Category: Food

We made a chocolate soufflé a while ago (actually, pretty sure it was months ago) using this recipe. My main complaint is that it was too sweet. Next time, I might leave out some sugar from the egg yolk mixture or use less-sweet chocolate (although I used bittersweet as directed).

I know J has a picture of the souffle somewhere. I’ll try to dig it up…

I found this really thorough and very interesting blog post on basically every type of sweetener available. The author evaluates each sweetener with regards to processed-ness and healthfulness (with an initial warning that sugar is bad for you…). Once we run out of the sugar we have, I’d like to get palm sugar (coconut sugar). I can probably get some from SoCal, which has a bunch of date palm plantations. Although they’re not native to the Americas – they probably originated near Iraq, date palms are supposed to be pretty sustainable to grow, since they require very little water. Sorghum syrup, blackstrap molasses (high in iron!), and rapadura (panela), the least-processed form of cane sugar, also have some appeal.

On a related note, I’ve been reading about the purported benefits of a low-carb diet and thought it would be interesting to track my carb consumption (although paleo seems hard if you don’t eat meat…). MyFitnessPal is really good for food consumption and body-measurement tracking, and it’s easy to use.

Over Christmas break, my siblings A and C volunteered at Johnson’s Backyard Garden (JBG), a local Austin CSA that delivers produce in the area.

JBG relies pretty heavily on volunteers to maintain fields and pack the produce. To persuade people to volunteer, JBG gives each volunteer a free box of produce!!! Okay, the value-per-hour based on the cost of a box is below minimum wage, but it’s nice to go somewhere and do something. If you go volunteer, you also get access to the reject veggies (which mostly look fine – food waste!) to take home.

In the course of composing the post on fried food, I realized that I haven’t talked about the wok yet!!

J and I have this amazing Le Creuset wok (in red). Le Creuset is considered the holy grail of enamelware, which is glass-coated metal in general (cast iron in this case). Other companies’ enamel, including Lodge, unfortunately, has a tendency to chip off. The wok is incredibly heavy. According to Amazon, it weights 12 pounds. It is impossible to lift with only one hand, so it’s a good thing that it has two handles.

Sibling C and I found the wok at a thrift store for $25. We hit the jackpot!! The key to this particular find was the type of thrift store. It is on the border between a rich neighborhood and a poor neighborhood. I suppose it was built there to serve the poorer people, but it means that all the wealthy people donate their cast-offs there. So you can find silver, full sets of china, fancy coats, and fancy furniture.

While I admire Le Creuset products for being high-quality and durable, I would be hesitant to buy new. I do think the price is worth it if you would actually use the item, but they don’t hit all my requirements for new items.

Le Creuset products are made in France (better than China, but worse than the US). The company markets itself as a luxury brand, so their products are considered status symbols. Hence there are a lot of people who own Le Creuset but don’t use them (total waste!). This also means that there is thriving market of used and vintage Le Creuset, so might as well buy one of those! On a nitpicky note, I also don’t like that the lid knob is plastic.

Friend A, the one who is allergic to everything (not the Friend A who likes bugs and bitcoin), needed some potholders. Of course we have a huge supply of potholder looms and loops (here’s a short history of woven-loop potholders). It is a classic childhood craft.

Good potholders are essential to cooking (although occasionally I have wanted my leather welding gloves to protect the backs of my hands in tight spaces)! Sibling C thinks that this style of potholder is the best there is.

My parents have a lot of food around (definitely enough to last the recommended 3 days for an emergency. In fact, it’s probably enough to last months). Unfortunately, this makes it easy for things to get lost or forgotten. We’ve had the same jar of Nutella for years (it expired years ago too, and the lid was used in a past automobile repair project by my dad). I was searching for a way to use it up before it goes rancid, and decided on brownies! The recipe I found uses almond meal and instant coffee, other remnant ingredients we have.

The recipe doesn’t actually call for Nutella. It calls for cookie butter swirled into the top of the brownie batter, but I figured I could sub in Nutella. I also used about 2/3 cup Nutella in the batter, as a replacement for the chocolate chips (I decreased the butter and sugar by about 25% each to attempt to accommodate the Nutella. I also added an extra ~1/4 cup almond meal ’cause the batter seemed too wet).

The recipe calls for baking at 325°F for 20-25 minutes. This was completely insufficient, unless you like uncooked brownie batter. I cooked the brownies for an additional 15 minutes, for a total of 40 minutes. Even then, the brownies were wet and fudgy, and incredibly tender. They needed to be eaten with a spoon. However, they had great flavor! Next time, I’d bake these at 350°F for about 30 minutes.

Since the last version of pad thai I tried didn’t turn out very well, I tried another recipe. It was sooo much better, and has very helpfully detailed directions.