Food, sustainablity, and some other stuff
As so often happens, J and I had nothing in the fridge to eat. No greens, no leftovers, no beans soaked and ready for boiling. Fortunately, we were able to scrape together some lingering and more robust ingredients to cook.
Aaaaand we got our produce delivery today, so we’re back to having fruit and leafy greens!
Although I’ve been buying (second-hand!) accessories for our stand mixer, we don’t have a dough hook yet and haven’t been able to make pizza dough. As a substitute, Imperfect Produce recently had “imperfect” pre-made pizza crusts. Maybe they were short-coded? They were some sort of fancy, too, multi-grain with sprouted wheat, I think (although they were essentially big tortillas… Not very fluffy at all).
Imperfect Produce has recently expanded into non-produce items, so we’ve been able to get pasta, cheese, butter, and even goat milk from them. They have a “perfect” line, but I avoid that.
One of my favorite, exceptionally tender cookies! Fatty nuts (pecans) make them even better, but other nuts also work. The recipe is from The Joy of Cooking (my mom said it might be from Betty Crocker).
Thoroughly mix butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add flour, salt, and nuts. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 10-12 minutes at 400°F until set but not brown. While warm, roll in powdered sugar. Roll in sugar again once cooled.
I gave up a while ago on my gray linen shirt, after extensive patching failed to halt its rate of degradation. I still really like it, though, and I’d like to recreate it in the future, so I’m trying to trace its pieces to make a pattern!
Cutting the garment apart wasn’t as easy or as clean as I would have hoped, so a copy-cat shirt might end up a little wonky… We’ll have to see. I also tore the sleeves into strips before deciding to make a pattern, so… I’ll have to wing those when the time comes.
Here are some old projects I found. I think I made them in middle school – I was really into beading and jewelry then.
Both of my siblings are strangely attached to crayons. Although they allowed many of our crayons to be given away, the compromise was that we had to keep the 96-color set. As sibling C said, “Who knows when the world will end and we realize we need crayons”.
Sibling C and I went to a cool estate sale in Austin a few weeks ago! It was particularly well-organized, and much of the normal junk that clutters estate sales (old food, low-quality mismatched silverware, low-quality pans, etc) had either been hidden or sold.
I was excited to find a small collection of old shaving accoutrements. I have a straight razor (that I need to get sharpened), but I’ve also been interested in trying out safety razors, with the particular goal of being able to recommend them to friends in good faith.
I bought 2 of the razors from the sale for $3.75 each, which seemed like a good price 👍
My mom’s favorite deviled egg recipe, from the Better Homes and Gardens 1981 cookbook! Perfect for picnics and potlucks.
Halve eggs lengthwise, removing yolks and mashing with a fork. Stir in mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, and salt. Fill eggs halves with mixture, garnishing with paprika or parsley.
I got a free baguette from somewhere a few months ago. It’s been sitting in my freezer since then, desiccating, apparently. I got it out to make banh mi yesterday and discovered that it was rock hard. I would’ve given up on the whole idea except that I’d already bought all the other ingredients.
To attempt to rehydrate the bread, I… steamed it. It mostly worked. Soggy on the outside and still pretty hard on the inside = delicious, right? Fortunately, panfrying got rid of the sogginess.
Bread down, onto the hacked-together filling! The main components of banh mi are some protein (I used fried tofu and scrambled egg), cilantro, mayo, fish sauce, and marinated veggies. I had trouble with the fish sauce (don’t have it) and the marinated vegetables (don’t have vinegar), so I made some wild substitutions like usual.
Julienned carrots and radish are supposed to be marinated in a combination of rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. I didn’t want to buy a whole container of vinegar (and it’s not available in bulk) just as I’m about to move out, so my plan was to use lemon or lime juice in place of vinegar. Lime would be especially fitting – it’s commonly used as a topping. But… the grocery store didn’t have either 🙁 The closest alternative I could find was grapefruit. I still don’t know if that was a good choice.
I added bonito flakes to the marinade to substitute for fish sauce.
The sandwich was actually pretty good, considering. The vegetables only have the faintest hint of grapefruit-bitterness flavor… 😀
A while ago, I need to use up a pound or so of sour cream (left over from some event) and some over-cooked sweet potato. I steamed it into sweet potato mush 🙁 I had the bright idea of making pancakes (really good, super tender and fluffy) and biscuits (not so great, but edible).
The original biscuit recipe, which is much better than my modification, is from Joy of Cooking:
20 2-inch biscuits
I don’t really use cornmeal for anything, so I decided to make cornbread to use up the haul-cornmeal. It had the added benefit of using up the rest of my flour. I’m moving out in a month and am trying to not have any food left. I’m down to my freezer stash of carby foods, like biscuits, brownies, low-tier garlic bread, low-tier baguette (which is gonna be upgraded to banh mi :).
Anyway, my mom provided the Cook’s Illustrated “Northern cornbread” recipe that she likes. (The “Southern cornbread” recipe has more cornmeal and, I believe, less sugar.)
