More Exciting Things to Do with Bacon, and Miscellany

There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who complain that fish tastes fishy, and the ones that think tuna salad is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Which is another way of saying that lunch made me happy.  

Meanwhilst, after intense discussion, in which many epithets were floated as possibilities, and some laws as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians were laid down ("absolutely nothing with 'chicken' in it"), JVW has a new nickname on this here blog. She will not be known as Xuan De (even though it means 'righteous virtue'), nor will she be known as Biker Chick, Evil Cajun Twin, nor yet Optimistic Gardener.  And she insists that Squid Girl is an honor that I should keep to myself.  Instead, she will be henceforth referred to as Bird (as in Isabella, the nineteenth century travel writer, and also a category of vertebrates she gets quite excited about), until I decide that really I can do better. 

Not only that, but Bird has contributed an explanation of one of my all time favorite appetizers to this blog.


Bacon Wrapped Dates as Explained by Bird

All you do is get dates of moderate size, not those great huge ones.  (At least, if you used the huge dates you’d probably need a whole slice of bacon per date, which would make a big mouthful that would be difficult to bite.  The smaller dates are easier to eat.)  Then you cut slices of bacon in half (so that you have two short strips, not two long skinny strips).  You wrap a date in a half-slice of bacon and secure it with a toothpick.  When you have wrapped all you want to cook, you put them on a broiler pan under the broiler.  In my oven, they are usually crispy-looking after about 10 minutes, when I then turn them over for another 10 (but you would want to watch them carefully, what with variations in broilers and potential variations in distance between broilers and dates).

Then you take just a bit of butter, like perhaps as much as a tablespoon if you have used up the whole pound of bacon, and less butter for less.  Sprinkle in some garlic powder and squeeze in a bit of lemon, then microwave till the butter is melted and drizzle it over the dates.  And voila, bacon-wrapped dates of profound yumminess and pleasure.  Just as good microwaved the next morning. [Or cold if you're running short on time, and need to get to work in an expeditious fashion. -- SE]

Cookies

Said to Jackie this evening on the phone, "These cookies are really good.  Unfortunately, that means I need to remember what I did so I can blog it."  With that in mind, I offer recipes for the two kinds of oatmeal and STUFF cookies I am making at the moment.

Regular People Cookies
1/2 pound (or two sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt (unless you use salted butter)
1/2 cup wheat or oat bran
2 1/2 cups oat meal
1 cup dried cherries, cranberries, or raisins
1 skimpy cup chocolate chips
1 cup walnut halves chopped

Preheat oven 350.

Combine ingrediants in order, mixing well after each addition.  An electric mixer is best, unless you have biceps to rival my brothers. 

Drop by teaspoon fulls on ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake for ten minutes, or until golden around the edges.


Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies of the Revolution

1/2 pound (or two sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons of brandy
2 teaspoons espresso powder (no, 2 teaspoons of really strong coffee will not work, it will just make you long for the coffee taste that you feel ought to be there)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (unless you use salted butter)
3 cups oat meal
1 cup dried cherries, cranberries, or raisins
1 skimpy cup chocolate chips
1 heaping cup walnut halves chopped

Proceed as above.  These recipes are after all closely related.


Other than that I can say that zucchini, onions, garlic, walnuts and spinach sauteed in bacon fat is my family's new favorite vegetable experience. Especially with cod baked after being sloshed with olive oil, lemon juice, and sprinkled with dill, pepper, and gorgonzola.

The bacon fat was leftover from the bacon wrapped dates I wrote about last week.  I really ought to write up a recipe, or rather get JVW to tell me what she does, since she is the official bacon wrapped date maker.  Bacon wrapped dates are splendid, and make a fantastic portable breakfast.

Things on the Mind

1) Enchiladas -- namely cheese and green chile enchiladas, bulked out with black beans, potatoes, and smoked almonds (which I could feed to various and sundry Seattle veggie-types).  There are times when I don't have enchiladas on the brain, most of them involve anxiety dreams about showing up to sing somewhere without rehearsals or functional sheet music.

2) Smoked salmon wraps may be the world's best nearly instant meal.  Too bad I'm headed back to the land of exile and not enough salmon, especially not the smoked kind. 

3) Moon cakes -- someday I will understand Asian pastries that aren't hum bao. It's probably not today.  For now they are on the list of foods that I find deeply inexplicable, like horchata. I feel I have had a nearly intuitive grasp on the true place of hum bao in my life since my first one, when I worked upstairs from Charlie's Bakery, and one was a buck seventy-five, which made it an even cheaper lunch than going to Taco King for tacos.  At least you can get hum bao  in Seattle.  I should check out the tacos at Rancho Bravo sometime soon.  I have a feeling that they might be an acceptable substitute.  (After all, they serve horchata, which I don't like, but it is a good marker for Mexican joints that might make me happy.)

4) The woods in Anchorage September smell like home.  This really may be the most beautiful place on earth.  (If you ignore the urban architecture, mostly.) We saw a moose. Another downside to Seattle: no moose.  (Or bears, wolves, coyotes, or lynx.  Oh well.)

5) It's been a very short time, but I am going to miss my coworkers at the UAA bookstore.  All that bouncy youthful energy.  All those interesting conversations with international students about what it's like to be a long way from home.  YU being unearthly cheerful even in the morning. 

Sorry, this post is short on literary merit, but I have to be up early tomorrow, and I want to go bond with Peter Fleming.  Peter Fleming, being the much funnier brother of the more famous Ian, wrote travel books, in which he deploys British imperturbability in the face of the insane, the outrageous, and toads hopping through his sleeping quarters all night long. I offer this quotation from the beginning of News from Tartary as an amuse bouche (because really everyone ought to read him):

It was time to take stock of the situation, and this, with a kind of luxurious incredulity, I did.  It was a sufficiently improbable situation. I found myself the leader of a party of four people who had left Peking the night before with the undisclosed intention of proceeding overland to India ( a distance of some three or four thousand miles) by way of North Tibet and Sinkiang.  For the latter province, which had until recently been rent by civil war and which was virtually closed to foreign travellers, we had no passports. Apart from a rook rifle, six bottles of brandy, and Macaulay's  History of England, we had no equipment or supplies worth mentioning. Two of us were women; and our only common language was Russian. I felt extremely cheerful nonetheless.

He goes on like this for hundreds of pages. Cheefully. Currently, I am not reading News from Tartary, but rather Brazilian Adventure which outlines an expedition at least as mad.

A Minor Offering

1)The Tall Guy characterizes the following as "a funny read, with astonishing revelations about what Allen Ginsberg ate for breakfast". I would characterize it as a funny read with hilarious discussion of unexpected gastropods. I was raised by granola smoking hippies and very little surprises me in the way of breakfast food. These two facts are not unrelated. Either way, fun: The Meal That Ended My Career as a Restaurant Critic.

2) I cannot blame the following link on my altitudinally enhance friend, but I think it's awesome: T-shirt of Awesome.

3) JVW should start a blog, because I keep wanting to post snippets of her emails.  Today she is trying to convince me that YouTube stardom is around the corner, if I just coupled my dubious singing and, I also assume, her considerably less dubious singing with carefully chosen pictures of chickens. She also shared some unorthodox experiences of the apple harvest (such as it is) in Anchorage.  The thing about Anchorage's growing season is that it is short but intense, and when apple trees are blooming elsewhere there is still snow on the ground here.  This does not make for happy apple trees, although there are few optimistic souls, and hardy trees that make the attempt. 

4) Biological accuracy about charismatic megafauna is important to me, even if the megafauna in question is shy and retiring in the forests of central Africa.  In other words, an okapi is not an antelope.  Other than that, I do recommend The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, even though I am probably just about the last person to read it. I blame the author's interview I heard on NPR about his second book.  Too much adultery in suburbia, without a really strong narrative voice to balance it out.  This has adultery in suburbia, but it also has a reasonably well done Autistic narrator.

5) Because one needs more beautiful astronomy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14792580

It's that time of the year again

I was going to attempt to write something trenchant about  That Anniversary but I got too angry and burst into tears instead, which is a problem when one is wearing glasses as this one does these days.  Also that post was a hair more serious and self revelatory than I am willing to be in this medium. And the audience in my head -- sundry relatives and close friends has probably heard me say all I really have to say on the topic, and yelling online won't help anything, especially when others manage to say what I want to say and keep some shreds of civility. So instead I will talk about the week which was totally a red letter week as these things go -- except for intermittent episodes of yelling at Leon Panetta and Congress which is pretty much par for the course.  (To the best of my knowledge Leon Panetta  does not read this blog and does not know that every so often he says something that causes me to yell at him in the privacy of my car*)

In the course of this magnificent week, I got to spend time with three of the four people who know way too much about me**: Skadi, the Tall Guy, and JVW (who I really need to come up with a better nickname for).  Spending time with any of them is exciting, but getting to see three of the four in a week is almost too much to hope for (especially as it's the three of the four that I am usually at least a thousand miles away from at all times, and even when I'm home in Anchorage, one of them is persistently in the Midwest***).  I made up a new recipe.  And I went for a hike.  And I finished a quilt. I am exercising great restraint.  If I were to truly demonstrate my happiness any one of these things would be occasion for all caps, bold, and hot pink, flashing type.  As it is, I merely point out my excitement, so that people who know me well can say, "indeed, Sarah is very happy about all this." Also any one of these things is enough and more than enough for a blog post, and may yet prove to spark one. I kept writing the one about how I don't sew in my head while I was, in fact, sewing.

And because it wouldn't be my life without heaping helpings of absurdity, I also explained my beauty regimen to a Japanese student, who didn't believe that I was as old as I said I was. (Dear readers who have never met me, I look more or less  my age, which is almost thirty-one.)  Upon producing my driver's license, he (yes, dear readers who have not already heard the story, the student in question was and is male) asked what I did to have such wonderful skin.  I stared at him as if he had gone completely mad, and explained that I took a multivitamin, and walked a lot. I believe that the main thing in my beauty regimen is beyond his reach.  Namely, at this point in his life, he is unlikely to be able to be related to both my grandmothers (and possibly my grandfathers as well).  Certainly my complexion is one of those things for which I can take no credit. 

But I mentioned a recipe, and I have one, albeit with almost no measurements, because if I'm not baking I rarely measure.  JVW has opined that my recipes are funny.  I have no idea why she thinks this way.

Smoked Salmon Pizza

First off you need a recipe of pizza dough.  Use your favorite, or use this one. If you use my recipe, I strongly suggest leaving the herbs out of the crust.

I actually suggest making the "sauce" the night before so that the flavors have time to meld.  I, of course, did not do this.
1 box cream cheese (full fat, or neufchatel if your definitions of virtue run that way. Although the results will not be quite as over the top.)
A handful of fresh dill or to taste, snipped up with kitchen shears
A handful of fresh parsley, like wise
A clove of garlic or so, minced, mashed or smashed, or a teaspoon or so out of a jar
A couple of green onions minced
A sizeable pinch of sweet paprika
The zest and juice of a quarter lemon
A tablespoon or so of milk
Salt and pepper

Use a hand mixer to mix everything.  You might consider nuking the cream cheese to render it easier to work.  Chill overnight if you have time to do that.

Toppings for the pizza

Smoked salmon, not lox (lox is a fine thing in its way, but it lacks the force of smoked salmon)
roasted red peppers
grape tomatoes
feta
pine nuts (I forgot that I had meant to put pine nuts on the pizza, until I was eating the leftovers.  It didn't suffer from the lack, but I suggest them, if you like that sort of thing.)

After the first baking of the pizza crust (see the linked recipe), spread the pizza thickly with the cream cheese mixture.  I have a hard time thinking of it as a sauce, because in the main, sauces pour; however it fulfills the role of sauce.

Sprinkle on the toppings in quantities that seem right to you.  The feta should probably be added with a light hand.

Bake the pizza for 5 minutes or so, or until the cheeses are a bit browned.  Serve with a large green salad, bacon wrapped dates, red wine, and most importantly good friends. I fed this to JVW, the Tall Guy, and his girl friend (who seems like still another delightful person, whose perversity of location I shall regret).  No one complained, and everyone had seconds and in some cases thirds. 

*Some people watch football and yell at the tv.  My family treats politics the same way.
**I really dislike the term "best friend," with its exclusivity, and in any case my relationships with all of these people are so different.  But they do all know more about me than I find entirely comfortable, though sometimes it is comforting.
*** Repetitive to the point of annoyance announcements that the friend in question ought to move to Seattle or Anchorage have so far not been productive, but hopefully my brainwashing attempts will eventually bear fruit.  Also, my friends are incredibly tolerant.

The Limitations of My Method

I intend to write about smoked salmon pizza with cream cheese sauce.  It would be a lot easier if I'd measured anything while making it.

Not really about food (much)

Except for the recipe for sweet potato pancakes, which the Tall Guy wondered to me why I didn't post here.  Since I didn't have a good reason at the time for not posting it, three weeks later I have gotten around to it. Anyway, the Tall Guy and I get to spatially intersect this week. And I expect to feed him dinner tomorrow. (Early forecasts are smoked salmon with a chance of pizza, with scattered bacon wrapped dates clearing off before the entree. If what I am thinking of really works, I am going to be blogging the meal in gratuitous detail.) So I really had better post the recipe. 

A few weeks ago I had leftover mashed sweet potatoes to contend with. I now know what to do with leftover mashed sweet potatoes.  This is not a normal problem, leftover sweet potatoes.  They pretty generally get eaten up with enthusiasm around here, but the other day I made a bunch, and there was a giant salad, and hamburgers, so I ended up with sweet potatoes.

I made pancakes.

Sweet Potato Pancakes
Call it a cup and a half of mashed sweet potatoes (mine had butter, garlic, and too much nutmeg* in them), 2 eggs, 1/3 cup flour,1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder. Fry at a lower temp than you otherwise might do pancakes, because they come out kind of thick. Maple syrup and butter are just dandy on them, but I couldn't help wishing for something a bit sharper like plain yogurt or chevre.

So my informal recipe for sweet potato pancakes is now revealed.  However the real reason for this post is that JVW and I were emailing each other one night recently and for reasons that I attribute to the lateness of the hour and the general ambient silliness of the people involved in the correspondence, we began writing parodies of Romantic verse with fruit bats inserted willy-nilly.  JVW has asked me to post them here.  I suspect that this is a ploy to get me blogging more regularly again.  For reasons that I find utterly obscure, she thinks my recipes are funny.

In this outbreak of pastiche, Byron and Shelley were probably the most deeply wronged, and you are about to see. (If one clicks on the titles, one will be whisked to the original poems.)

It Flaps in Beauty

 It flies in beauty like the night
Of muggy climes and buggy skies
And only stops to take a bite
As past the mango tree it flies
Though you may wish it on a plate
Upon a bun and edged with fries
One wing the more, one wing the less?
Deeply impair'd the nameless grace
Which soars on tropic ev'ning breeze,
  Or, clumsy, crashes into place
among the dense papaya trees.
  How pure, how dear its little face!

That furry cheek, and markéd brow,
  So soft, so calm, yet eloquent;
The the feet that grip, that cunning toe, 
  that tells of days unconscious spent;
A mind at peace with all below,
  A heart whose love is innocent!

That was a joint effort.  What follows is definitive proof that JVW is not only sillier than I am, but she is also better at formal verse.


The Destruction of the Orchards

The fruit bats came down like a wolf on the trees

And their membranous wings sang their song on the breeze

The sheen of their claws was like sun on a pond

And their fur was bright auburn or brownish or blond

Like the locusts of Joel of each separate kind

The fruit bats flew down for the fruit they might find

Their goal was to gorge on those mangos so sweet

Then roost in the trees, hanging on by their feet

But behold! for the villagers had quite enough

They wanted to keep their papayas and stuff

Their nets were in place in the branches aloft

To catch all the fruit bats, so darling and soft

And then one by one all the fruit bats were caught

The cleverer primates had captured the lot

The fruit bats did tremble, their eyes got as big

As the eyes of the Chinese Prohibitous Pig

And some of the people said, “Stir-fry the bats!”

And some said, “Slow-cook them in monstrous great vats!”

And some said, “Fillet them and put them to freeze

And then we can eat them whenever we please!”

And while they were arguing, the fruit bats broke free

And on the night wind far away did they flee

They swore they would no more rob orchards of men

At least not until they got hungry again

The following can also be squarely blamed on JVW.  Well JVW and Percy Shelley.  (Shelley makes me want to smack him on grounds of both verse and biography, so this effusion particularly pleased me.)

Batymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said, “Two vast and trunkless wings of stone

Flop in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered muzzle lies, whose crown

And outsize ears, and look of silliness

Tell that its sculptor knew with fear and dread

The hunger for papayas and the stress

Of having such a great big furry head.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Batymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my fruit, but don’t you even dare

To steal a mango.’  There is nothing more:

Behold the ruined giant frugivore.”

*My relationship with nutmeg is intense and complex. I can't stand the flavor, when I can taste the flavor.  When it is a faint trace, setting off all the other flavors in a dish, I adore it. When I explained to my friend JVW that I hated nutmeg,  she responded in tones of deep bemusement, "but you put it in all sorts of things." This is true.  As I said, it's a complex relationship, and the line between love and hate is very very fine indeed.

Adventures in Applied Color Theory

Last night I helped K, my Viking Cousin, and G, his sister-in-law, paint the living room and dining room of the Viking Residence. It was Sunday as the "Work Party to Get the Viking Residence into Shape before the Arrival of Small Viking #2" was winding down, that A, the Viking Wife, said quietly that she would kind of like the living room and dining room painted before the room got put back together. G and I looked at each other. Then we looked at A who is eight months pregnant and a very good sport about having her entire house torn up while the floors were refinished and the windows on the south side of the house replaced. We both thought, "this needs to happen." 

Yesterday G asked if I wanted to come to the Viking Residence and paint last night. After a bus trip that took almost an hour longer than it needed too on account of Seattle traffic, I arrived just in the nick of time for dinner.  Initially things did not look good for getting the painting done. Colors had not been decided on. Paint had not been bought. K was in a funk because of all the stuff that needed to get done. A was worn out. Small Viking #1 was beginning the evening meltdown. But G and I were determined.

I made noises that implied that I had ideas about the colors, so K told me to go look at the paint chips and make some decisions.   So I did.  I picked out a slightly brighter sunnier yellow for the living room, and a rich grey for the dining room (which is open to both the kitchen and the living room).  I have long felt that the dining room needs to be a darker calmer color to mark a still point between the activity of the living room and kitchen*(which is bright green). I have felt this so strongly for so long that my mind insists on remembering the dining as a much darker color than it actually was. K was a little dubious about the grey.  I spouted off with color theory**, but what really decided things was that A looked at the colors and said, "those are just what I want."  Possibly she meant, "I want people to make a decision. Anything is fine as long as it's fresh paint."  However we chose to take her at her word, and sent K off to buy paint, while G and I wiped down the walls and taped.  A took the Small Viking #1 upstairs and put him to bed and then fell asleep herself.

K came back with the paint, and shortly after nine o'clock we started painting.  When it came to the grey, I had several moments of fear because the paint came out of the can much lighter than I remembered and a slightly off color, warmer than I wanted.  Advising other people on what to paint their houses is always slightly harrowing because what if it doesn't work?  What if they hate it?  Et cetera.  Fortunately the grey dried to match the chip. We finished shortly after midnight with the caveat that the grey in the dining room needs a second coat (but it's such a small space that that will take no time).

We sat around drinking beer, eating goat cheese sandwiches, and feeling proud of ourselves.  I crashed in the office. The goat cheese sandwiches were amazing.  However I will not offer a recipe because unless you have scallions fresh from the garden, and equally fresh lettuce, and home made goat cheese cured in jerk seasoning, you just won't be able to replicate it.  Alas. 

When I got up this morning A and Small Viking #1 were up and A said that she liked the new colors.  I do too.


*I may have read The Not So Big House one too many times.
** To wit, cool colors recede, and darker colors, depending on the context, also tend to recede.  So the very small dining area should feel a bit larger with a darkish coolish color on the walls.  And it would provide a point of contrast to balance the yellow and the green of the living area and kitchen.  (The old dining area had been sort of a light orangy tan. It did not work.)

Report on Experimental Curry

In case you're wondering.  A boring apple that cooks down into mush is very nice in a coconut curry with the cauliflower and other things you wouldn't normally combine with apple. 

I Am Lazarus Back from the Dead...

Or at least Sarah back from the end of the quarter, and I'm back to start blogging again.  Much as I would like to say that I am moved by pure love of self expression, I will cop to actually being moved by the plaints of my reading public (such as it is).  Now that I am no longer putting sixty hour weeks in the studio, but am instead seeking summer employment (that does not involve me standing on concrete for hours straight*) and putting up a portfolio online, I have time to bend my ear to their requests.

Tonight there is experimental curry on the stove.  Well not terribly experimental, except for the apple I threw in on a whim.  Apple?

I keep forgetting that Gala apples are not my idea of pomaceous delight.  Not even close.  They may be almost the same color as Braeburns and Fujis, but they lack the snap and crispness that makes them favorites, and they cook poorly.  Under those circumstances the apples become some sort of sweet secondary vegetable, and thus into a curry that is already going to play host to cauliflower, an onion, garlic, and a tomato (as well as lentils and rice and some left over chicken). 

But that's not why I'm writing this.  I am writing this because I made gluten free, dairy free brownies that weren't entirely awful AND DID NOT REQUIRE ME TO BUY XANTHAN GUM.  Also the texture wasn't bad.**

Black Bean Brownies

One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed very well, preferably a brand that does not add onions to their black beans.  Alternatively one could make ones own black beans.  This one did not feel so moved.  Nor did she want to go buy new black beans after she opened the can and then realized that they had onions. So she ended up rinsing her black beans many times over and speaking of her actions in the third person. Even so, not too bad.
3 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil or more.  Next time I'm considering upping the oil. 
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon if you feel like it.  Or are trying to cover the taste of oniony beans. 
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts chopped

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease an 8"x 8" square baking pan, or a 9" round pan.  (Any guesses as to which I was using?)

 In a blender puree the beans with the eggs and vanilla extract until creamy. Then puree them a bit more.

In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients (sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, cinnamon).

Carefully fold the bean and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, then mix until totally incorporated.

Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips, and scrape into the prepared pan.

Bake until only a couple of crumbs cling to a tester.  I started checking at 30 minutes, but the brownies came out at 40 minutes.

If you have the time, these definitely benefit from aging over night. 


* I have a most unholy love of working retail (I pretty much hate recreational shopping).  I like meeting people.  I like talking about things I enjoy.  I like selling people things that will make their lives better (for sometimes very abstract values of better).  I'm even good at it. My feet however have issued an ultimatum about me and standing on concrete floors for hours a day.  Since my feet are an integral part of my active and exciting lifestyle, I perforce must accept that sometimes desks are okay too. 

**I have a couple of people in my life who need things to be gluten free and dairy free (this pretty much rules out chocolate mousse, since I'm allergic to soy based dairy substitutes; likewise tortes that substitute chopped nuts for flour were likewise out, because I hate chopping all those nuts by hand). I prefer to be able to accommodate them.  Preferably with things that are acceptable to not so restricted eaters. Texture is the area where gluten free desserts often fall down.  So when I find something that works for everyone I get all excited.