Late-Blooming Peanut Butter Sandwich Love

In the last year, I've come to enjoy nut butter more than I ever did as a kid. I thought peanut butter & banana sandwiches were weird then. In college, I enjoyed the Nutella & banana combination, but I was always just as pleased without the banana.

Now, I can go through a jar of peanut butter in two weeks.

I think there's some correlation with the amount of time I've been spending outdoors, rock climbing and car camping. And because one of my friends has been arriving at our web series film shoots with a snack of peanut butter and celery. Peanut butter is easy. It feels healthy. In addition to its sweet and snacky uses, it can also be used for savory dishes like gado-gado.

My favorite variation on the PB&J lately is this:

Plump blueberries up close.

Eastern Sierra in the background.

Something I've always found irksome about the PB&J is how the jelly or jam or banana tends to make the sandwich slide apart. During my last camping trip, I inadvertently resolved this issue for myself: I didn't have any jam, but I wanted a fruity element, so I threw on some of the dried blueberries I'd brought for my oatmeal. The slivered almonds were unnecessary ('twas an experiment). I would have used a slightly thicker layer of peanut butter if this hadn't been the very last that I could scrape out of the jar.

Advantages of using dried blueberries instead of jam or jelly in a peanut butter sandwich:

1. The chewiness of the dried fruit gave me more to sink my teeth into, which made the 'wich more satisfying.
2. Dried fruit is lighter than a jar of jam and can also be used in oatmeal or as a snack in itself. Scooping up a handful of jam when you need a sugar boost is not very convenient.
3. No need to worry about getting peanut butter in your jam or vice-versa.
4. The sandwich does not slip apart. 
5. Nothing got drippy. 

I imagine this would be just as good with most other dried berries, but I'll probably stick to these dried wild blueberries from Trader Joe's. A dash of cinnamon is always a good idea. 

Leftover Salmon? Avocado? Bread?

Avo-toast with extra protein. Salmon is great cold, so it's worth making more than you can eat in one sitting-- as long as you don't over cook it. Just-done-enough salmon tastes much better (I think), and will taste better the next day if you decide to re-heat it. 

Lots of freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of salt, and a squeeze of lemon.

Project 365 Abandonment // Chilaquiles de Catalina

The first time I ever had chilaquiles was during a student leadership conference in high school. We were at UC Santa Barbara, where we got a taste of dorm living and commons eating. And those first chilaquiles have always stuck with me. During a trip to Catalina Island last year, I decided to try my hand at making them myself:

Leftover tortillas, eggs, cheese, leftover salsa.

And I've decided to abandon my 365 project, at least until this period of transition and absorbing new surroundings is over. I'm still cooking, eating, and growing, and it is all delicious.

Five Things Learned in 2011

1. Salsa verde and chile verde are amazingly easy to make. And extremely delicious. Peeling the papery skin off of tomatillos to reveal their sticky, smooth, green skins is so satisfying. Just throw them in a pan with some pricked jalapenos, stick them under a broiler until their skins are dark brown, then throw them in a blender with some onions, garlic, chile, and salt. It's magic. Tomatillo salsa! Then brown some chunks of pork shoulder, pour off the excess fat, and add tomatillo salso to just barely cover it (add water or broth if necessary), and simmer for a couple of hours, or until tender. This is how I ate mine:

Corn tortillas, chopped red onion, chopped red cabbage, queso fresco, and Cholula (not yet applied).

2. I can make my own half-and-half. Why this did not occur to me before confounds me. I mix milk and cream in a little jam jar so that I can shake it up before adding it to my morning coffee. My home-kitchen version of homogenization? The advantage of making half-n-half instead of buying it is that I always have both cream and milk on hand. The disadvantage is that I always worry about one or the other spoiling. But since I make my own chocolate syrup, I can just guzzle hot chocolate with whipped cream in case of an emergency...

3. Toast steel cut oats in a dry pan first to make them cook a little faster and taste a lot better. Well, it tastes better if you like your oatmeal with a nuttier flavor. I sometimes soak steel cut oats in a jar overnight if I need to cook them quickly in the morning, and I found that if I don't toast them first, the finished product is too oozy and almost slimy. I just gently toast the oats (in a little butter if I'm feeling sassy) in the pan until I can smell the toasty-oaty aroma, then add water and simmer for twenty or so minutes. The other day I forgot about the pot on the stove. The edges were burnt and dry, but the 1/3 of a cup left in the middle was salvaged with some jam, almond butter, and cinnamon.

4. Dried sour cherries and dried tart cherries are very, very different. I bought sour cherries from Whole Foods and they were delicious; sticky, sour-sweet, and plump. The next time I went, there were only "tart" cherries. I snuck a taste and it didn't taste exactly right, but I got some anyway. When I got home and tried to eat a few more the next night, they were almost bitter, a bit dry, and miles from the lovely sour cherries that I'd had a week earlier. I was so disappointed in them that I actually went and returned them. Now I will wait until I see dried sour cherries in the bulk section. And I'll taste more than one. Shhhh.

5. Homemade cookies make people happy, even if they're mediocre. At least, I thought that most of my attempts were mediocre at best, but my friends and officemates seemed to enjoy them. I tried out apple cinnamon oatmeal bars, cherry chocolate chip almond oatmeal, and oatmeal chocolate chip almond. None of them had the crisp edges and chewy centers that I want in a cookie, so I guess I have to keep trying. Baking is the area in which I am least confident because I'm not very disciplined with my measurements-- except with brownies. They are forgiving. They do not intimidate me in the slightest. Brownies and I have an understanding that cookies and I have not yet reached. Maybe in 2012.

When You Can't Have Coffee In The Morning // Spice Appreciation

A couple of months ago, I went to see a homeopath and he prescribed a remedy for me during which, to my horror, I had to avoid coffee.

My first thoughts: This is wrong. Terrible. Inhumane. Many synonyms for those words. But not really. But kinda.

I love coffee. Nothing excessive (anymore). My morning cuppa. Setting the water to boil, grinding the beans, choosing one of my handful of "favorite" mugs, stirring together the grounds and hot water with a chopstick, wrapping up the french press with a tea towel to hold in heat, the waiting, the gentle pushing down of the screen, then stirring in a spoonful of condensed milk or half and half and brown sugar... the body of the Trader Joe's Sumatra roast I use, the grittiness of the coffee (since I like to grind it a bit finer than is usual for a French press), the steamy aroma of it.

I haven't made my morning cuppa since that first visit back in March. How did I cope?

It Ain't Pretty, But It's Tasty: Avo Toast

Sometimes, food looks as gorgeous as it tastes.

Sometimes, food doesn't look all that special, but once it's in your mouth, it's undeniably special. Case in point:

Trader Joe's Ciabatta loaf, split and toasted (at "4" on our Star Wars Darth Vader Toaster-- no joke). Ripe avocado, sliced rather un-carefully. (I roughed up the avo on the left a bit to see which texture I'd like better. I think I liked the feel of my teeth sinking through the slices more than the chunks.) A little sprinkle of kosher salt. That's it.

Maybe you're wondering why I didn't butter the ciabatta instead. Gasp! Has the Fiend acquired anti-dairy sentiments!?

Well, hell hasn't frozen over yet, so--no. 

There are a couple of reasons for swapping avocado for butter:

1. My mom (you know, my CSA) gave me avocados that I needed to use up before they became dry, hard shells of what they once were, or worse-- mushy, decomposed blobs of once-loveliness.

2. The texture of the ciabatta (crisp crust, chewy, lots of air pockets) was dying for something a little more substantial than butter, and since avocado has a super high fat content-- well, it just felt right. And I'd seen the combination on simply breakfast back when I used to prowl around there a lot, so it was worth a try.

It was oh, so good. Hot, toasty bread. Cool, smooth avocado. The tiny bit of kosher salt makes the tastebuds tingle and provides a contrast to the mildness of the avocado (gotta love those ionic bonds). 

Yeah, we can talk about how avocado is great for the skin or cholesterol levels, what with all its monounsaturated fat, but really, the point here was pleasure. It tasted damn good. And it felt good: the avo provided better protection for my mouth from the delicious, pointy parts of the ciabatta than butter could have. And, really, it's kinda pretty, too (and I love commas).

I don't care what kind of eater you are--herbivore, omnivore, locavore, vegan, macrobiotic(-ist?), raw foodist-- please, enjoy what you eat.

Overnight Fluffy Pancake Batter

Yeast. 

The pancake to the left was made as a pre-work breakfast. Pancakes aren't generally a for-one meal to make-- why go through the trouble of mixing up a batch of batter from scratch when you're only feeding yourself?

Because pancakes, cooked in butter, spread with more butter, and sweetened with a dollop of jam are wonderful. And wonderful is a good thing to have before going to work in the morning.

Yes, I did have to crack some eggs, pour some milk, melt some butter, measure out flour, but not in the morning. I made this batter the night before and by using yeast instead of baking powder, it was perfectly ready to be cooked the next morning. Wonderful. Easy. 

Also, I hadn't had much success getting fluffy pancakes using baking powder. I'm sure it was due, at least in part, to some lacking in my technique or the quality of the baking powder I used, but this batter, even with my haphazard technique of adding an amount of yeast that "looks about right," creates a pancake with a more than adequate fluff-factor. 

The best part is that it keeps well, so there may be multiple wonderful mornings, depending on how much batter you make and how large you make your cakes.  

To be honest, I often treated myself to post-work "wonderful" as well.