Recipe reduction--can I call it a countdown yet? 35-34

Surprise* Cinnamon Rolls
by L.V.Anderson on Slate's You're doing it wrong series

Good, very good. Is there any such thing as a "bad" cinnamon roll?  But I left the egg out of the batter recipe, so I'll never know if the "good, not great" desigation is appropriate.  Unless I try them again....

Sounds like an excuse to eat more cinnamon rolls.

Question: when you're dealing with a yeasted batter, is there any way to keep it from rising under your fingers before you can roll it up?  It swells like a sponge!  Should I turn the air conditioning down to sixty and put my hands in the freezer for ten minutes?

Slow Cooked Apple Butter

Don't know.  I didn't have Applejack, but it was just a small ingredient among many.  I didn't have real apple cider but used unfiltered apple juice as a good substitute. My choice of apples--Granny Smith and Pink Lady--could have been better. When I do it again I'll use cooking apples. And finally, the measurement of cloves and allspice hadn't transcribed into the saved recipe.  I used 1/16 teaspoon and that may have been a too much.

With all those problems I'm not surprised my results were only so-so. It was certainly better than supermarket apple butter but maybe not as good as farmer's market.

Just to reveal my naivete, I didn't think clearly about how to store the almost two quarts it produced. I'd just assumed I'd store it in the refrigerator--stupid! It will take me a year to eat that much apply butter. Today I'm going to go back and try to can it.

Recipe Reduction 37-36

 Wild Rice and Roasted Root Vegetable Bowl
from Oh My Veggies

I see you've noticed from the picture that the only root vegetables I included were onion, carrot and potato. I'm sure she was thinking parsnips, turnips, rutabaga or even sweet potato--I was thinking of RV accessories and I'm surprised I even remembered the potatoes.

It's just as well I didn't waste any of those yummy and sometimes exotic root vegetables on this recipe.  But if I'd remembered the dress the rice with vinegar and olive oil, would that have improved it so much?  Possibly a little.  It wasn't much of a "recipe" anyway--just cooked wild rice (with vinegar and olive oil), roasted veggies, served on a bed of greens. I used grocery store kale which was tough as oak leaves so I cooked it. The only thing that might have made it a "recipe" was the dressing--but it was just a mixture of tahini, garlic, lime juice and cumin. Not a good combination.

It's wholesome and edible and will feed me nutritiously next week.  But I'm not looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

Sardine Fritters in Lettuce Leaves with Sriracha-Soy Sauce
by Mario Batali, sauce by Stuart Brioza

Why in the world did it take me so long to cook something so simple and so lovely?  Open two cans of sardines--make sure the cats are out of the room--and mix them wiht bread crumbs, egg, garlic, Parmesan cheese and parsley.  Fry in a little oil. Serve with a dipping sauce of equal parts Sriracha, soy sauce and lime juice.

The author said "perfect for a dinner of four friends."  I say, equally perfect for a lunch with one. Me.

Bored to tiaras

Get Fluffy
A Pampered Pets mystery
by Sparkle Abbey

When I say I love to read, I mean it. There's a wide range of genres, styles and scenarios I enjoy reading, and a slightly smaller range that I can tolerate for a short time.  Like the extent of a single book. But--I'm beginning to remember--there are a few that I just can't take.

Even when they're well-written. I slogged through a Tom Clancey novel once and while the subject matter bored me to tears, I had to admit it was top-rate writing. James Patterson, too--so long as he was writing about children with surgically implanted wings, I could enjoy a book. (not two)


But Get Fluffy is a different matter. Having just finished an instructive, touching, heartful book about dogs in general and Merle in particular (Merle's Door), and currently listening to an audiobook about search-and-rescue dogs and their handlers, I found Get Fluffy abominably trivial. The "detective" runs a boutique selling dog's clothes. Her clients buy the clothes. The dogs wear jeweled collars and tiaras. The suspects in the case wear Valentino gowns and carry Hermes Birkin bags. And as far as I can tell, that's all they do...except go to parties and gad about. It reminds me a little of Jane Austin.

Yuck. I did my requisite 30 pages or three chapters, whichever comes last. Glad I didn't pay money for this.

Not up to normal even

Normal is Just a Cycle on the Washing Machine
by Len Bourland

I shouldn't have waited two weeks before writing about this--I've forgotten it. I think that says a lot. 

Maybe all the people who loooved it just happened to be in the same place in their lives as she was.  Clearly, I wasn't. It was readable, but didn't resonate with me an never threatened to make me laugh.

Sorry.

Great YA Great!

Eliza and her Monsters
by Francesca Zappia

It's all here and put together awesomely. Eliza is a high school kids with a marvelous talent for drawing and storytelling. Her web comic is so popular that people pay her to produce it. Other than a couple of online friends and her family, no one knows that's she's the much sought after author of Monstrous Sea.  (Okay, this warrants a fantasy/wish fulfillment alert, so here it is. Who doesn't like to read about geniuses?)

 She's also a recluse and a nerd, following in the spirit of her favorite author, the woman who wrote four volumes of the five-volume series Children of Hypnos and then quit, never ending her series. Some people say it was because she couldn't deal with fame.  But the real reason is a complete mystery.

Back to Eliza. A new kid comes to school. A guy, of course. And they talk--or rather, they write notes and exchange texts. He's a tremendous fan of Monstrous Sea and writes transcriptions of it. Very good ones.  Unfortunately, by the time she comes to trust him enough to share her secret with him...she can't. It would be like admitting to him that she lied during all those weeks when he shared his own secrets with her.

What a mess, huh?  It gets worse. And better. And worse. Read it.

Gardening In My Roots, fall will never come

Not a bad harvest for September 21. From top, next year's okra, this Sunday's fried okra, and lotsa hotsies.  The hot weeks this month have done a number on my baby turnips, carrots and even the okra.  But okra and peppers can't get enough of it.

Love this author. 3rd book, no misses.

What happened to Goodbye
by Sarah Dessen

I seem to remember this book having lower ratings than some of her newer ones, but now that I've read (listened to) it, I don't see why.  Oh--yes--I remember now. The other books of hers I read had some supremely intense events in them--rape, imprisonment--so the subject matter of this one is light by contrast.  Just divorce.  And feelings of rejection, homelessness, inability to persist relationsships....

I could see someone coming off this saying, "Wasn't that sweet?" But if they did, they weren't paying attention. This girl was going through a lot of misery underneath, and her failure to wallow in it was just a sign of the problem.

In true Sarah Dessen way, the author gets to put some heavy messages in her young characters words. I rolled my eyes a couple of times. 

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. 

But her description of what a true friend is by calling them a "two a.m." is right on.

Recipe Reduction 40-38

All-Purpose Stir-Fry Sauce (Brown Garlic Sauce) 
By Connie K, adapted from Martin Yan's Chinese Cooking for Dummies

As the reviewers suggested, too salty. But still kind of meh.  I stir-fried a load a veggies and added the sauce at the end; but even though I'd only made a half-recipe of sauce, I didn't end up using it all.  Or saving it.

After making endless variations on the stir-fry over many years of my life, my tastes have begun to change. One of my early favorites was a Szechuan sauce based on ketchup; later I enjoyed the intensely swet, rich brown sauce that goes so excellently with green beans. But now my favoite is a simple mix of sesame oil, vegetable broth, tamari and rice vinegar. Potato starch to thicken, but no sugar. Vegetables are naturally sweet.

Don't count this as a fail--I'll eat it happily all week. But it's not a do-over.

Baked Sweet & Sour Pineapple Sriracha Tofu Nuggets
Author: Yup, it's Vegan

Pretty much hideous. The dipping sauce was okay. 

You marinade your tofu in pinapple juice and tomato paste and sriracha and stuff, then roll it in a cornmeal-flour mixture and bake it.  The leftover marinade is enriched with ketchup and still more sriracha until it's so hot you can't taste anything for hours after, then you use it as a dipping sauce.

Not sure what I did wrong, but the tofu ended up with clumps of dry, flavorless cornmeal on the outside.  Frying this, even with the merest smidgen of oil, might have made it edible. But, hey! I could eat week-old bread if it were dipped in a spicy sriracha-ketchup sauce, so I'll eat this.



Todd Richards’s Fried Catfish With Hot Sauce
by Korsha Wilson

Good recipe--too bad I burned it and over salted it. Normally recipes skimp on the salt so I gave an extra sprinkle of the shaker.  Bad idea.  I burned it because the oil was a little too hot. I didn't use my thermometer and just attempted to judge it.  Plus my pieces were small, so they were a little burnt after only 2-1/2 minutes per side.

But still good. I keep eating it for supper and waking up thirsty with nightmares. Salt--or pizza--will do that to you.

Lacking the love in me

Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
by Drema Hall Berkheimer

So many people were so charmed by this book that I feel flat not to have shared their joy. I liked it lots, especially her unabashed and unrepentant mischief that made her the kind of kid next door I would have adored to grow up with. I loved revisiting a time in history that I would never know. Maybe if I were twenty years older, or if I'd grown up in the Appalachians, I'd have bonded with this book.

So disregard my lack of excitement and go read other people's reviews. My only complaint is that there really wasn't any confict. It was idyllic to the point of idolized. Could it have been real?

Recipe Reduction 42-41

Black Sesame Otsu With Soba Noodles
by Heidi Swanson

Very good and very fattening. I shall enjoy my lunches immensely this week.

The otsu is the combination of toasted pine nuts, sunflower kernels, and sesame seeds. She had many warnings not to overtoast--remove from the heat as soon as you smell a hint of toasted sesame.  I hope I did okay.

Then you mix the seeds with sugar and mirin and vinegar and toasted sesame oil and soy sauce and cayenne pepper (love the cayenne pepper!), thin it out with some of the cooking water from the noodles, mix it all up with sliced green onions and a little fried tofu. Wonderful.



Bhindi Masala
by L.V.Anderson for Slate's You're Doing It Wrong series

A great way to use up okra in the summer, but the sauce was off. Maybe because I forgot to salt it, or maybe because I knocked over the bowl I'd measured the spices into and lost part of them.  But the main problem was the tomatoes--too sour.  With fresh, ripe home-grown tomatoes it would be awesome.

Unlike many of my favorite Indian recipes, there seems to be no way to make it low calorie. The okra is fried and it absorbs all the oil as fried okra typically does.  Next summer, or maybe next week since I'm still getting a dozen pods a day out of the garden, I need to look into a stewed okra dish.

Best book of the year!

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
by Ted Kerasote



I have no quotes from Merle's Door and won't apologize. It was just too good to pull out bits and pick them apart. It should be left whole and perfect.

Merle is a dog and his man is a writer. As a writer, you expect a person to be a excellent observer and he truly is--but Merle is better. He figures out things--people, boats, echoes, trash cans....  He dances, sings, and charms even the dog catcher. He loves elk hunting but despises bird hunting. He absolutely adores downhill skiing--so much that sometimes he has to remind his man that the best powdery slope might not be the one you're pursuing--it's the one you're at right now.

While the dogs in my life are always and forever the best dogs in the world, Merle gets to stand with them.  May the elk be forever with you, Sir Merle!

Recipe Reduction 44-43

Crispy Roasted Chickpeas
By kechin on Food52

Yummy!  is there anything I won't eat with enough cumin and cayenne on it?

I won't share the recipe--if you're interested there are plenty of similar ones on the web. But I'll say that for a can of chickpeas, next time I'll use one teaspoon olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon each salt, cumin, cayenne, and paprika, probably skip the coriander because the other spices overwhelmed it, and shorten the roasting time to 30 minutes. I had a feeling that 45 minutes at 400 degrees was too long, and it was. They're slightly on the burnt side of crispy.

Ina Garten’s Barbecue Sauce

Adapted from her Food Network show

Not bad but what's with the oil?  I never heard of putting oil in barbeque sauce before, and I'll never do it again. It added nothing except calories.

Other than that, it was very tangy and very sweet. Perfect for chicken or pork.   But I can't help thinking she just three together everything in her kitchen without much thought or real design...which is more-or-less what she said in the notes.

Gardening in my Roots, wet September

As hoped, weeks upon months of mid-to-upper 90s with 0% chance of rain has given way to rain, drizzle, and thunderstorms every single day.  It's so wet outside that snails have been crawling up the windows trying to find a dry spot.

The broccoli--still holding on--seems to like it.











And this strange thing which is probably some sort of Mesclun greens that reseeded itself from the spring crop. It looks edible...but I'm oddly scared to try it. Maybe I should feed it to the cats first.

Lots of baby birthing. I enjoyed.

Delivering the Truth
by Edith Maxwell

Cute little themed "cozy" about a Quaker midwife who solves murders on the side. I didn't find the murder very interesting--not sure if it was poorly plotted, poorly portrayed, or just an example of my interests--when people in a book are having babies, I get bored with the people who aren't having them.

Midwife Rose Carroll, the mysery solver, is more than a mystery solver.  I expect character development for the main character, and wouldn't continue reading a series without it. But in this case, she's got so much of a character going that the murder investigation became an annoying sideplot--I could enjoy this character better without the murder. 

The mystery novel format gives an author a ready-made audience. People know what to expect out of a mystery. I'm no exception--I put a lot of scrutiny into a plain old novel before I commit to it. A novel can take you anywhere--wrench your emotions--tarnish your soul--go where no man has gone before.  Not so, I assume, for a mystery. Especially a "cozy" like this.  You stay on planet earth; the main character never dies and seldom do her best friends; her story continues in Volume 2; human civilization is not wiped out by an alien invasion.

And that's the problem with this. I think this character deserves a different genre. I'll happily read the next--it's already on my to-read list--but I wonder what she could have done if released from the cage?

Recipe Reduction 47...45

Veggie Nori Rolls

My only failure this weekend.  It showed--and still shows--potential. But don't follow the recipe.

It called for speading the nori sheet with hummus. I used some green-colored hummus I had in the fridge and it would have been better with the traditional hummus of chickpeas, garlic and tahihini.  But it was okay. You add a little carrot, a little cucumber, a little avocado and lemon and--stop there! Roll and eat.

But no. The recipe called for a sprinkle of nutritional yeast and that was just hideous.

Sopa Verde de Elote
by Heidi

Okay, I was dubious. And the instructions were just silly.  You cook the tomatillas and blend them up. In the same pot you cook the onion and garlic, then put the tomatillas back in.

In another bowl you blend up a bunch of frozen corn, a few frozen peas, hot peppers, cilantro and lettuce--yes, lettuce. You pop it in, add water and cook for just a few more minutes.

So here's my issue--why not cook the tomatillas, onion and garlic all together?  Saves a whole step.  So that's what I did and, no matter,
it was great!




Chicken Chow Mein
by norecipes

I don't know. There wasn't enough sauce for all the noodles--I ended up pulling one-quarter of them out (and all over the stove.)  And with only a tiny amout of soy sauce, it was bland!  A little soy sauce added to the marinade might have helped...or not. It might have toughened the chicken, and that was the only thing that came out well. Better to add it at the end.

If only I'd had the 5-spice powder the recipe called for, I'd know what it was really supposed to taste like. But the quantity was so tiny--one-eight teaspoon for four chicken thighs--I don't think it would have made that much of a difference. I'll never be a gourmet, that's a given.

GREAT science writing

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
by Adam Rutherford

This guy is a magnificent science writer! I am stunned at the complex ideas he can explain and illustrate and entertain me with. There's a lot of stuff in this book--lots of a lot--and I can only take time to point out a couple of things that absolutely floored me.

The first section of the book deals with ancient man-like creatures and it whacked me in the head with the reminder than our evolution was never linear--it was loopy. It lines up in a neatly branched family tree only when populations become isolated and stay that way. Mankind didn't. When the last group of modern humans left Africa, they met with Neanderthals and Denisovans and who-knows-what-yet-to-be-discovered species out there, and mated with them. You see it in our genes.

Also note: the vast amount of genetic diversity today occurs in Africa, but it was only a small sample of humans that emerged to populate the rest of the world. So a dark-skinned North African might have more genes in common with a Swede than he does with his dark-skinned South African neighbor.  If you feed the counts from the human genome project into a computer program and ask it to group them into six groups by similarity, it returns results that appear to follow the traditional racial groups.  But when you increase the number of groups, then small, isolated tribes begin to emerge, and they're nothing we would consider to be "racial" groupings. For example, with seven groups selected, one might say the seven major races of man are African, European/Western Asian, East Asian, Australian, American, and Kalasha.  (A northern Pakistani tribe of about 4000 people.) If you go to seven or more, it gets less and less like what we'd have expected.

Having eliminated race, he takes up inbreeding.  I never considered the notion that royal families--both European and Central/South American--are shockingly inbred. The classic case is the Spanish royalty's Hapsburg dynasty. Charles II was the last of the Hapsburg dynasty--he failed to produce an heir after two marriages, dying at age 39, bald, crippled, epileptic, and nutty.  Most likely because they started inbreeding more than a century before his birth. His line suffered a severe case of "pedigree collapse."  See this article:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/04/inbreeding-the-downfall-of-the-spanish-hapsburgs/

The inbreeding cooeficient is the average number of the genes which are the same on both their paris of chromosomes. For a brother-sister pairing, this value is .25. A team of geneticists calculted Charles II's inbreeding cooeficient as .254. (His mother and grandmother were pretty looney, too.)

Even more exciting is his description of epigenetics--the inheritence from parent to child of epigenetic factors, those which enable or prevent the expression of genes. I'd never realized these factors could be inheritied, but there's evidence of it. It's only partially inherited, and it's not permanent in the way of genes, but there are clearly demonstrated cases.

Lest you read this and jump on epigenetics as the latest "scientific breakthrough bandwagon", he cleverly notes:
But, as sometimes happens in science, it's also a field that has been exposed and leapt upon in a press frenzy to attempt to explain all sorts of as yet unsolved mysteries of biology. The legion purveyors of ackamarackus love a real but tricky scientific concept that they can bolt their quackery onto. It happens with words like quantum, which offers up some magical scienceyness, none more so than in quantum healing--an unfathomable extension of reiki, which, let's face it, is a load of old cobblers already. The annexing of this word from fundamental physics also ranges from washing powder branding to the theory of mind.

He gives more examples, but I'll leave it at that.

Gardening In My Roots first fall edition

The fall garden.

Looks hideous. But maybe not as bad as it seems.  This is how it looked after I stirred it up and hoed rows out of the blocks of rock-hard clay.  And planted seeds--turnip (of course), carrots, radishes, kale and lettuce. The lettuce seed was last year's and probably won't sprout.

But here's the reason for hope--next day after planting was predicted, rain!  And the next.  And possibly every day next week.

Hope springs eternal. At least in my imagination.

Recipe Reduction 50-48

Avocado Salsa
from Taste Of Home magazine

KInd of a non-brainer, but very suitable for serving as a side-dish for a Mexican buffet.  It's just corn, olives, bell peppers, onion and garlic, dressed up with lemon juice, a little olive oil, vinegar and organo. Just before serving, throw in the chopped avocado.

Note to self: for something like this, go for the firmer of the ripe avocados. It can even be a little unripe. Remember you're going to be chopping it.






Red Onion Marmalade
from Roy Choi

Wildly wicked!  Hot--sweet--loaded like a firecracker. So many flavors in something so simple.  It's just red onions cooked in oil, then reduced in mixture of red wine and vinegar. Then add sugar, cayenne, lemon and lime. Wow.

It's not something I'd want everyday, but I'd sure put in on a relish tray for guests.




Soy- and Butter-Glazed Carrots
by L.V. Anderson for Slate's You're doing it wrong series
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/02/27/soy_glazed_carrots_recipe_why_adding_tamari_or_shoyu_instead_of_honey_or.html

Most people's concept of glazed carrots involves sugar, and I quote,

But adding sugar (or honey or maple syrup, as the case may be) to carrots is mind-bogglingly wrong-headed, because carrots are already sweet. Adding more sugar takes them to a weird, nauseating no-man’s-land between dinner and dessert—vegetal in appearance and texture, candied in flavor, disconcerting all around.

Instead she adds soy sauce. It's awesome.

Slacker me!

The Carry-On Traveler:
The Ultimate Guide to Packing Light
by Erin McNeaney

and backpacker and bicycler and homeless adventurer, and everything elser...this book makes you think. Made me think, anyway--deep questions---
1. I have never ever read more than two books on a trip--why do I insist on having two backups in case the Kindle dies?
2. Wouldn't it be nice to have lightweight, quick-drying teeshirts and shorts instead of the mangy old cotton ones I always pack?
3. Why do I take cowboy boots for dress-up instead of tiny, packable sandals?

As you see, this is a thought-provoking book. But seriously, consider this: the big, boxy suitcases with swiveling wheels work great in airports...but what about outside the airport? You can't hop on a bus or walk ten blocks to your hotel, that's for sure. And you better make sure the friends you enlist to pick you up don't have an ultracompact car.

Before my next trip, even if I do stick with my 45-pound behemoth, I'm doing this:
- Look for a set of compression cubes
- Limit to three pairs of shoes: one general-purpose walking, one running, one ballet slippers.  Plus flipflops because I can't live without my flipflops.
- One backup book (paperback) but load a couple of audiobooks on the Ipod
- Take photocopy and scanned copy of passport

The idea that you can get everything you need for an extended vacation into a carry-on backpack is intriguing, and this book shows you how to make that happen. Not just vacation, either--some of the accounts at the end are from people who work on the road.  They pack their entire office into a carry-on.

I feel like an under-performer.

Recipe Reduction 58-56...51???

Low Calorie Avocado Dip

Again I face a recipe I never should have saved. It might seem sensible to extend avocados with fat-free yogurt and cover up the taste with garlic, cumin, onions, cilantro and lime juice. But yogurt is dairy and I prefer not to do dairy, so I ended up with one of those highly processed fake yogurts made from who-knows-what. The end result tasted okay but it was a waste of a good avocado.

Sorry I'm such a bigoted purist. Guacamole is guacamole and dip is dip. Don't mix 'em.


Vegan Thai Pineapple Fried Rice
Author: Yup, it's Vegan

Oddly enough I kind of liked this. I didn't have any five-spice powder and my curry powder was really old and I pre-cooked the carrots and broccoli--excellent idea that I thought of myself--you really can't stir-fry carrots and broccoli properly on a home electric range with a wok that's not quite flat on the bottom.

With all that against it, it turned out pretty good. But it wasn't real fried rice--it was just leftover rice added into stir-fried vegetables.

One final note--1/2 cup pineapple added to a head of broccoli, 2 carrots, half a head cabbage, and 2-1/2 cups rice, doesn't not make a "Pineapple Fried Anything."  It should have been called "Stir-fried Veggies with Rice and a Pineapple Garnish".



Whole Wheat English Muffins

Not "whole" wheat, only half, but delicious so I won't sue them for false advertising. I got careless and didn't heap up the batter as they told me to, so they ended up more like small pancakes and they weren't easy to split in half. But so good!

I wonder if a person could dollop about half of the dough for a muffin, say 1/4 cup, then let it cook just a minute and do its spreading, and then spoon the rest of the dough on top?  It's worth a try but...these things are awfully fattening and I'm the only one eating them. Better wait until I have an audience for the creation.






Now, I have a confession to make. My counter says I'm on recipe #55, but when I checked the recipes left in the to-try folder, there are only 51. It would be difficult to go back and see where the mistake(s) happened, so I'm going to apologize to myself and move on. There doesn't seem much point in going out to find four new recipes to add to the list. Trust me, I've learned my lesson already--I will reset the countdown to 51 and complete the regimen.  And never save recipes again.