Boo

Oh, Hey Dude, Hey

Hello.

This morning, I was lounging on an oversized chair in a sunlit corner of a busy cafe, reading a book to my son and sipping on an americano, when a woman I've never met walked briskly toward me, leaned over and said in a confidential tone, "I just wanted to say that I love your blog! I miss it!" I thanked her as she walked away, and just like that I was like, OH HEY. I kind of miss it too.

Here are some things I've been up to:

Baking apple tarts for friends. (Martha Stewart pie crust, apple slices, chunks of butter, pumpkin pie spice, brown sugar, and a pinch of kosher salt, then into the oven til done.)

Unsuccessfully ripening my meager haul of green tomatoes from the garden in a paper bag with a ripe apple. I guess they were technically "ripe" in the sense that they smelled really bad after turning brown in the bag, but it's not really what I was going for. (I can't be the only person who has made this dumb 'ripe' joke about their tomatoes, right?)

Snacking on breakfast radishes from a small patch in my only garden plot not currently fouled with cat shit.

Eating poached eggs on top of kale that has been sauteed in olive oil, then tossed with grain mustard and a splash of cider vinegar.

Staying up late in my office, drinking wine from coffee mugs and half-assedly working on art projects.

And to the lady who approached me in the cafe this morning, (and the other small handful of people who have actually come up to me in person to say they liked my blog) HELLO! I hope you're having a good day.

Dope Dope Dope

Life has been way too awesome to spend every day blogging. like the other day i was standing in front of a bar texting my no-show friends and shivering in the cold all like "BOO HOO NOW WHAT?" and another friend just happened to walk by. he was like, "dude what are you doing right now? there's a free red fang show at the tube in five minutes, we're walking there right now!"

So... that was fucking sweet.

Tt's supposed to snow tonight. it's been really cold and wet.

(you can tell because i posted this picture of RAAAAIN. it like, sets the mood and shit.)

Also i have been making lots of soups because it's been really cold:

It has a bunch of cool techniques and hints and stuff, like enriching your soup by stirring in a knob of butter at the end (I RECOMMEND THIS!!!!) or how to rescue a too-salty soup (cook a whole potato in the soup and then remove it). i love this book! thank you, library!!

This year we are hosting a small family thanksgiving at our house for the very first time. we already ordered our stupid hippie free range turkey (only like 10 cents more a pound than the crappy supermarket turkeys! it better be good though, i want to feel really smug about it.) and i've been pre-gaming by making lots of stock and freezing it, and the other day i finally roasted off the pumpkins i grew:

I mashed it and swapped some of it at a food swap, and the rest i'm saving for a pumpkin pie. now i have to decide if i want to do a streusel-top pumpkin pie. i know that i would love it but i think my family might get weird.

Also been taking beautiful walks on beautiful days with beautiful friends.

If i were the jesus-y sort i'd probably sit here talking about how blessed i am by the lord but instead how about i make a joke about satan (SATAN RULES!) and just give out a general vibe to the universe- THANKS UNIVERSE. thanks for the free red fang show, awesome friends, good food, health, family, and a roof over my head.

On Healthy Eating

The holidays are just about over, and I'm happily done with indulging in my mom's food, sugary treats, and booze. Okay, maybe I'll stick with some booze. I HAVE JUBELALES IN MY FRIDGE, GUYS. They aren't going to drink themselves.

Recently I went bonkers and decided that I was going to count my calories- for a few reasons. First, I was just curious. I wondered how many calories I was eating in an average day, and it turns out that I was eating a LOT MORE than I thought I was, even though I was eating pretty reasonably healthy. Secondly, I want to lose some weight. I guess I don't really have to start my sentences with "let me be frank" anymore because most people who know me, or who read this, know that I'm a pretty straightforward person. After I got pregnant, I got pretty fat. I mean, a lot of other shit happened to me when I got pregnant- preeclampsia, bed rest, undiagnosed thyroid issues that have caused problems for years, postpartum depression, pulmonary edema, a leaky valve in my heart caused by excess water retention, MAN THIS SOUNDS PRETTY CRAPPY IF YOU LIST THEM ALL TOGETHER LIKE THAT, HUH? Having a kid nearly killed me, but as much as I'd love to blame my spawn for all my problems in life, having DAILY MILKSHAKES for 9 months probably didn't help my situation much, either. Nor did my daily shuffle to the bodega 2 blocks from my apartment for a fix of Sprite & Twix. Having abandoned my primary vices, booze & cigarettes, I became an eating machine, with a sweet tooth like I'd never had in my pregravid state.

I started my pregnancy at a decidedly non-scrawny 155 pounds (I'm about 5'5") - the results of college binge drinking and lousy eating habits. (Hey! Vegetarians! Bread on top of bread is a bad idea. Put DOWN the wheat gluten.) The day I gave birth I think I tipped the scales at about 245 pounds. HEY GUYS, GUESS WHAT? GAINING NEARLY 100 POUNDS IN 9 MONTHS IS EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. A good 40 or 50 pounds of that was water weight from the preeclampsia, which was taken care of with medication after I nearly suffocated on my own body fluids (awesome!). The rest was all milkshake. After teaching myself to exercise and forcing myself to stop eating so many goddamn cookies, I've managed to lose all but 5 pounds of that, but my body still feels all out of whack.

The last 3 years have been a huge exercise in trial and error in trying to figure out what was wrong with my body and then trying to fix it. I've learned to treat food like medicine, and so when I occasionally indulge in something I know I shouldn't be eating, it does feel a little like a crack binge, to be perfectly honest. Which is to say, TOTALLY AWESOME FOR ABOUT 15 MINUTES, and then totally shitty for the next few days. I mean, that's what I assume a crack binge is like. I swear I don't smoke crack, don't listen to what my sister says- she has no idea what she's talking about.

Anyway, I guess what I wanted to say was, here's to a new year- a new decade. I've made huge lifestyle changes over the last 3 years, and this next year won't be any different. I have PLANS, guys. I just want to take care of myself.

AND HEY WAIT- before you get all butthurt and start asking yourself shit like, "Oh crap, if *I* want to be healthy, does that mean I don't get to eat fried sausage on toast for dinner? Because that looks pretty good!" Consider the following: This awesome pork sausage fried in bacon fat tops the scales at about 310 calories- that's adding in the minute amount of bacon fat that probably got absorbed by the sausage. The bread, a piece of dry whole wheat toast, was like 90 calories. The beans were drizzled lightly with olive oil and roasted in the oven for a little while, probably a total of 30 calories, tops. So this dinner was a pretty respectable 430 calories, dudes. Don't get all weird about the fat, either- bacon fat, while being made up of about 40% eeeee-vil saturated fat (which, according to some sources, isn't all that evil after all) is also about 60% monounsaturated fat. THAT IS THE HEALTHY STUFF IN OLIVE OIL, GUYS. That means that more than half the fat in bacon grease is "healthy" fat. So get over it. Drop a teaspoon of bacon fat into your pan and fry some sausage. Just don't eat like 5 of them and you'll be all set. BUT WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW? I'm just some jerkoff who writes a food blog. If you're really interested in what you're eating, start doing some reading. Read labels on your food, read books about good health. Learn to view dietary fat as an ally and not an enemy. Cut your portion sizes. Get up off your ass and move around. Don't use synthetic oils or fake butter or any kind of "replacement." Lay off the damn sugar.

Have a good night.

(And hey, dudes roasted green beans are awesome. Next time I'm gonna leave them under the broiler until they start to crisp a little more.)

Hot Cocoa

Portland was hit by an unexpected snow storm today- and while my initial reaction to snow is usually something along the lines of, "DAMMIT! I hate being stuck in the house!" I decided to suck it up and enjoy myself. I took my son for a walk in the snow (click through the photos to my flickr if you're so inclined- he's a pretty cute kid) and when we came home, we shook the snow out of our hair and settled in to make some hot cocoa.

I pretty much always have a pack of these on hand:

They come in a pack of 3 for like a $1.79 and I just like to have a nibble or two throughout the day to satisfy my sweet tooth without going nuts on a candy bar. I melted the chocolate in a metal mixing bowl over a pot of boiling water:

I tossed in a small chunk of coconut oil for flavor and to make the melted chocolate a little easier to mix with the milk- I was inspired to do this by a cup of hot chocolate I had recently that BLEW MY MIND. It was when I was tabling at the Icon Holiday Fair selling my drawings, another booth was selling COCONUT HOT CHOCOLATE. I think it was just coconut milk and melted chocolate and some spices, and it was so amazingly rich and thick, I could barely drink more than 4 or 5 sips before I felt totally satisfied. I didn't have any coconut milk on hand, so I just used some coconut oil hoping for a similar effect. Obviously, it wasn't all thick and frothy, but the flavor was nice- very subtle. I'm not a coconut person but as I've mentioned before, I'm trying to force myself to like the coconut oil and it's become kind of an acquired taste for me- I like it in my oatmeal, I don't HATE frying my eggs in it, and I also like it in hot chocolate, apparently.

I briefly heated some milk in a separate pan, but quickly got impatient and dumped it directly into the bowl with the chocolate mixture. I seasoned it with a pinch of nutmeg and a sprinkle of cinnamon, and even splashed in a few drops of vanilla extract. I whisked the whole thing together over the boiling water until warm, and then poured into cups for my son and I.

I have to be honest- the end result was not unlike those swiss miss packets of hot chocolate. It was a little gritty, not as frothy as I'd prefer (but I work at a cafe and I steam milk for my warm beverages all the time- I'm all spoiled on foam. I like my chai to be almost all foam.), but it was rich and warmed me up. One chocolate bar, a small chunk (like a teaspoon or less) of coconut oil, a drizzle of vanilla extract, and a pinch each of nutmeg and cinnamon mixed with about 16 oz. of warm milk, ended up being way more than enough for the 2 of us. It was rich enough to satisfy me after drinking about 1/4 of a cup, and I only served my son about half a cup, because- well, because I'm a jerk, haha. I'd say serve it in half-cup portions, so this would be enough to make 4 people perfectly happy.

It made us happy!
The verdict was: DELICIOUS.

Vital Wheat Gluten

Dude, I cannot believe I haven't brought this up yet. Not very long ago, I was at the store, skimming over the bulk bins in the hippie aisle (where I buy my flour, granola, polenta, lentils, etc.- because it's cheap AND I AM A HIPPIE) when the tag for vital wheat gluten caught my eye. "Add 1 tbsp. to heavy doughs for a lighter loaf."

Being a former vegetarian, it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the concept of wheat gluten. Good lord, wheat gluten (seitan, mock duck, gimme gimme) was my favorite faux-meat product, to be sure. But, the idea of adding a bit to my bread dough seemed kind of weird. So, I googled it a little bit, and then I started keeping an eye on the ingredients list of the sandwich breads I was buying, and I realized that almost all whole wheat breads have vital gluten added. Which is probably why, when I bake whole wheat bread, it's often gluey and dense, and why store-bought wheat bread is fluffier.

Let me say that I've almost completely given up on 100% whole wheat bread at home. I got some kind of bread bible from the library, I've tried tons of different loaves, and I've never had a huge amount of success. I satisfy myself by baking 2/3 whole wheat loaves, and now I add vital gluten in addition to that, and the results are totally different from what I was getting before.

Tonight was yet another pizza night- and let me just come right out and say that this geeky picture of me holding a lump of dough is really an excuse to show off my new tattoos, because they look nice in this picture.

So, behold: my new semi-official pizza dough recipe, only very slightly modified from my old standby.

Pizza dough for hippies:

(actually, this is not pizza dough for hippies, THIS is pizza dough for hippies, but whatev)

1 cup of water
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
2 tbsp. vital wheat gluten
1 1/2 tbsp. honey (use a mild honey, for your sake, like clover. I only had orange blossom and it's kind of overpowering for pizza.)
1 tsp. salt
1 packet of instant yeast
2 tbsp. olive oil


In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, wheat gluten, and salt. In another bowl, combine one cup of warm (just barely warm) water, honey, yeast, and olive oil. Let it sit for a second and get foamy, then dump into the dry combination and stir starting from the middle to form batter-like dough, adding more and more from the sides until you can handle it. Knead for 5-10 minutes (although you'll notice immediately if you bake bread often enough that the vital gluten changes the texture of the dough almost immediately) and then let sit in an oiled bowl, covered, for about an hour. Punch down, (SATISFYING SENSATION) and knead back into a ball until no longer spongy. Let sit for 10 minutes or as long as you want while you prep all your pizza goodies, then roll out.

"Roll out? Oh crap! I don't have a rolling pin!" Oh, you don't? Me neither, my kid stole mine and lost it. He was pretending it was a steam roller. WHERE DID IT GO? Anyway, just cover a wine bottle with plastic wrap (or don't, if you're not a germophobe) and use that instead.

We're too lazy to get a pizza stone so I bake my pizzas on a cast-iron griddle in my oven at 475ºf.

I don't know if adding vital wheat gluten to your bread is any more or less healthy (I'm guessing LESS, but whatever, it's only a tablespoon per cup of flour) but it makes the bread a lot better if you're using whole wheat, so I say go ahead and experiment with it. I will certainly continue to do so.

Vital Wheat Gluten: Addendum

Works great in whole wheat no-knead bread! (This is 2/3rds whole wheat, with 2 tbsp. of vital gluten added.)

Grilled Flatbreads

Sometimes I feel like I go on these kicks where I can't stop posting about the same crap. If that's annoying, uh- sorry. Like when I post about eggs all the time, or soup all the time. Or, in this case- that stupid pizza dough I'm always rambling about. But, whatever. A little bit of pizza dough never hurt anyone.

That recipe actually makes a pretty fair amount of dough, like more pizza than my family of 3 can ever eat in one sitting- so usually I portion it out and save some in the freezer. That way, when I'm feeling lazy, I can just pull it out, thaw it, and make a little pizza for my son or whatever. I had one ball of dough in my freezer the size of a large fist, leftover from a previous pizza night. I knew it wouldn't be enough for a decent-sized pizza, but this idea popped into my head to roll it out really flat and grill it on my cast-iron skillet.

Remember last time I posted about pizza and I was all, "Oh hey look, my kid lost my rolling pin, so I used a wine bottle! Aren't I clever?" So, tonight I had all my crap out, I had like 3 pans of crap going on the stove, and when I turned around to roll out my dough, I realized I'd recycled all my damn wine bottles. WHOOPSIE DOODLES. I was all butthurt until I remembered this weird little dough-stretching tip. I don't know if I saw it on tv, or maybe it was in that page of goofy 'kitchen hints' in Cook's Illustrated, but hey- if you don't have a rolling pin or a bottle of wine, you can easily stretch your pizza dough over the base of a bowl. It worked really well!

I heated my cast-iron for a long time on medium-low. I did a little test piece but it got black too fast before it cooked all the way, so I lowered the heat to like 3 or 4. I sauteed some kale in bacon fat, because IT TASTES REALLY GOOD THAT WAY, and hey did you know that a tablespoon of bacon fat only has like 113 calories? I APPROVE OF THAT. Also, cooking my kale in bacon fat makes my kid devour it like crazy. Do you know what is music to a mother's ears? "Mmm, this is really good kale!" Whatever, don't get all crybaby about my bacon fat- when's the last time you heard a 3 year old compliment you on your kale cookery?

For some reason, when my brain jumped to "grilled flatbread," I mentally placed a poached egg on top. I had this image of a piece of nice chewy flatbread with some warm greens and runny egg- just thinking about it is making me hungry again, actually.

So, the final tally was:

Grilled flatbread (the piece of dough I used was 1/4 of the original pizza dough recipe, further divided into 3rds. That means the pieces were pretty small, and stretched really thin before being grilled.)
Sauteed kale (use bacon fat! and salt!)
a sprinkle of parmesan
some chopped walnuts
one poached egg

Before anything, preheat your griddle. Saute kale, and put it aside. roll or stretch out your dough, and grill each side until brown. Place in the oven to keep warm if you want while you get your eggs ready. Poach eggs, then assemble flatbreads. I did a drizzle of olive oil over the base to keep it from being dry- then topped with kale, parmesan, walnuts, and egg.

They were not very big, so I made salads to eat on the side as well. The only thing I think could have improved it would be a squeeze of lemon, but I didn't have any. I'm definitely going to make this again though, it was awesome. EGGS. PIZZA DOUGH. STORY OF MY LIFE.

Day In The Life

Because I'm boring, but these pictures came out nice, here's what I ate today, in order:

Breakfast was whole milk yogurt drizzled with local honey, a piece of wheat toast with butter, and some clementines.

And, because I realized that I haven't really shared my new living space here (mostly because the kitchen sucks) here's where we eat now:

My husband still isn't 100% sold on having the front room of our home as a semi-formal dining room, but there's nowhere else to put the table and I think it looks AWESOME and I'm not going to move it, so suck it up honey- there's a couch and a tv in the basement. Plus we can play LP's (when the needle on the record player isn't broken) without getting up from the table.

I had a banana for a snack but I was too lazy to take a picture of it.

For lunch I made this salad, and then trucked around with it until I got hungry enough to eat it. This bowl is a Martha Stewart pyrex bowl that comes with a fitted lid- I just carry it around like regular tupperware most of the time. This is one of my most treasured kitchen items- I can bake in it, use it like tupperware, freeze stuff in it, store things in the fridge. My mom (who bought it for me as a wedding gift, in a set with other sizes/shapes) and sister both have the same set, and if we ever bring food to a family function in the dishes, we always make a huge deal about getting ours back.

I didn't eat much after lunch- just a heart thrive bar- those things kind of suck but they sell them at my work and they're handy, and low glycemic index hippie business, blah blah, so I eat them when I'm hard up.

I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture of my dinner until I was almost done eating it:

A black bean burrito with lightly sauteed spinach, avocado, sour cream, cheese, and salsa. After dinner I had a few squares of dark chocolate, and just a few minutes ago, at like 9 o'clock, I had a piece of toast with peanut butter. REALLY EXCITING STUFF, RIGHT?

I posted all this garbage for 2 reasons- first, I thought the photos were nice, haha. Second, I wanted to illustrate what it looks like to eat on a limited number of calories. Since I got all gung-ho about calorie counting, I've sort of invested all my OCD energies into it and I'm like measuring all my portions with little cups and tablespoon things and the whole thing feels kind of ridiculous, but I feel like I'm teaching myself how to eat less, and that's a pretty valuable lesson to learn. It took me almost a full week of eating like this before I wasn't COMPLETELY STARVING TO DEATH ALL DAY but it's been over a month of diligent calorie recording and I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping track of everything, I think. I have a chalkboard in my kitchen and I just jot down the calorie amounts of everything I eat all day. If you care, the final countdown of all this stuff I posted is 1701 calories. I don't count grams fat or carbohydrates and shit like that, I just try to balance out what I'm eating so it's not all the same types of food all day. One thing that I'm really trying to stay away from is falling into the trap of "Low Calorie Dieting." I see it all the time, and I think it's the worst way to live.

A good example, since I'm a barista- is the NONFAT LATTE DRINKER. I'm not going to go on a tangent about my customers, (nobody wants to get dooced) especially knowing that at least a few of them are readers (hey dudes!), but I think it's safe to say that nonfat latte drinkers fall into the same category as diet coke people, or really anyone who is so afraid to eat LESS than they normally do, they'll find any way to fill themselves up on lower calorie junk. You can totally lose weight this way- I've seen people do it, but it can't FEEL good. Nobody ever looks happy when they spit out, "NONFAT MILK, please." (But the lady who comes in and asks for heavy cream in her drip coffee- she's always pretty smiley. And she's skinny, too.) The thing that's funny about it is that the calorie difference when you remove fat is usually pretty negligible. For instance, the yogurt that I buy (Nancy's) comes in different fat contents. I buy the plain whole milk yogurt, because it's thick and satisfying and creamy, but it's like 180 calories per cup. One day my husband accidentally bought the lowfat version and it's still like 150 calories per cup. NO THANKS, GUYS- I'll take the fat and the 30-calorie hit. I only eat it a half a cup at a time anyway.

Anyway- I'm rambling. Blah blah blah, smaller portions of more satisfying food, live long and prosper, etc. (By the way I've lost 5 pounds since Christmas! WOO HOO.)