Tag Archives: friends

Day 3, 4, 5…….7

Well, I’ll have you know that blogging on the daily is a lot of work.

Day 3: Fruit, spinach and dinner out at a vegan restaurant.
Day 4: Fruit Spinach, avocado aaaannndddd mushroom tofu soup!

Rough guide to mushroom tofu soup

This soup is actually just a favorite of mine…
Cook the onions slow till they are the color of  honey
Then add cut peeled potatoes
Cover with water
Add some miso, a few pieces of Kombu seaweed
Next chop up all the mushrooms you can find, I got 6 different kinds from my local Asian Store… dump them all in when the water comes to a rolling boil
A little Daniel Friendly soy, a little more salt, toss in some tofu…some fresh garlic… AND THEN so much goodness in a bowl! serve with “rice” or rice..

Day 5: leftovers and random veggies.. I think I just slept early

Day 6: cheated at dinner…
Day 7: FREEEEEEEE went H.A.M. on some wine and KBBQ…
Day 8: That’s today, today has been hard.  And I’ve just been more moody and hungry… I keep eating and not feeling full… I eyed someone’s sandwich REAL hard.

 

 

Throwback Tuesdays – Drinky Suspicions

Today, they sent us home at 4:30 because of the snow.  To celebrate I bought a few limes on the way home to make some Blueberry Mojitos.  It’s like tasting a bit of summer in the dead center of this snowy, slushy, slightly drawn out winter. 

Drinky – Blueberry Mojitos
Brown Sugar simple syrup (50% brown sugar/50% hot water)
Mint
Basil
Blueberry
Light Rum
Lots of fresh lime juice
Ice
Lime Zest
Oh and club soda

Suspicions
I see pictures from home and realized that things have moved on, of course things have changed, but a small insecure part of me feels like I’ve been replaced. I think we come to a point where we realize that we are replaceable.  It’s true. Life moves on, people are forgotten, new people come around… can someone give me another drink?

Speaking of being replaced, today I made a pesto and replaced the pine nuts for walnuts.

I had basil, so, I took the opportunity to make pesto at home.  I mashed garlic, salt, basil, and a handful of walnuts (we always have them around, they are common) together and created a paste.  And you know what? Pine nuts are better.  They are smoother, richer and create a more refined and delicate flavor. Yea, you hear that! Pine nuts are classy; we’re nicer, and awesome and prettier too!   Lol ridiculous.  I’m ridiculous.

But the walnuts were good.  They have those tough skins so when you chop them fine you get a rougher consistency, I may try it again with roasted walnuts.  Overall the pasta was pretty good.  I have some left; I’ll have to experiment with other flavors.

Throwback Tuesdays – Instant v. Slow

I love instant noodles of all kinds….

Instant mac and cheese, we don’t really eat it because we think it’s delicious, it’s easy and for the time you invest it’s good! I’ll do it from time to time but we eat these things more out of convenience than taste. The only exception I can think of is haet ban. The Korean instant rice things, I don’t know what they do to that rice but it’s so good (I digress).

Good foods often take a lot more time than their instant counterparts. Just like people. Relationships that are reinforced with time and energy are often better than “instant” ones. I have a lot of “instant” friends, we could get a beer, we could have dinner, go dancing, but I wouldn’t share my life with them. The relationships that go deep are ones gilded with lots of time, energy and are often costly. They are and should be my favorites.

To prove the point here is my Mac and cheese recipe. It’s expensive, it takes a long time to make and there is so much fat that it’ll stick with you for a while.

1 stick of butter (doesn’t matter salted or unsalted…)
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
1/2 lb. of cheddar cheese (sharp) Shredded
8 oz. of Velveeta spread
2.5 tablespoon flour
¼ teaspoon dry mustard powder
salt & pepper

noodles.. Whatever kind you want, try to get stuff with lots of curls and maybe ridges on the outside… get more sauce

1. On low heat melt all the butter then sprinkle in flour and cook for a minute or so
2. Stir in cream (stir like crazy!), make sure you don’t get any lumps
3. Get the Velveeta, melted in
4 Get the cheese melted, save 25% of the cheese
5. Sprinkle in mustard. Salt and pepper to taste (make it a little saltier than you want it since you aren’t going to season your noodles).
6. While making the sauce cook the pasta.  Cook it till it’s just a little undercooked…
7. Stir in pasta
8. Transfer to baking dish.
9. Top off with the remaining cheese
10. Place in oven (375F) till it’s golden (~30 minutes)

VOILA!
Tips:
Don’t microwave leftovers! This is a béchamel-type sauce, if you microwave it the sauce will separate into oil and milk solids… so heat it back up in the oven. This doesn’t happen with the stuff from a box because a really smart food scientist did their magic…  Before placing in the oven the mac and cheese should look runny, if it isn’t add more cream, it needs to be runny or the final product will be too dry.

You can switch out for different types of milk. Just realize that the less fat the milk has the thinner the cheese sauce. So do one of two things to keep the consistency of the sauce, back off on the total amount of milk you use or make more of the butter/flour (which is called a roux) combo.

Oh yea, and don’t cook the roux too much, melt the butter slow on a low heat and cook the flour for a while, but don’t let it get brown. If it’s not cooked enough you’ll get a gross raw flour taste but if it gets to brown you’ll get some weird brown notes that aren’t indicative of a good mac and cheese.

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