Warning on the French press

"Children and hot fluids should be kept apart."

Working Lunch

Studying for the bar exam is not a creative enterprise. My entire mental world has been reduced to: Read this. Hear this. Memorize this. Write this. And, my favorite, Fill In This Little Circle With A No. 2 Pencil. If there was ever a less creative activity invented than filling in a circle of prescribed and uniform width with a prescribed and uniform writing instrument, I cannot think of it.

But, well, a girl's gotta eat. So my creative outlet has largely become: Making Delicious Things To Eat. (Most of them are delicious, anyway.) This week, for example, I picked up some Chinese eggplant, a vegetable I'd never cooked with before.* I softened the crap out of it in a pan with olive oil and garlic--which requires more oil than I like to think about--then scooped them out onto paper towels and threw some green beans into the pan to heat through. I served it (yes, we serve in this house, even in a meal for one) with some brown rice from the freezer and a homemade Thai chili sauce. That was the easy part: throw some Sriracha, fish sauce, and lime juice in a little bowl, and voila! Salty spicy sour goodness. Leftovers for lunch today made Corporations go down easier.**

*Is it a fruit if it has seeds on the inside?
**Admit I considered making a poison pill joke here. But. Ahem. NO.

Vegas, detox, stone fruits, postbar

This past weekend was the 3L trip to Vegas. I could probably write a whole essay on My First Vegas but instead I'll just say: I spent a lot of time lounging by the pool with a tasty margarita, exclusive clubs are pretty much stupid, I love my friends, rascals rule, and when you order curry at a Thai restaurant you should specify how spicy you like it even if the waiter doesn't ask.

Of course, after such a trip I need to detox. So after getting back home (and sleeping 6 hours in the middle of the day) I went immediately to the grocery store and stocked up on fruits, veggies, sourdough, and brown rice. Yes I know sourdough isn't a stock detox food but honestly I'm in the Bay area for like two more months and I'm eating as much of it as possible until I pop. Moving on....

And as if buying groceries--one of my favorite things in the world--wasn't enough to get my heart going all aflutter, I was greeted at le Whole Foods by a huge pile of stone fruits! Peaches are back! Apricots! Nectarines!!! Oh man, I've been waiting for stone fruit season for six months and I can't wait to eat, eat, eat as many pieces of fruit as possible.

And so finally, as if there weren't enough exciting things in this post to keep you entertained, the post-bar trip is taking shape. Come August we'll be seeing Saisai take over Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and (whew) Chicago. So fun!

Next baking project

I should say first baking project: I don't have a kitchenaid mixer and I've been scared to try mixing any sort of dough by hand or food processor. But this--homemade pop tarts, people!--sounds too good to pass up.

Eggs, salad, and sourdough

A simple and delicious dinner.
Eggs scrambled with salt & pepper.
Salad with romaine, "spring mix," endive, celery, and tomato with goat cheese and vinaigrette.
Slice of bakery sourdough to sop up the dressing.

Now that's a happy belly.

calorie counts?!

Is NYC now requiring restaurant menus to include calorie counts right next to the menu item? Bizarre! And kind of awesome. See Exhibit A here.

I love New York. I miss it. It's wonderful to be back.

Things to remember when talking about food

"Agriculture is a business. Farming without a financial motive is gardening."

More here. Parsons calls these "fundamental principles that both sides should be able to agree on." Some are common sense--courtesy and empathy are always good tools in conversations about touchy subjects, after all. But not even ground rules are ideology-free, and if we have to have an ideological conversation, I'd rather it be about stuff than about how to talk about stuff. Thoughts?

"The Omnivore's Dilemma"

I say: WHOA. What a mindfuck. Look for more soon.

Closing the distance between preparation and consumption

"My family, like most families, generally lives on the go, and we rarely get to have a decent breakfast in the morning. So most weekends I make twelve muffins (a different flavor each week) as breakfast for the week. I'm sure that someone, somewhere is scolding me for feeding my kid a muffin for breakfast. But here's what I know. When you make Mocha Chip Muffins, as I did this weekend, and see the ingredients going in--the copious amounts of butter, dairy and sugar--it makes you think long and hard about what you're eating, and what you should eat the rest of the day. It's one thing to know that a muffin is fatty. It's another thing to actually add the fat in yourself. Moreover, it's another thing to see the size of your muffins, and then see the gargantuan muffins that are sold in the stores.

Cooking--and really cooking from scratch--creates a consciousness about food. It creates a respect, an understanding of what, exactly, you're putting in your body. It's not that cooking is magically healthier. I'm not convinced that, say, my fried chicken has less calories than KFCs. But that isn't the point. The point is doing the actual work of frying a great chicken. It's actually having to see all the oil and eggs (depending on your recipe) used in the process. For me at least, doing that, has made it unlikely that I'll fry chicken every day, or even every week."

Oh, and the strawberries!

You might be curious what happened to that mass of strawberries I bought the other week. (Might be? Of course you're curious! You've been waiting for this your whole life!)

It was actually kind of dumb. A lot of the strawberries went soft and overripe before I got a chance to do anything of substance with them. (Though I did eat at least two pints with just whipped cream. A lot of whipped cream. Yum.) I only had about a pint left to work with. So, I took the easy way out: I baked a cake out of a box in two layers, frosted the whole thing with frosting out of a can, and put cut strawberries in between the layers and on top of the cake. It was tasty, but that's about all I could say for it. I think my classmates enjoyed it, and it looked kinda pretty.

I really don't think baking is my forte. But some time this summer, we will attempt no-knead bread.

Tapas

Last night I went out to a happy-hour-ish thing with friends at a Spanish restaurant. My favorite small plate: dates stuffed with chorizo and wrapped in bacon. Let's go through that again: dates + chorizo + bacon. Dates. Chorizo. Bacon.

Heaven.

Genius or desperate

The guest judge on tonight's late-night rerun of Iron Chef America is a rapper named Bone Crusher. No I am not kidding. He was surprisingly coherent for a dude who hangs out with someone called "Young Jeezy," and kinda cute to boot. Still, what's the philosophy behind this choice? Did Mr. Crusher ask to be on the show? Or is Food Network soliciting modern rap artists to add a dash of flavor?

UPDATE: During the judging of Iron Chef Bobby Flay, Bone Crusher made for some outstanding television:

Bone Crusher: I don't know if I like this dish, but I don't hate it. But it's interesting.
Another Judge: That's very cryptic.
Bone Crusher: Right, isn't it?
Another Judge: You sort of didn't say a lot there.
Bobby Flay: I think he said it all.
Bone Crusher: It's not bad. I don't know if I don't like it. Or I do like it. I don't know. But it's--it's good. Kind of. Sort of.
*Laughter*

And later (having previously expressed his dislike of raw meat), eating a rare steak:

Bone Crusher: It's great.
Another Judge: Do you need this cooked more, or are we cool?
Bone Crusher: No, we're very outstanding with this one.
Bobby Flay: Thank you.
Bone Crusher: I'm very proud of you.
Bobby Flay: Thank you Mr. Crusher.

Another apple experiment

Since apples are pretty easy to work with and also pretty tasty (and grown on the West coast! Local!), I've been trying to figure out different ways to use them in delicious desserts. This past weekend my adventurous cousin made us a pear pastry using frozen puffing pastry sheets, and it was yummy, so I tried to sort-of-replicate that with apples tonight. Notes to self: grease foil before putting down pastry sheets; get baking pan. Oh, and if you've noticed that these recipes are a little iffy on the amount of each ingredient, that's because I'm not working off recipes--I just sort of throw stuff in and hope it tastes good. Okay, moving on.

Ingredients
3 golden delicious apples
6 or so little spoons sugar
1 or so big spoon cinnamon
a little less than 1/2 a stick of butter
1-1/3 pillsbury pastry sheets

The pastry sheets are easy: they come two big sheets to a box, so just cut each into thirds and pick out the four thirds you like best. For those of you not so good at math, that means you'll have four equal-sized strips of pastry sheet. Cut each strip into 4 equal squares. Do not smush the dough.

Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and lightly grease. (Lessons learned.) Put the pastry squares on the foil leaving at least an inch in between. Bake in oven for, oh, I don't know, 10 minutes or so? Until they're just shy of golden brown, but have puffed up.

Meanwhile, put the butter in a saucepan to melt (I used a medium sized pot) on LOW heat, so it doesn't burn. Add in most of the sugar and all the cinnamon, and stir til it gets kind of hot. Peel and core the apples, and slice thinly (I cut into chunks--not the best move). Add the apples to the pot. Just cook and stir, cook and stir on low heat until all the apples have deliciousness all over them and are starting to fall apart.

When you take the almost-done pastry squares out of the oven, depress the puff in the middle of half of the squares and put a generous spoonful of the apple tastiness in the middle. Distribute the apples onto the squares, then use the other half of the squares to top them, making little pastry-square-and-apple sandwiches. Sprinkle a spoonful of sugar over the top of the sandwiches for prettiness and crunch. Put the sandwiches back in the oven until the tops start to get toasty brown, then take out and let cool before eating (I learned that one the hard way).

The result:

I think they turned out really well for my first try. Next time I'm going to try with peaches before they totally fall out of season. But I think any fleshy fruit like that would work if you want to experiment.

Experiment: baked apple slices

Ingredients
5 tart green apples
a good amount (1 cup?) brown sugar
a good amount (2 tbsp?) cinnamon
a dash (1/2 tsp?) nutmeg
1/2 a stick of butter
some (2/3 cup?) water

Peel and core apples. Cut into quarters, then cut each quarter into 5 or 6 slices, so the slices are about 1/4 inch thick. Mix brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg (in that order) with water in a separate bowl, blending with a fork. Pour water/spice mixture and melted butter over apples in square pyrex pan. Make sure all the apples are coated with yummy deliciousness. Bake uncovered in oven at 350 degrees, mixing/basting apples every 10-12 minutes. Bake until apples are soft but still hold their shape. Broil for a few minutes to brown if you're into that.

Updates forthcoming.

UPDATE: Tasty! I put them in for 12 minutes, then 12 minutes, then 12 minutes... and then put them under the broiler for 5 minutes. I separated the apples from the liquid. Next time, I might add flour to make the liquid thicker and more edible. Anyway, they were great on waffles.