the basix

i'm taking a break to kill time. i've noticed a lot of my friends don't know how to cook, and since a bunch of ppl are A) getting sick of dorm food or B) moving out into their own apts soon, i guess i may as well put down recipes of whatever i make, provided i remember how i made them. i uh.. don't own any measuring utensils except a cup. oh, and a shot glass.. therefore, it'll all be approximations. can you imagine eating instant ramen and frozen burritos for a week? usually what i make is sustenance fare. cheap and simple.. and to taste.

the most important staple.. RICE. get a rice cooker, calrose rice is usually 1 cup rice to 1.25 cups water.

what i'm eating right now: baked potato
wrap washed potato in plastic wrap, microwave for ~4-5 mins. sauce made by melting in microwave with one pat of butter (courtesy of the DC), some basil, cayanne pepper, garlic.

dinner: sauteed shitake mushrooms
heated pan to medium setting. put 6-8 mushrooms in with some minced garlic for about 1 min. drying out, added a mixture of 1 tsp rice wine, some chopped green onion, 3tsp water, 1 tbls oyster sauce, 1 tsp soy sauce. you can add a pinch of cornstarch to the liquids BEFORE adding it to the pan to make the sauce thicker. cook a few more mins until water is gone.. 3 maybe?

how to make a canned soup taste more like real soup:
add twice as much water, or 1 can if it's "ready to serve". cut up carrots, celery, potatoes, whatever veggies and toss into pot. boil. consume.

adding crap to plain pasta to make it taste good:
cook pasta like usual. at the same time in another small pot, add 1-2 tbls olive oil, half an onion diced, a few cloves of garlic chopped up, half a pound of ground beef, .25-.5 tsp cayeanne pepper, a zuchini if you want your veggies, and cook it up on med-high until the beef is barely cooked. at that point, turn the heat down a little bit and pour in half a jar of pasta sauce. when it's hot and simmering, it's done and scoop over pasta. too ghetto for ground beef? chop up a few slices of ham or pepperoni.

bean and smoked ham soup:
i made this a while ago, so i'm not sure i remember right, but it's damn tasty and will feed your for a few days. wash 1 lb anytype beans, boil with ~2 quarts water for half an hour. add 1-2 smoked ham hocks, clove garlic, 1 onion chopped, add 2 stalks celery chopped, 1 carrot chopped, half to whole 8oz can of tomato paste. some pepper if you like SPICY! simmer (gentle gentle boil) hour and a half. really easy to make 'cause unlike lab, you don't have to sit around and watch it boil.

ponzu portobello

sat night - panbroiled steak, sauteed napa, rice

tonight - portobello mushroom sauteed in garlic-ponzu(citrus vinegar/soysauce)-rice wine sauce, chasiu, rice

usually it's rice and pickled vegetables. yay for weekends. sometimes i loathe summit. thank God i can cook

thanksgiving break

it felt so good to go home. (thanks to el numero zeroth capitalist magalomaniac club whore) i strolled around 4-5 miles every day and then just ate and slept. it's funny how so little activity can take up a whole day. i took my books home, but i only made it through a page. foolishness. it was just too relaxing so i packed 'em away and just enjoyed a few days without pressure. since it was just me and QQQ, we had a mini-thanksgiving dinner of cornish game hens instead of turkey. it was deeeeeeeelllllliiiiiiissssshhhhhhooouuuuussss. mm.. and another night, shrimp and anchovy paste-fried rice at The Boat. goulash and spatzel at the jaegerhaus the night i got back. xiaolongbao at green village. oh, and before i left, Roberto's. let's see.. that's german, thai, american, chinese, mexican, and plain ol' home cooking i managed to hit up during the week. probably managed to consume a whole stick of butter from cookies and scones. mmmm.... by the third day, i just wanted to throw up, it was so good.

tazo tea

tazo tea sucks beyond all belief. i tried looking for the taste, but it seems to be missing. i think better names for their flavors would be "water", "tepid", "bland", etc. i have a packet from that strange lady in plaza who was giving away tea. sometimes ali has bad taste.

joy of cooking

in the newer versions of Joy of Cooking, there's no more illustrations of how to properly skin a squirrel.

bad juju

don't eat toast with olives, capers, salsa, and dijon mustard. salty, spicy, nasty. now i'm thirsty. and full.

pataks mango relish

i'm addicted to pataks mango relish. the overly expensive albertsons here only sells the medium one, so i've been looking for the hot one lately. it's still tasty though. strange that it's called "relish" since this stuff is usually referred to as "pickles". indian pickles. i also bought a jar of ashika's garlic relish (pretyt much cloves of garlic pickled in oil and other spices) but it really sucks. the garlic taste is good and strong, but it's waaaay too salty. i've tried cooking with it, or eating it with bread and other things to tone down the taste, but it's still too salty. not good. i don't have a jar here, but at QQQ's there's a jar of pataks ginger lime marinade paste that tastes pretty good on everything, especially chicken and fried rice. lately, i've been cooking a lot of cabbage b/c it's cheap, and i've found the best way to cook/season it. no amount of sauces or fancy cooking will ever top it being stir-fried plain with a little bit of salt. comes out crunchy with just a little salty to mix with its natural sweetness. using soy sauce and garlic chili paste would come in second. real corned beef with cabbage would probably be somwhere near the top of the list too.. but i haven't really cooked that here. one corned beef brisket for one person would be just a little bit much. i'd be eating it for a week. which wouldn't be that bad, come to think of it. but cabbage is definately not myf avorite vegetable. i think zuchini is currently on the top of my list, over gai lan now. so tender and savory, so hard to mess up. all it needs is to be sliced up, tossed in a pan with some olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and it's done. and maybe a litle rosemary too for special occasions. hah.. i'm dreaming of food.. but i haven't relaly been cooking much in the past few days. just.. been.. too lazy. with my sleeping patterns going back to normalcy again, it's hard to tell when i'm eating breakfast, lunch or dinner. should i count the cereal i had at noon after sleeping 4 hours as breakfast? or the meal i had after sleeping for 5 hours int he afternoon as breakfast?

observations while working as cafeteria staff at a fat camp

soem of those camp LJ kids are sooo unsanitary. people get served, then chagne their minds, and scrape their food back into the pans.. that's just.. not cool, especially when they've been walkng all around with their plates, poking at their food and sniffing at it, and talking over it. one of ther servers.. today she was dipping her fingers (she purposely ripped a hole in her glove for this purpose) into the vat of ranch dressing, and licking it. i didn't want to throw out a whole gallon, so i skimmed off the top... then there's the girl who was serving with one hand, and drinking with the other. another no-no. oh, and the person who was kissing her hand and blowing kisses to ppl in the lines, then using that same gloved hand to serve food. ah, and yesterday was the girl that chugged water straight from the pitcher. other people at her table get water from that too.. not to mention the ppl that will come in after them. i guess germs and passing colds along don't really occur to them.

condiment meal

i'm eating a "lunch" made of condiments. pasta sauce with vegetables, pickled cucumbers, and fried gluten with peanuts. not like there's not anything to eat. i've got all the ingredients for crepes, chicken curries, vegetables, and more. but condiments don't have to be cooked. i wonder what they're making for dinner tonight...

mexican commons

meg, johannes, and i had a mexican feast in el mercado today. oh man.. it was sooo good. we ordered a bunch of stuff that we didn't usually get.. and meg's never eaten there except for quesadillas before. 3 people, and a TON of food left over, even though we all ate till we felt full to the brim. then we mixed up the remaining fries and nachos and made her bro eat it. yes, it was bad. tums are very tasty. i ate 3 before i realized that i ate.. three. crunchy tasty chalky mints.

the commons goes kosher

oh yeah, i'd make a bad jew. i don't like matzo balls nor gefilte fish. matzah is tasty though. they're offering kosher food allweek in the commons in deference to passover. it's kind of fun to just point at a food and say, "i don't know what that is, but i'll have some of that thing. and that goopy stuff." but the taste is a bit hit or miss

san fran eats

back from a road trip with my bro to SF. great scenes of beauty, awe, and humor. oh yeah.. and the great food...

lunch at fisherman's wharf: fresh crab meat with a little lemon juice on bannock, which is some type of fried bread. oh-so-tasty.

dinner at the Slanted Door: fresh raw st. simon and beau soliel oysters sweet and refreshing tasting(i'd never tried raw oysters before, and was surprised at how good they tasted. the st. simon were better), a viet style beef carpaccio with peanuts basil and lemon juice (you can't tell that the beef is raw, which is good.. b/c it shouldn't taste that way! but it wasn't spectacular.. certainly very interesting to try though), crispy roasted duck legs with baby turnips carrots and fingerling potatoes in a gingery sauce (this was soooo tasty. the duck had the right proportions of fat to meat to make it juicy and was cooked just right so that it wasn't overcooked and the sauce was good and didn't mask the duck's natural flavor), "shaking beef" which was just some sort of peppery filet mignon cubes done in the house style (the beef was cooked perfectly, but sadly, the taste was just like another beef dish.. nothing too special). that dinner i ate of the bounties of the land, sea, and air...

lunch at Potsticker King "Wo-Teep-Dai-Wong": potstickers, xiaolongbao (heh, that's what someone called me after hitting a dragon in dominion), pork chop noodles.. some other usual chinese stuff. the xiaolongbao wasn't that good and everything had lots of msg. guess you can't compare to LA for chinese food.

dinner at The Stinking Rose: a restaurant devoted to garlic, one of my favorite spices! mussels steamed in garlic and a little bit of salt with garlic butter sauce. there was this super potent spread of olive oil, chopped raw garlic, parsley, and some other herbs to go with the rolls.. and just about anything else. the garlic were raw so it was spicy. yum. neon ravioli filled with a creamy smooth potato and garlic and lotsa other stuff mixture in a gouda sauce. the roast rabbit in a tomato based garlic and olive sauce with garlic mashed potatoes was pretty tasty too. the rabbit was just a little bit dry though. then creme and cocoa-covered expresso-soaked layers of lady fingers made up the tiramisu (that, the duck, and the oysters were my favorites) i want some more of that.. it's pure cholesterol =)

breakfast at House of Pancakes: French crepes filled with strawberries and cafe mocha! i regret that i was too full to eat more than one.

snack: lots of dried white nectarines, cherried, pears, etc. from Casa de Fruta

getting hungry now.. time for breakfast