Back to Life

Wow, it's been awhile.  It's so easy to fall into that lazy trap and then be unable to find the strength to come back and break it.  Hence no blogging for awhile.  Despite having ideas for posts, it's far too easy to just sit back on my laurels and regret not having put something up, but not actually do it either.  So here's a run through of the past 3 (?) weeks that I have missed.

First I had to drive up back up to the Northeast in order to get the last of my stuff out of my old office.  Bittersweet to leave the people at my office, but sometimes when things within a company get shaken up you don't always want to be there to see how things actually settle.  Maybe the stack of cards will be pulled into a neat, orderly pile, or maybe it's a game of Boston Janitor (52 pick-up) that no one decides to play after the first move.  Despite my unhappiness at the end, it is still hard to go from working and having enough money to pay the bills, go out a little, and put the rest aside, to feeling like you're on a slowly sinking ship.  I vacillate between wondering if getting a PhD will ultimately be worth it after the 3 years I have to take classes (I am just assuming I will have to go back to work after that, although who knows, maybe I'll be able to get some big grant that just lets me do dissertation work for awhile), and being determined to work my butt off and get involved so that I make sure this time will have been worth it.  I can say for sure that it's taking a little while to get my passion back for being in the classroom, especially without any sort of specific project to relate things to. 

Anyways, back from that tangent.  Since I was already up in the Northeast, I decided to visit my friend in Syracuse for a couple days.  We did our own cooking, went out for lunch, and in general just had a good time hanging out.  One of the meals we made was Pasta with Escarole,White Beans, and Chicken Sausage.  I'm not someone who normally likes wilted greens, but this is one of my favorite dishes - it's super easy and chock full of way more flavor than you would expect.  I think the reason I can do the wilted greens in this case is because the escarole actually stays internally crunchy.  No picture of that one, but I did buy all the ingredients to make it this week, so I should be able to get something up in the near future.  My friend also made some Nutella Cookies which also came out fabulous.  Those I have some pics of:

Wow, talk about delicious.  And oh, here's the recipe for that:  Chocolate Nutella Cookies

The week or so after that, I had a friend come down to visit, which involved lots of me cooking (got to try and impress, right?) and hosting.  Things learned - quinoa flour is picky, and one thing it doesn't work well in is pancakes.  I think part of it is just having that quintessential pancake taste in your head, which quinoa cannot and will not ever have.   Also though, I think there's clearly something about the way pancakes cook that require gluten, and quinoa does not have gluten in it, period.  While experimenting can sometimes go awry, it can also go well.  This Sausage and Cheese Frittata turned out really delicious, even though I ended up with no pepper (mine went bad on the inside).  Although anything with sausage sprinkled throughout should taste pretty good.  Sticking to the classics is another good strategy, however, as with Peter's Pasta Caprese.  The visit did actually give me a chance to get out a little bit, as one day was spent hiking at Eno River State Park.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this little place.  It definitely wasn't that hard of hiking (although we might have inadvertently missed the more challenging trails), but we did hike for something like 4 or 5 hours.  Definitely a good way to purge late night alcohol residue from your system.



I'm looking forward to finding some more places to go hiking, as well as checking out the Botanical Gardens, some of which is set up more like a reserve.




Other than those few things, it's just been getting reacquainted with taking classes again.  Definitely need to structure my time better - I can skim and get the general idea of something really well, but it leaves me at a loss when people start bringing up specifics. 

So there you go, my time off from blogging in a nutshell.  I certainly don't have as much time as I did earlier in the summer, so I am going to make a goal of putting up one to two new blogs each week, sound good?  Off to the weekend...

Sunday Links

Gudelon Castle : Building a 13th-century castle in France, using period materials and techniques.  I'm not sure what their plan is for when it's done (make it into a sort of museum?), but the website has a lot of information on it about the history and such.  However, you can also see that what they are interested in is very specifically the construction techniques - why not include some historical information about all the people who went into building a castle, especially in comparison with what those trades are like today?

Defining Prosperity Down : One person's theory that the government, rather than making it a priority to find/create jobs (who the hell cares about the deficit when so many people are unemployed, I mean christ), will define it as a structural issue out of its control, and high unemployment will become the new norm

5 Myths about the Bush Tax Cuts : I think the biggest point of this, and many others who aren't proponents of tax cuts, is that they are disproportionately skewed towards the highest earners, in terms of how much money you actually save.  Additionally, as a way to stimulate the economy, they fail because higher earners are not very likely to put that money back into the economy - they have the flexibility to take that extra money and save it, whereas people in the lower and middle classes often do not.  As an economic thing, unemployment benefits come much closer to a 1:1 ratio - every dollar spent = a dollar put back into the economy (without a job, you should have to use all this money to cover expenses, not save - this theory is obviously a lot more effective in a situation with high unemployment, such as now).

King Tut's Chariots  : Marvels of ancient engineering...

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling : On paper at least, this is very eloquent.  It's funny, because I can relate.  I may have been salutatorian of my highschool, but I came out having no idea what I wanted to do, partly because the only thing I knew I was passionate about was horses, and that had already been damned as a career choice.  Looking back I know that I was lucky with the teachers I had, but I'm still glad I found some postprocessual historians and anthropologists/archaeologists at the colleges I went to.

New Zealand's Next Top Cat Model  : Just Awesome - I linked to the video because it's pretty funny.

The Not-So-Pastry Tart

So I found out that I hated the closest grocery store to me when I went looking for frozen pastry puffs and they had none.

Really?  I mean come on now.  Going up and down the same 2 aisles about 5 different times also made me realize that pretty much all they have is convenience foods.  Not that it's bad to have some, but I guess the enormity of the convenience market really hit me that day (I'll hold off on food politics for another day).  The only thing close to puff pastry I could find was an apple filled puff pastry that I think may have been made by Pepperidge Farm - hah, not really gonna work.  So I improvised, because who really wants to find a 3rd grocery store in 1 day??

What I decided to go with was crescent rolls - because I saw one that said it was light and flaky.  Sounds close enough, right?

Anyways, the recipe I was making it in was this: Zucchini, Tomato, and Gorgonzola Puff Pasty Tarts.  Sometimes cooking food is all about figuring out how you want to change it though - I am generally not a huge gorgonzola fan (although I'm coming along), so I decided to use goat cheese instead (The cafe I liked to go to for brunch in Goshen, NY had a fantastic goat cheese tart, oh the memories).

There's how mine turned out.  I added some basil too, for kicks.  Ultimately I thought it was just ok.  Crescents just aren't really meant to be cooked rolled out like that, plus I missed the first cooking timer bell, so they got a little overcooked and brown on the bottom.  And I actually went beyond the recipe, and sliced the zucchini in half lengthwise to make it thinner, and felt like some of the pieces were still too thick.  To me, zucchini does have much taste, so I don't want it to stick around in my mouth too much.



Final decision?  I still like the idea of a goat cheese tart due to the Goshen Cafe, so I'll continue to look for recipes.

I realized that all of these posts so far, besides Sunday links, have been about food.  That's ok, because I like to cook.  I have some other financially related stuff in mind for the future though, just FYI to my 3 followers.  And really it ties into food as well, because what I cook is very much related to how much (or little) money I have.

Bon appetit!

Crispy Crepes

Fall of 2009 I went to Quebec for the CNEHA Conference.  The best part about staying with someone from Quebec, as well as having another friend who lived in Quebec for a summer, is that they know the best places to eat.  My favorite was definitely the place that did all crepes (I don't remember the name, it wasn't very important to me at the time).  They literally have all sorts of entree style and dessert style crepes, which they make on a big grill pan (?) in the center of the restaurant.  I don't even remember what kind I got, but I do remember it being delicious.  I have wanted to recreate that ever since.

I happened to this recipe for Crispy Crepes on the Steamy Kitchen blog - it is Asian themed, but she does more than just Asian food (also, she has a recipe for phoa on there, mmmm).  As attributed in the post, the recipe itself is actually from one of Tyler Florence's books.  Moving on.

I tend to do a recipe list/picture check to decide whether or not I want to try and make something (unfortunately too many people leave comments about how something sounds really good - why not leave a comment once you've actually made the dish, thanks).  With apples, prosciutto, and brie, this sure sounded like a winner to me, so the other day I set about finally making it.

One key for this is knowing ahead of time (gee I wish I read over recipes more often) that once you make the batter for the crepes, you let it sit for an hour.  Right now I don't have all-purpose flour, I have quinoa flour on hand, and given that I am a poor grad student, I will go on using my quinoa flour until it runs out.  Clearly this means that some things might get messed up in cooking however.

The recipe calls for using an 8-inch pan - mine had sloped sides, and when I put the 1/4 c. of batter in, to me it seemed much to thick.  So I ended up using closer to a 10-inch pan, and just not filling the whole thing up.  What I think the more important part of the recipe lays, is that you need to wait for a little browning to occur in order to flip the crepes.  When I tried to follow the 30-45 seconds recommended, I found that mine were not yet brown (perhaps due to the quinoa - maybe it makes things a bit thicker?), and basically fell apart.  After learning to wait longer, I also found it was easier to just figure out how to flip the thing using the pan alone.  And to be honest, flinging the pan actually works pretty well.

Once the crepes are cooked, you can go ahead to the crispy part.  I added thinly sliced Pink Lady apples (Weaver's didn't have the proscribed Granny Smith), and prosciutto on top of that.  Then they get cooked for about 10 minutes - the recipe failed to mention the cooking temp, so I used 250 degrees.  Once they get out, you add thinly sliced brie, which melts due to the heat, watercress, and some fresh ground black pepper.

My crispy crepes, mmm

Overall, I thought they came out delicious.  Even after the crepes are made, they do require a bit of assembly.  I also have to mention that, being on a strict budget, the prosciutto is fairly expensive - 5 or 6 bucks for 3 oz worth, and the recipe called for 6 oz.

In the future, I'd like to do something more similar to what I ate in Quebec though, which doesn't require going in the oven.  It reminded me of a very simple omelet, but with a flour based batter rather than eggs.  MMM.

Finally, Andalucian Gazpacho

I finally got around to making the gazpacho yesterday.  In case anyone doesn't know, gazpacho is a cold tomato based, raw vegetable soup, originating from Spain.  With all of the peeling and dicing you have to do to begin with, and then the blending and sieving later, it is definitely a little time intensive (although the upside is that you don't need to heat anything on the stove).  But anyways, the steps I had to do tonight were to blend everything (I just used a regular blender), and then you have to let it go through a fine sieve, so you just get the smooth liquidy stuff and leave behind the chunkier pieces.  I imagine that is more of a preference/fine dining sort of thing - if you don't mind small pieces of ingredients, you could just go straight from the blender to the bowl.  

After all was said and done, with the amount of ingredients that I used (5 roma tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 green pepper), I ended up with enough for about 3 bowl fulls, which seems like a good amount for just one person.  As I mentioned, I wasn't able to use a scale when buying produce, so my proportions were a little bit off - I halved the amount of garlic to 4 cloves, and even for a garlic lover, I still find it a bit overpowering (the original recipe is supposed to make 1 lb. of soup, ahh!).  Anyways, here is the finished product, with diced tomato and pepper as a garnish.

I also added cubed bread, but the size of the cubes overwhelmed the soup, so i decided not to show it.  I think once I make croutons, that will work much better.

Overall, pretty tasty, I'm looking forward to branching out and trying other versions.

Sunday Links

I made the gazpacho, but then I opened the bottle of wine that my landlords gave me after I signed the lease.  Short story, I can't put the cork back in, so I had to drink it all, by myself.  Therefore, here's some links, gazpacho recap will be tomorrow :-)

Neolithic Feasting : Short article about  British archaeological discovery of remains from a large slaughter event at the biggest "henge" site - Marden Henge, overlooking the Avon River.  Animal remains are from pigs, while bone implements and at least one arrowhead has also been discovered.

Life on Mars?  : Scientists believe Nili Fossae would be the place to look for rocks that might have fossilized evidence of life on Mars, but the site has been nixed from the next rover landing site possibilities due to landing concerns  :-(

No More Triceratops? : Scientists look at evidence that "triceratops" is actually the juvenile version of the torosaurus

Torosaurus

Triceratops

Here and Back Again

So in the middle of the first post, I realized that this should actually be the first post, to explain what is going on, and what this blog aims to do.  I recognize that when it comes to keeping in touch with people, I am a terrible friend.  I cannot reliably email/call/write people, but I hope you realize it is not because I don't love you.  I've wanted to do a blog for that reason, but also because there's a bit more freedom/structure (if that makes sense) in terms of what you want to talk about and how you organize it.  Lastly, I love sharing cooking, and I that is best done with a set up such as this where I can post some pictures and talk about my experiences. 

So I suspect a big theme will be recipes and what I am cooking.  There are a few favorite recipes that I make consistently, but otherwise, I just like to try new things.  I like bold flavors and ingredients, and am very picky in terms of deciding if something is good enough to cook again, or if it was ok for one try, move on to the next. 

Along with the theme of cooking, I am very much concerned about eating healthier and more locally.  However, I am not perfect, and this is a constant journey.  I try to educate myself about these things by listening to Podcasts and reading (currently I am about halfway through Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma), and then doing what I can to effect change in my own life at least.  Which is hard when you are all of a sudden on a grad student salary again.  However, as of right now, I am trying to make a commitment to go to the Weaver Street co-op, as well as take advantage of the farmer's market in the same area.  Cooking from scratch in general will often save money, as will buying seasonally.  So in that spirit, I am attempting to learn about and cook more seasonal meals, although I don't know what that will mean for the winter, since I don't have the materials or space to do much preservation/canning.  I just ordered some seasonal cookbooks, so I look forward to trying some of those farmers market oriented recipes. 

And as mentioned, I am once again a grad student, ahh!  Going for a PhD means a lot of things, right now I am most concerned with the reading.  So given that many of my friends are involved in archaeology/anthropology, I will probably post at least a few things on here relating to those sorts of issues.

Through all of this, I hope that any of you who actually spend the time to read and follow posts will comment often, and enjoy the food and random musings I try to offer.

Thanks!

~Ash