is it me, or do vegetarians get all the pretty food?

 

Made vegetarian chili Sunday to feel our Game Night crowd.
Also made chili con carne, but had no desire to photograph it
(a study in brown).

The veggies.

closer...

Will have to make this again,
if only to feed my brain all that fabulous color.

Veggies mit 3 kinds of beans.

And these gorgeous hot peppers are from our garden. =)

I think I need to make vegetarian more often...
good for us, good for the planet, and so pretty!

=)

xoxobb

when ya just don't feel like writing...

 

Cook those tomatoes!

7 lbs of home grown tomatoes

I'm doubling Lynn Rosetto Casper's recipe for tomato sauce (tho' darn it I can't find it on the web--got it second hand...) to use more tomatoes.

And about 10 cloves of garlic.

Funny it should take writing procrastination to get me past procrastinating re: cooking the tomatoes.

Either way, I can now see more counter space that I have in a while. I still have a LONG ways to go, but most, yes, most of the really red ones are now destined for sauce. TODAY. =)

biobabbler

P.S.

Here is the sauce, gettin' saucy...

Lunch. Yum.

self-serving "equivalents"

 
So, making my favorite spaghetti sauce, among the ingredients I am slated to add are:

1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes

2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste

2 (15 ounce) cans tomato sauce

2 cups water

Well, given:

and

my interpretation of those ingredients is:

chopped, fresh tomatoes

more chopped, fresh tomatoes

freshly squished tomatoes

and, a couple more, just in case
(and to get my counter cleared off)

Next up:

3 teaspoons basil

Which, to me means:

Last, but not least:

1/4 - 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

I'm sure they meant:

A gardener's perspective on recipe plasticity.

We'll see how it goes!

bb

our little physics lesson for the day: a la rhubarb pie...

 
If you think the 2 rhubarb pies you are baking are done, begin to slide rack towards you (with pies filled with boiling custard...) and rack TIPS down of its own accord, the molten pies then start SPEEDING toward you, and you leap out of the way to watch them FLING onto the linoleum (upside down, of course), their contents SHOOTING out across the floor to within inches of the opposite wall...

What you might learn is that the teeny, tiny, painstakenly chopped pieces of rhubarb can slide up to 6.5 feet FURTHER across the floor than the pie plate. Substantially further than all of the custard.

This, at least, is what we learned about mechanical physics today.

And, you?

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P.S. Good news is, though, that I have ended the day with grass stains on my pants (meaning I got outside and played). Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes would approve, though my wardrobe does not.

would you like acid with that? In your EYES?

    
Are you ever chopping onions and thinking: This REALLY HURTS! And feel like a weenie?

Well, fret no more.

You are tough. You have sulfuric acid in your eyes!

Woah! No wonder I've donned ski goggles and sunglasses to fend of the painful squirts. Did something wrong today while making Julia Childs' Soupe a L'Oignon (soo simple and easy and yummy) and WOW did my eyes hurt.

Then I remembered that newly acquired factoid, and top that off with the fact that during chemistry I learned that sulfuric acid (H2S04) is, among acids, CRAZY STRONG. I remember we were VERY CAREFUL with that substance.

I thought: More cooks need to know this.


Here's the official word from "About.com: Chemistry":

...When you cut an onion, you break cells, releasing their contents. Amino acid sulfoxides form sulfenic acids. Enzymes that were kept separate now are free to mix with the sulfenic acids to produce propanethiol S-oxide, a volatile sulfur compound that wafts upward toward your eyes. This gas reacts with the water in your tears to form sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid burns, stimulating your eyes to release more tears to wash the irritant away.
Cooking the onion inactivates the enzyme, so while the smell of cooked onions may be strong, it doesn't burn your eyes. 

Is that NUTS, or what?!?

So, never let it be said that cooking is for the faint of heart.

I remember the scene from Julie and Julia where Julia is chopping a mountain of onions and her husband walks in, says a few startled words, and rapidly retreats, ducking the propanethiol S-oxide bomb that was their kitchen.

Julia stayed, chopping and crying.

What a goddess.

(photo courtesy of blogs.browardpalmbeach.com)

=)


biobabbler

P.S. I looked at that picture and first thought: "WHAT in the WORLD?" Then I thought "Is that spectacular creature a monkfish?" Have no idea where that guess came from--SO not a fish person. So, looking up monkfish, I find:

Courtesy of the Maryland State Department of Natural Resources, particularly Mike Luisi (thanks Mike)! I'm thinkin' it's the same creature. WOW, whattaface. In permanent "ROWR!" position.

I do remember Julia saying (in the film) that part of why the men at the French cooking school loved her was because she was fearless. Handling this creature certainly supports her claim.

biology x food = freak out (WARNING to squeamish re: animals as food--skip this!)

 
Some images capture starkly the connection between biology and food (two things I love, which are inextricably connected) in ways that are disturbing. To me.

(IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE A PHOTOGRAPH of ANIMAL-AS-FOOD, skip this post.)

Such is the case for the image (far, far) below, found at http://blog.alimentationgenerale.fr. It's far, far below to protect those who wish to avoid seeing a pretty frank animal-as-food photograph.

This image also connects with other parts of my brain, including man-as-omnivore, sustainable living (witness NOT wasting animal parts), photography (clean, minimalist black and white 50's-style I am drawn to, crazy about, tho' subject puts me on instant diet), and my latent leanings toward vegetarianism.

And the part of me that lead to becoming a biologist--I feel a great empathy toward non-human animals.


And plants.

Trust me, I am the WORST plant thinner ever. I find it very difficult to, for example, pluck out baby beet plants who (oops) just look so psyched to LIVE. Who am I to kill them just because I want 20 big beets versus 1000 tiny scrunched up red string-roots?

But I also have a great regard for the very basic living involved in an independent, sustainable human lifestyle, which includes many who are not vegetarians, and either raise and slaughter their own meat or know the people who do.


Anyhow, this came up 'cause a friend is in Paris and he posted today that he finally ate "tete de veau" and was very grateful for the abundance of wine. Of course I had to look it up.

For some strange reason, no French was in my brain that moment (maybe the lack of circumflex in tete de veau?) and the way I pronounced it (in my head) was "teh-teh" de veau. Odd.

Which left me totally unprepared for:
 

!

To make it all the more bizarre, I've been on this Julia Childs "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" kick, 3 recipes in the last 3 weeks or so. LOVE Julia. Watched her (repeat) cooking shows when I was a kid. I was a total non-cook but I just loved her.

However, watching the movie Julie and Julia, I also knew that I would NEVER make the lobster dish. So not boiling a live creature. Won't even consider it. (No judgment on anyone else.)

But I can see Julia making tete de veau, and she probably has. Multiple times. With gusto.

Anyhow, this photograph just captured so well the uncomfortable intersection of different parts of my knowledge/experience/education/emotions/aesthetic that are obviously not super resolved.

Otherwise, I'd have a clear feeling about this image (amazing, fascinating, horrifying) vs. an inarticulate "oh....my" response.

I guess that means the emotional box I'd check to describe my feelings (amazed? fascinated? horrified?) about this image is:  all of the above.


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P.S. Will be in non-computer-mode for next 3-ish days so won't post during that time. Passez un bon week-end!