sounds of the flute and the harp by just using percussion instruments. I think they did a fantastic job. Definitely give it a listen if you've got a few minutes to spare.

EDIT: Here is the link for those catching this on other sites that don't show the embedded video. 

But one thing is not clear to me: the coconut dressing.
You process dried coconut flakes? And then mix it with curry leaves and other spices. I tried it and it gives me more like a chunky paste. I must of done something wrong there...
Could you explain it to me again?

Oh no! This email came from one of my dear listeners, Marie, who had asked me the questions about sandwiches (which, although I felt like I was out of my depth, I did my best to answer in this podcast episode). I think I might have mentioned a coconut dressing for some salad or another. It's one of my father's favourite ways to have any dense salad (like the ones with cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, cilantro, and lots and lots of shredded coconut). I suggested a South Indian Coconut Chatni (not to be confused with North Indian fruit chutney, which in my mind is a disgusting way to ruin a perfectly good meal—who wants sweet with savoury?) which is a common accompaniment to all sorts of dishes, and completely forgot to specify that I meant to say fresh coconut.

As I mentioned in an old blog entry, my family always had fresh coconut, that my father would break open, and ferret out of the shell. The thought of having dried coconut never even entered my mind! I guess it's like those people who are fortunate enough to have herb gardens outside their houses: the thought of buying dried herbs seems ridiculous, when the fresh is sitting there in all its glory, right outside the door.

For the record, whenever I say "coconut" in any way, shape or form, assume that I mean fresh. The one concession I'll make is for tinned coconut milk, but that's mainly a convenience thing, rather than an ability thing. If I had the energy to break open a coconut, then grind it in the blender, then squeeze out the milk, then figure out what to do with the left over coconut grounds, I'd be doing it all the time. But quite frankly, coconut is expensive, and I'm not about to spring $1.25 on all that effort when a tin of coconut milk is about $0.89 for me. Thanks, but no thanks.

You can also find fresh grated coconut in frozen form at most Spanish supermarkets, or at Asian supermarkets. The best part about these is that the black, tough skin has already been removed, thus saving you a step in deliciousness. Just separate out the frozen block of coconut into 2 inch squares (be it with a hammer and chisel, or a mallet, or whatever it takes), and freeze them separately. Then, when you want coconut, just thaw out exactly what you need, because thawed coconut goes bad quickly.

I apologised profusely to Marie, and I hope she'll forgive me, and try again with fresh grated coconut that's been frozen. I also apologise to anyone else who tried the recipe and ended up with a mass of WTF.

Beans and rice become finger food ...

... to peoples outside of India. In India, of course, we eat with our fingers, rather than spoons and forks, and we relish the task of scooping up the perfect quantities of rice, lentils, and pickles in one mouthful, to be followed by a swift bite of fresh green chile (for heat), and a bit of lemony cold salad (usually, cucumber, tomato, and onion, in any combination or separately). Then, in goes a bit of dry cooked vegetable with a bit of rice. Then goes some stewed veg with the rice. And on and on it goes, until the meal is finished, and the plate is clean, and all of the rice is finished. We do not waste rice. It's too important a part of our lives.

In the US and Europe, however, eating rice with one's fingers seems a bit out of place, and is difficult to do on the go. Enter hand-held beans and rice. This isn't quite a recipe, because I haven't really seen it before, but I had some leftover brown rice, and cooked brown lentils in the fridge. If you don't have cooked lentils, feel free to use a tin of black beans. It'll work just fine. However, I do caution you that my lentils are very well spiced, so if you're going to make this, make a point of adding extra spices, like cumin or coriander powder (or both!), a bit of cilantro or parsley, some grated ginger, some minced garlic, or whatever else you like. Because my lentils already had those spices in it, I didn't bother with adding them.

3 cups cooked brown rice
1 1/2 cups cooked beans, drained
spices of your choice
2 cloves minced garlic
Chopped green chiles, or chile flakes (optional)
1 TB oil, or spray of oil. Use vegetable oil. Olive oil would taste weird, I think.
Salt, to taste

Preheat your oven to 375ºF. Spread the oil on a baking sheet, and set the sheet on your counter. In a large bowl, dump in the rice. With a potato masher or wooden spoon or your hands, mash up the rice. It helps to have a good solid potato masher, because it will make short work of that mound of brown rice.

Drain the beans of their liquid, to the best of your ability. This works best when the beans are drained, because otherwise, the final product won't stay together so well. Mash the beans and rice together. Add in the spices of your choice, salt, the chiles, and the garlic. Mix it well with a spoon, the masher, or your hands.

Split the mass into balls about the size of your palms, and splat them down on the baking sheet. Don't worry about neatness. It's not going to be too terribly firm when you get started, but that's sort of the point. Bake at 375ºF for about 15 minutes. Remove the baking tray from the oven, and flip the rice balls over with a spatula. Feel free to smash them down slightly, to make them thinner, if you'd like. This will give a more crispy texture to the outside. Continue baking for another 15 minutes. By now, you should hear the rice sizzling nicely. This is a good thing.

Finally, if you want to, set the baking sheet under the broiler for a couple of minutes to get the tops browned nicely. It took about 2 minutes under my broiler.

These are excellent on their own, or as a vehicle for your favourite salad to go on top. I used the recipe for Beet Salad of Doom that I came up with a few days ago. The good part is that I managed to clear out my leftovers. The bad part is that my husband loved it so much that I don't have any more cooked brown rice or beet salad. Boo.

This is also an excellent way to sneak in some grated vegetables of your choice. Carrots would be excellent, as would cabbage. I wouldn't do potatoes, because I'd be nervous that they wouldn't cook up completely, but feel free to experiment. If the rice balls are too firm when you are forming them, add a bit of the bean liquid, or a bit of water. You want them to form a shape, but only a loose shape in the beginning. The extra liquid makes the rice more tender as it bakes.

The best part about this is that you can have beans and rice as a snack, and eat it with your fingers with no problem at all. They'd also make really cute little nibbles for a party, wherein you don't use full on cutlery, and just have people milling about, having bites of every little thing.

Luncheon on Saturday

My friend Emily came over on Saturday to have lunch with us at our apartment. The meal barely took around twenty minutes to put together, because I had already soaked and boiled chickpeas the day before. I find that if I make my own cooked chickpeas, the final cost analysis leaves me much more comfortable than when I spend on tinned chickpeas from the store. When I looked around for a sale, I finally found some chickpeas at the store for $1.25/lb at the Indian store in Queens. That will easily double in volume when soaked, and increase still a bit more when boiled.

For one pound of cooked chickpeas, I'd pay about $0.50/lb. However, the weight of those tinned beans does include water, meaning that I'm paying a premium price for water. I don't know about y'all, but paying that sort of money for water is unacceptable. The point is that while I do keep some tinned beans in the pantry for emergencies, I use them only for emergencies, and don't count on them when I am looking for something to eat. This doesn't mean that I get annoyed when having to use them: I did buy them for a reason, after all!

At any rate, we did the dry roasted garbanzos from the cookbook, and one of the versions of aubergine. Emily had brought over some of those long Japanese ones which were slender and seemingly seedless (say that five times fast!), and ever so tender. We just sliced them up thickly, and those cooked up in no time flat.

And of course, I had a pot of brown rice already made by the time my friend came over, so that we could get down to the business of eating, as soon as possible! Everything was lovely, but more than that, the company was quite a lot of fun. We've decided to make this a weekly thing. Just by sheer dumb luck, I'd happened to call my mother today, and tell her of all the fun we had together, when my mother tells me that my sister was having friends over on Monday night too. They also live in a tiny apartment, but it's in Arizona, not New York (boo).

She spent to the tune of two or three hours in prepping ingredients, cooking, and then cleaning up the aftermath of the mess in the kitchen before everyone arrived. Once we discussed how I did this, she figured it would be quite sensible to follow my format, of having the main dish there at the place where everyone convenes for the feast, but have each guest bring a vegetable, and do the prep and cooking together. If the person doesn't have a lot of money, this is perfectly ideal, because now, you have a chance to get a huge meal with an investment of only a couple of dollars for whatever it is you're buying. Even if you buy expensive, or fancy ingredients, you're only buying around a pound or two, and that's enough to share with everyone else. This is just for one meal, remember. Leftovers may happen, but you should count on just that one meal.

So although we did buy those aubergines earlier in the week in Queens, for about $0.79/lb, even at the regular price of $3/lb, someone could afford to buy it, as it's only $3. When you do the potluck style where everyone cooks at home, it becomes a burden, because it's not just that one ingredient they're buying, but rather, dipping into their own stores of weekly groceries to make this happen. How easy is it to pop into a grocery store on the way to your friend's house, and grab a couple heads of broccoli, or a pound of peppers, or a tin of cooked beans (a larger one, please) if you're in a hurry or uncooked lentils if you're not, or even some salad material (lettuce, tomato, scallions, cucumber, and a little but of nuts)? It doesn't take but a minute to run in and run out, and then head over.

Once everyone arrives, you have the major cooking (rice, dry beans that're now soaked and boiled, etc.) taken care of, and it's just a question of putting together the quicker cooking foods, like the fresh produce. If you're not looking towards potatoes, or other slow cooking heavy root veggies, you can have a very easy time of chopping and cooking together.

That being said, if you're in a small apartment, and have a tiny kitchen, like I do, feel free to branch out to the dining room table, coffee table, or any other spare space you can see, with cutting boards and knives, to help with the prep work. This way, only the person who's essential to be in the kitchen need be in there, and the rest can help, while chatting on with a glass of juice or wine or water or fizzy drink, and still having a good time anyway. If you have kids who want to help too, but you're nervous about handling knives, let them do jobs that they can do without hurting themselves. After giving their hands a good washing (it's important to encourage your kids to follow good hygiene), let them rip up the dark leafy greens or remove the greens from the stems, or squish the avocado to make guacamole (it's a good thing if it's not uniform, because good guacamole has a bit of texture), or take the string part off the string beans, or help out with collecting the vegetable scraps for the compost bin as they show up. Get everyone involved, and it's so much more fun that way!

I'd suggest that if you try the same thing in your house (where others come over to cook with you), maybe try the following tips, to make it fun for everyone:

1. Prepare any long cooking ingredients before your guests arrive. That is, soak and boil beans the day before, get your water boiling for pasta and/or cook the rice about an hour before, and clear off some work space in your counter top. I have a tiny New York kitchen, and it makes me quite crazy to have anything on it, because otherwise, I have no workspace.

2. If you're like me, and you have very little kitchen space, feel free to branch out and use any available surface to seat a cutting board and a knife. If you know that you don't have knives and cutting boards, ask people to bring their own as well, or run down to your dollar store, and grab a few cheap cutting boards. That way, people just need to bring their favourite knife.

3. Don't worry about a specific plan in cooking the food. This isn't about the food. It's about having your friends come together for a fun time of working together to make a meal happen. If someone has an idea that sounds interesting, let them try it out. You may all learn something new! I was once at a party where people had never tried simply broiled tomatoes. I showed them how to do it, and it was like everyone was discovering tomatoes for the first time ever! (Just slice tomatoes into thick slices, and lay under the broiler, with a teensy bit of oil, for about five to eight minutes, checking on them every couple of minutes. Cook until little black spots form on the cut surface of the tomato. When they're out of the oven, lay on a basil leaf, and sprinkle on lime juice. Excellent stuff.)

4. Don't be afraid to taste something quick cooked, to get an idea of what it tastes like. If someone brings something that nobody has a foggy clue what it is (except the name), you can't go wrong with slicing off a bit, frying it up in a bit of oil on your stove, till the thing looks cooked. Go with a thin slice, so that it cooks quickly. Taste it, and see what works.

5. If you have people who do not drink, make sure to have on hand some sparkling cider, or seltzer water that's been flavoured with a bit of ginger juice (grate up fresh ginger, squeeze out the juice) and a twist of lime. This is meant to be a festive occasion for everyone.

6. If you're doing this weekly, skip the expensive ingredients, and stick with cheap stuff that everyone can afford. In fact, avoid serving alcohol every week, as it's expensive. Serve wine or beer or other things only occasionally. If it really is only once in a great while that everyone gets together, go nuts (responsibly, please)!

7. If there's an awkward lull in the conversation, don't be afraid to reminisce about memories of how everyone met, or something along those lines. I find that it gets everyone talking again in short order, and things pick up. If you do prefer there to be background noise, stick with music that can be enjoyed as background noise. You don't want it to drown out conversations!

The point is, all you need is one other friend to do this with, and a commitment to each other to make it work. If you'd like to alternate houses, that works too! For my friends who come over, they get an afternoon of fun and food and cooking together. For me, I get a good kick in the backside to keep my apartment relatively clean, so that when people do come over, it's just a quick clearing off of the kitchen, or hanging up a coat in the closet, rather than an elaborate cleaning all over again.

It also prevents me from falling into cooking ruts. There are times when I'll default to food that I've been making since I was a little kid, because I've made it so many thousands of times by now, that I can practically do it in my sleep (this includes any kind of bean or vegetable soup, and pasta). If I don't keep an eye on myself, I will stop exploring, for ease of preparation, rather than keeping my search up for new and interesting ways to do things. Everyone ends up with something that they wouldn't have had without the group.

Try it out some time, and let me know how it goes. And if you have any hints to share, feel free to comment, and let others see them as well!

Are we that funny?

I was doing a search on the iTunes store for podcasts to listen to, and I came across a few GLBT ones. It struck me, all of a sudden, that most of them were labelled "humour", rather than lifestyle. Why is this?

What is it about being gay that seems to draw us towards humour?

How can you tell good bread?

The sound. If you've watched Ratatouille, you'll know exactly what line I'm talking about. It's the one where Collette is schooling Linguine on the fundamentals of good cooking. If you haven't seen the film, let me explain. When looking for good bread, you don't go by the look, you go by the sound. Mind you, the bakery won't be too keen on you palming all the loaves, so I'm not saying that you do this in the store to all the loaves, but when you do come across a loaf from a bakery that people rave about, hold it up to your ear, and press on the crust with your hands.

It should crackle, and sound something like a cross between crumpling paper and the sizzle of a thick slice of bread on a nice hot skillet, when you fry it up for croutons. The bread should also sound hollow when thumped with your knuckles, and should spring back resiliently when you do give it a press. If the bread doesn't bounce back, you're dealing with bad bread.

Well, my friend Chuck picked up the Bread book, and has been loving it.

He tells us more on his blog.

The book is called Bread. With something that solid, you don't need more fancy titles. Like Chuck said:

I could tell that the generic stuff they offered was differing radically from what I was used to. They combine yeast & water with flour using a sponge, which I hadn't done before. It also asked for much longer rising times, longer cooking times, and higher temperatures, as well as other things, like sustaining steam in the oven to crisp the crust. Figuring that I might as well give it a shot, I went ahead, half afraid that I'd turn out a burnt loaf of bread right?

Negative, Roger Wilco. This bread is out of this world.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The point is that when you can see that you've been doing even the fundamentals incorrectly (all these years), you now know that there is a technique—a magic—to making the perfect bread. Get the book from your library, or snag it on the internet. Whatever you do, make bread happen.

I don't want to know what's going in. I want what's coming out.

I've had this major annoyance for a while, that when I'm on the phone, I want to hear what you're saying to me. To be honest, I'd sooner not be /on/ the phone to begin with, but there's a total of one or two people who I have to talk to on the phone regularly, because we're so physically far apart (best friend and my mother are two of those). So aside from face-to-face interaction and emails, the only time that I'll be listening to what you're saying is when you're doing it on the Internets.

1. Don't eat while you're recording. It's disgusting to hear the smacking of your lips, and the movements of your mouth. It also breaks up your flow of what you're trying to say. I don't mind if you need to get some liquid in you to keep the mouth lubricated (because one does tend to dry out), but much more than that is quite revolting.

2. --

No, that's about it. Don't eat when you're recording audio.

Thanks.

Beet salad of doom.

It's the first time I've eaten beets and enjoyed it.

3 lb beets
1 lb carrots
1/2 lb daikon or red radish
1/2 lb granny smith apples

Peel the beets with a peeler. Grate everything up, either in your food processor, or using a box grater.

Dressing:
Handful of raw soaked almonds
1 TB white miso (optional)
Glass of orange juice, reserved
1 TB lemon or lime juice
Handful of fresh green chiles, stems removed. Omit if you don't like heat.
Salt, to taste
1 TB Rice wine or apple cider vinegar
Knob of ginger

In a blender or food processor, combine the almonds, miso, lemon/lime juice, green chilis, ginger, and vinegar. Grind until the almonds and chiles are chopped up. Then, crank the blender or food processor on full speed, drizzling in the orange juice in a steady stream, until everything is the thickness you want for it to be. Remember that you want this to cling to the vegetables. Then, when it's like you want it, remove it from the blender, and add salt to taste.

Toss the vegetables together with the dressing, and let it marinate for at least 30 minutes. The beets will turn everything into a brilliant pink/red, and the flavours will meld together beautifully. You'll get a little sweetness from the orange juice, carrots, and the apples. You get some tartness from the apples and lemon juice. The ginger provides a lovely counterpoint to the hotness of the chiles and the sharpness of the daikon. It's a wonderful salad, even in the cold weather, because the flavours just marry so well together.

You could use peanut butter or any other nuts you have in place of almonds. All it'll do is change the flavour in interesting ways.

Other vegetables you can add (and grate):
Courgettes
Cabbage
Red onions
Scallions
Jicama
Chayote
Mango
Green papaya


If you decide to add some tomato, do so just before serving, so that the tomatoes don't leech out too much water, and make the salad into a mess. Feel free to roll this up into rice wrappers, and make spring rolls. The juicy dressing makes it so that you don't need a dipping sauce. Why not use it to stuff some Romaine lettuce leaves, and eat it like a taco? This would also be a stellar and interesting sushi filling.

If you are allergic to nuts, feel free to use coconut instead. If you don't have a blender or food processor, just do an emulsion with a bit of peanut butter or almond butter or whatever instead. If you don't like orange juice, try pineapple, or mango juice. You just need a little counterpoint to the heaviness of the salad, and the slight sweetness does the job.

In any case, I'm trying to get at the most important thing: There is no excuse not to make this salad. Go make it. If it got me to eat some beets, it's a miracle.

Oil Podcast

New Episode is up and in iTunes. However, for whatever reason, it's only showing up to people who hit the subscribe button, and as an older show. Weird. Either way, you can listen to me ramble on about oils. There's a LOT of information to cover, so I took a fair bit longer than the usual 20 - 30 minutes.