Collard Tofu Wraps

I decided to make some pretty food even though I honestly don't care how beautiful my food is, especially as I don't have much time in my day. All this programming!!

Collard leaves + tofu + chunks of eggplant + minced garlic (why, yes, garlic remains super fresh for at least 2 months in the fridge!!) + salsa + pancake maker.

Pesto Sauce & Whole Wheat Macaroni!!

Since we have a LOT of basil growing in our yard, I decided to finally make pesto, something I've been planning for the past 5 years. No kidding. With plenty of basil, a whole bag pine nuts, and a tray of garlic, all I needed was some parmesan cheese.

I adapted this recipe a lot since my sister doesn't really like basil. She actually doesn't like garlic either, so next time I'll just make pesto sauce without garlic specially for her and then make real pesto. In addition, I didn't use too much oil, since I used a whole cup of pine nuts and a whole cup of cheese. The pesto itself was therefore much creamier and thick, which I prefer over a light and liquidy pasta sauce. It also occurred to me that pesto is a raw sauce... Hm. Interesting. The nice thing was that I got her involved in the cooking process. Dinner was quite spectacular for my mum too because she didn't have to cook or do dishes.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh basil leaves!

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil)

2 small bulbs of garlic

0.5 cup olive oil

1 cup pine nuts, toasted.

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni

0.5 cup water

Method.

1. Cook macaroni.

2. Wash leaves. Stick in blender with garlic and toasted pine nuts and pulse a few times

3. Add cheese, oil, and water. Pulse.

4. Scoop generous globs of pesto onto drained macaroni.

5. Sprinkle with more parmesan!

6. EAT EAT EAT!

The best part is that I made restaurant-quality sauce for literally something like a dollar.

Oh, here I am again ranting on that other person's blog (see yesterday's post) who lists the price of all the ingredients.

I'll do that here too, just so I can be "famous" and "adored".

Ingredients if I want to be honest about the price

1 cup fresh basil leaves! - $0 (from garden)

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil) - $0.25

2 small bulbs of garlic - $0 (from garden)

0.5 cup olive oil - $0 (got reimbursed)

1 cup pine nuts, toasted. - $0 (got reimbursed)

1 cup grated parmesan cheese $~1

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni $0 (used dining dollars, so it's technically free.)

0.5 cup water $0

Total: $1.25

Price per serving: $0.25

Or, Ingredients if I want to emulate the other blog

1 cup fresh basil leaves! - $1

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil) - $0.25

2 small bulbs of garlic - $0.20?

0.5 cup olive oil - $0.40?

1 cup pine nuts, toasted. - $3?

1 cup grated parmesan cheese $~1

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni $2

0.5 cup water $0

Total: $8

Price per serving: $1.60

IN YOUR FACE, TRITE OTHER BLOG!

I guess I'm still bitter about how that person gets so much freakin' respect for something not that notable.

I'm really glad that I made pesto sauce, since we have a LOT of basil, a lot of pine nuts, and a lot of delicious cheese. It's also so simple! I tried it on fries and it was great too. I don't think I want to use any oil next time; I'll just make it with water since the pine nuts have a lot of lipids anyway. I won't use spinach either, if I'm not making it for my sister.

Garlic Bread

I didn't take any pictures because I wasn't even going to blog today, but then I realised that I don't need pictures since this is just a tip/reminder for myself.

Fat-free garlic bread.

I'm somehow managing to live without buying oil/butter. It's pretty interesting because I've had literally 10 grams of fat for the past week. The week before that... I had a lot of fat in the form of stuff bought from Chinatown...but generally speaking, my fat intake is around 10 - 20 g/week.

It was 10-50 g / day before. I don't really crave it either. For one thing, this is unhealthy because fatty acids are necessary in order for the nervous system to function properly, among other things. However, I do have a lot of fat stores so I suppose it'll even out (except for the omega-6s).

My carb/sugar intake, on the other hand, has surged/been maintained. I discovered a way of making fat-free garlic bread that tastes amazing and steamy. The toaster's broken, so I used the sandwich grill to grill 3 slices of bread.

Then, I sprinkled garlic powder onto the bread. I'm not sure how it works, but the water vapour around the bread condenses (which doesn't make sense...right?), and mixes with the garlic powder, making a really thick paste, that works perfectly with the bread. So, cheap and fast, and tasty. I'm biased though, because bread is my favourite food.

Toast + garlic powder = garlic bread.

No need for ovens or butter or actual garlic cloves...

Supermarket Specials 1

I decided to blog about some quirky stuff I found at the Chinese supermarket, Kamman, "near" [har har! Not say how near] my house. I've never noticed it before, but they sell umami seasoning. I suppose after writing that paper about umami. All of a sudden, umami seasoning popped onto the shelves at Kamman! I honestly don't recall ever seeing it before, when I combed the store all those times. Well, it's quite interesting to see cute shakers of this stuff, just as described in those articles I read for my Writing Seminar class.

They even come in economy size! By the pound! One note of irony, I suppose, is that the brand name is meant to be Japanese, yet it quite clearly states that it is a "PRODUCT OF U.S.A." In addition, there is a French translation ["glutamate monosodique", "produit des etats-unis d'amerique" - pardon my lack of accents]. Now, this is notable because the stereotype is that French cuisine is flavourful, gourmet, fresh - whatever you like - yet the translation happens to be in French. The French are not known to use MSG. Yet, the package, in an Asian supermarket, has a French translation [not even a Chinese translation, which would be expected since the [false] stigma is that all the Chinese use MSG by the bucket]. Perhaps this is saying something about the way the world is heading; after all, MSG makes stuff taste good without having to cook stocks for 17 hours. I would be pretty upset if all soups tasted umami though. What about the hint of celery, or hint of broccoli?

MSG is much cheaper to buy and use than cooking a stock for 17 hours. The gas/electricity price of cooking stock costs more than a pinch of MSG crystals, I'm guessing.

So, another thing I saw, this time at Target, during the Winter sale, was garlic. Sure, Target now has a whole section selling fresh food, but this was found in the sale section, among the wrapper paper, holiday cards and chocolate. It was a box of garlic.

I have never seen garlic packaged in a cardboard box, wrapped in plastic before. This is completely novel to me. Of course, it begs the question: why did a company decided to sell garlic in a box during the holiday season? [Especially when vampires are loved, in this Twilight era...?]

I suppose since I was happy to get a pie pan for my Holiday present, maybe some people enjoy getting 57 g of garlic.

Then again, I would really love 57 g of garlic if I didn't have much money, or if I hadn't eaten garlic in months/years.

So perhaps it IS rational to package garlic that way, for easy wrapping and giving during the holiday season.

The last thing I will talk about, which I actually bought, is the canned coconut milk. I plan to use this when I go back home for Spring break, but I definitely will not be throwing away the cans that hold the two coconut milks! If you can't figure out why I think the cans are funny, it's ok; I suppose it's not that funny except for immature teenagers/young adults like me.

Gooey Cheese "Biscuits"!

Well, I finally removed myself from Penn's food blog [I never posted on there anyway] because its style was very different from mine, and I prefer to vent out everything on this blog. Sure, they get more readers [do they?], but this blog was made by myself. Also, there's a lot of Penn-Dining-Hall- bashing/insulting/burning in effigy on there. While I disagree with the meal plan that we are forced to buy, I do like the food.

I had about half a jar of mayonnaise remaining from the potato salad I made last week, so I decided to use it to make something. But what? I'm not particularly fond of mayonnaise in the first place, so I had to make something that everyone else in the family would eat.

I found a recipe for mayonnaise biscuits written by someone who I don't think I like [judging by her writing style and comments and the fact that she uses mixes for basically everything; okay, I'm being narrow-minded and mean here].

I used it as the basis of what I made, but I made it better! You know it! Sure, they are "biscuits" in the American conventional definition, but they're definitely pretty good. A bit oily, but kind of like cheesy potato patties [without the potato]. The picture below is the batter made following her recipe.

The following is my version! Note that these are not British biscuits. Those are sweet, and a synonym for those is "cookie".

Ingredients for 12 patty-type-American-"biscuits"

1. 14 to 16 tbsp mayonnaise [Please. Get. The. Fatty. Original. Kind.]

2. 1/2 cup of fat-free milk

3. 1/4 cup whole fat milk, put into jar and swirled around so that the last globs of mayonnaise can be used

4. 1 cup of self-rising flour

5. 2 big tbsp of 100% whole wheat flour

6. 1/2 tsp baking soda

7. 2 cups of shredded cheese!

8. Lots of garlic powder and herbs! No salt is fine in my opinion.

Method:

1. Mix everything except ONE CUP of cheese. You will get something that looks like the image above^ [the dark spots are dried herbs; I used oregano, basil, and thyme]. The dough should be like muffin dough, and very sticky. It doesn't taste that great when it is uncooked.

2. Spoon evenly into 12 muffin cups. Since I don't have muffin cups, I spooned them into tart shells. And a pumpkin-shaped mould.

3. Sprinkle remaining cup of shredded cheese over each spoonful of batter.

4. Bake for 14-16 minutes at 400 degrees F in an un-preheated oven. I never preheat my oven...

5. Leave everything in the un-operating oven for 15-20 minutes.

These biscuit-patty-gooey-thingys taste very cheesy, gooey, and a bit oily. They are not the conventional dry American biscuit that you get at fried chicken restaurants. The texture is extremely spongy [like a sponge cake!]. They are a bit puffy, but they didn't rise much in the oven.

Now it really looks like a pumpkin...

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.

Pasta Salad!

I'll talk about chocolate some other time. Today, I actually felt like cooking so I made lunch. There are actually only 17 pieces of penne left. This is amazing because there are always tons of leftovers. [I mean, we always have leftover pasta and rice. No matter what.] Plus, my mum and brother genuinely like[d] what I made today though my brother didn't like the pickles part.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I found this recipe and the pictures were really pretty, so I decided to emulate it. In truth, I have never really had legit pasta salad. Okay, in year 7 and 8 there were these days I bought macaroni + mayo + tuna, which I suppose constitutes pasta salad. However, today's salad was LEGIT!
Tweaking The Luna Cafe's ingredients and method...

Stuff you need:
1 box/lb of penne
A chunk of frozen cut vegetables from an even larger chunk of frozen vegetables.
0.5 cups of cut up pickles
1 red bell pepper

Dressing:
1.5 cups mayo
0.5 cups low-fat milk
3 tbsp vinegar
Juice of one lemon
Pepper, salt, garlic powder [a LOT!]
1 big spoon of mustard.
Method:
1. I think the ingenuity of The Luna Cafe was that the boiling water used to cook the vegetables was then used to cook the pasta, because the vegetables were taken out using a strainer. I honestly think this is SUCH a cool idea.
2. Boil vegetables until they are soft and look cooked.
3. Make pasta and drain and let it sit there until it cools down. Don't use too much water draining it. While the pasta is cooking, cut pickles and red bell pepper.
4. Mix all the stuff in the dressing ingredients list.
5. Mix everything together.

Yes, the dressing does look rather unappetising. I just put it here so that you know you're doing the right thing. The powdery stuff is garlic powder since we don't have actual garlic.
The dressing looks delectable now :P


By this time, the pasta salad actually tasted good, except that there was wayyyy too much dressing. I somehow managed to coat all the pasta and vegetables using just half the dressing. I ended up dumping the other half in anyway, though, because, like chocolate, I suppose you can't have "too much". Though, apparently semolina likes to soak up liquid, so right now, 4 hours later, the liquid has, er, apparently decreased. I can't really tell, since there are only 16.5 pieces of penne left.

I just taste tested half a piece of penne and I have to say that this time, the penne piece tastes like it was made with the soury-fatty dressing INSIDE the semolina. Earlier, when it was just cold, you could clearly distinguish between the pasta and the dressing. Now, the dressing and pasta have formed a glutinous-y conglomeration of awesomeness. An analogy would be

bread in a pan + egg in a pan = fried egg on toast.
but
bread soaked in egg overnight = eggy bread [more commonly known as "French toast" in the U.S]

This was delicious pasta salad, since you could definitely taste a sourness and tangy-ness that comes only in PASTA salads! In retrospect, if I made the dressing more vinegar based rather than mayo based, I probably would get something completely different, [vinaigrettey salad?] which I would like to try out actually, since it would be healthier. [NEVER, EVER, EVER, use low fat or fat free mayo. It's crap in a jar. No kidding.]