Recipe Reduction 70-69

 Roasted Veggie Spreaddip
from hungry-girl.com

As a spread for a veggie sandwich, this would be pretty good. As a dip for vegetables, okay but bland. But as a low-calorie, healthful alternative to hummus, this is tops! No added oil other than the low-fat yogurt. It needed some sort of spice...cayenne pepper? Will try.

I nearly cried when I read the recipe. See this:

Halve the head of garlic widthwise, exposing the cloves. Remove papery outer layer from the bottom half, leaving skins around cloves intact. (Discard or reserve the top half for another use.) 

Discard??? Discard??? Throw away HALF A HEAD OF GARLIC? What kind of person would do that?  What kind of person would even write that?

I'm not a child of the depression but my mother was, and I can tell you, she'd come back and slap me with an iron skillet if she saw me throwing away half of a head of precious garlic. It's not the cost of it--it's the waste.



Tuna With Sprouts

(One of my non-recipe recipes. Why did I save it?)

Tuna is good with sprouts. But tuna is not good because it's almost impossible to find sustainably harvested tuna. I'm eating my last can rather than throw it away symbolically, but it will be a long time before I guy another one.

Best History Award! (from me)

1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by 

Charles C. Mann

We need to make this required reading for all college students, or at least all those in natural sciences. And we really need to rewrite our grade school text books.  Because...

When Columbus arrived in the Bahamas, the Western Hemisphere was not a sparsely inhabited wilderness. It was neither sparsely inhabited nor a wilderness. There were a lot of Indians here--we know this, both from early explorers' accounts and from archaeological records--and they were managing the plants and animals to suit their needs. In some cases, managing them a lot.

The book goes in a lot of directions and tackles a lot of topics, all fascinating.  Why have we not known about the Indians' influence on their environment? What were their civilizations like, and what happened to them? How many were there, and why did they die? In what ways did they change the environment?  and the last and most scary of all, what happened to the plants, animals and peoples of the world during the Columbian exchange?

One chapter deals with a classic example of the mistake we make when we assume that what we see is what has always been. It's known as Holmberg's mistake. Allan R. Holmberg was an anthropologist who studied a tribe in Bolivia called the Siriono. He wrote that they were "among the most culturally backward peoples of the world." They suffered constant want and hunger, had no clothes, no domestical animals, no music and little religion. They couldn't make fire or even adequate shelters for themselves. For millennia, he thought, they had existed almost without change in a landscape unmarked by their presense.

He was wrong. Both about the people and about the land in which they lived.

...smallpox and influenza laid waste to their villages in the 1920s. Before the epidemics at least three thousand Sirionó, and probably many more, lived in eastern Bolivia. By Holmberg’s time fewer than 150 remained--a loss of more than 95 percent in less than a generation. So catastrophic was the decline that the Sirionó passed through a genetic bottleneck. (A genetic bottleneck occurs when a population becomes so small that individuals are forced to mate with relatives, which can produce deleterious hereditary effects.) 

In addition to the population crash, the Bolivian military was rounding up the Sirionó and putting them in prison camps or working them as slaves on cattle ranches. The people that Holmberg found in the forest were fugitives, escapees hiding from their captors.

He also failed to realize that they were recent migrants to the area, and that area had once supported a large, sophisticated peoples who built an extensive and complicated array of causeways, mounds, and fish weir. These massive earthworks were all around, but no one guessed they were of human origin.

Above information from https://erenow.com/modern/newrevelations/3.html

Recipe R&R 72-71

Squash, roasted tomato and popped black bean salad
from A Modern Way to Cook

To be fair, I should get the book back out of the library and check the time estimate on this. I wrote down "30 minutes" but it says inside the recipe to roast the squash for 40 minutes. Little matter--it actually took me 54 minutes.

The idea of popping black beans is you rinse and dry the cooked beans with paper towels--
Why paper towels? I have a stack of tightly woven dish towels that would have been fine for the purpose. It's about time that a book titled "A Modern Way to Cook" would stop harking back to the old days when every cook kept a roll of paper towels in the kitchen. That's SO seventies, man.
--then dry-fry in a medium-hot skillet until they pop and turn crisp. Mine failed to pop, probably because they weren't dry. Don't blame the paper towels, blame me for forgetting to do that step.

However, if I had remembered to dry the beans, would they have still left my skillet coated with black grime that took me ten minutes to clean off? I didn't include the extra cleanup time in my results, but I wanted to. Just out of spite.

Sorry to write so negatively. Recipes like this make me feel like a crappy cook who can't take time to read a recipe. It didn't taste good enough to be worth the hassle of peeling and slicing butternut squash, seeding cardomon and grinding the seed, jesting a lime, grating ginger; putting pans in and out of the oven and then having to wash two cookie sheets when one would have done the job.
Luckily I followed this disaster with a winner:



Spanish Tapas Peppers
author unknown: darn!

Take a bunch of lovely little peppers from your garden, stuff them with richness, and bake them a bit. Serve warm. Ahhh.

The recipe called for bell peppers but the Italian frying peppers I used were much, much better. The richness consisted of a lot of little bits of stuff that you simply had to chop up all together: raisins, garlic, green olives, anchovies, tomato, saffron, bread crumbs and olive oil. I was scared of the raisins and anchovies, but they disappeared into a medley of flavor.

I may never make this again but I'll smack my lips forever.

Recipe Reduction 74-73

Instant Pickled Cukes
from Roy's Choi's LA Son

Absolutely revolting. I must have made some major mistake in copying out the recipe--it's pretty short so I would have just copied it by hand instead of using a camera.  Maybe  I missed "how long" to cook the cucumbers--the recipe just said "while the cucumbers are cooking, get the other ingredients together," and add them. Then you add black pepper and cook one minute more.

But no amount of cooking would eliminate the bitter aftertaste. Maybe it was my substitute for star anise--cooking experts suggested that equals parts anise seed and fennel seed would be fine.  Maybe it was my cucumbers--I used some from the garden and some from the farmer's market. I tasted the ones from the garden and they were fine, but I didn't think to taste the ones from the market. Let's check now....

Aha! The market cucumbers are bitter. But even if I pick them out, the spice mix is odious.

Other than the revolting taste and lack of cooking times, I don't think it's realistic to expect that a bowl of cooked food will chill after only 30 minutes in the fridge. Mine was still warm after an hour.  That could be very disappointing if you were cooking for a crowd--imagine having to serve warm, mushy pickles?

4 o'clock No-bake Energy Bites

I messed up royally and yet I still liked these. What's not to like about a goop of oats, chia seeds, dark chocolate, maple syrup, vanilla, toasted coconut and peanut butter?

If I'd remembered to toast the oats and grind the chia seeds, it might have been exceptional, tastewise. But as an energy booster, not so much -- too much sugar. I ended up with about 10 balls, with 24.6 grams of sugar per ball, more than my entire daily target for added sugars, 19 grams. The measurement is tricky--I take "added" sugar to be "sugar that's not a naturally occuring component within a whole food." So I'd count the sugar in the chocolate, maple syrup and peanut butter but not that in the oats, chia or coconut. Maple syrup isn't a whole food; if I made my own peanut butter in the blender then I wouldn't have to count it...interesting. Peanuts have .375g sugar per tablespoon; peanut butter 1.5g. So technically I should count added sugars using difference between peanut butter and peanuts.

Splitting hairs. Too much sugar. Probably not enough to offset the fiber.

Gardening In My Roots and a book review

Unbelievable--I've managed to grow shallots.  If I'd realized they had bulbed up I'd have harvested them before they started blooming. Having tasted one yet--the hot weather may have ruined their flavor--but I will soon.

Moxie
by Jennifer Mathieu

Tops! Great YA that even a parent can enjoy. Possibly young people don't want their parents enjoying their books, but what can I say?

There were several side plots--or themes--along with the central one of "how can girls fight back against rampant sexism in a small-town high school?" In the beginning, I thought it was unrealistic--how could boys get away with wearing obscene tee shirts? At my kid's high school they'd have been sent home in a blink. And groping? They'd probably get outside suspension. But this book depicts a culture of "backing the football boys" and a lack of balance in the teaching staff that could let that sort thing happen. It's a cautionary tale.

The sideplots are good: the heroine learns to make new friends even if that might mean losing her BFF; she gets to meet a boy; and she gets to deal with her mother starting to date again.

I especially liked the copy center guy (minor character). It would be cool if Ms. Mathieu would write another story with him either as protagonist or simply as a link between the two stories.

I just read some of the other reviews (that's okay since I've already written mine) and I was disgusted to see people thought the need to add a "Content Warning". What idiot thinks a YA novel should need a content warning just because it deals with serious issues? We're not talking zombie attacks, serial killers, or unabombers here--we're talking about exactly the sort of serious issues normal teenagers face every day. And the book isn't the slightest bit graphic--the really bad stuff happens off stage. People who say this book needs a content warning ought to consider asking their school board to post one at the front door of the high school.

Recipe Reduction 76-75

Fried Pepper and Tomato Salad
from Breaking the food seduction

Some very interesting flavors going on here, and joy-on-joy, NO balsamic vinegar!

I would have called it a relish, not a salad. You simply fry red bell peppers in oil until they're really soft, add tomatoes, garlic and a pinch of sugar and salt, simmer until thick. It's very good, but...

I'm sorry to say that I've just found another food that I can't buy at the grocery anymore--
red bell peppers
Red aka **ripe** peppers are sweet and soft, but the ones at the grocery are sour and hard.  Let me give you a lesson in botany.

When fruit (peppers are fruit) is green, it is sour. When it gets ripe, it becomes soft and sweet. The color might be an advertisement to the animal world--time to eat! That's how fruit-bearing plants get their seed spread around--when the fruit is developing, it's hard and sour so animals don't eat it prematurely. When it's ready to be planted, it becomes soft and sweet. Along come the animals to spread your seed far and wide, fertilizing it as they go.

It's a great strategy and has worked for millenia, but them came big trucks. And cross-country travel. And even cross-continent travel. Ripe fruit is soft; it bruises and spoils. But mankind is smarter that nature--he realizes that fruit doesn't have to be ripe to be purchased, it just has to look ripe. It worked for tomatoes and now, I fear, it has started working for bell peppers.

In a way you could say that modern-day consumers are stupider than mice. Mice wouldn't keep on eating something hard and sour just because it was red and had the words "all natural" printed on the package. Mice would take a nibble, spit it out, and go on down the aisle to purchase a can of Spam.


Baked Cucumber Chips

(picture withheld because they look so unappetizing)

Theoretically it's possible to slice up cucumbers and bake them at a low temperature for four hours and they'll turn into chips. (American chips--not British ones) This recipe gives four seasoning options, so I chose to do onion-and-garlic plus salt-and-vinegar, at different ends of the baking sheet.

Sadly, it assumes you don't prepare them and then realize you need to use the oven for something else.  I have a two-oven stove, but with outside temperatures approaching 110F I chose to use only one. So the chips had to wait a long time and then only got an hour of baking before bedtime.  I turned off the oven and left them inside....

And sort-of forgot all about them.  A couple of days later they got another hour of baking and--hard to believe--got left in the oven again.

Five days later I tried them. The ones that were crisp were pretty good, but most of them were dry and leathery. Not their fault.

Good recipe; bad execution.

Murder mystery but did I like it really?

A Share in Death
by Deborah Crombie

There's a serious problem in starting a series of detective fiction by reading the oldest book first. It seems a no-brainer--read the first one first. If you hate it then stop; if you love it continue and you'll be glad to have read them in order. But...what if it's neither love nor hate, but somewhere less than the midpoint?

On Goodreads, the first book in this series got a 3.79 star rating but then they gradually climbed up into a consistent 4 star--and even one 4.19. Is this because she improved or because the people who didn't care for that style of book simply stopped reading and rating it?

I suspect it's because she improved--authors tend to do that, you now. But do I want to continue reading at #2 (3.95) or jump to one of the later books and make sure I love them before I spend months on the series?

I wish I'd started in the middle. But if you're thinking about starting these, make sure you're okay with a complicated timeline and a large suspect pool who are a little hard to tell apart from each other. Make sure you can tolerate being inside multiple people's heads (although, thankfully, not at the same time). And be prepared for a frightfully lucky coincidence at the end. Sounds awfully critical of me, doesn't it?  But there's so much potential here--I want to like this--I'll have to try again.

Recipe Reduction 78-77

Homemade Salsa Verde
by Cookie and Kate

I confess I only made this recipe because I'd saved a different one from Roy Choi's cookbook and I just couldn't face it. His version was half oil, one-third vinegar and wine, a little dab (2) of tomatillos, and a lot of leaves--mint, cilantro, and basil. I'd like to taste it but I didn't want to make it. Salsa, IMHO, is a fat-free food. One of life's pure joys.

Note to self: remember, next time you get ready to save a recipe, if it looks too weird to believe, it probably is.

The recipe I chose said to char the tomatillos and peppers in the broiler--it was supposed to intensify the flavors, but didn't. I don't know why, but the end result was no better or worse than the recipe in my Southwestern Cookbook that has you simmer the tomatillos in a little water (poach them) and use the peppers raw.

Apparently there's a big debate on Chowhound regarding tomatillos: roast or poach? One guy said roasting made a sweeter salsa but simmering a more traditional, sharper-flavored one. So I might try roasting someday, but in the oven, not the broiler.


Skillet Shrimp Chilaques

We all know why people make chilaques, right?  I'll give you a hint: "stuffing" is a way of using up stale bread; potato pancakes are a way of using up leftover mashed potatoes; so...what do you do with leftover corn tortillas?

Tear them in strips, drench them in salsa, bake until mushy; give them a fancy name and sell them for $16 a plate to gringos.

These were delicious, although I didn't have enough salsa verde and had to supplement with a can of enchilada sauce from the pantry. It called for putting the shrimp on top and broiling five minutes, but my shrimp were too large and I had to turn them over halfway through.

It should have been an easy, hassle-free recipe, but wasn't. Here's what I'll do next time:

1. Brush oil on 12 tortillas; stack them and cut into strips. Spread on a baking sheet(s), making sure they're in a single layer. (no turning needed!) Bake them until crispy.

2. Dump them in a casserole dish and pour two 10-oz cans of green enchilada sauce on top. Alternately, make your own sauce in huge batches and freeze in 2-1/2 cup containers.

3. Put the lid on the dish. (No wasteful aluminum foil!) Bake 15 minutes at 350.

4. Uncover, put desired topping on--but not shrimp (they're too expensive, too hard to find sustainably sourced varieties, and too much trouble to peel.) I'm thinking eggs or chunks of farmed American catfish next time. If using catfish, sprinkle some ancho chile powder and salt on top.

5. Put the lid back on and bake until almost set (eggs) or starting to flake (fish).

6. Serve!

With my adjusted instructions I could have this dish on the table in 30 minutes and only have to wash two dishes.

Recipe Reduction 79

Lentils with Roasted Tomatoes and Horseradish

from A Modern Way to Cook

I didn't bother to time this because I was multitasking with other recipes, but I won't dispute the 40 minute estimate. You start the lentils and prepare the other ingredients while they cook, and when the lentils are done everything else is, too.

So I won't criticize the timing, just the methods and the results. To cook the lentils, you put 1-1/2 c lentils with 1 quart water, toss in a single tomato, 4 cloves of unpeeled garlic,  a few sprigs thyme, 2 bay leaves, and some vegetable stock. Boil it until done, then take out the tomato and garlic. Chop the tomato; squeeze the garlic out of its peel and mash them together.

Sound easy? Hardly. Getting the tomato out is okay but it takes a while to hunt around in a big, soupy pot of lentils to find all four garlic cloves. Then I realize the tomato has its skin on--little shred of tomato skin in a soup are extremely unappetizing. By the time I've chopped it and removed the skin, there's not much tomato left. It would have been a lot faster and easier to smash the garlic, peel it, and throw in a scoop of tomato paste.

She never mentions removing the bay leaves (choke factor) or the leftover stems of the thyme sprigs, which look like hideous skeletons. (Gag and choke factor)

So now you have a big pot of lentils and a tiny dab of tomato-garlic. You mix them, season with salt and pepper (no!), dress with a generous glug of olive oil and a splash of vinegar. How much salt? Not a clue. I took a wild guess at 1 teaspoon and that was too much. How much oil? I decided that a "generous glug" was somewhere between "1/4 cup" and "none" so I went with "none." How much vinegar? No idea, but I forgot it, anyway.

Other than skipping the oil and vinegar, I assembled this recipe as directed and took a bite.

I love lentils and tomatoes and horseradish. I hated this.

Gardening in my roots, dog days

My roots are being sorely tried. It's funny that in this weather the Johnson grass is still green and growing and hardy. I know, however, that it's roots can go down six feet and better. 

Times like this remind us what prairie grasses are all about--getting the water. All of it.

My poor peppers and okra are only surviving with a tri-weekly infusion of lake water. And it's expensive.

Why I read travel (journey, adventure, pilgrimage...)

Walking to Listen:
4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time

by Andrew Forsthoefel


There's everything good to say about this book. Most admirable: the way he shifts seamlessly between his own inner life and that of the people he's listening to during his walk across the country. He's honest about his boredom, apprehension, fear--existential and physical. Climbing out of Death Valley--will I die out here? Crossing the Navajo reservation--will people revile me because I don't belong? Walking into a barbershop in Selma, Alabama--will black people talk to me?

He talks frankly about the envy he feels for couples in love and people who've found their belonging place. He questions himself--am I really so different from Jeffrey Daumer? He asked the same questions as I did--but he decided to kill people, me to walk and listen to people. He meets a few oddballs along the way, but more often good-hearted, generous and caring people. People take him in and he reciprocates--

[Leaving a Navajo home]

I stayed with the family for several days, and it was only right before I left that I was convinced Grandma didn't resent me. I gave her one of my vogesite pebbles as an offering of gratitude.
"Thank you, my son," she said in English.
Later, Melissa texted me and said that Grandma had cried when I left. I'd been a bit choked up myself. The family compound had become a kind of home, like Marian and Herb Furman's Homeplace in Alabama, and I didn't want to leave, but at the same time I couldn't stay. I spent the whole day walking in that contradiction.              

Here's the beginning of one of the most gorgeous, puzzling, head-scratching passages of all. I can only quote a little,

Walking in the desert of Arizona emptied me, a simple blankness impossible to describe using words, which fill rather than empty. The heat melted tons of bullshit from my mind. The dry drained the swamps inside. The sky seemed to lend its own expanse for the unfolding of my own....

I hope that makes you want to read the rest--its gets better. I want to read this again; wish I'd bought it on Kindle. Or Audible. It's narrated by the author.  Above all, his writing is enchanting. Even when bad things are happening, you can't stop wanting to read on.

Recipe Reduction 81-80

Beef With Cumin
from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook

Sorry I lost the pictures for these.

I liked it a lot. I used a couple of grassfed strip steaks--unbelievably expensive--and I did a good job of following the instructions and not letting my oil get cold. It had me marinade the meat with potato starch, soy sauce and rice vinegar; deep fry in oil for just a minute; drain well; then add to a stir-fry of garlic, ginger and green onion.

But the problem was that it was just meat and a little onion. No veggies and no sauce--it didn't feel like a meal.  If this had been served alongside a mixed vegetable stir fry with a light but rich sauce, it would have been magnificent!

No problem for me, though. Since my partner didn't care for it without sauce, I got to eat all the leftovers.

Blueberry Peach Cobbler

by Joanne eats well with others,  adapted from Cooking Light

Ah, a throwback to the cobbler of my childhood. Except no Bisquick. My mom used to make those magic cobblers where you put the topping on the bottom and it rises above the fruit as it cooks.  Sorry, mom, but I like this better--less like a sponge and more like a pie.

It was very good, except I forgot the blueberries and my peaches were half plums.  I'm going to mark it as made. At least, in the spirit of, made.  Seventy-nine recipes to go. Sigh.

Sorry for the did not finish--too many words, not enough lifetime

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
by Ron Chernow

I'm not exactly giving up on this, but I am returning it to the library. It's a phenomenal work, but at 832 pages I'll consider halfway through as enough for the time being. But how fascinating it was!  I wasn't bored at all, not even when the subject matter could have been boring.

Learning some of the dubious practices his early Standard Oil Company indulged in make me wonder how different things are today. For example, offering to ship huge amounts of oil through a railroad company in return for them giving him a volume discount, or offering a kickback in return for preferred service. At times the deals even extended to having the railroad pay him a percentage for competitor's shipment. or maybe I didn't read that right--sorry. Even great writing can't make me understand business.

The main reason I'm quitting is that I quickly realized it wasn't John D. that I was interested in, but his son, John D. Jr. If I slog this through to the end, I'll have less time to read up on the other.

Great, great great biography. I think Chernow ought to get a Nobel prize.

Recipe Reduction 83-82

Don't worry, it's not turning into a recipes-only blog. I'm just stuck a couple of very long books right now.

Pattypan Squash With Cajun Beans
from Fat-Free Vegan

It's hard to ruin Great Northern beans, but this recipe comes close.

Back in the old days, we called them white beans to distinguish them from pinto beans which were the only other color bean we frequently ate. We might encounter red beans or kidney beans in a salad, but they weren't real beans, and neither were Lima beans or black-eye peas.

Nowadays I'm a bean sophisticate. I have cannellini beans in my pantry, along with mayacoba, Christmas and black. Lentils, chickpeas and green split peas make frequent appearances.  But for a good old-fashioned comfort food, I turn to white beans.

So if beans are so good, why would I want to cook them with onion and celery and stuff and then drown them in cayenne, oregano, basil, fennel and sage? I don't know, but it proved a point--don't mess with beans. If they're too bland for your taste, dress them at the table with sweet relish, hot relish, or salsa. Leave the rest of the junk in the kitchen.


Okra and Rice Casserole
from Southern Living

Not bad, and with the quarter cup butter it might have been good. But I already know that a generous dollop of butter improves almost any dish, so what was the point of making a mediocre dish fattening?

I have a valid complaint to make about the recipe--it's weird. It has you start with making a roux, then chopping up seven vegetables and adding to the roux. Not exactly "quick and easy." Then you take two 8.5 ounce packages of microwaveable basmati rice, microwave them, and assemble the casserole.  What's with that?  I've never even seen microwavable basmati rice, and I would never consider buying a pre-packaged convenience food version of something as simple to prepare as rice!

You pour a cup of dry rice out of the bag, add water, and simmer on the stove for 20 minutes. And if you buy the big bags of rice at the Asian market, you don't even have a plastic bag to throw away.

Is it possible that a person writing a recipe wouldn't know how to cook rice? Or that he  thought his readers wouldn't? Very weird.

So here's my lunch for the week. I hope someone invites me to go out.

Recipe Reduction 85-84 can there really be so many left?

Dark Chocolate Quinoa Bark
by Chicory

Supremely good and fattening, too. Mmmm.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to exercise vigorously to expend the energy required to consume foods like this on a regular basis?

Or in plain English: I cain't eat it!

Here's how to make this supremely fattening treat for yourself: wash and dry some quinoa, mix it with maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla, salt, nuts and seeds. Spread out on a baking sheet and bake until lightly browned. Melt dark chocolate and pour over it. Die in heaven.

Caponata (Italian cold eggplant salad)
from Breaking the food seduction

Not a "salad," except in the sense that potato salad is a salad. This is simply a mush of slow-cooked eggplant (plus garlic, celery and onion), with tomatoes, capers, and green olives.  Tasty but not irresistable; would go well with a hearty minestrone and a loaf of Italian bread.

I might make it again sometime when I'm trying to be fancy. But only for guests.

Spooky AND Scary

In the Shadow of Blackbirds
by Cat Winters

As a bird watcher, I'll complain that she should learn the difference between blackbirds and crows.
As a reader, I'll keep my mouth shut. This book was superb. Don't start if you're not prepared to finish in a single reading, because that could very possibly happen to you.

1918. The year will be indeliably etched on your brain. It's the year of the Spanish Influenza--face masks--fear--the everpresent smell of onion, camphor and garlic, as people try to ward off the germs with superstition. It's the year of World War I's gruesome climax of trenches and poison gas and young men dying far from home. It's the year when Americans learned to hate all things German--you couldn't say Gesundheit in public without risking arrest. And--as you'll learn here--it's a year when Spiritualist Photographers preyed on people's loss and pain, selling them photographic sessions that might capture the spirit of their loved ones hovering behind.

This is one book you definitely need to read on paper. The illustrations are as remarkable as the text, especially the cover shot. Or if you prefer to audiobook it, have the paper copy nearby.

Recipe Reduction 88-86

Red pepper white bean hummus
by Yup, it's Vegan

    For some reason the camera failed to capture the true color, which is a deep carrotty orange. It tasted as pretty as it looked--but I think I can make some improvements.

For one, it called for tahini but I'd failed to copy out the amount. I used 1/4 cup, then added a little more. But I can't tell that it improved the flavor--it just added calories. (Tahini, if you don't know, is sesame seed butter. Just like peanut butter or almond butter: fat, fat, fat.)

For two, it could use about a half-cup onion. Or better yet--roast the onion along with the bell peppers!

For three, their method of roasting bell peppers stinks. One hour and fifteen minutes in the oven. Even after all that roasting, they weren't all that roasted. The broiler method is faster and much better.


Eggplant sauteed with miso
from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat

Oh, what a lesson I learned!

First step is to deep-fry cubes of eggplant. Some idiot (me, myself and I) used the wok instead of a tall, narrow pan. I heated the oil to 350 and then threw in all of the cubes at once. Immediately the temperature dropped to less than 200 and the eggplant soaked up the oil. If only I'd done them in batches and kept the oil hot!


Lesson part two: I poured on the sauce (miso, mirin, sugar and white wine) while the wok was still really hot. It immediately caramelized. One might even say, burned.

I'm going to have to do this recipe again and do it right the second time. I kind of liked it, but it was clearly too greasy and burnedy.


Stir-fried Beef With Chiles and Basil
Adapted from Matthew-Amster Burton and Thai Street Food, by David Thompson

Simple and surprisingly good. Stir-fry ground beef with garlic and bird's eye chiles. Add fish sauce and a little sugar and chicken broth; turn off heat and add a lot of basil. After that you were supposed to top with a soft-cooked egg; I skipped that step but it would have been fabulous.

NOTES: I'm not a big beef eater, but if I ever make this again, I'm going to drain the grease off the beef before adding the fish sauce. And make sure to use plenty of basil.

Minor mystery, fun but forgettable

Seeds of Revenge

by Wendy Tyson

A little too dark for a cozy. The police detective was borderline unprofessional and prone to sharing details that a real detective wouldn't. The crime solvers were amateurs--likeable busybodies who became embroiled in the mystery through no fault of their own. They were fun, and smart, and fairly gutsy--worth a second try when I run out of other books to read. Also, the book had dogs--always a good thing--but the dogs didn't get to play a starring role.

Although I guessed the identity of the perpetrator halfway through, and my guess was confirmed several times (simply by the casual way they kept dismissing him as a suspect), I will admit that the puzzle of the books kept me engaged to the end.

Would I recommend it to my brother? Sadly, not. But if you're fond of light mysteries and like a series with some ongoing growth of the main characters, this may be for you.

Recipe Reduction 90-89

Summer Fruit Crostada
by Ina Garten

NOTE to self: when the crust of a fruit pie isn't getting brown so you leave it in the oven 14 minutes longer than the longest of the recipe's cook times, check that the bottom isn't burning!

This is the sort of recipe I'd expect to find in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Butter. A lot of butter. Butter in the crust, butter in the topping. And sugar. A lot of sugar.

Yummy, but not an everyday dessert. Save those calories for special occasions.




Okra fritters
from The Doss Family Cookbook

 

 Make a batter of okra, onion, tomato, bell pepper, cornmeal, flour and egg.





Fry it in patties in hot oil.If you truly love okra, and I do, you'll expect miracles. Don't waste your energy.


My first batch was nicely browned outside, but the veggies inside were still raw. And bland! How is it possible to make such beautiful vegetables taste so bland?


I cooked the second batch longer, but there wasn't much oil left in the pan and I refused to add more--I already knew I didn't like them, so what's the point of making them more fattening?  I was going to have to eat them--they weren't that hideous--so why not feel virtuous while I suffered?

Gardening In My Roots, Harvest Edition

Not a bad little harvest. Nothing compared to last year, but something none the less. I finally found a cucumber but it appears to have been lurking among the vines for some time.  That's it in the back. Oops.

Recipe Reduction 92-91

Stir-Fried Tofu, Asparagus, and Shitakes
by L.V. Anderson for Slate's You're doing it wrong series

She's right and I didn't even do it right but it came out all right. Right on!

The secret to home-fried tofu with that leathery skin it gets in restaurants is simple: freeze it.  SHe said to slice it into the serving size pieces and freeze it that way; I simply froze it whole and it wasn't so bad. But it would have been better her way--I'll do that next time.

Her sauce--just mirin and soy sauce--isn't bad at all. But there are others I like better.

One quibble: why do so many stir-fry dishes have you put the garlic, ginger, and hot pepper in first, fry for a minute, then add the vegetable?  By the time the vegetable is done, the garlic and ginger has been browned to a crunchy and somewhat tasteless crisp.  I should do it the way I've seen it suggested--cook the garlic and ginger first to flavor the oil, then take it out. Cook everything else and return it to the pan at the end.

 
Sesame Tomato Cucumber Salad
from Southern Living

The vegetable base for this salad has only tomatoes, cucumbers, green onion and jalapeno; if I'd stuck to those, it would have been excellent. When I added a bunch of lettuce it threw off the dynamic and the results were only so-so.

It's worth keeping for the dressing, a simple concoction which might be good on a grain-based salad. Try it:
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp olive oil
1-1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp toasted sesame seed
1/4 tsp salt

Not quite a mystery but great action thriller

Lane: A Case for Willows and Lane
by Peter Grainger

Very enjoyable British action thriller. Not the mystery I was expecting--well, no, there was a mystery behind why the villains were acting the way they were, but that part of the detection was done by police inspector Willows.  Scenes of the detection were interlaid with the action flick--Willow's elderly mother Emily and Lane, a former police detective retired by necessity when she sustained major injuries.  I don't think I was supposed ot know that at the beginning, but the cover gave it away.

Lane reminded me very much of Julia Spencer Fleming's heroine, The Reverend Claire Ferguson. She's gutsy and tough and thinks on her feet; she's realistic in her assessment of her physical strength when confronted by a male adversary. The only trait I missed in her is an inability in using the tools in her environment as weapons. But then again, she was trained at the Police Academy, not the United States Army.

Everything I ought to like, and didn't

This Organic Life
by Joan Dye Gussow

I'm going to permit myself a DNF (Did Not Finish) on this. I assumed it was going to be great so I kept plugging along. I was almost halfway through when I finally said, "But when's it going to get good?" So I checked a few reviews to figure out why it had a 3.95-star rating when I found it drudgerous. (I know that's not a word but it ought to be.)

Oddly enough, the ratings are pretty consistently good--people almost universally liked this book.  But a couple of reviewers felt the same way I did and even pointed out some future developments that were going to make me dislike the second half even more than I had the first.

Why was it so much about the house and so little about the garden? Why were they rebuilding a house in a floodplain, anyway?  I wished there's been some better organization of it all--it seemed jumpy and shallow, not deep.  I hate supermarkets as much as she does and for the same reasons, but reading about them left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I don't mind being educated on things, but the writing didn't have to be so bitter and hopeless.

Oh!  I see now that it was published in 2001.  A lot of the things she's writing about weren't widely known back then--she was breaking ground when she documented how much energy it takes to ship a strawberry from California to New York. She was a pioneer--a first lady of local eating. In 1960, my A&P grocery used to buy produce from local farmers, in season, but by 2001 the big volume shippers from California were preeminent.  Only recently have stores begun offering better choices.

Okay, then I won't diss on her book. It just didn't go down well.

Recipe Reduction 95-93 and A Rant

Zucchini Fritter Omelet
from Roy Choi's L.A. Son

Squash gets a uniquely lovely flavor when you slice it into a skillet with a litle oil, add a bit of salt, then cook it down to a mush. My mother called it "fried squash" and it was only much later in life that I tried the experiment of breading the slices and frying them in oil, like eggplant. Most people would consider the latter method a correct approach to frying squash, but not me. I only did it because it was a way to get my children to eat squash.

And all that goes to explain why this dish pleased me so much. The delicate, sweet, and overwhelmingly squashy flavor was a throwback to childhood meals.  I don't feel comfortable printing the recipe here, but this is the gist of it: grate a squash, cook in olive oil until brown. Add butter and eggs to make an omelet of it. Eat immediately. 

Note: He called for 4 tablespoons of olive oil for 2 medium zucchini. Inconceivable. Did he really measure out that much oil, or just drizzle some in?  But no--he's a chef--he wouldn't need to measure to know how much oil he was using. Needless to say, I used about 1/2 of one tablespoon and was happy with the results.

I could imagine myself retired, living quietly in a cottage with a small garden out back, making this for a delightful summer breakfast...eating it on the back porch with a cup of coffee, some toast...dogs at my feet hoping for leftovers...birds singing the sun up....

Instead I chucked it in a plastic dish and took it to work next day. Still tasted good but I missed the birds.

 

Slow-Braised Carrots
from Ingredienti by Marcella Hazen

I wanted to improve some late carrots from the garden--they should have been pulled months ago--so I tried the Marcella treatment. Braise in butter and a little water for a long, long time.  It didn't work--they were too far gone.  I'll try roasting the rest of them.

 



 

Cool Cucumber-Herb Dip


Shows promise, but doesn't use up much of a pint box of cucumbers. It called for 1/2 cup cucumber to 1 cup sour cream, but you chop up the cucumber and throw away the liquid, leaving more like two tablespoons. I couldn't taste them.


Original ingredients
--------------------
1 Tbsp diced shallot
1/2 cup chopped cucumber, seeds removed
1 cup low-fat sour cream
1 tsp white-wine vinegar
1 Tbsp chopped fresh dill
1 Tbsp chopped fresh chives
1/4 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper (If you want everything you eat to taste like pepper.)

I'd like to try again using twice the amount of cucumber and just enough fake sour cream to hold it together.

WARNING! Author is about to go off on an inane tangent!
Consider two sample recipes, cooked last weekend.

Recipe 1
    Ingredients:
        1 shallot, diced, 1/2 cup chopped cucumber, ...
    Method:
        In a food processor, combine shallot and cucumber; ...

Recipe 2
    Ingredients:
        2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped, 1 shallot, sliced, 1 fresh hot red chile, seeded and roughly chopped...
    Method:
        In a blender or mini food processor, combine garlic, shallot, chile...

What's weird about these recipes?  (And countless others)

Answer: They want you to waste time dicing, chopping, or slicing things that you're about to throw into a food processor and pulverize to a paste. Is it really going to make a difference in the final product if I dice the dumb shallot or just throw it in whole? Am I being stupid to ask the question? Let's go to The Great Google--

America's Test Kitchen says,
  Luckily, a good food processor permits you to put down your knives (and your mandoline and your grater)--the food processor will act as your prep cook. You'll get more uniform results while saving time, energy, and your sanity.

Maybe I didn't google the question right, but the answers I got were all on the order of, "use the food processor to speed up your chopping." Not a single one explained why I needed to hand-process the stuff before food-processing it.

Fantastically fantastic

The Lie Tree
by Frances Hardinge

Awesome book; as irresistible as a potted plant that feeds on whispered lies and divulges secret truths. Who doesn't want to possess it?

The side plot--or really, the main plot--is how an intelligent young girl can survive up in an age that denigrates and discards women's brains. Even her father, a famous scientist, writes her off as a mere female, unable to understand his work, unsuitable to carry it on. But even while she recognizes and rages against the repression, she loves her father and is hurt deeply when he is suddenly, inexplicably scorned by the scientific world. What has he done? And why?

Her mother starts off as a total enigma--an empty-headed flirt whose only real concern for her daughter is that she reflect well on her mother.  You hate her early and often, but her real nature may not be so simple or shallow. We'll see.

Her little brother is just a sweet, energetic kid--but the parents won't admit he's left-handed and he's being forced, almost cruelly, into using his right. Shudder at this: "God only loves good little boys who write their catechism right-handed."  (my quote may be off, but that's the idea)

Add a cast of other characters--superstitious house servants, a kindly uncle who never made it as a scientists on his own so he must tag along on his brother-in-law's credentials, an odd society woman whose husband is going into Parliament, and most of all, a strange boy who keeps showing up at infuriating times--

Great. Nail-biting. Spooky. Masterpiece.