Tonight I had chili, left over from a crock pot chlli fest on Sunday. Unfortunately, a bean escaped my table and fell to the floor, unbeknownst to me, where it then was squashed by my shoe. When I arose from the table, I tried to walk over my tiled floor and WOW my foot slipped right underneath me and I almost ended up horizontal! Or broken my neck on the counter! I was so surprised! What could possibly make my shoe SO slippery???? Well, as you might guess, and as I then found out, it was A PINTO BEAN. Who would have known that beans could rival a banana peal any day? Why don’t people make jokes about beans being slippery? Are people too busy talking about magical fruity beans making us toot? Or are there just too many slippery foods so people just focus on one: bananas. Well, I can only say that I have never slipped on a banana peel, but I have sure felt the slip of a bean under my shoe! Good luck to all of you the next time you eat chili and someone drops beans!
Chocolate Legos?!
I saw today that a Japanese Designer named Akihiro Mizuuchi came up with chocolate legos. I think this is pretty ingenius, of course, and lots of fun – but why hasn’t it been done before? Maybe people thought they would just get mushy and fingerprinted from being handled and played with. Which of course, they would, and as the article addresses, this is not so much a problem if you like to eat chocolate. And lick your fingers. Wash your hands before you get going!
So, how much do these cost? Are they like monogrammed M&M’s, or perhaps more expensive? I would guess they are about 5x more expensive than the M&M’s. But I can’t find them for sale anywhere. Did LEGO Corp pay Mr. Mizuuchi to design these? If so, how much did they pay him? I think that would be my dream job, coming up with mold ideas and designing different shapes of chocolates. How awesome.
Monday Recipe – Fruit Topping
Today’s recipe is super easy, like all my favorite recipes.
Fruit Topping
History:
I made this up in my kitchen a while back. I’m sure a lot of people have made up this same recipe.
Recipe:
Take 1 cup of sour cream or plain yogurt (greek is best) and whip it with 2 Tbs sugar (or honey, or other sweetener). Spoon it over fruit. Yum! It is the perfect blend of tart and sweet.
Crackers
“Crackers, Gromit! We forgot the crackers!!”
Like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit, I too like crackers. Have you ever tried making your own crackers? I haven’t. I once saw a cooking blog post where a mom was making HOMEMADE GOLDFISH CRACKERS. She had a little tiny cutter she used for each cracker. Wow. She must be very patient. I would do a mini batch of 20 and then say, “whew! I’m sure that’s all I’ll want to eat.” And then after I eat them I’d go to the store and buy a package.
I was thinking about crackers all day today because this morning I finished off the last of a package I had in the pantry. Two days ago my friend brought me a jar of the BEST JAM EVER. And ever since I have been eating it on crackers. I actually finished off the whole jar in three days. Pretty amazing, that little jar of jam drove me to madness. I will go into more detail when I do a post on that specific jam soon. I have no idea who’s original idea it was, but they could control the world with that jam. At least, if the world were made of people like me.
Anyway, I got to thinking about crackers, and how they are really just a stale bread product. Like, someone left their croissant out in france, or in England they left their biscuits out too long, and then all the French and English people realized how good stale, hardened bread can be! Of course, the more butter or fat, the better tasting the stale bread. (Saltines must have come from non-fat bread) Hence, the cracker was born, and with through the years, it became something like this:
I especially like these. So crunchy and plain. Ritz, Townhouse, you know – the buttery variety sprinkled with salt. It’s just like a stale croissant chopped up with salt added to enhance the buttery flavor. With the air condensed down. Maybe these are more from the biscuit family tree. At any rate, they are fantastic with cheese or jam, especially the JAM that could rule the world. More on that later. For now, eat your crackers with what you will, and enjoy.
S’mores Galore
As we near the end of summer camping season, I’d like to call out my thoughts on one of America’s most beloved camping traditions: s’mores.
These are basically made from graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate. Translated this is sugar/flour, sugar/sugar, and sugar/cocoa! For me, this is too much processed sugar for one treat. It’s like those deep-fried and heavily frosted cherry-goop-filled deserts they used to serve at elementary schools. I would only eat the ends because the cherry filling was just too much for me.
The fireside method of cooking s’mores is difficult. If you are patient, and have your own roasting stick to yourself for a while, you can sit and stick your marshmallow right next to some white hot ash for ~8 min. All the while hoping that no one else’s roasting stick and marshmallow pushes itself, ash, wood, fire, or anything else in the pit onto your marshmallow in this vulnerable position. If your marshmallow survives this unscathed, then you hope that it is melted in the middle region when you make your s’more, otherwise it will be hard to bite down on this 3 inch tall, slimy, crunchy square. I don’t know any other food that can be both sticky and dry at the same time! I guess s’mores are unique in that way.
Here are some other ideas I found from chow.com. Pretty good ideas to me except for the bacon one – what’s with the big hype over bacon??
If I went camping a lot (right now it is maybe 1 time a year), I would experiment with lots of different dinners and desserts! For dinner, I’m very interested in kabobs, crock pot lasagna and stews. For desserts, my favorite has always been pineapple upside-down cake, but here are some other ideas I would like to try:
- Baked apple slices with brown sugar and cinnamon
- Pineapple cakes baked inside zuccini
- Cherry chocolate cake baked in crock pot
- Bread pudding in crock pot (made with sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon and eggs – like baked french toast)
- Tres leches cake in a crock pot
- S’mores using coconut (maybe dip cooked, wet marshmallow into coconut?) and chocolate with almonds
I tried making a ‘smoregasbord’ (to broil in tin foil in the oven) this morning but it didn’t work out well. It turns out that marshmallows don’t melt well when they are covered with tin foil, but they broil VERY quickly! Here are some pictures.
Lookin’ good and ready.
Yeah… the only good thing that happened was the melted chocolate softened the graham crackers so they were tasty.
My Secret
Some people have asked me – “How do you write so well?” They say, ” We are awed at your writing ability and intuitive insight.” Well, I will now take a moment to explain. I won’t get too much into my secrets because then people would copy me, but I will outline the basics.
1. I eat chocolate.
2. It feeds my soul and my creativity.
So, that’s about it! I’m sorry I have to be so secretive about it, but there are lots of details that I cannot include here, like pages and pages worth, for all the public to see.
Mushrooms
I really like mushrooms. When I was little I thought all mushrooms were poisonous and so when my mother put mushrooms into dishes, she was trying to kill us. Of course I refused to eat whatever food I thought had slimy, evil mushrooms in it! I asked her once, why she would try to kill us by feeding us mushrooms. Then she told me the truth – not all mushrooms are poisonous!! Thank goodness because they sure taste good. Here are my three favorite mushrooms:
Crimini mushrooms are my third favorite mushroom. Great with salad, stir fry’s and a multitude of other Italian and Asian dishes, these mushrooms absorb taste very well and add their own slight flavor to any dish. I also really like them stuffed with hard and soft cheese blends, bread crumbs, and olive oil. Soooo good. Also these are nice because they are relatively inexpensive and you can find them at any grocery store.
My #2 favorite mushrooms are Shiitake. Shiitake mushrooms are fantastic for any type of meat substitute. I especially like them on buns as a “mushroomurger” (I just made up that word out of mushroom and burger).
My all-time #1 favorite mushroom is Enoki! Thin, long and white, these are best in soups. As in SO GOOD in soups. Like, IF YOU PUT THESE IN ANY SOUP I WILL EAT IT. Koreans make a lot of kinds of soups and stir fry’s with these mushrooms. It is always fantastic, whatever these are in. I cannot explain why or how they taste so good. You must buy these in Asian supermarkets.
I knew a fellow in Asia that grew his own mushrooms in his bathroom. It is the perfect environment – steamy, usually dark, wet. He had some good success. Maybe I should try such a thing…
Sugar Cereal
My friend lives on sugar cereal. The other day I was wondering how they get all that sugar into sugar cereal. It certainly doesn’t quite look like sugar. At least not normal sugar. And since it is roughly 90% sugar, how do they get anything else in there? And with other cereals (also sugar since they are all at least laced with the stuff) how can they say “9 g whole grain per serving” when the original grain is all ground and mushed up and added to various types of real and fake sugar and then re-formed to look like whatever grain they started with? Do they do that to animals too? Ew. I wouldn’t eat anything like that. Is that what they do to make hot dogs? (aka the ultimate mystery meat – besides SPAM) This past 4th of July, I watched the hot dog eating contest put on by Nathan’s and was so horrified and disgusted I swore I would never eat a hot dog again. (You’d think that contest would deter people from ever buying hot dogs again.) So I probably don’t have to worry about hot dogs. Even though I ate them raw as a child. I must not think of that.
In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t eat sugar cereal very often. It isn’t really the sugar, since I truly like sugar. It is the funny slimy-then-gritty feel I get on my teeth and gums after I eat it. It’s really weird. Plus, after I eat a bowl of cereal, I am still hungry. So naturally, I eat another bowl. The SAME THING happens until I hit about the 6th bowl, at which point I notice my mouth issue (and I’ve eaten the whole box). Why can’t Kelloggs and General Mills make cereal that gets you full after one bowl, or maybe two? Or they could just take away whatever it is that makes my mouth weird. Unless that ingredient is sugar – then of course that would be pointless and no one would eat it! Case in point – raisin bran and other bran cereals. No way you’d want to eat 6 bowls of those – not unless you want to spend all day in the bathroom! Get some good books to read in there!
No matter what kind of cereal it is, somehow they require about 30 extra ingredients/preservatives/fillers/whatever. It’s like they are all sitting in the food lab, thinking up more stuff to add to make it “better.” As it is, I have had cereal on the shelf/opened but in storage for more than two years, and although it looks fine, I would never eat it! Would you? How scary!
Monday Recipe – Cinnamon Tortillas
Since this is a commentary website, I will not post many recipes. But….each week on Monday I will post a favorite recipe! This will be a recipe that is EASY. And by easy I mean DOABLE. Like, you make it once and then you pretty much have it memorized forever. And if you go and make lots of money on my recipes with your food truck or whatever, that’s ok as long as you give me credit. Like on your menu put my web address and name and picture, so all your loyal, addicted customers will know from what source you got your awesome ideas. Here is my picture, just in case you were wondering what I look like (drawn by my artist friend, who is 5):
It is very accurate. What can I say? I am a happy person.
HISTORY:
In honor of my younger sister, who is celebrating a big birthday today, I want to share a recipe we loved growing up. I have a distinct memory of hiding out in our family car outside during a rainstorm and eating these, and it was thrilling. Does anything that is thrilling to children need to make sense? I think not.
RECIPE:
Place a tortilla on top of a plate and spread it with butter. Sprinkle generously with sugar and cinnamon. Cook in microwave for about 20 seconds. You can tear pieces off or roll it up and eat it. Beware of running melted sweet buttery goodness. YUM!!!!! This is so good that I need to post a bunch of pictures of it.
Food Blog Cookbook Hotel
Why do all the most popular, highly rated food blogs feature recipes for intense speciality foods, like a cheese torte unique to some completely remote and hidden town of France. I don’t want to cook that, although I would probably like to eat it. Have they run out of regular food ideas? Or are those not interesting to people? I have better things to do with 4 hours of my time. I won’t tell you what they are, but they definitely aren’t that. Seriously, who wants to make some special torte that requires weird, expensive ingredients and that no one will eat (except maybe me). The novelty of these fancy food blogs must resonate with some deep down consciousness of us all that enjoys looking at pictures of delicious food, and pictures of people making delicious food.
Then there are a lot of blogs that (no offense if you do this) continuously post recipes for things like “cake batter frosting” and it makes me slightly sick to my stomach. Because I am not addicted to things like cake batter. I will eat it when I make cake and there’s some left in the bowl (I don’t think you are human if you don’t do this), but I don’t want to lather it onto cookies and eat them. I don’t want to make 8 different kinds of cheesy bacon twists, either. That’s not my cup of tea. But I will tell you about one of fantasy cups of tea. (Not really a cup of tea, but as in preference)
I want a food blog that is called “No Effort Cooking.” Not “easy” or “simple.” NO Effort. For when I can’t even open a package or use a can opener. When I am that lazy. The best recipe would be the magical number for the Awesome Food Restaurant in Everytown, World that offers free food for the benefit of mankind. The next best recipe is called “Roommate/Lover/Friend/Neighbor cooks dinner based on a myriad of incentives/threats.” I like those recipes. Whoever writes this blog should also start a hotel chain based on food service. That would be heaven. You could go to your plush room, lie down, and they would bring you whatever gourmet food you want throughout the day. And they would cook it like you would, or better. And when you venture out to, say, the beach, they will just bring your food to you there. Ah all the fantasy associated with food.
Charged With Chocolate 