Couscous Soup!

Because I was too lazy to make pasta today, I decided to make tomato soup and add couscous instead. I've recently become really fond of soups, mainly because soup is basically water, and I've been pretty dehydrated mostly, due to the fact that it's the summer and I've been running more than I have in the past few months. Also, since I'm on a sort of coffee ban [due to the caffeine negatively impacting methimazole efficacy], I've cut down my morning consumption of liquid from one litre to maybe 250ml. No, not one litre of coffee [although that'd be pretty intense]. During school, I used to drink say... 500ml of coffee/tea, 250ml of milk, and 250ml of water, juice, coffee or milk, before noon. Now, it's just 250ml of milk. If I remember.

Anyway, no one else is using the artichokes, so I guess I have to use them for something.

While consuming this soup, I wondered how soggy pretzels would taste like in it, since there ARE oyster crackers for soups, but we don't have them at home. So, I stirred in a handful of pretzels and promptly forgot to take a picture of them. They didn't really enhance the flavour or anything, since they barely absorbed any soup... I suppose this is due to the shiny malty [?] coating that most thin pretzels have. Nevertheless, the pretzels were okay. I should've let them soak in the soup longer, but I was hungry.

Also, at Costco today, they were giving out samples of the "Hollywood Cookie Diet" which is, at first, oxymoronic, but then you realise how truthful it is. The facade of glamour and prettiness and hedonistic lifestyle... yet it is all due to restriction and limitation, since if you point one finger out of that bubble, you collapse all your fame and blah. The same goes for this diet thing. The sample piece of cookie itself tasted artificial, like a protein bar, sans the protein. However, it really looked like a cookie. I'm not kidding. It looked like a legitimate chocolate chip cookie piece. But if you think about it, do you want real or fake? Real love vs. fake love? Real food vs. fake food? Real friends vs. fake friends? Real is way cooler.

CHILI SIN CARNE!

CHILI sans la viande - without animal pieces...instead, there are roman beans and lima beans and TVP and pickles and artichokes and tomato and parmesan and onion and crushed up tortilla chips [the leftovers].

A.k.a., awesome-everything-I-love-chili!

In fact, this chili even looks better than these here! YAY! This is just to prove to my brother that my plating, in fact, is not substandard [I've never really liked the idea of plating though, because it makes food appear more as an ornament than as a food].

Onions, artichokes, pickles, getting "gently browned"

Rehydrated TVP with dried chili and tomato paste marinade.

Adding the lima beans!

Ingredients:

1. A LOT of water. Keep adding cups of water throughout the.... 3-4 hours it takes to cook. I was initially going to make tomato/chili soup but that would mean that I used twice the amount of water. Which would've required a larger pot. Which I do not possess.

2. Lots of tomato paste!

3. Garlic

4. Onions! LOTS!

5. Pickles

6. Artichokes in oil - we have a jar of them. I don't know why, since no one in the family except for me and my brother has actually ever heard of the term "artichoke" before. I don't know who bought these... just that they've been sitting in the fridge for a while. Well, at least it covers the "oil" part of the chili.

7. Two cups of Roman beans. Soak these for a few hours. They take AGES to cook.

8. Half a cup of lima beans. They swell TREMENDOUSLY when soaked for a few hours. Literally 2.3 times their original sizes.

9. Half a cup of dried TVP, mixed with two cups of water and one scoop of tomato paste and two packets of dried chili. This way, the flavour gets "infused". Supposedly.

10. One cut up Boca burger since I dislike eating them grilled.

11. Leftover tortilla chips with the salt at the bottom.

12. Herbs - oregano, basil.

13. Quinoa, just because.

Method:

Cook everything on low heat for a few hours in a giant pot. Cook for an hour, turn off the heat, and go to XC practice for three hours. Come back later at around 9:30pm and continue letting the stuff simmer on low heat, adding water every now and then. When the roman beans are done, the chili is ready. The roman beans determine the cooking time!!

I wonder who else makes chili at 10:41 pm.

I ended up with a lot of chili. Look at that! Three boxes of chili. BUT IT'S AWESOME BECAUSE I LOVE CHILI!

The last time I made chili was the first day of school last September. It wasn't as great as this one. This one is "awesome-sauce"ly thick and beany and protein-filled! And it DOES NOT taste bland... for those of you who think vegetarian stuff is "rabbit food". It is NOT.

Joe's American Bar & Grill

Such an iconic name. I wonder how filled-to-capacity this chain restaurant was, during the 2008 elections?

We went to the Braintree Mall on Wednesday the 21st, after visiting schools in Cambridge, and I honestly think that I shouldn't've ordered. In a family of 6 [for now], we should always order 4 items in an American restaurant. We have never finished 5 items, let alone six. Usually, I'm the one who doesn't order, simply because there is no main dish that I can eat due to the animal pieces. Also, though, I usually am the one who likes side dishes anyway [think salad, the bread, mashed potato... you know].

That day, my dad didn't order but I did, just to "change it up a little", though in all honesty, neither of us should've ordered. I got the spinach and artichoke dip, which is basically ubiquitous in any American grill style restaurant. In fact, if it wasn't for the seafoods section of the menu, one'd think that he/she had just walked into Applebees with different decor. Or Chili's with different decor. Or TGI with different decor. That's the problem I have with American restaurants. Sure, they offer a sense of "homeliness", but they also use the same cookie cutter. Except, Joe's American apparently makes all their food from scratch, whereas TGI reheats it.

My brother got chicken fajitas. I wish I could have a corn tortilla for once in my life instead of flour tortillas...

These are the best oyster crackers. Ever. Someone needs to send me a box of these. NO, NOT THE "Premium" brand oyster crackers [those have PHO]. It HAS to be this brand!!!!

My grandpa doesn't like coleslaw. This coleslaw wasn't as oily as the one from Clark's but I don't think I'm a huge fan of not-sour-enough-and-too-fatty coleslaw.

My brother's clam chowder. Okay, I tried some of the soup part. It was okay. Creamy. I like corn chowder more.

Spinach and artichoke dip with fatty cheese. Funny how we turn two vegetables into heart attacks, right? It was really creamy and definitely tasted more real than the kind from Applebee's. I'm serious. There were actual chunks of artichoke that LOOKED like chunks of artichoke! The pita chips were too salty, though. I liked how they gave us some celery with it, because at least that's a little different from the other stores out there, which probably don't even stock fresh celery.

My mum got this fish thingy with a corn and cucumber salad, which was quite amazing since I never imagined that the two could get moshed together so yummily.

My sister got a cheese pizza, with thin crust. It was amazing crust - look at the grill marks on the back! The topping wasn't that interesting though, and it was drenched in lipids.

Joe's American Bar & Grill, 250 Granite St. Braintree Mall, Braintree MA.

CANDY STORE OUTSIDE!