Last Week's Projects

I'm a terrible procrastinator. It's T-minus seven days until Christmas, and I currently have in my possession half of a present for one person on my list. My list is ten people long. I have a package coming in the mail on Thursday which will take care of two more people on the list, so officially I have a quarter of my Christmas shopping done with seven days to go. Every year, this last week or so before Christmas becomes a completely stressful time that I could have easily avoided were I not such a terrible procrastinator. Last year I got Amazon Prime a week before Christmas to get everything where it needed to be on time; this year, I'm trying to figure out how to get $100 worth of stuff from a site so that I can qualify my order for free two-day shipping (somehow, Amazon does not have everything I need).

What the hell am I doing writing a blog entry, you ask? Procrastinating, of course. What was I doing yesterday? Falling down a mountain repeatedly on a snowboard. The day before? Oh, playing video games and cleaning my apartment. I'm awful. We're going to keep this one short, so I can actually attempt to do some internet shopping and place some orders because I am terrified of going anywhere near a mall this time of year. My desperate last minute shopping will be done in private to preserve my own sanity, thank you very much.

A short sidenote which will surely become a more lengthy blog entry in the future: I've figured out I have this problem. I have a bad case of completism. If you give me a cookbook, I get this awesomely stupid idea that I want to cook everything in it. This is why I keep making things from Joy of Cooking even though I have a pile of other cookbooks, which I didn't even want to buy because I haven't cooked everything from all of the cookbooks I have. I have a lot of problems.

Anyway, I made a Kale and Potato Gratin from Joy on Monday night, which didn't turn out so well. I'm not sure what happened but the potatoes on top of it never cooked through, even after an hour in the oven. I gave those to Ralphy and ate the rest of it and it was all right. No pictures, because I also found out my camera was dead. Oops.

On Wednesday night I made Snickerdoodles, also from Joy. I think I left them in the oven a little too long. Also, when they say to space those things 2.5-inches or so apart on the sheet, they are not fucking around! I had a batch of hexagonal cookies. They had so much butter in them that I calculated the per-cookie butter amount, which was 1/18 stick of butter per cookie, so a breakfast of four cookies (yes, I eat cookies for breakfast sometimes [and the rest of the time I eat organic omega-3 poop-city fiber cereal]) is 2/9 of a stick of butter, which is kind of a lot, I think.


On Thursday I made fried rice (yes, I followed the recipe from Joy, that's how incompetent I am at being Chinese, plus I have the aforementioned completism problem) with leftover rice from the Keema Alu. It was kind of gross (partially because I didn't use enough scallions, since I was picking them out of Z's garden and he doesn't have very many so I didn't want to pick them all), so I doused it with soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and sriracha, and it was marginally better but still gross. I guess I need to work on that one.

This week, I'm not letting myself cook until I'm done with my Christmas shopping. At this rate, you might not hear from me again until next year.

Kale and Mushrooms with Creamy Polenta

One of my biggest incentives for making a new dish or using a new ingredient is finding something on sale at the store and buying it, not knowing what I'm going to do with it. The other is having to use up the remains of something left in my fridge from a previous meal. I've ended up with some strange and disgusting meals this way, like chicken quinoa soup made with chicken that had been in my freezer for a year and a half (don't ask, and yes, I boiled the shit out of the chicken so that I wouldn't get food poisoning, and no, I'm never doing that again) and all sorts of egg-related abominations.

Anyway, kale for $1/bunch and the bacon leftover from my bacon cornbread (which was um... underbaked, and still taken to the potluck, but I'm just not going to talk about it anymore) ended up being a perfect reason to try the Kale and Mushroom with Creamy Polenta recipe I dug up on epicurious. Polenta is one of my favorite comfort foods, and a half dozen raw oysters with a Bloody Mary followed by a bowl of parmesan polenta and then whatever's for dessert at Zuni Cafe is one of my all-time favorite semi-inexpensive meals. I've tried making it once before, with some unmemorable results, but this was a perfect reason to try again.

I followed the recipe exactly, except for the fact I only had 3.5 cups of milk so I replaced the last half-cup with water. The polenta right out of the pot was fantastic, though after spending a few minutes taking a kind of crappy picture of my meal, I noticed it was starting to lump up and dumped the kale-mushroom-bacon mixture on it and ate it. It was tasty, and definitely complemented by the delicious topping, but not close to the Zuni polenta of lore. The recipe is a keeper, though next time I think I'll try sticking the whole skillet in the oven to bake the bacon instead of saute it - I like it crispy.

Up soon: experiments with the new 13 x 10 baking pan, pie dough (I finally bought a rolling pin), and ruminations on how the hell Z and I are making Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves and everyone else coming over. I guess I actually have to clean my bathroom now. Eep!

Leftover report: I couldn't eat any more peanut soup. I ate all the tomatoes out of it and gave the rest to Ralphy, who not only seemed to really enjoy it, he also licked the container clean so I didn't have to scrub any peanut detritus off the insides of it before putting it in the dishwasher. Dogs are awesome.

Ratatouille Provencale

The Joy of Cookingsays that this is supposed to look like a "colorful cubist still life"... I suppose I could describe it as such, except it just looks like a pile of vegetables on a plate. It also tastes like a pile of vegetables on a plate, nothing special. I've never actually had ratatouille and just wanted to make it because of the movie, which I actually haven't seen either, though I keep meaning to (it's on my 200-movie long Netflix queue somewhere... I think). I put some red pepper flakes on it and just ate it, regressing to basic hungry-person "food is fuel" (aka "Donger Need Food") mode. Plus, they're vegetables, and they have vitamins and make you poop and I don't eat enough of them. Can you tell I'm just trying to make myself feel better?

Note to self: eggplants + vegetable peelers = no. Everyone else: you probably know that you're supposed to use a knife. Another note to self: if you ever want to try it again, try the cute little specialty eggplants at Whole Foods since they probably don't have that nasty bitter taste you get with the big normal eggplants. The cheap bastard approach does not work with eggplants, apparently.

In good news, I chopped two onions up for the first time without tearing up tonight. I'm not really sure how I managed that since it normally gets so bad I have to run to the other side of my apartment with tissues, but I can guess that washing my hands after peeling them and standing way the hell back while chopping helped. I tried the "trick" which involves putting them in the freezer a few times but it's all LIES. I read on some message board or article that some people actually cut them up underwater or at least under running water, which seems like a good way to lose your goddamn fingers (and the bottom of the sink doesn't really seem like a very clean place). Then you have wet onions to dry too. How is that even a good idea? Baffled.

Anyway, I wasn't really satisfied with the ratatouille and went and ate a huge slab of cajun beef jerky I got at the meat market. My next two meals are going to be ratatouille fortified with meat candy. How's that for a combo?