Story of My Dinner: Episode 3

Tonight my class was canceled, so I celebrated by watching Netflix movies and eating fried rice.  I know, I should have been doing homework, but there's only a week left of classes, and I'm getting antsy for Christmas Break.  Besides, I LOVE fried rice, especially drowned in yummy soy sauce.  It's a must-have every time I go out for Chinese.  I love it so much that I invented a recipe for it when I was a young teenager and have since perfected  it (in my opinion).  I have it almost once a week.

Fried Rice
2 cups water
1 cup uncooked rice
1 large chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tbsp olive or sesame oil
soy sauce
ginger
pepper
garlic powder
2 carrots, diced and cooked
1/3 cup peas
2 eggs

1. Boil water, and add rice.  Cover, and turn down to low heat.  Cook rice for 20-25 minutes.
2. While the rice is cooking, pour oil into a frying pan, and then add chicken.  Stir the chicken in the oil to coat and add soy sauce (I like a lot of soy sauce, so I do about 2 tbsp here), as well as a dash of ginger, garlic powder, and pepper.  Turn onto medium-high heat and fry until chicken is cooked on the sides but not in the middle.  Fill pan with a quarter of an inch of water and continue to cook the chicken until the water almost completely boils off (5-10 minutes).  Check to make sure that the chicken is completely cooked.
3. Push the chicken to the side of the pan and crack eggs into the pan, scrambling with your spatula.  Add a little soy sauce to the eggs to flavor them.  When the eggs are cooked, add carrots, peas, rice (once it's cooked), and about a tablespoon of soy sauce.  Stir well.  Taste, and add more ginger, garlic, pepper, or soy sauce as desired.

Sorry, my recipes are always kind of rough.  I never measure the ones I make up.  Also note that these aren't the only things I'll add to my fried rice -- this is just what I made tonight.  If I have spinach or green onions, I'll add those vegetables, or even broccoli.  It just depends on what I have on hand.

So for my story tonight, I thought long and hard about it.  I realize that my fried rice doesn't look that different from my Turkey and Rice I had on Monday.  I kept staring at it, trying to come up with something new, and all I could picture was this blob of rice coming alive and walking off the plate, like something off Better Off Dead (hilarious movie, btw).  Then I remembered another story about food coming alive, written/illustrated by a favorite writer of mine, Bill Waterson.

So yes, today I'm copping out and letting someone else tell my story.  But you can't really complain.  What's better than Calvin and Hobbes?  And it actually fits with this blog anyway, because it's literature (yes, I'm calling graphic novels literature), AND it's a fantastic allusion to my all-time favorite Shakespeare play, Hamlet.  Enjoy!

I love how the blob stabs itself with a fork.  :)

Come back tomorrow for another episode of Story of My Dinner!  Tomorrow I'll write my own story.  Maybe I'll even draw a comic strip.  What do you think?

Story of My Dinner: Episode 2

Today I had knock-off Cinnamon Toast Crunch for dinner.  Not as good as actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but still a treat.  

Yes, this is a typical dinner choice for me.  I may love to cook, but I also love to be lazy.  And I LOVE cereal.  Cereal provides me with about 40% of my annual sustenance, I’d say.  I’m not exaggerating.

This story is way less melodramatic than yesterday’s, and I think it’s actually pretty funny (but that may just be me).  Let me know what you think.

 PsychoCinna

Brannie and her husband, Toat, sat in the wading bowl on a hot summer’s day.  The pool was bustling with people, mostly children, who jostled into each other.  One young tike swam past and kicked Toat in the corner.

“Ow!” Toat groaned, wincing.  “That kid nearly popped my air pocket!”

“This is ridiculous,” Brannie complained in her high-and-mighty voice.  “We’re never coming to this bowl again.”

“Seriously!” said Toat.  “I have never seen this place so crowded.”

“And filled with floozies.  Did you see how thin that woman’s cinna-stripe was?  My mother never would have let me out of the house dressed like that.”

“Certainly not,” Toat agreed.

They fell into silence for a moment, Brannie glaring at those around her.

“What’s the point of coming to a pool if you can’t even touch the milk?” said Brannie.  “It’s so hot, Toat.  I can feel the sugar dust on my skin.”

Toat nodded. “I’ve got my bottom corner in, at least.”

Brannie peered over at Toat with a calculating eye. “Is the milk clearer over there?  Maybe I should scoot over.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, sweetie,” Toat said uncertainly, peering around him.  “It’s pretty crowded.”

“Nonsense,” said Brannie.  She wriggled her way over to Toat, and ended up sliding on top of a toastman in leopard cinnaprint.  

“Hebbbeybbbbb,” the toastman said, his mouth partway in the water, where he was pinned by Brannie’s large squarish figure.

“Oh, hush,” Brannie told him.  She then sighed in contentment as she dipped two of her corners into the milk.  “This is almost worth it.

“Brannie, um, I think that toastman is drowning,” Toat said hesitantly. 

“He’ll be fine,” Brannie said without concern.

After a moment the toastman stopped struggling in the milk.  Toat looked at him nervously, waiting to see signs of life.  The toastman didn’t move.

Then there was the shrill tweet of a whistle and the silver lifespoon dove from her perch at the guardtower and in a quick dip scooped the toastman out of the milk and to safety.  The formerly drowning toastman began to stir as the lifespoon set him on the rim of the bowl.

“There, see?” Brannie said with a smile as she settled down into the milk that the toastman had previously occupied.  “Everyone got what they wanted.  I got the milk, the lifespoon got to go for a dip, and the toastman didn’t drown.  This day is going better than I’d thought.”

Okay, so this story also reveals that I’m a bit disturbed.  But hey, at least it’s not melodramatic, right? And I don't really need to post the recipe for this, do I?

Tune in tomorrow for Episode 3.  Maybe I’ll get better at this as the week progresses. Thanks for reading!

Story of My Dinner: Episode 1

A friend of mine recently got me into a youtube channel called rhettandlink.  It’s a pair of best friends (Rhett and Link) who write random songs and do random sketches, film them, and post them on youtube.  And sometimes they even get paid for it.  For instance, a few years back Alkasetzer paid them to take a “Great American Road Trip,” where they drove all over the country trying different foods while being as wacky as possible.

One episode in this series was a little different.  It was about a photographer who posed food in different ways to tell a story.   Here is the episode:

I was really struck by this idea that food has a story to tell.  So I decided to blog about it!

The purpose of this blog is to cook food that we’ve read about in stories.  But I wanted to change things up a little.  I decided to write the story of my food.  Every day this week I’ll be posting a story I made up about a food I ate that day.  They’ll be pretty short stories, more like flash fiction.  I’ll also post the recipe, in case you’re interested.  Sounds fun, right?  Maybe I’ll do it more after this week, if it’s still fun come Sunday.  I'm calling it "Story of My Dinner."

First Food: Turkey and Rice

Disclaimer: It's kinda late, and I'm kinda tired, and I'm in a weird mood.  I also wrote this story in less than 10 minutes.  So please don't judge me.

Rice to the Occasion

Peawee struggled to raise himself from the mulch of gooey rice that had enveloped him.  The thick substance was as firm as cement, yet he continued to struggle.  He didn’t know how long it had been since the devastating tidal wave of cooked grain had washed over his family’s home.  A minute?  An hour?  Days?  All he remembered was the crushing blow as the wave plowed over him, and the searing heat as he struggled to free himself from it.  Now that things had settled, he only wanted to find his beloved.  Had she drowned in the wave?  Had she been crushed by turkey debris?  He shuddered at the thought.

            In the stillness of the wasteland that was once his home, he heard a muffled cry.  It had to be her!  She was alive!  With renewed determination, he wriggled to free himself.

            “Sweetpea!” he cried when he was finally free enough to call out.  “Sweatpea, I’m coming!”

            Unfortunately, from his stranded position, Peawee did not see the barbaric carrot lying in wait below, watching.  As Peawee freed himself, the carrot pounced, and Peawee was flattened into a casserolic oblivion.

Okay, as I was writing that, I was thinking, “I’m such a weirdo!  And so random!  And possibly slightly disturbed...”  But this is all I could come up with after a 4 hour night class.  I’ll try to come up with something less wacky tomorrow.  Depends on what I eat, I suppose.

As for the food I was writing about, I made it from Thanksgiving leftovers.  I know I didn’t make it sound very appetizing in my story (or look very appetizing in the picture), but it’s actually really good!  It’s the same idea as chicken noodle soup, only with turkey and rice.  I just cooked the rice for a really long time until it absorbed all the broth.

In order to make this, I boiled my leftover turkey carcass for 1 hour, and then deboned the meat and strained the broth.  I ended up with about 10 cups of broth and 3 cups of shredded turkey meat.

Turkey and Rice

10 cups turkey broth

2 tbsp chicken bouillon

2 cups rice

3 carrots, chopped

¼ cup chopped onion

¾ cup frozen peas

Oregano

Basil

Pepper

Put broth in a large pot with bouillon on high heat.  When it comes to a boil, add rice and carrots, then cover and lower heat.  Allow to cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, place chopped onion in a small frying pan and submerse in water.  Cover and boil for 10-15 minutes, until onions are clear and tender.  When they are cooked, pour onions and any remaining water into the rice pot and stir.

When the 20 minutes are up, add the peas and turkey, as well as your desired amount of spices (I used about ¼ tsp of each).  Add more bouillon if it is not salty or flavorful enough, and more water if you want more broth.  Cook on medium low to desired consistency -- If you want broth, cook less.  If you want more of a casserole substance with really soft, sticky rice (which is what I did), cook longer.

In case you couldn't tell, this makes a TON of rice.  I froze about half of it into individual servings, so now if I ever don't feel like cooking dinner, I can thaw out one of the bags and voila!  A balanced meal.

Okay, that's that.  Join me tomorrow for Story of My Dinner: Episode 2!

Bush Tea and Boiled Pumpkin

My dad recommended a book to me about a year ago.  He said it was about woman in Botswana who runs a private detective agency.  That was enough to get me hooked.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith, is the first in a 12 book series (and still going - #12 came out this year) that has been highly successful.  It has entertaining characters, and is a wonderful slice of life in Botswana.  It’s unique and human, strange and yet so relatable.  It’s the sort of book you can set down for a year and pick up in the middle and immediately enjoy again.  I think the best word to describe it is “charming.”

Plus I liked it because it was written by a Brit (Scotsman, to be specific).  What can I say?  I love all things British.

The cool thing about the series is that it tells so much about African life.  I knew nothing about Botswana before I started reading, and now I know lots about their traditions and attitudes and the food they eat.

That’s right.  It all comes back to the food.

If you have read any of the Precious Ramotswe (the main character in the series) books, you can probably guess what two foods I tried.

1)      Bush Tea

2)      Pumpkin

McCall Smith constantly talks about bush tea throughout the series, because it’s pretty much Mma Ramotswe’s favorite thing in the world.  I always thought it was entertaining, because it combined the very British ideals of constantly drinking tea with the African plant, which comes from the Bush.  And by Bush I don’t mean a shrubbery.

Or the U.S. president.

I mean the wilderness.  Specifically the hot, dry desert of southern Africa where only the Bushmen live.

 If you haven’t seen this movie (The Gods Must Be Crazy), go watch it right now!  Slapstick/cultural clash comedy at its finest.

I assumed I wouldn’t be able to try bush tea, because I don’t drink tea unless it’s herbal tea for religious reasons.  (If you want to know about the Word of Wisdom and why Mormon’s don’t drink tea, click here.)  But it turns out that bush tea is an herbal tea!  That means it’s 100% natural, caffeine free, and therefore not habit-forming/addictive.  So I got to try it!

Bush Tea, otherwise known as Rooibos or Red Bush Tea is a tea made from the rooibos plant, which grows in southern Africa.  The tea is red in color and has a very mild flavor which children tend to like.  It’s also good for settling stomachs and (supposedly) relieving allergies.  

I admit that I don’t usually care for herbal tea unless it’s drowned in sugar and milk/cream.  To me it always tastes like someone plucked some grass or weeds off their lawn and stuck it in a cup of hot water. 

 

I’d rather drink plain water 95% of the time.  However, I really wanted to try bush tea since it’s such a huge part of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.  So I went to the nearest organic health foods store and bought the cheapest box I could find (it was sold under “Rooibos tea”).  If you want to learn more about preparing tea, check out Julie's post about it from our English Tea Party.

I can honestly say, as one who is normally biased against herbal teas, that I actually liked bush tea! 

 It was very mild in flavor, and definitely a little earthy (what tea isn’t?), but it didn’t taste watery either.  And I normally don’t buy into the whole “tea calms you/settles your stomach” thing, but this stuff had a strange relaxing quality to it.  I’ll have to try it when my stomach feels a little off.

I tried it plain, with a little honey, and with some lemon juice.  I liked it all of those ways, but I think I liked it plain the best.  Crazy, I know.

Okay, as for the pumpkin – Mma Ramotswe’s favorite food is pumpkin.  She often thinks about it, she often shops for it, and when she’s eating dinner there is always pumpkin served.  I really like pumpkin (as I may have indicated in my previous post about the apple pumpkin soup), so I wanted to try it.  The problem was that I didn’t really know if pumpkin in America was the same as pumpkin in Botswana, and I also had absolutely no clue how to prepare it.  I tried googling it, but it seems that most people didn’t really know much about it either.  As I was reading the books I kept searching for clues until finally I came across something in book #8, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive:

“[Mr J.L.B. Matekoni] and Mm Ramotswe were sitting at the kitchen table in thir house on Zebra Drive.  Behind them, on the stove, a pan of chopped pumpkin was on the boil, filling the air with that familiar chalky smell of the yellow pumpkin flesh.  Inside the oven a small leg of lamb was slowly roasting; it would be a good meal, when it was eventually served in half and hour or so.” (McCall Smith 88)

This clued me in on lots of things: 1) the pumpkin is boiled, 2) it’s supposed to smell chalky, 3) it’s meant to be served with oven-roasted meat (which is mentioned in another book as well), and 4) it's cooked for at least half an hour.  That was something to go on, at least.

Method for Pumpkin

I got a small pie pumpkin, cut it in half, scooped out the stringy pulp and seeds (used a melon baller -- it worked wonders), and then chopped 1 half into chunks.  I then tossed those chunks into boiling water and let them cook about a half an hour, until they were tender (and they indeed smelled chalky).  Then I drained them and let them cool. 

Meanwhile I chopped up some beef strips, which I soaked in a little vinegar to tenderize (I’m too cheap to buy the tender meat), and then fried the strips in butter, along with some salt, pepper, and garlic powder, just until the outsides of the strips were browned.  Then I tossed the strips in the oven (at 350 F) with the pumpkin chunks to finish cooking and allow the pumpkin to get a little bit of a “roasted” flavor.  I pulled it out of the oven about 10 minutes later and served it with butter on top of the pumpkin.

I had trouble finding a good knife to do the job

Is this the way it’s cooked in Botswana?  I don’t know.  I did my best. 

Is the pumpkin good/worth the effort?  Not really.  Perhaps it’s because my pumpkin was not as fresh (I got it at Walmart and waited about a month before I actually cooked it), or perhaps it’s because American pumpkins are not the same as Batswana pumpkins, but the boiled pumpkin was less than stellar.  The butter helped, but I think I should have boiled it with some salt, because it was pretty flavorless.  I only at a few chunks, and then mashed the rest to use in Pull-ApartCinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Bread and some more Apple Pumpkin Soup.

I washed it all down with some bush tea, though, which made it better.  And the meat was good.

The Verdict: Bush tea is delicious.  Boiled pumpkin... not so much.  But it was worth a try.  Now I can better visualize the two No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency staples as I get caught up in the series (I’m on book 9, The Miracle at Speedy Motors). 

If you’re in the mood for a light read full of charm and insight into a new culture, as well as some gems of wisdom, try out The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  It’s the perfect kind of book to curl up on the couch with while enjoying a steaming cup of bush tea.

Recipes You Should Try!

I don't have any food from literature for you today, but I do have some delicious recipe recommendations!  I don't know what got into me this week -- I just randomly decided to make a bunch of cool stuff.

First, I made homemade hot pockets.  I used biscuit dough for the pockets (from this recipe), rolled it out as thin as I could get it, and then cut it into rectangles.  Then I spread some ranch dressing on the squares and added lots of cheddar cheese, turkey pieces, and cooked broccoli.  Then I sealed them up and baked them for 15-20 minutes.  Added some butter on top before serving.  They turned out wonderfully (way better than actual hot pockets)!  They're great to have in the fridge for a lunch on the go.

Then I was bored one night, so I decided to make homemade sprinkles!  Anna sent me a recipe for them, and I thought, "Hey, why not?"  You can check out the sprinkles recipe here.  I attempted to do some chocolate sprinkles, but they failed because the cocoa powder made it too dry and thick to push through a pastry tip.  But I made green ones that worked wonderfully!  And they taste like sprinkles should taste!  It wasn't really worth the effort -- a lot easier and faster and cheaper to just buy some sprinkles -- but it was fun to do once.

And lastly, I made some Apple Pumpkin Soup!  I had all the ingredients, so I just went for it. And it was amazing!  I will totally be making this again!  It was tart, slightly sweet (but not really), and just all around delicious!

I don't have an immersion blender, so it's a little chunky, but I liked it that way.

Be advised, though, that it is never a good idea to let a pan sit on a hot burner for a long duration of time and then add oil.  It starts big scary grease fires.  Luckily I acted quickly and got some baking soda on it, which put it out instantly.  But it was kinda freaky for a second there. In case you don't know this already: NEVER put water on a grease fire.  Never blow on a grease fire.  Never go running around with a flaming pan of grease (that's how two girls at SVU ended up in the hospital with 3rd degree burns that required skin grafts).  A level head and some baking soda are all you need.

The charred remains of my grease fire + baking soda

I also made some stuff we have previously made for this blog:  Shepherd's Pie and Pumpkin Pasties.  I brought the pumpkin pasties to workshop, and they were a huge hit.  (It helped that this time I mixed cinnamon and nutmeg into the pie crust dough, and mixed a little salt in with sugar to sprinkle on top). 

This is why I love fall!  There are so many delicious treats to make.  Baking season is upon us!  Rally your hot pads and taste testers!  This season promises to be delicious!