I also bake bread.
(Source: early-onset-of-night)
Went to a Himalayan buffet for lunch.
The food of Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, showcased right here in a South Dakota strip mall.
Wow.
It was pretty good, although I didn’t know what anything was. There was a big bowl of tossed salad and a big bowl of rice, but after that I was pretty much clueless.
“Which stuff doesn’t have any meat?”
Turns out, most of it didn’t have meat. $10 all you can eat. I totally chowed down, thinking “This is what the Buddha ate.”
Namaste.
"I will freely admit to being a critic of today’s sterile, packaged, commercialized society. No, I am not against capitalism or technology and I am green within reason, but when it comes to food and nutrition I think our ancestors got along better without nutritionists and doctors than we do with them."
— Green Deane
Say howdy to my cider, festering away in the laundry room. The laundry room is very cool, temperature-wise, thus it is located there. About 65 degrees American during the day and down to 60 degrees at night.
Cider should be fermented at cooler temps, so I have read.
This is my first cider. There’s nothing in it but apples: A half a gallon organic apple juice. One entire 12 ounce can of organic apple juice concentrate, the juice of four organic Granny Smith apples which I mashed myself, crying “THIS.IS.SPARTA!”
I’ve made cyser before (apples and honey), but this is all apples all the time.
It’s two days old now.
I’m following a modified Green Deane procedure. Green Deane is a foodie/environmentalist type blogger easily located by searching. His method produces a slightly sweet, effervescent, mildly alcoholic drink.
On the 28th, 1st, or 2nd (depending fermentation activity), I will siphon it into two half-gallon BPA-free plastic jugs, leaving behind the yeast sediment and about a cup of liquid. I will top off the jugs with about a half a cup each of more Granny Smith mashings. Then seal and wait for the bottles to become very hard (carbonated). Then I will stick in the fridge to chill and halt fermentation. Hoped-for and likely alcohol content will be around 5%, about beer strength.
A few days after sitting in the fridge, marrying and mellowing, I will get drunk off organic, nutritious, homemade cider that cost, all together, about ten bucks. I will probably listen to music while doing this. Loudly.
In French, Cider is Cidre. In Spanish, Sidra. Years ago, I knew a girl named Sidra. Now I know what she meant.
“Cheers!” where ever you roam now…
Food update from yesterday.
The brownies were pretty fab. I cooked them a hair too long I feel. The only thing I’d change would be to knock off ten minutes in the oven.
The Vagabond King Pizza Rolls turned out too doughy. I rolled those bitches thin as hell, but they rose in the oven and overwhelmed the sauce and cheese. Unimpressed. Should’ve went with my gut, which was wontons.
The Spanish potato omelet did not materialize due to chef intoxication and a sudden Merle Haggard listening spree. Tonight!
Here’s the cracked white bread heading toward the end of its third rising and about ready to go into the oven.
I’ll probably eat this sliced with white bean puree and olive tapenade.
Cracked ‘white’ bread at the beginning of the rise. It glistens with olive oil, like I usually do on “date” nights. Heh. Ladies?
It’s cracked white bread because I am out of whole wheat flour. I know what you’re thinking: Mike without whole wheat flour? Why, that’s like a mountain man without his mountain!
I do have cracked wheat and white bread flour, so that’s what this is. We’ll see.
Innards: 3 1/3 cups white bread flour, 2/3 cup cracked wheat, 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 1/2 teaspoons turbinado sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast, water enough to make a moist elastic dough, about 1 and 2/3 cups.
Tonight I’m going to make bruschetta on rustic bread I bake myself topped with white bean puree/olive tapenade/roasted tomatoes. Bruschetta three ways!
Be jealous, for I am an excellent cook. Remember Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, how he was an excellent driver?
I’m like that only with cooking.
All these chain sit-down restaurants are exactly the same.
They’re always “neighborhood grills”, even though there’s one in every town exactly like the one in every other town. And they’re never in an actual neighborhood, but out by the interstate or the mall.
Applebee’s, Chili’s, whatever…
I always avoid them because they’re so tired and there’s nothing on the menu I really want to eat. It’s just meat, meat, and more meat, usually with their “special” barbecue sauce straight from a plastic vat.
So a new restaurant opened here in town and I went to it last night to try it out. It’s not a chain, but owned locally. It’s located downtown, away from interstates and malls. The building was unique, not straight from an Ikea box. I thought it had potential.
But, alas, it was the same old shit. TGIFriday’s with a different name, a knock-off of a knock-off of a knock-off. How sad. I had the onion rings because everything else had meat in it—well, everything but the business model, har, har…
The beginning of the long slow decline into the abyss.
I can’t do two things at once anymore apparently. Well, I can, but I gradually combine them into one thing.
In my new big kitchen I was in the process of baking bread. Namely, I was waiting for my yeast starter to bubble up. I had my flour and salt in the mixer. Everything was ready.
I was also making a pot of tea. Guricha, to be exact, a full quart to chill and drink over ice because, you know, it’s 4 degrees out and it’s important to stay hydrated. Loose leaf, this tea was. I had it right in the pot, steeping. Normally, I strain it with a handheld strainer into a glass pitcher which I then chill in the fridge.
These are all activities I have done hundreds of times, unlike, say, sex (bajillions).
So my little timer went off telling me my tea was done steeping and I began pouring into into my mixer, over the flour and salt.
The fuck?
I caught myself after about a cup, but it was vibrant green tea, plus tea leaves, that went into it.
I chuckled and made the bread anyway, suppressing with dubious success thoughts of Alzheimer’s, senility, and dementia.
The bread is now baked and cooling on the rack. I hope it’s good. Perhaps I discovered something, something amazing. A lot of great things have happened by accident. Alcohol, for one: “This honey water smells funny.”
PARTY TIME!
Perhaps green tea bread will change the whole world.
It could happen.
Isn’t it weird about all the vegetables?
Isn’t it, though?
New article up over on Cagle Cartoons & Commentary. Currently, it is the funniest one there, a veritable “laugh riot” in Hollywood-speak. Ok, maybe not. Maybe it is just amusing. Personally, I laughed out loud (LOL) while I was writing it, though, which frightened my cat, who is pretty sketchy in the nerves department anyway, being a Vietnam vet.
The case of the missing oregano.
It was a trip to the store like any other. I had my list, my money, my bag. Mainly I was after big portobello mushroom caps. In my world, these are “burgers”. I tear off the thick stem and fry the cap up. I dice the stem and some onion up and sautee. I put this on top of the “burger” and melt cheese over the whole mess. Ker-pow! vegetarian burgers. Try adding a few drops of liquid smoke to the stem and onion concoction while you’re sauteeing.
Nummy.
So I needed whole wheat buns and cheese and an onion and of course the caps. I get the buns first and then hold up the caps next to them so I have a perfect fit. I needed a few other things: black beans, lentils, jasmine rice. And oregano.
This was, like, a week ago.
I had my own little jar for the oregano. At the co-op where I shop, I buy in bulk, thus most of my containers are constantly being reused. I haven’t bought an actual “bottle” of olive oil since 2010.
“I can’t believe how much of a hippie you’ve become,” my son said over Christmas when I scolded him and told him to take his beer bottle out of the garbage and put it in the recycling bin. I thought about going to my closet and bringing out my shotgun to show him that I still have a little cowboy in me yet, but decided against it. By the way, I am a member of the H.W.G, Hippies With Guns. We’re a small, very stoned, special interest group. We never go marching because we’re always on the couch watching Cartoon Network.
So I got home and unpacked everything and no oregano. “Didn’t I buy some oregano?” I asked my cat, scratching my head. She was standing in the kitchen with me, hoping it was time to eat. She is always hoping it’s time to eat. After she eats, she’s like “Man, I can’t wait to eat again!” That’s her whole life. Well, that and naps.
I called the co-op and it wasn’t left there. I searched the car but didn’t find it. I scrutinized my receipt and, yes, sure enough, I bought some oregano.
I didn’t think much of it after that. God does have a sense of humor after all. I mean, look at the giraffe, for fuck’s sake.
Tonight, though—right now, in fact—I am in the middle of making a tomato sauce and WHERE IN THE HELL IS MY OREGANO?
Excited!
Today I am going to attempt to make gougere, the sacred French pastry I have always been scared of. It is flour and cheese and more cheese and some eggs and still more cheese.
It is called a choux pastry. “Shoe”…
Hold on, I wanna listen to Old Brown Shoe by the Beatles/George Harrison while I write…
There.
Shit! Not Old Brown Choux! Have I jinxed myself?
I am also making a German-style mushroom and sour cream soup. I may be a vegetarian, but I eat damn GOOOOD around here. My belly (which is made mostly out of beer) never tells a lie.
So I went down to the Staple and Spice Market to get some yeast for brewing. I haven’t brewed anything in a while and I’ve got a hankerin’. I won’t be brewing today, but soon and for the rest of my life. Brewing yeast is the only stuff I ever buy at Staple and Spice. It is an over-priced, boutique, health food store with a small homebrewing section.
It is full of rich people in faux fur buying thirty-seven dollar bags of organic sunflower seeds. “Look, Jeeves,” they say to their butlers, “I’m eating healthy now, like those cretin Occupy kids with their facial hair and hacky-sacks!” They drive around in sleek hybrid cars, never caring one whit about the toxic waste dump all their batteries will have to go into.
Normally, I avoid the place like the plaque (teeth, not artery), but, goddamn it, where else can I get homebrew stuff? South Dakota, where I live, is like nowhere with people trapped in it.
You can’t even get decent shaving cream here, just that foam shit in a can. And tea that doesn’t come in a tea bag? People look at me like a Communist when I enquire about it.
“Sharing is caring.” sayeth Karl Marx, you cowboy motherfuckers…
Yee apostrophe haw!
