I’m a fan of random dinners, or what I like to call “garbage can meals.” Put together a bunch of forgotten ingredients, that would otherwise end up being thrown out, and you have yourself a resourceful garbage can meal. Although I find grocery shopping relaxing, which I know is kind of strange, sometimes I don’t have time for it because it’s kind of an event for me. I tend to get lost in aisles, staring at the different bread options, wondering if I should try that new cereal, or whether I should be adventurous and grab that intriguing curry sauce. Some nights my lack of focus intimidates me, so I choose to go home and see what I can do with what I have. Fortunately, my grocery store wanderings often result in a pantry that’s full, albeit random, but packed with edible things ready to be thrown in a garbage can meal.
One night I came home and looked at my fridge, and it stared back at me with red and green peppers, zucchini, and a yellow onion. Then I went to see what my pantry had to offer. A can of tomatoes caught my eye first, then I pushed it aside and saw the kasha that had been waiting patiently to be used since last summer. This past June I went through a brief gluten-free phase, and my mom, perpetually confused by me yet always supportive, bought me a box of kasha so I’d have a new gluten-free grain to try. This gesture, while kind in intention, left me unsettled. “I’ve never cooked with kasha!” I thought, “What is kasha?! Why don’t I know what kasha is? Am I failing at gluten free-dom?” You may find my reaction a bit intense for the situation, and it absolutely was, but a lack of gluten resulted in a high amount of crazy in this one. My sister even told me I was “tweaking out,” and looking back on it she was dead on. Once I started eating gluten again, I dove gleefully into pizza, pasta, and bread baskets of all kinds, and didn’t look back.
The box of gluten-free kasha sat lonely and forgotten in my pantry until this one fateful evening of no grocery shopping. On this night I decided I was going to use the kasha, gosh darn it, and I was going to like it. What is kasha, you ask? Just another word for buckwheat groats, and honestly if my name were “buckwheat groats” I’d probably prefer a fancy stage name too. Before you jump to the conclusion that buckwheat groats belong in an actual garbage can, not included in a garbage can meal, let’s take a judgement-free moment to learn about kasha. It has a hearty texture, nutty taste, and crazy nutrition. Even for us gluten enthusiasts, kasha is a grain worth trying: one serving (1/4 cup dry) boasts 5 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber, plus a bunch of flavanoids and antioxidants. K enough with the learning, let’s get to the food.
There are certain ingredients that reel me in immediately. They turn this indecisive girl into a real go-getter. Sometimes these dishes aren’t vegetarian, so I need to be the girl who orders, “The chicken penne without the chicken” just so I can get the herb goat cheese, or the roasted tomatoes, or the artichoke hearts. Artichokes especially, with their buttery layers, disarm me entirely. I use them at home frequently, but often without variation or creativity. For me, artichokes add to the old standards: pizzas, dips, or that chicken penne recipe without the chicken. One Saturday morning a few weeks ago an episode of Giada at Home rocked my world with a recipe for puréed artichoke soup with fresh mint and lemon. Puréed artichokes? That’s crazy, but brilliant. In my artichoke trance, I decided I needed to give the recipe a try.
Being a somewhat superficial food lover, I had some qualms about this soup’s appearance. Artichokes usually add visual appeal to dishes, but an artichoke puree mixed with spinach results in something very…green. But not a vibrant, beautiful green…kind of a dulled, yellowish green. While I knew I’d have to come to terms with a less-than-beautiful dish, it was clear the superficial part of me would need to act in some way.
To add to my need for slight adjustments in appearance, I knew I’d need to give the soup a bit of “oomph” to overcome the boy’s internal struggle over eating a bowl of puréed vegetables. To help us both, I made just a few adjustments to Giada’s recipe. As the soup simmered, I baked bread into buttery, crunchy croutons to give some aesthetic, yummy appeal. Since thyme has a lemony flavor that mixes well with mint, I baked the croutons with thyme, and added a half teaspoon to the soup base to tie it all together. To make the soup more decadent, I added a scoop of creamy cheese, which melted easily into the otherwise nutrient-packed soup. With a plan to meet both our beauty and taste needs, I thawed my artichokes and prepared to fall back into my trance.
I’m not someone who’s ashamed of my nerdiness. I actually wear it on my sleeve, right below my sarcasm. When it comes to Valentine’s Day, it’s a time for both to shine. The boy and I often pretend to be a sugary-sweet, over-the-top corny couple. It’s an inside joke that may induce vomiting if overheard by others, but for us it’s a fun reminder of our in-sync humor. Valentine’s Day provides the ideal environment for this side of us to flourish. For instance, last year I made heart-shaped, bright pink cookies. Since I knew he couldn’t eat the entire batch, I also brought some to work, but cut them jaggedly in half in honor of a particularly difficult client. A client you might say was “breaking our hearts,” ha ha ha…nerd, remember?
I’ve always been fascinated/obsessed with attractive baked goods, but for the same reason costume parties were always my favorite in college, I just can’t say no to a theme. Halloween, Christmas, Fourth of July, you name it, and I’ll make a dessert for it. Valentine’s Day is special, though, because the opportunity for hearts, sugar, chocolate, and pinkness comes wrapped in a bow, just asking to be assembled into something delicious and obnoxious.
This year, I knew I wouldn’t have time to make individual heart-shaped baked goods, but I wanted a brightly decorated dessert to bring to our Valentine’s Weekend (he’s out of town this coming week, so I got a whole weekend). I decided to go with brownies because they come together rather quickly, but are kind of like a blank canvas. A delicious blank canvas, just asking to be stuffed with chunks and chunks of chocolate, then topped with thick cream cheese frosting ready to be decorated with abandon. Or you know, something like that.
I’m sad to admit that I discovered pad thai much, MUCH too late in life. As a picky eater in childhood, as a teenager, and into young adulthood, I missed some of the finer things in food. In college I started being more open to the unfamiliar, mostly because a girl can only eat so much peanut butter and jelly. Thank goodness for my lack of attention span with meals, because now I want to take on the culinary world…or at least the vegetarian hemisphere of the culinary world.
Which brings me to thai food. In my pickier years I had a “gross, but what IS it” attitude towards the food genre. Now I care less, try not to think about it, and then when curiosity gets the best of me I know I can figure out what it is with a quick google search. Of course, with Pad Thai the search results came with a landslide of recipes with fish sauce. Recipes that insisted, “fish sauce is the key ingredient! You need the fish sauce! Leave out the fish sauce and it’s not pad thai!” Cool it, people, step aside, and put the fish sauce down, cause this vegetarian is hungry. Hungry for sweet-yet salty sauce mixed with light rice noodles, twisting around a mix of bean sprouts and sweet cooked pepper, then dusted with crushed peanuts and fresh lime…it’s just the best, right? Right. But this kind of love begs the question: is this perfection that can be recreated at home, and without fish sauce, no less?
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For some people, or perhaps most (according to my high school science teacher), smell is the sense most strongly tied to memory. Well, I only have half a sense of smell (it’s a long story, don’t worry about it), so I’ve always had to grasp onto other, more dependable things. As you may guess given the topic of this blog, I have many memories tied to food. For example, my grandma’s simple chocolate cake brings me back to when my brother, sister and I all lived at home with my parents, and my grandma would come over for steak dinner, potatoes (side note: I ate cheese bread at these meals. Literally white bread and cheddar, broiled), and dessert…my grandma never forgot the dessert. The cake showed up frequently, and as a sheet cake, could be decorated for various occasions: New Years Eve? Sure, write on the cake and bring some noise makers…Easter? Well we have the pastel frosting, might as well…an average Tuesday? Why not make that random day all the better?
As time went on and my grandma passed away, there came a distance between my family and our chocolate cake. That is, until a few weeks ago when my mom requested “Grandma’s Chocolate Cake” for her birthday dessert. My family does birthdays in a big bad way, so when mom requests a specific cake, you give it to her, and you don’t ask questions…or you shouldn’t anyway. As soon as my mom emailed me the recipe I started scheming about what I could do to make it more special. I knew I had a great idea when I realized my sister and I were thinking the same thing: transform the sheet cake into a round layer cake.
The day I was planning on making the cake I told mom I had to stop by to get my round cake pans. My comment was met with silence, and then, “Why? What are you doing to my cake?” I insisted that I wasn’t doing anything big, just making it better. “I asked for my chocolate cake. I like my chocolate cake as it is. Don’t screw with my cake.” She was overreacting, I was sure. What’s better than a chocolate cake? A layered chocolate cake, that’s what. “No, that will mess up the frosting. The frosting is the best part, don’t screw with my…no, wait, you know what? Don’t screw with your GRANDMA’S cake.” My mother, the sweetest woman in the world, was speaking sternly, and about food, no less. So I had no choice. I was going to make grandma’s cake, and not screw with it…well not much.
