so I’m all sugared out. not sure how it happened; ’twas supposed to be an ordinary weekend spent visiting with in-laws doing ordinary laundry eating ordinary things and watching ordinary TV. instead, between Thursday and Sunday, I somehow ended up party to more sugar (and delicious fat and a little protein too, I guess) than I have in a while. hm. “party to more sugar.” that’s a strange phrase I just considered deleting, but will in fact leave because it brings to mind the phrase “sugar party” which is what I’m going to title this post.

so I didn’t have my camera at the inlaws’, but I came home with some leftovers and thought I’d present evidence of said sugar party for others’ enjoyment; it might also be nice to look at tomorrow while I’m intentionally avoiding sugar and giving my poor pancreas a rest.

first, some run of the mill chocolate chip cookies left over from mid-week. these are made with a new (to me) ingredient: Trader Joe’s semi-sweet chocolate chips. ooh-la-la. Giant Eagle’s chocolate chips now have dairy in them so I made the switch. quite pleased:

next up, my favorite oatmeal cookies- the plain old boring kind with nothing added. so good. the recipe is from the Betty Crocker “Cookie Book,” (veganized, of course). leave it to ol’ Betty to win the vegan oatmeal cookie battle in my heart:

three rotting bananas + nut allergy => slightly overdone banana bread - nuts:

and this last one isn’t mine but I think it’s time to share it’s awesome power with the world. it’s apple pie, and the best goddamned apple pie in the entire fucking universe. my mother in law makes it. I never even really cared about apple pie before I tried it several years ago. it’s amazing. I have her recipe, and if you want it, ask and I’ll give it to you. it’s actually not hard at all, nothing fancy.. just a perfect recipe. PERFECT:

that is all. still hoping to have some green tea ice cream to show off here soon, maybe a new concoction I’m working on involving brownies, fudge and mint, and maybe if you’re lucky something to read that involves non-food topics. stay tuned.

I don’t know why my previous blog post didn’t show up until today, since it was written back a week ago.. but anyway I guess it just means more updates for all three of you reading this to enjoy.

I don’t have much to offer except a few more food photos.. this week was brutal on several levels and I felt completely exhausted up until about two hours ago.. and now that I’m rested I have to go to bed. c’est la vie. what’s been on my mind?

1.) the teachers union at my school came to a tentative agreement last week and our ratification meeting is this week. while I’m happy that we seem so close to a conclusion on the matter after working the beginning of the year on our expired contract and coming precariously close to a strike, I’m also not exactly looking forward to a several-hour-long meeting after a long day of school in cramped auditorium seats listening to union representatives tell me why I should be happy to approve a contract requiring me to do more work for less pay and shittier health care. blah.

2.) my team has aparently been up to some shady business. if you’ve been even minimally aware of the sports media over the past several days, you don’t need an update from me; suffice it to say that I’m disappointed they were up to no good and completely agree with the punishment and general consensus that ol’ Bill wasn’t just “misinterpreting” the rules. but if I hear one more student, or so-called “friend” for that matter, ask me about the gigantic asterisk that apparently goes down next to every Patriots victory of the Belichick era, I’m going to puke. want to know what I think? not only are they going to go to the superbowl as many predict, and win the superbowl as a few are calling, they are going to finish the season undefeated.. yep. I said it. now they have something to prove. they haven’t had that in a while. and you know how that works.

3.) but I still made some food.

earlier this week I tried a new recipe from Voluptuous Vegan, whose recipes have never been less than amazing every time I’ve tried them, but tend to fall on the fancier and generally more time consuming side of things. most recipes aren’t great for weeknights unless you want to modify them or do some prep work in advance. we chose the former, and replaced the absurd variety of peppers required for this chili cornbread casserole with a boatload of garden variety jalapeno.. don’t know why I’d never heard of baking cornbread with chili in the middle before but it’s a damn good idea:

sometime this weekend I threw together a desperation meal, (don’t act like you don’t know what I mean).. I was hungry and writing a paper and probably would have happily scarfed down cardboard but somehow ended up with my head in the freezer thinking that edamame sounded good.. so I threw it together with some TVP and every herb and spice in the pantry, and roasted up what vegetables were getting old in the fridge.. then I was surprised at how appealing it looked so I took a picture:

then tonight it dawned on me that I needed a decent, non messy, and microwaveable leftover dinner to take for the hour or so I am stuck at school before our ratification meeting, so behold a quinoa/black bean/mushroom stuffed pepper:

and finally, I realized this afternoon that our household contained no dessert.. which is simply unacceptable. (especially with a football game that needs to be watched). with limited ingredients and time, here be the thickest peanut butter cookies ever produced:

yep. I’d comment on the Pats and Chargers but, well, it’s only halftime and I don’t want to jinx anything.

Gotta love ‘em. Most versatile cookies ever. This recipe is from a really great super snobby food blog called Baking Bites that I read occasionally. It’s probably the best thumbprint cookie I’ve made OR eaten. It’s got just the right texture, which is (surprisingly) accomplished with cornstarch. They’re pretty impressive cookies, whatever way you go about them.

Ways to go about thumbprints:

1. As per the original recipe, fill the unbaked cookies with jam/fruit curd and bake.
2. Bake unfilled cookies and carefully fill the wells up to the brim with a thin frosting that will harden on top and stay gooey inside. This is especially good if you zest a lemon into the cookie dough, and put a bit of lemon juice into the frosting. Very grownup cookie. I’ll show you some of these eventually. The trick to that frosting is a bit of corn syrup. You’ll laugh but I got the recipe on the back of a dollar package of Christmas cookie cutters I got at the Bloomfield Foodland …. which featured Santa and a six pointed star. Amazing.
3. Bake unfilled cookies and show off your fancy frosting tips while you pipe in some buttercream frosting. I went for chocolate this time, but have done orange frosting, and vanilla too, and I don’t think there’s really any way to go wrong here.

Chocolate buttercream frosting piped onto vanilla thumbprint cookies.

Raising a cookie army. I quadrupled the recipe. This picture is not all of the cookies!

Proud mama with her million cookie babies. Q says “Look at those cute fuckers!” and I agree.

(Also known as the right way to make those sweet potatoes I made a while back.)

This was a stellar summer meal: string beans straight out of the garden right before dinner, a veggie burger with fresh tomato from the garden and lettuce from the farmer’s market, and glorious glorious sweet potato slices.

The recipe is from “Ultimate Vegetarian Recipes” from Parragon Publishing — it’s a 500-page coffee table style book with tons of food glamor shots, including prep photos. A lot of the recipes are really impractical and not the way I would choose to do things (and a lot of them really focus on eggs and cheese), but I am glad I stumbled on this recipe. .. .. …. if you can call it a recipe. Really it’s just a method, I guess.

Anyway:

1. Boil a sweet potato whole (ten minutes for a big one. maybe a bit less for a smaller one.)
2. Let it cool enough for you to touch it without cursing. Peel it with a vegetable peeler or your fingers or a paring knife. All work pretty much equally well.
3. Cut into slices — the recipe says thick ones, but I like them better when they’re on the thin side because they get crispier.
4. Pour a little more vegetable oil in a big skillet than you think you should. Heat it up, add the sweet potato slices, squirt a little chili sauce on them, and cook them till they have some darrrrrrrk brown crispy spots on ‘em. Make sure both sides get good and crispy.

The actual recipe says to grill them, and I guess if you’re into that kind of thing, it’s probably good. What can a grill do for me that a skillet can’t?

not at the same time though..

I’ve been wanting to make cola cake for a while, but haven’t had a chance to do so.. but the other night I had some extra cherry coke in the fridge so I turned a normal batch of chocolate chip cookies into double chocolate cherry coke cookies:

(just use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, substitute cocoa powder for some of the flour and replace most of the liquid with cherry coke)

and these green tea cupcakes are just the latest method I’ve found to consume the bulk matcha powder I am buying in quantities that would make an emperor blush:

(buy Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and follow the recipe found therein)

just so you’re ready, I’m hoping to get to that cola cake in the next week or so.. and I forsee some homemade green tea ice cream in the near future.

Today I yanked the potatoes. We had six plants growing in a raised bed. This is our third year of growing potatoes and we’ve had modest success in that we’ve always actually gotten potatoes, but not necessarilly as many as one might imagine we could get. For the last couple of years we have attempted to mound the dirt around the plants as they grow, which in theory is supposed to increase your yield. This year we spent way too much money on new dirt in order to aggressively try this strategy. Results = inconclusive.

From six plants, this is our complete harvest…

Many garden plants are an economic plus for a househould. Spend $2 on a packet of seeds, get many many times the value of that in veggies from that packet of seeds. Potatos, not so much in our experience. We could’ve gotten more potatoes than our harvest for the cost of the seedlings alone, not to mention the cost of the fancy store-bought dirt we brought in.

But ultimately there is something very exciting about potatoes. It’s a gamble and a surprise. You watch the plants grow all summer and get huge and you have to wonder what’s going on below the surface. Then when the time comes you break out the shovel and dig them up and there’s no turning back. And even if you only get a handful of potatoes from your crop, goddamnit, there is nothing like some fresh potatoes from your garden (especially if you’re living in the city, like fresh grown corn from your garden, its just something that you normally don’t get).

Will we continue to grow potatoes here at Torley Manor? Probably. At least give it another year and see if we can increase our yield. If not, maybe we’ll find it better to devote that section of garden to something else.

Speaking of which, our patience with the brocolli looks like its about to pay off. Two of the 3 plants now have edible looking brocolli heads on them. This guy is about 4″ across now. The other one is just starting to form. So exciting!!!!