How to cook without groceries? Maybe?

Over the holidays, I realized that my bank account is looking sad.  So I am making it one of my new year's resolutions to make do with whatever I have sitting in my pantry, rather than running out and buying extravagant ingredients to make a single dish every time I need to eat or update this blog.  Fortunately, the roommate and I have built up a fairly impressive collection of spices, kitchen instruments, and dry goods for young 20-somethings, so that should help...

Got home from the new job today (apparently I am a "natural" at steaming milk for lattes...I call it beginner's luck) and was starving because leftover baked goods are not really a filling, tide-you-over-until-lunch type breakfast.  Rooted through the cupboard and found some of this stuff:

Last time I tried to use this as a shortcut dinner, I was really upset because it tasted TERRIBLE.  Whatever was in the "spice sack" was bland and awful and processed, so this time, I opted to throw out the spice sack and make up my own blend.

A local restaurant where I was employed for all of two weeks offers a delicious madras curry chicken dish with Israeli couscous on the side that I have been longing to try to make for myself, so you could call that my inspiration.  Unfortunately, their dish has apples, onions, sultanas, and arugula.  All I had were raisins.  And really, those don't even belong to me but the roommate was nice enough to let me use them.

I was feeling adventurous and recipe-less, so I boiled the couscous with some olive oil, tossed in some minced garlic, then put in the following blend of spices:

(That first one is cayenne.  I should also resolve to become a better photographer.)

I have NO IDEA how to season curry-flavored stuff, so I added a teaspoon of curry, a 1/2 teaspoon of cumin, about a 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon, some salt, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.  Then I tossed in some raisins.  No clue if that's the "correct" way to do it, but this is what it got me:

Believe it or not, it tasted OK.  Was it delicious?  Meh.  But it COULD have been awesome with some sliced apples, red onions, arugula or spinach, and maybe a touch more cinnamon.  Mostly I was impressed that the spice blend wasn't totally off...  I crumbled up some candied/spiced pecans (I would have preferred toasted almonds, but again, I was going for free) that I made for Christmas on top, and voila.  A lunch that was tastier than cereal!

I need to figure out a way to add protein to my meals since I don't each much meat at all, beans are hard to sneak into stuff, I hate chickpeas and am not crazy about quinoa, and I can't eat eggs very often, BUT I figure I'm off to a good start for creating meals on the cheap.

In the meantime, I have a bunch of spices in my cupboard that I need to learn how to use.  Coriander?  What does one put that in???

And now I really do need to run to the grocery store....

Now I know how guinea pigs feel

So my friend often feeds kale to her guinea pigs, Winnie and Theo.  They really really love it, but I have always felt so-so about its flavor.  But now I love it, hence the title of this post, in case there was any confusion...

Anyone who has ever lived with me knows that I have a difficult time having packaged snacks around the house because I will DESTROY them within 2 days.  Flavored potato chips are my biggest weakness, and I had to stop buying them because I have no self control and let's face it, they're terrible for you.

But this evening, I discovered a solution to this problem. While stressing about the amount of groceries in my fridge that I must consume before hopping a plane to Arizona tomorrow, I discovered a bunch of almost-fresh kale in the veggie drawer.  The roommate suggested that I stir fry it up and save it, but I really despise leftovers--especially leftover vegetables--and I am not the world's biggest fan of stir-fried kale because it has a mouth-feel grossly similar to raw broccoli. The kale wasn't going to keep until I got back, and even though it's cheap, I didn't want to throw it out because I also despise wasting food.

I also wanted a snack for the 6-hour plane ride tomorrow because I was stupid and bought a 5 PM flight and I am poor and have little money for airport food. 

Put all of the parts of this equation together and you get...kale chips.

Kale chips are one of those foods that my family would mock me for eating.  But they are ridiculously tasty, cost-effective, and are MUCH more nutritional than potato chips.  A bunch of kale costs less than a dollar, and a bag of chips can cost up to $4.  So you can make either a ton of kale chips or buy some potato chips for about the same price.  You do the math.

And seriously, these are hella tasty.  I had to restrain myself from the cookie sheet and grab a plastic container to save some for tomorrow.

I'm ridiculously excited about this new discovery. 

You need:

1 bunch of kale, rinsed, ripped into bite-size pieces (sans stem), and dried thoroughly
a few glugs of olive oil
whatever seasoning inspires you at the moment/salt

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spread the kale out on cookie sheets.  For one bunch of kale, either make it on 2 pans or do it in stages--it's worth it because it comes out crunchier.  

Drizzle olive oil, add seasoning, mix things around a bit.  Bake for 15 minutes or until kale is brown around the edges and crunchy.

 

(I actually had to rebake these for a bit...)

K approves!

UPDATE: My sister just mentioned that TSA might mistake the dried kale for pot.  She has an excellent point... This + some loose leaf tea with a tea strainer MAY rouse some suspicion.  So.  Maybe not the best plane food.

The miracle of back streets (which, oddly enough, includes 34th St.)

As someone with an incredibly crap sense of direction, I tend to stick to my guns when it comes to routes.  Hence my love/hate relationship with Massachusetts Avenue and, to a lesser extent, Wisconsin Avenue.  So while what I'm about to say might sound really dumb to some, it was a point of pride for me.

I discovered how to get home without using Massachusetts, and I didn't even have to look it up on Google maps!  Given that I've lived in DC for nearly 6 years, you'd think my navigating skills would have kicked in before now, but you'd be wrong.

 Pennsylvania Avenue is a disaster sometimes.  The bike lanes are a great idea, but sometimes you just have to shake your head and sigh/cry at the shenanigans that occur along that street.  Cyclists seem to make it their mission to run the red lights at all sorts of bad times, and I saw a car almost plow into a guy who tried to cross against the red on 10th St.  While I was still in my early biking stages, I got hit by a cab crossing Penn on 12th St., and this past spring, a cab made a u-turn in front of me and made me fall off my bike.  Granted, I was biking down the lane on one bike while holding another bike (we call it "ghost riding" and it's what you have to do when customers are dumb and leave rental bikes unlocked outside of the World Bank....long story for another time), but he still shouldn't have turned in
front of me.  In general, streets named after states are approximately 62.5% more stressful than the smaller streets.

Anyway.  It was delightful crossing Mass on 15th Street and being able to use the bike lane for awhile...I turned onto P (but really it could have been any street...and I know/think there are one-way bike lanes on Q and R, but I always forget which lane goes which way), took it through Dupont, took the bridge, and huffed my way up Wisconsin into Glover Park.  Ta-da!

That all being said, climbing up to Observatory Circle and cutting over is probably easier...but it's good to know I have options.  I feel like I have unlocked a chestful of secrets, and it is very exciting.

Sad pumpkin pie and an awesome bike ride

Got up at 6:30 this morning to roll out some dough and make a pumpkin pie for the internship holiday party...and proved to myself that I should not bake at 6:30 in the morning, because my crust slumped and there were weird globs of oil on the top of the finished pie (puree, milk, sugar, spice, eggs...how do you mess that up??).  To console myself, I ate some (homemade!) corn muffins with jam and yogurt and watched several YouTube videos about how to properly flute a crust.   Next time it'll be perfect--PERFECT, I tell you.

I need to get away from this boring holiday baking kick and come up with something more creative than pecan or pumpkin.  Maybe some sort of chocolate peanut butter thing....or this concoction, which my sister (who happens to be pregnant and is probably in need of chocolate) sent to me.  Post about something fabulous to come.

A less-than-eventful bike ride to L'Enfant today.  For the past 5 years, when I lived in the vicinity of AU, I took Massachusetts Avenue downtown. Even though I moved to Glover Park, I still do.  It's a love-hate relationship between us, but I'm familiar with all of its quirks and foibles. Wisconsin through Georgetown would be easier, but the idea of biking through Georgetown at rush hour sounds less-than-fun.  I'm sure there's a way to do it on the back streets, but my sense of direction being as crappy as it is, I don't know what that way would be.  I'll work on finding a route so I have something interesting to post about.  

Lots of bikers along 15th today.  I tried to gun it for the light at I St., which always changes about 1 second before I can make it through.  Sometimes you can run it at the red because there's a turn arrow, but there was a gaggle of pedestrians making ready to cross.  So I stopped, as I should have, but a CaBi biker behind me dinged his bell at the last second, apparently trying to pass me, then grumbled and huffed loudly when I stopped.  Not really sure what happened there or how/why he thought he could pass me OR why he was following me closely enough to be annoyed that I stopped OR that he couldn't seem to see the red light ahead.  I just looked straight ahead and stayed stopped at the stop line.

<slightly self-righteous rant>

It annoys the crap out of me when cyclists and/or cars pull into a crosswalk without stopping at the stop line.  That's why they invented stop lines, so that moving vehicles don't mow down pedestrians.  So yeah, inch into the crosswalk if you have to, but make sure people are out of the way before you do it.  Bikers also tend to turn right on 15th just past the White House when pedestrians have the right-of-way there, and the pedestrians have to stop or jump out of the way. It just seems like arrogance to me. Being on a bike does not mean that you have the right-of-way at all times.  Bikes have brakes for a reason, so be prepared and willing to stop once in awhile.

</slightly self-righteous rant>

Maybe I'm overly cautious about pedestrians and cars.  If it explains anything, I spent 4 years as a bicycle tour guide on the National Mall, so I'm pretty excellent at being patient and people-dodging while being somewhat polite about it. (Unless a tourist tells me to get off a sidewalk on the Mall.  I bristle, turn around, and inform them that the sidewalks on the Mall are technically considered shared-use trails, so look up the traffic laws of places you visit before making stupid remarks, asshole).  I am also good at making loud comments at rulebreakers (i.e. "Oh, did you not see that glaring red light in front of you?") and then turning around and doing stupid shit myself.  I guess none of us is perfect.

Inedible Rice Pudding

Here's how not to make rice pudding....

When you don't have any regular milk, use nearly-expired cream and a can of evaporated milk to equal about 3 cups.  Mix with 2 cups of leftover brown rice, then cook with 1/2 c. sugar. 

Continue to cook for many minutes (about 40), wonder why it's not thickening, panic, then add corn starch to make it instantly gloppy.  Add cinnamon from a crappy container with GIGANTIC holes, then add more sugar because you are worried that you added too much cinnamon and it will be bitter.  

Taste and cry because you just wasted some perfectly good ingredients on an excessively sweet pot of goo that has the texture of masticated frog guts mixed with wallpaper paste that has enough calories to fatten all of the world's starving children.

This is why we don't buy cheap cinnamon containers, kids.

Sigh. 

Live and learn, I suppose.

Baby, it's cold outside.

God.  Damn.  It's cold outside.  I know that's not a very original thought, but it's the only thing running through my mind right now.

Because I don't plan ahead for anything, I had very few bike-friendly things to wear this morning.  When I saw the weather forecast, I panicked and threw on as many layers of clothing as possible...wound up with a wool sweater, a sweatshirt, a peacoat, a giant scarf that's the size of half a blanket, a pair of tights, jeans, and two pairs of socks.  And a pair of Merrell hikers.  And a hat squeezed under my helmet.  And some awesome-ass biking gloves that I purchased from Cycle Life.

Pea coats are TERRIBLE for biking.  Not only do they limit your motion range to practically nil, they're not very warm, so you have to layer underneath them, which allows you to move even less.  So as I made ready to ride the 12 miles down the Capital Crescent Trail from Bethesda to Georgetown then into downtown via Virginia Avenue and Constitution Avenue, I looked somewhat like the little brother from A Christmas Story.  With my computer lashed to my back in a messenger bag.  Nevertheless, I took frost-covered Vancouver and headed out.

There were a surprising number of cyclists on the trail, most of them wearing bright yellow things on awesome touring bikes.  I followed a guy on what I think was a Surly Long Haul Trucker with a Brooks saddle for a while.  The envy drool nearly froze around my mouth.

The trail is beautiful in the morning....there's really nothing like seeing the sunrise over the Potomac River, and if I hadn't forgotten my lobster-style over-mittens and my hands had been warmer, I would have stopped to take some pictures.   Next time.  Maybe I should consider getting these.

Despite the fact that my toes (in spite of 3 pairs of socks, 2 of which are made of wool!) and fingers were frozen by the time I got to mile marker 0, Georgetown is nearly always warmer than Bethesda.  I'm not sure if it's elevation, time lapse, or a combination of both, but I'm usually warmer by the time I get down the trail.  It's not just being exercised-out either...there was no frost on the ground downtown, even in shady patches.

I trundled up Virginia Avenue, which was uneventful, then down Constitution Avenue (on the sidewalk because construction is still terrible and I hate that road), past the National Christmas Tree display (it's so tiny), then stumbled into the garage where I work....only to find that the heat wasn't on.  Sob.

Cinnamon Pecan Pie

I should probably get used to this whole updating thing...it's harder than it looks!  With my old blog (and my short-lived Twitter account), I managed to update nearly daily because I would write random rants about things that pissed me off, but that gave certain people the impression that I was a very dark and angry person.  Which I am not.

Also, I tried to add a bunch of people that I follow, and Blogger keeps not saving them.  I have attempted this no less than 7 times in at least 3 different ways.  I even sent in a help request to Blogger.  So, Blogger peeps, if you are reading this, something's broken.  Please fix it. 

Anyway--I made a pecan pie!  My mom makes frosted pecans every Christmas, and they are phenomenal.  I'm not a gigundo pecan fan, but when you coat them in egg whites, sugar, cinnamon and bake them, they become the best dessert treat ever.  Hence, my addition of cinnamon to a normal pecan pie recipe.  I've also found that arranging halved pecans on the top distributes the nuts nicely and gives you a really nice, pure, roasted nut flavor.

I have to give 99% of the credit to this recipe, which is the best corn syrup-less recipe I have found for pecan pie.  Corn syrup grosses me out, and it's a pain in the butt to work with, so I don't use it!  This recipe is incredibly easy, and the pie is oh so very good and hardly sticky at all.

1 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

1/2 c. butter

2 eggs

1 tbsp. flour

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1 tbsp. cream (recipe calls for milk, but all I had was soy milk and heavy cream, so I opted for the cream)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 c. chopped pecans 

a bunch (1/2 cup?) halved pecans

1 unbaked pie shell* 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  

Toss butter in a saucepan to melt over low heat.  While melting is happening, whisk eggs until they are frothy.  Mix melted butter into eggs.  Add sugars.  Add flour and cinnamon.  Mix everything together.  Add vanilla and cream.  Fold in chopped pecans.

Pour the whole mess into the pie crust.  Arrange halved pecans on top of the pie in a pinwheel/spiral/snowflake pattern.  Make it look pretty.  Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 350 and bake for another 30 minutes.  Crust should be light brown and crispy.

Prettily arranged pecans

The crust collapsed a little bit because there was butter in the bottom of the oven that started to smoke, so I had to perform an emergency rescue about 3 minutes into the cooking process.

*Pie Shell Recipe

As you can tell from the photos, I am rubbish at crimping them but when it comes to ingredients, I am a pie crust purist.  My boss asked me why I don't just go out and buy them, and I refused to dignify that with an answer.  YES, it takes time, but unlike homemade pumpkin puree (IMHO), it is definitely, totally, 100% worth it. My roommate  asked me to show her how to make these, and it really is pretty easy.  The trick is to do it in a cool kitchen and be obsessive about keeping your ingredients cold.  It takes some practice to get the feel for it...my first few pie crusts were not great.

Also.  You do not need a food processor to do this and anyone who tells you that you do is being lazy.  You don't even need a pastry cutter (though having one will make your life easier...I adore mine).  You just need a couple of forks or two butter knives.

Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on most store-bought crusts?  Way too long.  A true pie crust has:

2 1/2 c. flour

1 c. butter

dash of salt

dash of sugar (if you want)

ice water (about 8 tbsp?)

That's it.  Nothing else belongs in there.  I don't even like vegetable shortening because, while it supposedly makes for a "flakier" crust, it detracts from the taste.  And a pie, to me, is all about the flavor.  If you properly blend the butter and flour and keep things cold until baking, your crust will be plenty flaky.  The butter basically melts down between layers of flour.

So.

Start with refrigerated butter.  Cube your butter.  Cover and refrigerate it again.  Go be patient for awhile, then come back to the kitchen.

Pour flour, salt and sugar into a bowl, mix, and create a well in the center.  Put cubed butter in well.  Get out your pastry cutter, forks or knives, and blend butter into flour until you have pea-sized chunks.  Make sure you are really thorough with this step (it will take awhile), otherwise you'll get a lot of stray flour at the bottom.

Once things are looking nicely mixed, you can refrigerate again if necessary (I have to in the summer).  If not, go ahead and add the water, a little bit at a time, mixing it into the dough each time.  You may need to use your hands to get the stray bits of dough from the bottom of the bowl.  Keep lightly mushing the dough and water together until the dough forms a ball.  Be careful not to overwork things.

Add more flour to the outside of the ball, wrap in saran wrap (or place in an airtight container), and refrigerate.  This recipe will make enough for 2 single-crust pies or 1 double-crust pies.

I'll write more later (with pictures) about how to roll out the dough, because that can be a little tricky, too.