Wanted: recipes for cookies that go well with afternoon tea. Because how am I supposed to work when all I can think of are cookies?
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Posts Tagged ‘food’
Wanted: Cookie Recipes
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #distraction, cookies, food, Thoughts, work on February 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Yes, But No
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cross-border living, food on November 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Oh, right, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I tend to forget holidays because, paradoxically, I have two sets of them to track.
Thanksgiving? We’ve already done that, haven’t we? Yes, but no.
So today I am prepping a list of holiday-related food to make, along with a series of Plan Bs in case holiday-specific foods are not available.
Because why, Canadians might ask, would anyone look for fresh turkey or cranberries in November?
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Groundhog Day, Again
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, food on September 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Due to an upcoming event involving Mr Man and fifteen buddies, today was mushroom soup day. Imagine this day, only with twice as many mushrooms.
We did the slicing and duxelle-ing and at one point, had four of our biggest pans on the stove and two cookie sheets in the oven. The goal was to make mushroom soup and we are about 81% of the way there. Next, we just need to assemble 32 cups of stock and the roasted mushrooms and the rest, and then we have a double quadruple batch of soup. Half for us, half for Mr Man’s Manly Crew of Adventurers.
Won’t lie, I’m beat. And we didn’t make quite as much progress as we’d hoped.
Ask me what we’re having for dinner.
Indian food:)
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Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, cooking, food, free on August 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »
I have not tested this cookbook, but it looks fun and it’s free and the illustrations are excellent and there are copious speculative fiction references, and I dig the vibe.
The title is funny but I submit that it is too reductive. One doesn’t need to be a sad bastard to enjoy quick, easy cooking. I’ve also spent a non-zero part of my life eating versions of many of these recipes, and know them for the lifesavers that they can be.
Are you newly parted from the parental homestead? Newly parenting? Only have half an hour before you have to log on for a Warcraft raid? Are you just really, really freaking tired?
This may be the cookbook for you.
The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don’t die
By Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov
Illustrated by Marten Norr
This cookbook is all the recipes you already make, when you’ve worked a 16-hour day, when you can’t stop crying and you don’t know why, when the eldritch abomination you woke at the bottom of the ocean won’t go back to sleep. And hopefully, this cookbook gives you some new meal ideas. Even Sad Bastards have to eat.
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Surprise of the Day
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, food, guilty pleasures, Thoughts on August 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Wait, Fritos and Triscuits have about the same amount of sodium?
Triscuits: 170mg per 28g = 6/g
Fritos: 300mg per 50g = 6/g
Excuse me while I go get some more Fritos.
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I’ll Take It
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, food, recipes on August 19, 2023| 1 Comment »
Good news, Peoples of Earth! I am happy to report that the recent chocolate cheesecake experiment was a success.
Difficulty rating: easy, except for questions around the pan and the ingredient updates, but now I’ve got the process figured out. Also, my current pan makes cutting difficult.
Appearance: not terrible, despite the cracks caused by over-baking. Next time I’ll stick to the temperature guides and ignore the jiggle factor. The 9” x 3” pan made that less than reliable. Also, next time I’ll fancy it up with whipped cream and fruit.
Flavor: Mr Man’s assessment, and I quote, “F’ing delicious.”
I’ll take it.
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Again, here is the original recipe and my version of the updates, recorded here for posterity (and by that I mean the next time I make this, which will be soon!):
Epic New York Cheesecake From BraveTart
Chocolate Version
Crust:
225g Biscoff cookies
57g melted butter
pinch of salt
Cheesecake:
905g full-fat cream cheese, brought to about 70°F/21°C
112g fresh goat cheese (not pre-crumbled), brought to about 70°F/21°C
32g Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tsp espresso powder (didn’t have this so I steeped 6 coffee beans in the cream, remove after boiling)
15g vanilla extract
1g Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for table salt, use about half as much by volume or the same weight
250g plain sugar
300g/6 large eggs
170g heavy cream
225g semi-sweet chocolate, added to the cream after boiling and stirred until melted
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Do You Ramen?
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, food, Thoughts on May 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »
The answer to a recent Wordle was “ramen,” which brought me back to after-school second lunches and some of my first creative attempts at cooking. Ramen is salty and delicious and while I don’t eat the instant version much anymore, the memories remain fond.
If you also enjoy ramen, may I suggest this interactive idea generator:
Inspiration Wheel | Shin Wheel
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Fox Nuts
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, food, India, interesting, learning@lunch, new to me, Thoughts on August 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I love that there are still so many things to learn. Take fox nuts, for example (the food, not the, well, you know). If you have more than a passing familiarity with Indian cuisine you’ve probably heard of them, but I had not. I ran across a reference today and thought, “Fabulous! What the heck are those?”
Where do Makhana (fox nuts) come from?
Fox nuts, or makhana, are seeds from the prickly water lily (euryale ferox). When cooked they puff up, a little like popcorn (if all the action happened inside the shell and required a blow with a wooden mallet to release the final product). It is a very popular Indian food for snacking and other dishes.
Fox Nuts: How They Are Grown and Prepared
I wonder what they taste like? Time to head over to the local South Asian grocery and find out.
And this has been today’s edition of Learning at Lunch.
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A Tale of Two Recipes
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, baking, bananas, Felicia Day, food, peaches are frequently a disappointment, recipes, Thoughts on August 9, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I recently tested two new recipes. One worked, one (through no fault of its own) not so much. I’ll start with the less good.
Butterscotch Peaches Recipe – NYT Cooking
The recipe is fine, the butterscotch flavor excellent, and it could have turned out great. Emphasis on “could.”
If you don’t have access to the New York Times recipe collection, here are the ingredients I used:
- 6 medium or 5 large ripe peaches
- 4 T. unsalted butter
- ½ C. cream
- ½ C. sugar
- 1 T. maple syrup
- Pinch of salt
- ¾ t. vanilla
- In sum: peel and chop the peaches, brown the butter and sauté the peaches for three minutes, then let rest. In a second pan, add all remaining ingredients except vanilla. Stir over low heat until the sugar is dissolved, then raise heat to medium and let simmer/boil for 12 minutes or until browned. Add to peaches and stir to combine.
The result? My peaches were a bit of a disaster. The first peaches of the season often are, but I held out hope. They were beautiful, I‘ll give them that, but after washing and scoring and boiling and peeling (a pain, I’d skip it next time) and slicing, I had to accept the facts.
The peaches were decidedly mediocre. All but two had at least some internal brown spots, and three were nothing but mush. And eaten fresh, even the prettiest fruit was mealy and low on flavor.
I cooked them up and made the butterscotch. Then, as I was nearing the finish line, I waffled over the final product. Should I go ahead with the subpar peaches or skip the fruit and just eat the butterscotch? While I considered my options, the butterscotch started to harden. By the time I decided to say what the hell, I was on my way to Candyland. As in, the butterscotch was hardening into delicious-yet-difficult-to-mix candy.
I went with it in the end. The final product tasted good, actually, but there were chunks of semi-solidified butterscotch throughout. (It would have made for a delicious addition to ice cream, in fact. Maybe next time.)
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On to the good:
So there I was, stalking Felicia Day’s library on Goodreads (as one does), when I ran across this book:
I picked up a copy last week.
I need to start testing some of the thousand (!) recipes here, but if there is a more perfect type of cookbook for me, I don’t know what it is. I love the ease, reliability and reach of books like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, but this new book’s approach not only tests the many (many) variations of each recipe, it also tells you what they tried, why, and with what results. Then you get the finalized recipe.
I made the banana bread. Mr Man’s double helping for dessert say it was a success.
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Baked Milk, the Moo-ening After
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, food, recipes, Thoughts on July 10, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I recently had a request for an update on the baked milk situation so here we go.
Short answer: The first version was pretty good.
Longer answer, one that will surprise no one who knows me: I made a few tweaks.
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Here’s my previous post with the original recipe link: Baked What Now?
I kept the proportions but used 2% milk and kefir because that’s what I had. It worked fine, but:
- the final result wasn’t as caramel colored or flavored as the store-bought version
- it wasn’t quite as thick as I’d hoped
- with summer on the horizon, I wasn’t enthusiastic about keeping the oven on for six hours at a time.
Over several iterations, I now have a version that addresses these issues and works for me. Between this, biweekly yogurt, and air-quality concerns, we may have used it as an excuse to pick up a portable induction burner (on sale, totally reasonable!).
The new alternative uses whole milk, kefir plus sour cream, and skips the oven in favor of the induction burner. We have a remote thermometer for yogurt so we use that, but keeping it at temperature can be a bit of a hassle. If you have a slow cooker that will maintain a steady ~210F, try that. (I’ll try that next time if I can find my slow cooker.)
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Baked Milk
4L whole milk
- heat milk to a simmer, then maintain temperature at ~210F for 6 hours
- let cool to 115F, add:
7 T. kefir
1 T. sour cream
- mix well, jar and close with vented lid (cheesecloth, fermentation caps, heck, paper towels would work, whatever you’ve got)
- let sit on the counter at room temperature for 36 hours or until set; I put mine in an insulated grocery bag but it’s not required.
Is it good? Yes. Keeping the milk around 210F using a burner gave me a better depth of caramelization than 225F in the oven. The process is a bit more of a hassle than I’d like so I’ll continue to look for improvements.
Is it even better when mixed with guava juice and lemonade? Yes, it is.
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