these days

There are some new things in my house, including this big brown couch. I'm not sure why the picture turned out the way it did, but I kind of like the uneven lighting. It makes the picture look old, like the couch.

I eat a lot of dumplings, and some people ask me what kind of dumplings they are or how I make them. Here you go - these are the dumplings (they're vegetarian):

I make them by adding about a half inch of water and a couple tablespoons of sesame oil to a frying pan. I put the lid on until they're hot through, then take the lid off and let them get brown and crispy once the water boils off. They stick to the pan until they're crispy, so I wait until they are ready and then I flip them to let them crispify on the other side. Then I eat them with Chinese black vinegar (镇江醋).

I also lost two buttons from my coat and only had one replacement button. So I got a bunch of new red flower-shaped ones. People have been asking me if I got a new coat. They look really pink in this picture, but they are actually maroon and match the coat's lining.
Here's a picture that shows the flower shape better.

I added some links. Some people (hi Mom) will probably really enjoy the cooking blogs that I have been digging recently. 101 Cookbooks and Mahanandi are both vegetarian, but don't let that stop you, omnivores. The recipes are delicious and often inspiring, and the photos are great.

i have a smart blog

What does this even mean? How does it check?

interesting ways to eat thanksgiving leftovers

Those roasted vegetables were really good with hot breads and sweet mangoes. It is ok if you don't get the breads joke. Also I've been eating a lot of pie for breakfast. Mmm, hot pie.

pumpkin story

My family visited my house for Thanksgiving dinner today. Yes, today is Friday. We always do that - it lets them use Thursday for driving. Works just fine. I made some great food: a pumpkin stuffed with roasted veggies, the wild rice stuffing that's become a family favorite, and a simple, delicious asparagus salad. It was complicated, interesting cooking, so I took a lot of pictures.

When my brother arrived at my house on Wednesday, we started preparations by making the vegetable broth that would go into the pumpkins' stew. This (which we later thickened slightly so it was more stew-like) was my favorite thing out of the whole meal. The roasted pumpkin was cool, presentation-wise, but this broth was just ridiculously good.

Thursday we put the stuffing together, and I don't have pictures of that. But there are a lot of pictures of the final stage of preparation from today. We hollowed out the pumpkins (which were actually just pumpkin-like squashes), first...
Then we roasted them empty for a little while - since they're the biggest thing they needed a head start.
They came out looking very pretty.

These vegetables were all roasted, too (on the outside of the pumpkins). I forgot to put the beans in, but I intended to include great northern beans as a substitute for the seitan the recipe called for. Then we put the vegetables and the sauce inside the partially-roasted pumpkins and roasted the whole thing a little longer.


The pumpkins came out beautiful and delicious. It was a little hard to access the deliciousness at first, though.


The last thing I made was this salad: roasted asparagus with lemon juice, blue cheese, and tomatoes. Everyone always likes it. I liked this wine, too - I am generally a fan of vinho verde.

look what I made

One of my favorite food blogs had a recipe for peppers like this a long time ago, except they had them in a sweet peanut-ful sauce. I didn't feel like going to all the trouble, so I'm just going to eat them with yogurt. I really love yogurt.

I decided to try making paneer. It's pretty easy. You boil & curdle the milk, then you strain it and squish it into a cheesy form.



And for lunch I had carrot-ginger-sweet potato soup, which was great.

cold day, spicy food

I have learned how to make some decent black beans to go with the quesadillas I eat all the time. The key seems to be cumin & onions.

special guest star

F. was visiting this weekend, and last night we didn't have much to do so we made a delicious dinner. I made sweet potatoes with creamy sauce, he made spicy fried rice with onions. Here's F's fried rice, mid-fry:


These are the sweet potatoes before I added the cream. I microwaved them first, so they didn't take much cooking in the pan, they just had to pick up the flavors.

Next, here are the sweet potatoes after I added some cream (actually, I put in milk, too) and peas. The spices in there are cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and cloves, so this smells pretty good.


We ate the rice with yogurt on top and had some wine. It was so delicious that I ate way more than I was actually hungry for. After that I wasn't good for much besides sitting on the couch for an hour or so.

perennial dinnertime favorites

An egg taco, fresh from the skillet. The avocado is a little less than pretty, but still delicious.

I forgot to mention

I have a dog now. She loves to chew stuff up.

lucky me

My iPod is covered by the warranty even though the reason for the crack in the screen is a little iffy: my dog chewed it up. They didn't seem to care, though, and the replacement will arrive tomorrow. Hooray for Apple.

Why not? Certainly you wil get.

I'd had these ancho chiles sitting around in my fridge, waiting for me to get around to stuffing them. But I kept thinking it'd take a long time, so I never actually did it. Turns out it's easy! I fried some rice with onions, cumin seeds, and canned crushed tomatoes, and then put that in the peppers with some cheese and baked them (450 degrees, 15ish minutes). They could have been roasted beforehand - I think that would have made the peppers softer & milder - but they were delicious just the way they were.



Next time I won't take the seeds out of the peppers with my bare hands, though. I often have a lot of little cuts on my fingers, and it really burned for a while. The skin is only just starting to feel normal again.

cleaning out the fridge

A while ago, Meijer had salad greens on sale, buy one box get one free. So I had a whole lot of arugula. But I never got around to eating it, and it was wilting in my fridge, until I did this with it:

Arugula is a little bitter, so I added some sugar, and it's a delicious late lunch (with plenty of leftovers, of course).

minty milk

I bought some fresh mint the other day to cook with some fennel and onions I was making. But what do you do with the extra mint? That's always my problem with fresh herbs - unless I'm making a lot, I can never use it up before it gets dried out. This time, though, I have a delicious solution to the extra mint problem.

First, I shred up 6ish mint leaves and put them in a short glass with a teaspoon or two of sugar.

Then I put in a tablespoon or so of milk and muddle them around as if I'm making a mojito.

Then I fill it up the rest of the way with milk. It's very refreshing, and it reminds me of some "fresh mint" gelato the co-op sells. But it doesn't cost $5 for a pint, even if I use Oberweis milk.

beverages

I have a stuffy ear (I didn't know ears could do that), so I've been drinking a lot of Mom Tea.

meals: greatest hits

These are some of the food pictures I emailed to my envious friends before I thought to put them up here (most recent first).

I made this cake for my family when I visited them over Labor Day weekend:
For a week or so, I was making avocado and roasted pepper spring rolls for lunch:

You can't see much of the food, but for this birthday party I made veggie subs, vegan chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, and margarita chiffon cake.

I ate this mango, too.

This was my entry for Iron Chef Urbana. Nobody really dug my "rustic home cooking" theme, so I lost to the fancy seafood dishes. But actually the twice-baked sweet potato with grapefruit on top was really good. Next time I might make it with some kind of grapefruit glaze, so it's easier to eat.


I ate this for breakfast a couple of times:

dinner

I've been taking pictures of my meals and sending them to people. They are invariably envious of whatever I'm eating. So I thought I'd start blogging about food instead of sending email - that way the envy could be less exclusive.
Today I made a version of this zucchini kurma, from one of my new favorite food websites. I used patty pan squash, though, because it's always been my favorite and I brought some back with me from Michigan.

I chopped all the vegetables...


Then I had to fry some onions and spices...


Here it is bubbling away with all the vegetables added...


I finally ate it with rice and some leftover potatoes. Don't you wish you were also eating my favorite squash?

the Bed

My parents dropped by yesterday on their way to take my youngest brother to school in Mississippi, and they brought me a bedroom set. I had one, but they wanted to trade - they get a bigger one for the guest room, I get a smaller one that can fit better in my apartment. The great thing is, my new bed is the Best Bed In The World. It's old, it's pretty, it's soft, it's tall, it's comfortable, it's the best. It has a decorative knob at the top that wobbles if you move around a lot. It's simultaneously endearing and annoying; I think I'll just keep the knob in the closet.

I admit it's also nice to have something to put my clothes in. But I'm really mostly excited about the Bed.

fairytale logic / magical reasoning

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ended exactly the way I expected it to. Every last loose end tied up the way I personally would have tied it. Do I know from narrative conventions, or what?

one good thing

A lot of things have happened, but one minor positive is that I can have green hair again.