Anything But Spaghetti

Pure Heaven

2008-01-05T18:23:00.001-05:00

[Eaten in 35 seconds, the same amount of time it takes for WAC students to decimate a tray of General Tso's Chicken.]

Here's to eating your dessert before dinner. Or, in this case, instead of dinner. At least I didn't need to feel too badly: 2/3 of this was fruit!

Baked Bananas with Toffee Sauce

(recipe from The Best Ever Three & Four Ingredient Cookbook)

Things pilfered from the pantry:

4 large bananas

5 tablespoons light brown sugar

5 tablespoons heavy cream

5 tablespoons water

1 scoop vanilla ice cream

[Bananas, post-baking.]

Bake unpeeled bananas at 350^OF for 20-25 minutes, or just until skin is totally blackened.
Over burner, dissolve brown sugar in water completely. Add cream, boil, and cook 10-15 minutes, or until sauce is thickened and even in color.
Remove from heat and let stand at least 5 minutes before use, to allow it to become tacky.
Cool bananas for 5-10 minutes. Split bananas lengthways with a very sharp knife. Take care, the insides will be very mushy/runny and the skin will be tough, a very sharp knife will help to pierce the skin quickly and without malforming the flesh.
Serve with ice cream and drizzle toffee sauce over top.

Enjoy!

Certified for Microwave Cooking

2008-01-03T22:02:00.001-05:00

These recipes brought to you by Litton microwave cooking products! Not really, but I did use the company book, Microwave Cooking – Convenience Foods. Despite being hideously out of date (published in 1981), it still lives with the real cookbooks, and not in the "camp" library with Knitting with Dog Hair (a youngster from 1997), Attractive Lawn Furnishings (1946), and The New Joys of Jell-O (1973). Of course, when I glanced through the book on Tuesday, I didn't really expect to find anything edible. Probably because of the 80's stigma. Or that it's a promotional cookbook. From the 80's. I was pleasantly surprised to find at least two recipes that I could work with.

Tonight's dinner came out of the Litton cookbook, although, of course I had to add a pinch of spice to the food, as everything looked (and no doubt tasted) a little bland right out of the microwave. For the roll-ups, I used seasoned roast beef deli slices instead of old, dried beef, and baked the whole mess in the t.o. to bring out the flavors without making the food soggy. For the Wild Rice Casserole, I added the spices instead of the recommended sour cream, though I wish I had used real roasted chicken instead of canned – the whole dish ended up tasting like tuna, I think because the cans looked so similar that my brain was switching the flavors around. Still, everything in the book, even with alterations, makes a satisfying meal, and it all came out of two dorm-style appliances at around 10 minutes. Sweet.

Asparagus Roll-Ups

Things pilfered from the pantry:

hollandaise sauce

1 bunch asparagus spears

1 package roast beef deli slices

Microwave asparagus in 1 inch water for 5 minutes (crisp) or 7 minutes (mushy).
Drain, roll bunches of five spears up in two slices of roast beef. Bake in the toaster oven on 375^OF for 6-7 minutes.
Whatever kind of hollandaise sauce you're using (mix, store-bought, or homemade), make it now while the roll-ups bake.
Serve drizzled in sauce.

Wild Rice Casserole

Things pilfered from the pantry:

2 packages Uncle Ben's 90-second wild rice

1 package frozen chopped spinach

2 cups cooked, chopped up chicken (or 2 cans of chopped chicken)

1/8 teaspoon cumin

1/8 teaspoon basil

2 cloves garlic

Microwave rice by package directions. Microwave spinach in a large, 1 quart, casserole dish for 4 minutes, stir with a fork, and microwave an additional 3 minutes.
Mix together chicken, spinach, and rice along with seasonings and pressed garlic. Microwave 2 minutes.

Enjoy!

No-Bake Noodle Cookies

2008-01-01T22:24:00.001-05:00

I must not have been thinking clearly when I picked Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays to update. The last night of Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, April Fool's Day, Earth Day… all of them on days when I update. (My birthday also, but I won't still be doing ABS, because I will be a college graduate by then, woo-hoo!) Today, I was happy to rediscover a Christmas gift (Thanks Uncle Bruce, Aunt Gwen, and family) on our kitchen table that was perfect for ABS – No-Bake Noodle Cookies.

Yep, you only need a microwave for these babies. My mom says she used to know a recipe for no-bake brownies (no-bake, if I made them, because the batter would be all gone before they could hit the oven). The cookies are perfect for dorm room study sessions or late New Year's Day snacks that you (by which I mean me) can make tolerably well before or after the… er, memories of the night before have worn off. And I'm tolerably sure that all of these ingredients are also available on the salad bar, though you might have trouble with the peanut butter chips or chow mein noodles. Unless you want to make your own chow mein noodles, for which you'll need some ramen. I didn't measure everything in the jar, but I do have a picture of it, which gives a tolerably good impression of the ratios of things.

[These cookies really look (but not taste) really familiar to me. Watch out, when I'm around cookies, they all tend to turn out looking like soot spirits.]

No-Bake Noodle Cookies

Things you'll need:

chocolate and peanut butter chips (about 1 cup total)

chow mein noodles (about 1 ½ cups)

peanuts (maybe ½ a cup)

raisins (maybe ¼ cup)

(Sorry Aunt Gwen, I think you told me on Christmas how much of each was in there. Anyone who knows, feel free to leave me a comment on the amounts and I'll update the ingredients list.)

Microwave all ingredients together for 1 – 1½ minutes. Mix well.
Dollop teaspoon sized cookies onto waxed paper. Cover and press with a second sheet of wax paper. Seal and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before eating.

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

To the Cat’s Taste

2007-12-29T20:54:00.001-05:00

In retrospect, I think I unconsciously created an English (or English Major nerd?) theme this week. First, there were tea cookies (bite- and toddler-sized, in my version), followed by the actual tea on Thursday. Today, I couldn't resist the urge to try something out of To the Queen's Taste: Poached Salmon.

The thing I love about this cookbook is that it includes an original, Elizabethan recipe, as well as a "modern" (circa 1976) adaptation of the recipe by Lorna J. Sass, the book's author. In most cases, the Elizabethan version assumes a high level of self-confidence: cooking time and measurements are subjective, or entirely absent. Thankfully, the author lists her own measurements and times. This particular recipe, as well as being enhanced by modern conveniences like measurements, also could translate just fine to a portable burner.

[Illustration of how to skin a fish, from the late 16th century.]

Sass calls this a "delicate preparation," in which the beer and rosemary end up as the strongest flavors. The salmon tasted light, maybe even a little dry, but it went well with brown or wild rice. And the cats loved it. All three of our clowder were circling the table. Occasionally – though only for mere moments before they were scooped back onto laps – even circling on the table. It's normal for them to beg, as we're all suckers for the Puss in Boots routine, but it's definitely not normal for them to act like we just bombed the carpet in catnip. I guess that makes this recipe people tested and cat approved (hah).

[Once sated, this one just wanted to nap, and didn't much appreciate having her picture taken.]

Elizabethan Poached Salmon

((very slightly) adapted from To the Queen's Taste)

Things raided from the pantry:

¾ cup water

¾ cup beer (dark beer works well)

2 tablespoons parsley

¼ teaspoon rosemary

¼ teaspoon thyme

¼ teaspoon salt

vinegar

3-4 salmon steaks

Combine all ingredients sans fish in a large saucepan. Bring up to a boil, then down to simmer for 5 minutes.
Add fish to pan, ladling liberally with broth, top with extra sprinklings of rosemary, thyme, and parsley.
Cover fish and poach for 8-10 minutes.

Or the original, from The Good Huswives Handmaid (1588)

To seeth Fresh Salmon Take a little water, and as much Beere and salt, and put thereto Parsley, Time and Rosemarie, and let all these boyle togethere. Then put in your Salmon, and make your broth Sharpe with some Vinigar.

Enjoy!

I’ve a Little Teapot

2007-12-27T18:24:00.001-05:00

I've never been a coffee person. Tea, I've found, tastes as good as it smells, and goes much better with cookies, smelly cheese, itty-bitty sandwiches, sushi, and curried eggplant. There are at least ten boxes of the usual tea bag suspects in the pantry here at home - from lemon zinger to Irish Breakfast. At school, I wouldn't even want to guess the number. There's maple sugar, chai, and Prince of Wales for sure, plus a delicate Australian tea squirreled away behind the baked beans. I suppose, in my warm and fuzzy love of tea, I'm a pretty typical English major.

For Christmas, among other, non-food related, things, I got this pretty little teapot that will fit perfectly on the crowded workspace of my desk. It came with a packet of black tea (with banana, pineapple, passion fruit, and mango), which lasted for two cups (well, one and a half, because my tea cup was actually a little bigger than the tea pot). Full-bodied and lingeringly sweet, tasting more like flowers than fruit, really. In color, it was a perfect complement to the evergreen I cut from the yard, but it tasted of a tropical summer.

Sometime over break, while I have a full oven and stovetop, I want to try some recipes out of my new cookbooks – The Best Ever Three & Four Ingredient Cookbook and To the Queen's Taste: Elizabethan feasts and recipes. For now, it's off to sushi with my high school friends and time for that second cup of tea.

Christmas Morning Cookies

2007-12-25T13:34:00.001-05:00

I found this recipe weeks ago in Cooking Light and it looked perfect for Christmas morning. The delicate blend of chai spices meets the buttery, crumble-iciousness of shortbread. I'm at home and have a real stove for the next three and a half weeks, which has been a real treat. (Although I have been away for more time than I've been home, this Winter Break.) I'll definitely have to try these back at school in the t.o. sometime to see if these cookies are dorm room ready (or not, they may become muffins, or scones – toaster ovens are picky sometimes). Nothing is better than fresh baked goods on Christmas morning, tempting aromas wafting through the house (and setting off the smoke alarms, twice, though no burned cookies, thankfully).

Chai Shortbread Cookies

Things raided from the pantry:

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Dash of ground cloves
Dash of freshly ground black pepper

¾ cup powdered sugar
10 tablespoon softened butter

1 tablespoon ice water

Combine flour and spices (except sugar), stirring well with a whisk.
Beat sugar and butter with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating at low speed until combined but still crumbly.
Sprinkle dough with the water; toss with a fork. Divide dough in half. Shape dough into 2 (6-inch-long) logs; wrap each log in plastic wrap. Chill 1 hour or until very firm.
Preheat oven to 375°. Unwrap dough logs and cut each log into 18 slices using a serrated knife.
Bake at 375° for 9 minutes. (Cooking Light says on parchment paper, which keeps the bottoms from burning or sticking, but I didn't have any, and found that the bottoms browned, but didn't burn or stick at all.) Cool on pans 5 minutes. Remove cookies from pans; cool completely on wire racks.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

C is for Cookie

2007-12-13T14:29:00.001-05:00

I think I may be going soft: I was happy with the dining hall today. I haven't been happy with the dining hall for the past year and a half (coincidently, ever since it came under the management of Chartwells). If there are vegetable options (and not just potatoes and corn, which, frankly, just don't count because of their high starch content) they are soggy and unseasoned. I've pretty much stopped going to lunch and breakfast because the choices are so often the same, and so often super greasy and covered in cheese. Not today.

In about two hours I'll be headed down the road home for Winter Break (who am I kidding, probably four hours, seeing as I have yet to pack anything at all). I didn't really have time to prepare anything for ABS today. And, miraculously, the dining hall came through for me. Exam week is the most extreme week for the dining hall; I've found that the quality vacillates more during this time than at any other during the semester. Like me, they're most likely trying to use up all of their food before we all leave for break. Dinner has suffered – I've been eating French fries and pudding for the past two days. But the cookies, oh the cookies.

Every year during exam week, the dining hall stops serving dry cheesecake and mutilated pie to devote their energies to the Annual Cookie Box. At the back of the main room, they set up a beautiful gingerbread house surrounded by a deep tray that covers one long table. And fill it with deliciousness. And then refill it every lunch and dinner period.

[The lunch shift survivors. Imagine this covered in cookies. Then multiply by two.]

I took these photos at lunch today, after the box had been picked down to bare bones, though Kathy managed to snag the last of the sugar cookies from the lunch offering. Even though they were the last, these vanilla sugar cookies (with cocoanut frosting!) were just as good as the first, and miles above the usual cookie offerings during the rest of the semester. I'm glad I'm going home, actually, because I think I may develop an addiction if I eat any more of these.

Shoremen: Enjoy the cookie box while you can; non-shoremen: Enjoy the holidays!

* ABS will continue to post over the next month, though I won't be able to post on Tuesday (and maybe also Thursday) of next week: I'll be in Las Vegas!

The Sun's as Warm as a Baked Potato

2007-12-11T22:49:00.001-05:00

The king returned tonight to the ABS kitchen, this time in the form of one of my favorite Jewish traditions: latkes. Hanukkah came around early this year, smugly plunking itself down in the eight most hectic nights of my school year: smack dab in the middle of both the last week of class and my entire exam schedule (exams also came early for me this year). My brain right now feels as deep fried and smushed as, well, potato pancakes, really.

I've been in the kitchen before when latkes were made, usually when my dad's family visited for one of the holidays. Hanukkah and Passover, though, were always spent up at my aunt's house, an hour and a half drive up the turnpike into Amish country. My aunt always invited friends from her Synagogue to join us. Most times they were cool – I remember one couple who leapt up on the spur of the moment and just started waltzing – and sometimes they were just… eccentric – like the one who put a (hopefully unloaded) gun on the Seder plate for… who knows what symbolic purpose. Back in those days, I was less interested in food than I was in Nerf guns, or Cannibal the Musical(the title is a quote from the theme song, btw),or any other excuse to escape the weird and wonderful adult society downstairs for the equally madcap world of the cousins upstairs. I know I'm mixing holidays, talking about Hanukkah and Passover in one breath, but I remember less of the actual ceremonies than I do of the people, who are stubbornly refusing to fall into any sort of calendar organization. Although I wasn't as into it at the time, though, the good food is now the part that I want to connect to.

As I said, I've seen latkes made and eaten them fresh from the family kitchen. And I've certainly harped to my friends when the dining hall attempts them (always soggy from those unforgiving steam trays). But. This was the first attempt. And I decided to try them with our leftover sweet potatoes, which are juicier than regular potatoes, requiring more brain cohesion than I've got right now to keep them the right shape. I forgot (though I will never again) that cast iron skillet handles get HOT. I relearned this when I tried to faithfully follow the mash-up of online recipes I'd found, which told me this step was very important. Well, yes, important to add more oil and butter each time, as that wears off, but important to have a spiffy, clean pan? No, that can only end in tears (or a very firm jaw clenching to stave them off, followed by cold water). And besides, I didn't find that my latkes stuck any more often with a dirty pan, so I just couldn't see the point. Oy vey. That's enough griping from the peanut gallery, I'll let you get on to the sweet stuff.

Sweet Potato Latkes

(recipe cobbled together from these two at Epicurious.com)

Things you can snitch from the dining hall:

6 tablespoons butter

½ cup shredded onion

Things you will probably have to buy:

2 large sweet potatoes

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon pepper

2 teaspoons salt

6 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

Using a cheese grater, coarsely grate the sweet potatoes. Chop the onions to roughly the same size as the potato peelings. Combine both in a colander and press out as much liquid as possible.
Whisk together the eggs, flour, and spices.
By hand, work together the drained potato mixture and the egg-flour mixture until mostly mixed, just on the edge of totally mushy. (This process is called 'goozing' in my family.) You should still be able to see individual potato peelings.
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat until all the butter is liquefied.
Press goozed potato mixture into a ¼ cup measuring cup, then plop down directly into the boiling oil. Flatten with a slotted spatula.
Fry the latkes for 5 minutes per side, flattening them again (to get out excess moisture) with a spatula when you flip them.
Cool latkes on a paper towel to absorb excess cooking oil.
Add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of oil after every batch of latkes.
Serve as they are cooked, hot, or reheat in the toaster oven on warm for later. These sweet potato versions go great with a saltier dip like Ranch dressing, French onion dip, or Salsa

Enjoy!

My Toaster Oven (Which Is Magical)

2007-12-08T20:10:00.001-05:00

My toaster oven is my favorite piece in the suite's kitchenette. Our teeny tiny workspace came with a small refrigerator, sink, and microwave. And about one foot of counter space. College juniors and seniors cannot be trusted with ovens or stovetops; we'd obviously be blowing up buildings because we haven't evolved from our high school chemistry days of (intentionally) failed Bunsen burner experiments. On a tour of my future home for nine months in the spring of sophomore year, I started drawing up mental lists. Microwave cart for extra counter space, the unused rice cooker from my parent's pantry, maybe some portable burners, a nice wok, and, definitely, a toaster oven. A BIG toaster oven.

[Wok, wok, wok! P.S. My hand looks really weird in this picture! :-P]

And I got one. It was my main birthday present that summer. It was big enough to fit a nine-inch pizza (which I finally tested this November) or a mini-meatloaf pan. But it also does things that it shouldn't be able to do, magic things.

This is the time of year when I stop going to the grocery store twice per week (I am terrible at planning lists in advance and always manage to forget the ginger root). Instead, because I really don't feel like transporting home ¼ of the refrigerator along with my essentials when I drive home for Winter Break, I try to use up everything perishable. Everything. So I saw this half-bag of cookie dough in the back of the fridge, and thought I'd like to try making more of my cheesecakes with a variation on the crust. The result was passably tasty, as my guinea pig suitemates avow, but seriously skewed my ideas of how toasters ovens actually work.

I started with a thin layer of cookie dough (chocolate chip) lining the tins of a muffin tray, popped them into the t.o. for 6 minutes, and out came… muffin-like things. What? I guess maybe there isn't as much difference as I thought between muffins and cookies. The only other explanation (which makes more sense, considering the incredible variety of food it can cook) is that my toaster oven is magic. I feel like this could easily be true, and maybe not even limited to my own t.o. You see, a similar thing happened to one of my suitemates: she was baking cookies, and got scones. I like to think about toaster ovens as magic, because that would make me a magician. Coolness!

“Spoon Day”

2007-12-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

Last week I heard word that today was Spoon Day, which I thought sounded fun in part because of the utensil's unique inspirational quality. (See Exhibit A: spoons the game, Spoon, spooning). In their own right, spoons are pretty awesome utensils: they're both functional and fashionable (See Exhibit B: strangers on the internet).

I had to know, though, about this "Spoon Day" before ABS promoted it. I had questions: National or International? Soup or tea? Calendarized or Facebook Legend? I couldn't find Spoon Day in International or National or Annual flavors anywhere. As near as I can tell, Spoon Day is, unfortunately, the stuff of Facebook Legend. And it may or may not occur on the last Friday in April, and goes under the alias of National Spooning Day. I am immediately skeptical of Facebook-only fads, however, in this case perhaps an exception can be made. Because they have t-shirts, they must be real.

While the authenticity of Thursday, December 6^th as "Spoon Day" has yet to be confirmed, I feel like getting in the spirit. Although, now that I've dithered back and forth over what Spoon Day may be, I feel that I must interject this one point: spoons are sexy (See Exhibit C).

[Exhibit C: Baby Got Back.]

This fact jumped out at me last summer when I first saw the ones I knew I had to have as my own. After a long day of thrift store shopping, I came across three blue bins in the dusty back aisle of the Goodwill. Inside each were teetering piles of unorganized flatware. Some sets were scotch-taped together, but the vast majority of the horde were all jumbled together, spoons with knives, forks running wild. But sticking out of the top of one bin, there was one spoon that caught my eye and winked at me. A thunderous jangle accompanied my tussle to set it free, a struggle made worthwhile by the lovely Art Deco styling of the handle. There were no others like it to make a full set, so instead I set about to find four of each of the three basic utensils, no two exactly alike, to bring to college this semester.

Even if it is not "Spoon Day," and especially if it is, I wanted the excuse to share my extra sexy spoons. I had also thought it would be a perfect lead in to talking about my toaster oven and the other kitchen paraphernalia here at the ABS suite (apparently it is Microwave Oven Day, but microwaves definitely aren't sexy enough). It seems I had more to say about spoons (and Facebook) than I ever thought I'd need to say. Well, my toaster oven (which is magical) next time. Tuesday: sweet potato latkes, just in time for the last night of Hanukkah!

Enjoy (something delicious with a spoon)!

One Hundred Almond Curry

2007-12-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

To celebrate the first day of the last week of classes, last night I led a team of intrepid Children's Lit scholars through a three hour cooking obstacle course. The reward was the best homemade Indian food I've ever had. I got the recipe from The Traveler's Lunchbox, and she got it from Niloufer Ichaporia King's cookbook. When I read Melissa's post and realized that I had almost all of the ingredients in my kitchen (chicken thighs on the bone, coriander seeds, almonds, coconut milk, black peppercorn) and had never tried to make a masala before… I knew it was time. (I'd say it was love at first bite if I didn't realize how ridiculously corny that sounds.)

My feet ache from standing around on the linoleum in my socks for the entire length of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (our marathon cooking background movie). When I exhale, my mouth waters from the rich explosion of spices still lingering in my breath. Imagine the sweet milky scent of almonds commingling with the toasted sting of red chili peppers and sharp, warm cinnamon. Right about now I wish that blogs had smell-o-vision.

(For recipe and a thorough investigation of Parsi cuisine, see original The Traveler's Lunchbox post. Sorry guys, this one is not dining hall-shopping friendly.)

Enjoy!

Roots Part II

2007-12-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

My mom sent me these pictures of the farm. The first four are from the late, late eighties or early, early nineties. The last three are much more recent.

Enjoy!

Guess who!

My brother, back when pink shorts were cool.

The barn, where there were once pigs. Apparently I, also, stood on the wall outside the pig yard.

This is the farm house from the 1800s. Nobody lives in it anymore, obviously, but it is still standing, which is pretty amazing.

Frank and Aunt Nancy in front of the cabin. You can see how tiny it is.

It's teeny tiny, but the photo is of the "Shatzer Down Lane" sign. (Click for a slightly bigger version.)

Mammaw and Frank talking peaches.

Roots

2007-12-01T20:05:00.001-05:00

I feel like I'm going backwards this week. With the method of how I'm going about this impromptu "theme week," I mean. Because today – after starting with a (minimally) involved dinner and following that with a (token) effort in a salad – I just felt like eating my apple. Unfooled around with.

So maybe I should rewind a little further and tell you why I need to not cook with this one, why these apples are special to me. It's not just because of taste. There are other apples I love, of course, (Pink Ladies, last summer's fad fruit for example). But I don't know them the way that I know Winesaps. You could say that Winesaps are in my blood.

I have a little family history story to share. Thanks to le internet and conversations with my grandmother's cousins, I know that in 1779, my maternal family first moved to Washington County, Maryland, starting the farm that I have visited twice a year since I was a child. Although the family didn't purchase the main portion of the land that's the farm I knew until 1831, the original farm house is still on the property, right next to the new(er), lived-in farm houses.

What's not on the website is Frank's crinkle-eyed smile and hugs for the too long absent Baltimore relatives when we make our pilgrimages in peach and apple seasons. Or how the name Elizabeth (who married Jacob Shatzer and lived on the farm in the 1870's) still survives as a family middle name (my mother and I share it). When I was a very little girl, there were still pigs on the farm, which I only remember because my brother Alex walked along the stone wall of their pen while I poked around their corn-cob feed pile. Of course, that story's not as well remembered as the time he got pseudo-electrocuted on the live cow pasture fence. Understandably so.

There are still some cows along the lane – which although it apparently has a real street name, I've always known it by the hand-made "Shatzer Down Lane" sign and prefer that name, honestly – but the main product of the farm these days are summer peaches and fall Winesap apples. Twice a year we journey back to our motherland up near the Pennsylvania border, returning with new histories and at least a half bushel of whatever's in season.

Before I even knew what they were called, I knew those apples as part of my extended family. And tonight they're perfect just the way they are.

A Salad Fit for a Winesap

2007-11-29T19:02:00.000-05:00

After Thanksgiving break, my aunt sent me back to school with my favorite apples, the Stayman Winesap that I've already used once. I love how crisp they are, and how the promise from the rich, wine-like apple smell is so fully delivered in every bite. My aunt, knowing well my affinity for them, gifted me with three of these fragrant beauties. Three, which just happened to be the number of weekly updates for ABS. I knew that it was time for a long overdue apple week (for real this time Aubrey, though I'm sure your Fall Break apples are long gone now).

No cooking involved in this salad dish, rather a balancing of the delicate, dry flavor of the Winesaps with the tangy, sweet, crunchy, savory, and fresh flavors of the rest of the salad. The cheese in particular required some hands on attention – I acquired a French manicure of crumbled feta to prove it. The juxtaposition of all of the competing elements of the salad itself required a dressing that could both hold its own and keep those elements as the focal point. It also needed to be something out of my fridge, because with two weeks left to this semester, it's time to start working on whittling away at the perishables. For instance, all of the salad ingredients – barring the fresh apples I brought back after break – came from the dining hall at one time or another. The dressing conundrum ended up solving itself through this school-fueled necessity: a bottle of pomegranate and hibiscus vinaigrette that's been living in the suite's refrigerator since August. Extra pungent from sitting for three months, but still sweet from the pomegranate. Even now, I'm not sure what a hibiscus flower tastes like exactly, so I can't speak for how well that held up. In any case, I was glad to use another serving or two of my dressing, which turned out to be a complimentary, but not overpowering flavor for the whole dish.

I liked my apple salad so much I ate two and a half servings in one sitting. But hey, I figure I'm allowed to pig out on fruits and veggies. Maybe it'll even make up for the four snickers bars I had for breakfast, followed by a take-out box full of dining hall French fries for lunch. Two and a half salads balances that mess out, right?

Maybe I outta drink a V8, just to be on the safe side.

Fall Apple Salad

Things you can pocket at the dining hall:

2 cups spring greens mix

¼ cup feta cheese

1/3 cup Craisins

½ cup croutons

Things you can get elsewhere:

1 Stayman Winesap apple

pomegranate hibiscus vinaigrette dressing

Arrange salad in layers, starting with the greens and ending with the feta. Sprinkle lightly with dressing. (If you go too heavy, the greens will start looking wilty and unappetizing. Plus the feta really becomes a star flavor when it isn't competing so much with a flood of dressing.)

Enjoy!

For Love of Leftovers

2007-11-27T23:28:00.001-05:00

"I guess I should wait until you leave to lick the plate." – Emma

If you hadn't guessed, my very favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal is the stuffing. My great-grandmother's herb dressing recipe, my aunt's James Beard dressing, traditional cubed stuffing cooked in the bird like my dad's. It doesn't matter the form, they're all beautiful and unique. Like snowflakes, except, you know, delicious. I love stuffing so much that I ate it (not leftover dessert or even cranberry sauce) for breakfast until Sunday, when I had to leave the leftovers behind and come back to school.

There's pretty much nothing that needs to be done to stuffing for it to be enjoyable leftovers. Microwaving's the most messing with it that I'll allow. The turkey on the other hand, that is prime for remixing. Turkey is not my favorite fowl. Cooked right, it can have a crispy, succulent skin like duck and rich dark meat reminiscent of a nice capon chicken. Yet I can't find an apt description of good turkey without heavily relying on comparisons to other bird flesh. On Thanksgiving, there's plenty of cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, and yes, of course, stuffing, to lend it flavor. After Thanksgiving, all of its compliments run away to reinvent themselves as breakfast solo acts. And then you're left with literally pounds of neglected turkey. That's when the creative remixing comes into play.

Of course I know that I'm not alone in my quest for new methods of turkey recycling. After I found the following curried apple pita recipe in my copy of Fast, Cheap & Easy (discovered at a Pennsylvanian Amish market last summer) and served up the fragrant lovelies with an extra twist of sweetness in the form of vanilla yogurt and some drizzled Fireweed honey, I snooped around the internet to find other solutions to extraneous Thanksgiving bounty. I didn't have to look very long.

Over on Slashfood, leftover remix recipes have been featured with their own tagged category. This week, Bob Sassone asked

"But what's the fun of making a big turkey if you're not going to make soups and sandwiches and pot pies with the leftovers?!"

Here, here.

He was responding to this Jill Hunter Pellettieri article over on the Slate magazine site, which posits:

"In some ways, the leftover feast is as sacred as the meal itself. The guests have left, you've cozied up in your PJs, and the only remaining company is your closest family, the people you love most. There's the huddling around the Tupperware as you all seek the perfect bite of cold stuffing; the soft hum of the microwave in the otherwise quiet house as it warms the mashed potatoes; the smell of toasted bread slathered with mayo for the perfect turkey sandwich (sandwiches are, in my mind, the only acceptable use of leftovers)."

Well, partially. She's spot on about the stuffing. It would be sacrilegious to mess around with that. But earlier in the article, she also claims that the turkey itself is "often dried out" and that chicken is "more flavorful, more manageable." I don't think that finding new use for turkey need take anything away from the day itself. Although it is the centerpiece of the table, the Thanksgiving turkey is still just one symbol out of many, eaten for tradition, not for flavor. And isn't it better to find ways to enjoy all of it, rather than rehashing the same meal in microwaved form until you are so sick of it that you toss whatever's left?

I'm certainly a proponent of finding new flavors to accent leftover turkey. Last night I made this for a gathering of friends hanging out in the suite. We weren't in our PJs, and I definitely needed more than the microwave, but I think we found that cozy, thankful, meditative place to which Pellettieri aspires.

Curry Apple Turkey Pita

(recipe adapted from Fast, Cheap & Easy)

Things you can pocket at the dining hall:

1 cup sliced onion

16 lemon wedges (or 2 lemons)

½ pound cooked turkey

4 pita bread rounds

Things you could buy at the store:

1 Tablespoon yellow curry powder

½ cup vanilla yogurt

4 Tablespoons Fireweed honey

1 apple (Stayman Winesap variety)

Zest and juice the lemons, discard seeds. Warm oil over medium to low heat.
Add lemon juice, zest, and onions, stirring continuously until onions are limp (or "tender" as a cookbook would call them).
Shred cooked turkey and mix it and the curry powder into the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes.
Move pan away from the heat, slice and mix in your apple.
Spread vanilla yogurt inside pita pocket (or cut pitas into sandwich slices and spread like mayonaise if they have no pockets, like mine). Drizzle honey inside (not outside, unless you want honey all over your face), close pita, and eat.

Enjoy!

Turkey Day the Second

2007-11-24T16:47:00.000-05:00

I think I may have a freakish fondness for stuffing. Despite what the name implies, yesterday on Turkey Day 2 I was again able to gorge myself on stuffing of two different kinds to the point where my plate of seconds was only stuffing. And then had room for two desserts. And ate stuffing for breakfast for the past two days. Maybe I just have a natural, or seasonal, competitive eater's stomach. Or maybe it was because my aunt made a James Beard stuffing and it totally rocked.

As much as I could praise the turkey, or the green bean casserole, or the cranberry sauce, or the mashed potatoes (all of them gloriously evocative of Thanksgivings past), the best part of any Thanksgiving has to be eating the food with family. Meals without company can be indulgent and filling, but they can never be as satisfying as a meal shared. This Thanksgiving I got the chance to surround myself with family three times, and remind myself just exactly where all of my different roots are. My cousins on dad's side may be on Myspace and Facebook, but nothing really compares with being in the same room with them for story-telling. Just like frost-your-own cupcake day can't ever fairly be judged against frosting a homemade carrot cake with my aunt in the kitchen I grew up in.

It's almost unfair, giving college students less than a week to be home to enjoy the holiday, and its leftovers. In three weeks I'll be home again for Winter break. Until then, I’ve got Dad’s Marshall Field’s turkey leftover sandwiches to tide me over. Still tastes like Thanksgiving in my house and I’m feeling good.

Turkey Day the First: Stuffed to Perfection

2007-11-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

Thankfulness comes in the form of a full belly. And in a blessedly elastic belly. Power-napping does wonders to expand the appetite. This afternoon started with hand-mashing potatoes and salad arranging. Dinner number one - with my maternal grandmother, aunt, mom, and step-dad - was relaxed, quiet, and crispily delicious. Especially the stuffing (or dressing, as Mammaw calls it). Mammaw whupped up the cream for our pumpkin and black cherry pies (from the local Amish market, and yes, I meant 'whupped'). Preparations had started the night before, as had the eating (the stuffing was just that good), and when we were all finally at the table, we shared our news and tucked into our feast in a collective sigh of contentment.

Dinner number two - comprising at peak times 30-35 representatives of my step-dad's family - was three long tables of traditional Thanksgiving feast foods (sans sauerkraut, thank goodness) and joyful toddler shrieks, catching-up and keeping up. My mom, step-dad, and I tried our luck at the themed quiz - glad I'm not alive during the original thanks-givers' times, I like forks! - while we polished off our plates. The youngest family members kept all entertained with bubbly laughter and bumps and bruises and drawings and general adorableness. As we left for our car, warmed from the furnace of post-feasting digestion, I was thankful for all of it, and for having the chance to reprise this holiday not only twice, but a third time again tomorrow with my dad's side of the family.

For now, it's time to pass out again - I feel like I've got stuffing for brains (mmm… stuffing) - and let my weary appetite replenish itself in time for Turkey Day, the sequel. See you on Saturday with more utterly gluttonous indulgence. Enjoy!

Mammaw whupping the cream. So delicious.

Power-napping between first dessert and second dinner. I'm turning into such a hobbit.

And this was only my table - multiply by three for the full effect. I was stuffed like a turducken, but I had to at least try everything on the table. Couldn't resist the bacon in the lima beans.

Shark + Knife = cooler than the pilgrims.

Fruit Salad Mish-Mash

2007-11-20T22:08:00.001-05:00

This evening before I leave for Thanksgiving break, one of my classes met for a pot-luck movie night. Our professor's wife made the main dish: lasagna. Other students brought bread, wine, and dessert. I couldn't be left out in the food making, of course. My contribution: fruit salad.

As far as party food goes, fruit salad has become a rather ubiquitous side dish, so I wanted to do something special to spice it up. Undertake a quest, if you will.

Step 1: recruit as many fruit salad recipes as humanly possible in half an hour's internet and cookbook trolling. I had originally planned to allot a few more half hours to this task, but the sheer numbers enlisted in the online fruit salad recipe army made step 2 a lot easier.

Step 2: amalgamate said recipes into something otherworldly. I had the germ of an idea from Kids Cooking: A very slightly messy manual: make this into ambrosia (how lofty is that?) by adding a sour cream/marshmallow/cocoanut mixture. Other recipes online seem to echo my slightly messy manual, including one that can't help but remind me that there really isn't all that much cooking to do with most fruit salads. Time to crack open the spice jars (and some fireweed honey from this year's Maryland Renaissance Festival) and get experimenting.

Step 3: fully realize my kitchenette's impracticality as a fruit salad laboratory. One 2 x 3 countertop workspace gets really, really tight when you've got to break out the mixing bowls in multiples. I tried six variations on sour cream, lemon zest, vanilla extract, nutmeg, allspice, marshmallow fluff, cocoanut nectar, and fireweed honey. The winner scrapped the vanilla extract, fluff, and cocoanut, which overpowered the fruit with too much sugary-sweetness and not enough punch.

Step 4:

Fruit Salad Mish-Mash

Things bought at the store:

1 lemon

½ teaspoon all spice

¾ teaspoon nutmeg

1 ½ teaspoon fireweed honey

Things nicked from the dining hall:

¾ cup sour cream

4 gala apples

2 navel oranges

4 bananas

½ cup strawberries

Zest and juice the lemon. For zesting, grate the skin down to the white, but do not use the white (the pith) as it is simply not good tasting. Juice the lemon into the serving bowl.
Blend sour cream, spices, honey, and lemon zest together until creamy.
Peel and cube fruit into even sized chunks, starting with oranges, then apples, then bananas, adding each to the lemon juice in the bowl as you finish.
Gently mix everything together and refrigerate 2-3 hours before serving.

Step 5: Enjoy!

Bick-its

2007-11-17T20:41:00.001-05:00

On special occasions and at least once whenever our relatives from Maine visit, my grandmother makes meatloaf and these biscuits. They're as much a staple of my childhood as sweet potato casserole, chicken pot pie, pinwheel cookies, or (yes, even) spaghetti. I love them more than cheesecake, saving room for at least four or five at the end of any meal they grace with their presence. These biscuits (or in our quirky rural-Mason-Dixon-line-farm meets Northern-Ball-mer (Baltimore) meets Towsonite-suburbia slang: bick-its) don't have anything fancy about them, they aren't exotic, or even particularly unique in recipe from other baking powder biscuits (in fact, the baking powder I used had nearly this recipe printed directly on the side) – but in the eight or so minutes that they spend in the toaster oven, they transform from just anybody's dough to my Mammaw's biscuits.

I don't know how they do it, but they do. When I smell the crisping dough, I am instantly transported back to my grandparents' rancher, Mainer cousins at my side making stick-and-duct tape swords, or careening around the basement on the old red tricycle, or messing around with the pop-O-matic on the Trouble set. My memories are almost always linked in to food, a mutually beneficial relationship for both of us. Yet even without twenty-odd years of memories tied in to these biscuits, they still smell doughy and rich coming out of the toaster oven, and make excellent jam and butter vehicles, as my suitemate remarked while she scarfed down six of them.

Baking Powder Biscuits Bick-its

Repurposed from the dining hall:

1 cup milk

½ teaspoon salt

Bought at the store:

2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

4 tablespoons shortening

Sift flour, salt, and baking powder together. Use a colander over a large bowl or pot, tightly holding colander and bowl or pot together at the rims and shaking side to side, thus avoiding turning your kitchen or dorm room into a flour bomb detonation zone.
Cut in shortening with two knives until it is mostly mixed but still a little lumpy.
Pour in milk and stir until all dry matter is absorbed.
Drop rough, tablespoon-sized portions onto an ungreased baking tray. Bake 7-8 minutes on 450^O F in the toaster oven. Yields 30 biscuits, though only 24 are pictured because my suitemate ate 6 before I took pictures. : )

Enjoy!

The Best Vegetable

2007-11-15T19:28:00.000-05:00

Throughout my childhood, sweet potato casserole reigned king of the tubers at my family's Thanksgiving table. It's a ritual: a mere half hour before the meal my stomach will roil in need of that salty sweet perfume wafting up the stairs from the kitchen, but I have to wait, or burn my fingers on the oven-hot, sweet potato innards. My mom's recipe, one from Bette Haney – who originally had it from Mrs. Maggie Schenault of Alabama – clipped from a newspaper, is a dessert that needs no marshmallow fluff because it's really a pie without a bottom crust masquerading as a vegetable. My favorite Thanksgiving vegetable.

One year my mom tried to make baked acorn squash instead of my sweet potatoes. My whole family had been changing up the traditions for a few years, most memorably swapping one giant turkey – difficult to roast without drying it out – for a couple of capon chickens, and adding in my step-dad's carrot soufflé. I love that soufflé (another cleverly disguised dessert mingling with the dinner foods) and I did like the baked acorn squash (though I probably eye rolled through it that first year). Still, my sweet potatoes had that mythic cloak curling coyly about them from the time when adults went into the kitchen and feasts magically came out, all while I played with Barbies and half-listened to the parade on TV.

Bette Haney's Sweet-Potato Casserole with Praline Topping

(Halved for toaster oven convenience.)

Bought at the store:

Potato Mixture:

1 ½ large eggs (I know, half an egg, right? But if you pour it out and then divide half off to not use, it works.)

2 lbs sweet potatoes (Although if they've still got leftover sweet potatoes in the dining hall, they'd save you a bunch of steps and time. You'd just have to scrape off any offending marshmallow bits before use.)

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup melted butter

2 ½ Tablespoons heavy whipping cream

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon allspice

Topping:

½ cup packed light-brown sugar (You'll want to do the packing, it'll give you more sugar if you cram the measuring cup full than if it's just loose.)

1 ½ Tablespoons flour

¼ cup finely chopped pecans

1 ½ Tablespoons softened butter

Peel, boil until soft, drain, and mash the potatoes. Or clean 2 lbs of dining hall cooked sweet potatoes and start from there.
Beat potatoes and eggs together (make sure you've got a big bowl for this). Mix in remaining Potato Mixture ingredients until you've got a smooth paste.
For the Topping, stir sugar, flour, and pecans together. Work in the softened butter.
Pour Potato Mixture into a greased baking dish. Sprinkle Topping evenly over everything.
Bake 50-60 minutes at 350^O F until the topping is browned and bubbling and sending out perfumed feelers.
Arrange loose pecan halves in a pattern on top.

Enjoy!

A Rocky Courtship

2007-11-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

Ah, Dining Hall. This month, you've been reaching out to students, showcasing just exactly how far you can push your limits. Unfortunately, while you've had some successes, you've managed to reinforce to your student body just what those limits are.

Last week, Thursday night: Japanese Dinner. It shouldn't be unreasonable to get dinner from a buffet line in less than twenty minutes. It shouldn't be unreasonable to serve the advertised foods for more than the first hour of a three hour event. I'm speaking here about the "dumplings" everyone was talking about when I got to the MDR at 5:40 PM. I never did get to eat them. The tray was steaming empty when I arrived, and wasn't refilled until halfway through my forty minute wait in the sushi line. And then you filled it with pirogues. I didn't get any miso soup, either, because that was gone when I got out of the forty minute sushi line, replaced with an unidentified chowder.

I realize that the dining hall was especially full (perhaps the advertising worked a little too well?). I realize that you are patiently waiting for the college to get around to your renovations (After, of course, we get a new stadium, new dorms, new parking lots, and a new fountain. Those things rightfully come before renovating the one building on campus that 99% of students use daily.) so that you can better serve the growing student body. However, Dining Hall, I expect you to learn from this experience not that student-WCDS collaborations are inherently doomed – although I was fairly upset about the length of time spent in the sushi line (which was forty minutes, I counted), the sushi was wonderful.

The ingredients were fresh, the rolls expertly made, and the design-your-own roll idea was a special treat for sushi lovers – but that in your current state, if you cannot feed so many people with the specialty of the day, then maybe you should pick a different specialty.

Tonight, Tuesday night, for example: Thanksgiving dinner. This was definitely your specialty.
I thoroughly enjoyed the orange peel cranberry sauce, the garlic mashed potatoes, the seafood and crab bisque, and those rolls. The rolls were exactly what rolls should be – crunchy, butter-glazed outsides and soft, sour dough insides. Perfect. There were less than perfect things. I think in this case, more than any other, tradition is against you. You are competing against Mom's sweet potatoes, Dad's turkey, Aunt Nancy and Mammaw's stuffing. Honestly, I commend you for even trying to compete against those heavy-weights.

Most of all, though, your Thanksgiving dinner reminded me of a promise I'd made to myself when I started this blog: to find a way to make some of my favorite family recipes in my limited kitchen and bring a little bit of home to Washington College. Dining Hall, I may not see you Thursday night. I send my regrets, but I have a date with a sweet potato.

Pepper-stuffed-Apple-stuffed-Peppers

2007-11-10T21:05:00.000-05:00

These are not your typical stuffed peppers. I've never liked stuffed peppers. Probably because they taste like Bad Mexican. Bad Mexican is heavy on melted cheese, heavy on greasy beef, and manages to taste like beans no matter what is in it. Bad Mexican is unhappy American food that changed its name (Good Mexican, of course, doesn't get better than beef quesadillas at Frisco Burrito in Towson. Super fresh sour cream; succulent, sizzling beef; otherworldly pico de gallo; and perfectly crisped tortillas. If you've had them, you know what I mean and why I don't feel bad about giving them free advertising. If you haven't: it's time for a pilgrimage.)

I don't like not liking food. I needed to take the Bad Mexican out of the stuffed pepper. I needed to use the fresh ingredients taking over our kitchen closets.

I ended up with a sweet, vegetarian friendly twist on a savory, bean-y staple of the Bad Mexican type. Instead of rice, I used pumpernickel bread to fill out the stuffing, and instead of melty nacho cheese or tomato sauce to bind it all together, I used mustard. I was first introduced to the delight of apples in spicy mustard one July when it was time to use up ungifted Christmas gift basket non-perishables. What I wanted was an excuse to throw out some dreadfully pungent and therefore unusable mustard (and I've always been a ketchup girl, anyway). Apparently, dreadfully pungent mustard plus super sweet apples equals delightfully stimulated taste buds on both the sweet and tangy receptors which makes mouths happy. I wanted to carry that experience over to my stuffed pepper makeover, so I replaced the beef (which in this sort of preparation tends to be greasy no matter what the cook does) with apples and peppers. Kind of like stuffing a turkey with minced turkey innards, I guess.

I can't think of stuffed peppers as Bad Mexican anymore; I can only think of this, and that's a good thing.

Pepper-stuffed-Apple-stuffed-Peppers

Bought at the store:

4 apples (Cortland, Winesap, or Gala. 2 for the stuffing. The other 2 to be stuffed, if you want more sweet than savory in the final product.)

3 slices pumpernickel bread

3 ½ Tablespoons Dijon mustard

parmesan cheese

chili powder

rosemary

garlic salt

Harvested locally:

5 green bell peppers (3 for the stuffing, 2 to be stuffed. If you're not stuffing the apples, use 7: 3 for stuffing, 4 to be stuffed.)

2 medium spicy red mystery peppers

Carve the cores out of two green peppers and two apples.
Dice and mash the remaining apples, green peppers, and the pumpernickel slices.
Stir in sliced red pepper rounds, mustard, and spices to taste.
Pack the cored peppers and apples with your stuffing, top with an extra dusting of chili powder.
Bake peppers for 15-20 minutes at 400^O F and apples for 10-15 minutes (until they begin splitting and bubbling out of their skins) at 400^O F.

Enjoy!

First adventure: Sunday Dinner

2007-11-08T16:53:00.000-05:00

When Lindsay, Emma, and I came back to the suite after pepper picking Emma took over the kitchen to fill our bellies. It's good to have a break from being the wielder of the spatula after a burst of intensive party cooking. Yet even though I kept my hands firmly on the camera and out of the sauce dish this time, I couldn't help but help. While Emma wielded my new seven-inch carving knife against such fiendish foes as Lindsay's peppers, chicken breasts, onions, mangoes, and plums, I made the sticky rice. But I cheated and made it in my rice cooker, one of my parent's wedding gifts that I seized from the back shelf of my their pantry nearly a year ago. So mostly my hands stayed on the camera, and I let Emma work her magic this time.

Emma had this Indian cooking sauce that just begged for fresh mangoes (and when we used all of those that we had, really ripe plums) and kind-of sweet, kind-of hot mystery peppers. As heady tropical steam filled the kitchen, I attempted to catch the cook at work. Yet every time I got close she'd shy away and try to clear the shot of all save the food. Eventually we got on the same page and our cook du jour got her hands, at least, into the shots as well as the food.

Soon the rice clicked over to warming, the chicken browned, and Emma's spicey-sweet mango sauce had bubbled to perfection. We nestled down on the couches with our heaping portions served, as an added bonus, in some of Emma's hand-made ceramic bowls and ate until we were stuffed like the Thanksgiving turkey. I'd definitely be willing to get pampered by Emma's eats any time at all.

Indian Mango Chicken

Pocketed at the dining hall:

3 plums

Bought at the store:

Patak's Mango Chicken sauce (Since this import is only sold in specialty food stores, you could get away with substituting a mild yellow curry paste mixed with a can of coconut milk, as long as you use an extra mango. Both paste and milk can be found in the international foods aisle of any grocery store, even the C-town Acme, and include instructions on how to make them into your own sauce.)

Basmati rice

1 lb uncooked chicken (or 1 lb cooked chicken with mild or no spices from the dining hall)

2 mangoes

½ yellow onion

olive oil (vegetable oil is better, if you've got it)

Harvested locally:

2 green bell peppers

3 mildly spicy red mystery peppers (one of my suitemates whose family grows peppers is working on the name)

Brown chicken in 1-2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil over medium heat until white on all sides.
Add sliced fruit and vegetables. Cook an additional 5 minutes.
Measure 1 ½ cups water for every 1 cup uncooked rice (use the cup that comes with the cooker, otherwise the math gets tricky in the English* measurement, as their cup = ¾ cup) and flip the rice cooker switch to on. This will take about 15-20 minutes, but you can start it any time during the cooking process, as your rice will be kept steaming fresh by the warm function for as long as you need.
Empty cooking sauce over veggies and chicken. Turn down heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

If you don't have a rice cooker, I'd suggest going for instant rice or even microwaved rice, as cooking sticky rice on the stove is a thankless task that should only be attempted if you are held at gunpoint. Seriously, it's intense!

Enjoy!

*Because we are a stubborn people and like to melt cultures into a confusing blur, we still use an antiquated measuring system, called "English" or Imperial after our colonial masters, but which also includes measurements from other immigrant cultures. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has converted to the much more efficient base ten system of Metric. But you can have fun with conversion with sites like these, where you can finally know how many ancient Hebrew measures are in a U.K. hogsheads. (It's 37.195 281 818 measures in 1 hogshead [U.K.], for those not in the know.)

Pepper Picking

2007-11-06T23:47:00.000-05:00

Sunday evening, my friend Lindsay drove Emma and me to her grandmother's house. Our goal: fill a market bag with the peppers ripening in the vegetable garden.

First, she showed us her room, the room her two aunts grew up in and left their acid green carpet behind. One window looked South on the two ancient front yard trees. One window looked West on the garden and the horse farm next door. One window looked North on the backyard swing set and the field beyond where once there was a blue-tongued bull that let children pet it sometimes.

Then: harvesting time. While we explored her yard and the vegetable garden, the sun set in a blaze of orange and purple behind the neighbor's industrial sized farm complex. It was almost hard to tear our eyes away from it to focus on the task at hand. But we did explore, seeking out ripe peppers, strolling through towering lima bean vines dangling fuzzy white bean pods, walking the edges of the property and sounding memories. This place had a sense of place; it knew what it had been, and what it was now. It knew because Lindsay knew; it knew because she spoke its memories.

We drove back to campus when the sky faded to blue-black. Our market bag brimmed with green bell peppers and a mysteriously mild red pepper that may be Serrano, or Anaheim, or Early Jalapeño, or maybe even Hungarian Hot Wax left to redden. Sometimes this happens with gardens: you plant the seeds and something totally unexpected shows up, a stranger whose face is distantly familiar but whose name you can't place. It's all part of the adventure.

A Recipe for a Party:

2007-11-03T23:48:00.000-04:00

9:00 AM – 10 hours to party time. Hit snooze alarm 10 or 12 times.

11:28 AM – Drag myself out of bed. Carve Pepperoni Jack-o-lanterns and green, orange, and yellow bell pepper snakes. Still in my pajamas. Mmm… breakfast.

1:15 PM – Take a break for real life (i.e. my job. A food blogger's got to work).

3:40 PM – Swing by the dining hall for last minute party essentials. I'm saved – fresh mushrooms on the salad bar. And – why didn't I think of this before – cucumbers. They'll do much better for fingernails than "cheese."

3:55 PM – Pit stop at the bank.

4:00 PM – Hit up the dollar store for more last minute party essentials (But where are my post-Halloween sale items? And why are they already stocking Christmas goods?? Do find excellent red glass serving plates, though.)

4:25 PM – 2.5 hours to party time and home again, finally. Fry up pizza toppings.

4:40 PM – Carve onion bats. Cool shades, on. (For the onion tear gas. Not that they help much. These are some seriously onions. Told you there would be tears.)

5:07 PM – 2 hours to party time. Attempt to fry up onion bats. Set off fire alarm. Cue desperate magazine fanning.

5:15 PM – Set off fire alarms. Again. Even more desperate magazine fanning.

5:42 PM – Test punch mixture. Promptly spill onto my never-worn, tan-colored, last-clean-pair-of- pants. Break for emergency spill reversal measures. The punch is good, though.

5:55 PM – 1 hour to party time. Back in my pajamas. Blend up the "finger foods" dip. Black (food dye) + White (Ranch dressing) = Green? More food dye seems to be the solution. Unexpected bonus: temporary giraffe tongue effect.

6:10 PM – Frost remaining spider cookies. No, I didn't finish frosting all of the cookies on Thursday. I'm sure I had very good reasons, but now I'm ruing my previous lack of industry.

6:46 PM – 0.25 hours to party time. No Rice Krispie witch cookies (Next year, maybe). No fingernails on the carrot "finger foods." Commence last minute cleaning (Read: straightening up, tossing the dirty dish towels (and other common room detritus) into the bedroom and closing the door on them).,

7:00 PM – The first guests arrive! Take coats for Hindi Film Star and (Unmarried) Roman Woman. Yes, I am still in my pajamas. But not for long!

7:05 PM – Finally decided on a costume: Random Hufflepuff # 34. The pants are stain-free and dry, which is a plus, because otherwise I'd have to go as Random "Stumbled Over to the Great Hall Still Half in Her Pajamas" Hufflepuff #34. Not nearly as effective, really.

7:07 PM –Set out chilled punch, start up music, welcome more guests (purely coincidently dressed in coordinating Washington College Student costumes), commence pizza making. Revelry and toaster oven adventures ensue. And fun was had by all, and it was all good.

A Good Place

2007-11-01T20:56:00.000-04:00

Ah, party prep. I'd forgotten how much it eats my life. But it's all good. It's good to have a goal, to have a grand, tenuous idea that exists only in my head become a witnessed reality. It's good to try more than one new thing at a time, because it magnifies the feeling of accomplishment in the end result. Not only did I do this, I also did that and that and I made them all work together.

But even at this early stage, I'm wrestling with the success of my ideas in the details. (Remember how I said there would be tears and disasters?) Last night I started with the spider cookies and they look vastly different from my mental image of them. Granted I wasn't be able to frost them until today – frosting is one of those delicate processes best not attempted in the wee hours of the morning and they were entirely different beasts then, much less like that image – and that is affecting my view of the final result.

What I have are flatish sugar cookies with spoke-like pretzel protrusions that only look like spiders if I'm looking at them all squinty in the half-light. It doesn't help that I started by chopping each two inch pretzel stick in half – some of the spiders are so stumpy that I wonder how they would propel their fat bodies around. Eventually I cottoned on and left the pretzels full length, but there's nothing I can do for the poor dachshund spiders.

My suitemate accurately compared the dough-ball form to the soot-spirit things from Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, which of course, made me love them more. Those soot-spirit things are adorable! But my store-bought dough flattened on baking. My suitemate suggested adding baking powder. I perversely continued to make flattened soot-spirit dachshund spiders. Now they look like this one after he was smooshed under his piece of coal. Which I find somehow even more adorable. I think I found that place where I've succeeded in my own failures. It's a good place.

Tomorrow morning I'll craft my rice krispie treat witches, find (and carve??) a pumpkin, and prep the pizza ingredients, at which point I've run out of things I can do until immediately before people arrive on Friday.

Spider Sugar Cookies

Things you can procure at the dining hall:

thin pretzels

red hots

chocolate sprinkles

Things from the store:

sugar cookie dough

melting chocolate

Preheat toaster oven to 350^O on Bake.
Mould dough into ½ inch thick spider bodies. Poke eight pretzel legs into the bodies, at least ¼ inch from the edge of the dough.
Bake for 15-20 minutes for each batch. (I know, it takes a loooong time, but it makes the room smell delicious while you can work on other tasks.)
Melt chocolate in the microwave (one 5 oz. bar takes 2-3 minutes).
On a sheet of wax paper or other protected surface, coat each baked spider body with the melted chocolate. Generously sprinkle. Affix as many eyes as suit your fancy to the body, about ¼ - ½ inch from the edge. If they keep falling off, use a dab of the melted chocolate frosting.

Enjoy!

A Party of Spooky Doom

2007-10-30T21:48:00.000-04:00

There ought to be a rule that Halloween is not allowed to fall on a Wednesday. And if it must be Wednesday, Advising Day should be on November 1^st. If you have to throw your Halloween bash on All Hallows Eve… erm, Eve, then you might as well wait for the weekend anyway. Maybe I'm just bitter because I have a late night class on Tuesday and I have no MWF classes so all of my Wednesdays are blissfully free.

I can't party on Halloween, or even the night before, but damned if I'm missing out on the party planning fun to be had. I don't know yet what my costume will be (Gender-confused Lumberjack? Random Hufflepuff #34? Zombie? Lumberjack Zombie?), I don't know what music I'll play, but I do know the food. Besides the requisite candy, there must be creepy punch, there must be cutesy cookies, and there must be pizza.

It is possible to go too far with the creepy factor in Halloween food. Peeled eyeball soup sounds perfectly appetizing on paper (if you know that the eyeballs are really tomatoes), but put it in front of a guest and you're likely to get looks of nausea. Nothing's worse than serving something absolutely gruesome only to have to eat it all yourself when your guests refuse it point blank.

Thursday (pre-party) I'll post on the food prep. Expect last minute changes, disasters, and tears, but that's always the way with a party. If I didn't try something adventurous and risky, I wouldn't have the will to try at all. Saturday (post-party) I'll post on how everything turned out, further disasters and recoveries, and full recipes for everything that was ultimately on the menu. For now I leave you with my provisional menu and wish you happy haunting on the morrow.

Menu of Spooky Doom:

Blood Punch – Probably cranberry juice, grenadine, ginger ale, maybe pomegranate juice. Served in a giant jar inside a carved pumpkin.

Spider Cookies – Chocolate sprinkle coated sugar cookies with pretzel legs and candy or icing eyes.

Witch Hat Rice Krispy Treats – Rice crispy balls topped with frosting coated ice cream cones. Possibly Twizzlers for hair?

Finger Food – Baby carrots with cheese fingernails. Black Olive Ranch dip?

Build-your-own Pizzas – Dueling toaster ovens (we have two here in Calvert that fit a 9 inch pizza pan), possibly pizza bagel bases if I run out of $$, toppings in kitschy Halloween shapes: mushroom skulls, green pepper snakes, pepperoni Jack-o-lantern, onion bats, etc.

Seasonal Cravings

2007-10-27T22:19:00.001-04:00

In the past, I've made this sandwich with plenty of substitutions: rye for pumpernickel, provolone slices for brie, raspberry jam for cranberry sauce. With something so simple to assemble, it's fun to play around with components, especially when you want to use only what you can find at the dining hall. But they're really a different sandwich than the one I was craving. When the first tangible signs of Fall blow into town, I start craving something seasonal.

Apparently my inner calendar is fast-forwarded by at least a month and the holiday I anticipating is Thanksgiving, not Halloween. Perhaps that's because I personally eat at least three full Thanksgiving meals on Turkey Day, which either makes a person love the food or loathe it. Thankfully, I love it so much that I just can't wait another month to have it and when the dining hall didn't have absolutely everything I needed, I just had to follow my grumbling gut to the store.

I didn't use anything from the dining hall this time and I really wish I had. What should have been a ten minute jaunt to Acme to grab some sandwich fixings turned into a thirty minute slog through congested aisles and stagnant check-out lines. There are three times when no one who values their sanity should brave the grocery store: before a snow storm, after a long rain storm, or the weekend before a major food holiday (and aren't they all food holidays? Christmas dinners, Halloween trick-or-treating, Thanksgiving feasts, Valentines baked goods, Fourth of July barbeques…). Two out of three applied today – brilliant foresight, Olivia.

Back in the tranquility of my suite, I unwrapped the turkey from its filmy deli plastic , dolloped out the cranberry sauce, coated the bread with a creamy layer of brie, and clicked the timer on the toaster oven over to eight minutes. As it ticked, the buzz of the crowds in Acme faded away into the sizzle of roasting turkey and melting brie. There's just something about the first real days of Fall that send me craving the sleepy sweetness of turkey and cranberries. Since it's too early for Turkey Day itself, what I needed was this preview of a full belly, set against the backdrop of falling leaves and falling temperatures. If I closed my eyes it almost tasted like November. Craving satisfied.

Ante-Turkey Day Sandwich

Bought at the store:

¼ pound turkey deli slices

brie cheese (spreadable)

pumpernickel bread

whole berry cranberry sauce

Spread brie thickly on the bread. Layer on turkey and cranberry sauce.
Toast for 5-10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Food for a Rainy Day

2007-10-25T21:12:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, reader Aubrey made a request in the comments section which I wanted to address with its own post. She wrote:

Over Fall Break Alexis and I went apple picking, and I was having so much fun climbing trees that I didn't realize how very many apples we had picked. We ended up picking just over half a bushel. Alexis flew them here in her carry on. And now, well, we have nearly half a bushel of apples that are starting to rot. What can we do with them with a toaster oven and microwave?

I immediately thought of "happle" bagel sandwiches. It's a recipe I've been making since I was little, out of my spiral-bound cookbook for kids with illustrations of tap-dancing tunafish cones and pirate map muffins. The book itself is currently resting on the shelves of the package room at Central Services. Tomorrow I'll have it in my hands again (and maybe have pictures), but today I made these from memory.

The artichoke salad failure still haunting me, I forged ahead yet again without a printed recipe, but this time I had sense memory to help me out. Sometimes I need food that is predictable, food that isn't a wolf in sheep's clothing, that won't bite me on the nose with vinegar-poisoned fangs when I least expect it. Sometimes I need food that I know will not char to a crisp or melt into a viscous soup. Sometimes, on days when I haven't seen the sun and the internet is spotty and I'm still sleep deprived from the scant two hours I got on Monday night… I just need food that tastes like home.

Next week I'd like to experiment and see if I can whip up a fun and funky apple dish. I already know that I like apples in things like Waldorf salads and sushi, and that they work really well with a plethora of chicken preparations. For now, for Aubrey and anyone else with an abundant autumnal harvest, I give you something reliable to warm you up inside on a chilly, rainy day.

"Happle" Bagel Sandwiches

Nicked from the dining hall:

½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 gala (or hand-picked) apple

1 plain bagel

cinnamon and sugar

Lay bagel halves on the baking tray and sprinkle cheese onto each bagel half, as if you were making sauce-less pizza bagels.
Top with apple slices and dust with a generous amount of cinnamon and sugar.
Toast until all the cheese has begun melting, about 6-8 minutes.

Enjoy!

Notes on an Eggplant

2007-10-23T23:27:00.001-04:00

"Eggplant, basil, spinach, & chile salad" is on permanent earmark status in my copy of Quick & Easy Healthy Eating. The page is stained with past successes (and at least one abysmal failure). Smudged marginal notes hungrily circle the printed words. They advise not to mistake garlic "clove" for garlic "bulb" (a serious misreading, i.e. my abysmal failure, which led to sweating vampire repellent for an entire week), to use less chile powder (much, much, much less!), to remember to use a seriously big bowl for the mixing steps or risk flinging yogurt-soaked spinach into a lit gas burner.

The last time I made this, my last summer vacation ever was wilting away in 90 degree heat and sticky Baltimore humidity. My friends and I were ready to scatter once more, some more permanently than others, as college terms opened and far-away jobs beckoned. There was time enough yet for one more backyard barbeque.

I consider that barbeque a success. Nearly half of the prepared food ended up leftover and organization blew out the window along with the broiler's billowing smoke. The boys, who should have, in theory, eaten the most food, were busy manning the kebab grill or running on all liquid diets. But good food was shared by good people, and we all had fun making it. And making fun of each other while we made it. One of the dishes served was my version of Hugo Arnold's "Eggplant, basil, spinach, & chile salad."

Last week's farmer's market yielded two lovely eggplants and a batch of pleasant memories to spur me into the kitchen to test the feasibility of grilling eggplants without a grill. Previously, I've always done it on a broiler pan (which without fail resulted in the previously mentioned billowing smoke and required a helper to constantly fan the smoke alarm). The toaster oven actually works better. You end up trading pretty grill lines for a less hectic, less smoky kitchen – a win-win situation in my book. I'll definitely be adding this one to my swarm of marginal notes.

Eggplant Basil Salad

(adapted from a recipe by Hugo Arnold)

Foraged from the dining hall:

1 cup cherry tomatoes

½ cup sunflower seeds

4 lemon wedges

Bought from the store or otherwise:

2 medium eggplants

1 bag baby spinach (on sale for $1.00 – score!)

1 cup plain yogurt

salt and black pepper

cayenne pepper

3 cloves garlic

olive oil

basil

Cut eggplant ¼ inch segments, hotdog-ways. Baste generously with olive oil and broil 3 minutes per side at 450^O F on Toast setting. Let cool and slice into bite-size pieces.
Whisk yogurt, 3 Tablespoons olive oil, mashed garlic, juice from the lemon slices, and spices (about ¼ - ½ teaspoon each, to taste). Toss with eggplant, tomatoes, and spinach leaves.
Serve chilled and top with sunflower seeds.

Enjoy!

Ramen Remix #3: “Asian” Ramen Salad

2007-10-20T16:19:00.001-04:00

In the past year, the majority of my high school friends have crossed over to the dark side: vegetarianism. There were always one or two in our group, but college dining halls have an uncanny ability to foist dietary changes on students, whether from the quality of the food or the variety (and freedom) of choices. As an omnivore, entertaining for vegetarians is a daunting task (for vegans a voyage into the unfamiliar waters on the edge of a map labeled: here be monsters). Luckily, I happen to be a pretty peaceable omnivore and my vegetarian/vegan friends could not be more wonderfully accommodating.

I like to host parties. Unsurprisingly, my favorite center on food. Tea parties, barbeques, bacchanalian orgies… When I realized that at least seven of my oldest friends now abstain from animal products, I panicked. And when I panic, I buy a book. The book I found was The Salad Scoffer by Ronny, an import from the British Isles focusing on party food. I already had vegetarian recipes in my other cookbooks; this one drew me on its concept: "It's time to smash the stereotype!" That stereotype being the sad, iceberg lettuce/tomato/shredded carrot salad which is the typical response on the part of my (unimaginative to the nth degree) omnivorous counterparts to vegetarian/vegan dinner guests. A salad need not be boring.

The following recipe is not from The Salad Scoffer but I'd like to think that Ronny would approve. I didn't even attempt to make this vegan – even after a months of breathing space, I don't think I could eliminate every lurking element of animal extortion out of my cooking without being spoon fed instructions from a real life vegan. I did use chicken (gasp) but the salad tastes just as good with tofu, and has enough bite to it that you could even do without either, in a pinch. It also includes this week's theme ingredient (ramen, in case you hadn't guessed) remixed as a crispy chow mein noodle for the classic "Asian" salad topper, as well as a practically painless salad dressing that you can make to go with everything. Painless in relation to the crispy ramen, which resulted in a sickening, blackened mess on the first try.

But don't worry, I was frying in butter, and accidentally let it go for about three minutes. My final crispy ramen noodles came out perfectly, and I have included the method to achieve the edible second version in the final directions below.

"Asian" Ramen Salad

[Serves 4]

Foraged from the dining hall:

2 cups mandarin oranges

4 cups (or one take-out box-full) spring lettuce mix

2 cups cooked chicken or: 2 cups tofu (you're on your own for cooking this)

1 cup Craisins

Bought at the store:

1 package ramen noodles

3 stalks green onion

sesame seeds

1 cup sliced almonds

Crunch up the ramen noodles into inch-long pieces, mix with almond slices and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. Marinate with: 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, and 3 Tablespoons peanut oil.
Crisp on the burner for 1 minute only. Promptly remove from heat and set aside.
For each serving: Toss spring lettuce mix with some of the ramen-sesame-almond mix and 1-2 Tablespoons dressing. Top with other ingredients (cooked chicken pieces, sliced green onion, Craisins, and mandarin oranges).
Scatter on more ramen-sesame-almond mix and drizzle dressing over everything.

For the Dressing:

4 Tablespoons white wine vinegar

3 Tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

2 Tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons sesame oil

1 teaspoon grated ginger (you'll need a piece about the size of a quarter)

sesame seeds

Add all ingredients together in an empty jam jar. Stir. Secure lid and shake (for consistency) before each use.

Enjoy!

Ramen Remix #2: Don’t Try This at Home

2007-10-18T20:49:00.000-04:00

Ah, artichokes, they seemed like such a good idea at the time. They called out to me from the salad bar, canning oil glistening over a yellow-green mound. Despite this frankly unappetizing form, I knew that I loved cooked artichoke and artichoke dip, so I wanted to see what I could do in the toaster oven with what is essentially a perennial thistle. A little olive oil, garlic, and maybe some Caesar dressing, I thought, ought to do the trick. I should have done more research first.

On the Food Network's website, Cathy Lowe's Caesar dressing; calls for (among other things): 6 cloves of garlic, Dijon mustard, vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, and anchovies.

Bleugh! Vinegar plus vinegar equals indigestion. I knew that Caesar dressing was salty and tangy, but I hadn't really thought about what was in it when I filled up my take-out cup. I didn't help matters by saturating the artichokes (already suspended in oil and vinegar) in an olive oil, dressing, and garlic marinade. Broiling the whole mess was the icing on the indigestible cake. Made the kitchen "spicy" as my suitemate put it, wiping the tears from her eyes.

The resultant salad-like concoction was equally "spicy," and is currently roiling about in my stomach. I'm including the recipe here with notes as to how I put the nails in my cuisine coffin, but don't try this at home!

Caesar Artichoke Ramen Salad

Things you can appropriate from the dining hall:

1 cup canned artichokes (mistake #1 – if something stays well stocked for any length of time at WCDS, that's a pretty good sign that it's not fit for consumption)

1 cup cherry tomatoes

½ cup baby corn

2 cooked chicken breasts

1 cup creamy Caesar dressing (mistake #2 – should not be used as a marinade or in conjunction with something as heavy as artichokes)

¼ cup Feta cheese

Things you will probably have to buy:

2 packages ramen

5 cloves garlic (mistake #3 – garlic overload)

½ cup olive oil

1. Whip up a marinade out of 3 cloves of garlic, the olive oil, and three tablespoons Caesar dressing. Saturate the artichokes in this mixture for 30 minutes.

Caesar dressing a marinade does not make. If the dressing already had both oil and (6 cloves of) garlic already, just how potent was this stuff? Garlic count: 9 cloves.

2. Meanwhile broil the tomatoes at 350^O F for 15-20 minutes until the skins blister and pop.

This was step was actually rewarding. Kind of like popping popcorn, except with more juices (and therefore more mess later). On their own, my blistered, half-skinned tomatoes are mouth-wateringly good. Too bad I had to fiddle around with artichokes, too.

3. Fill two bowls each with a package of ramen and enough water to completely cover it. Cover and microwave on high for three minutes. Let stand (still covered) for an additional three minutes to get cooked ramen without boiling any water.

A reliable ramen cooking method. If you don't have a portable electric burner, don't let that limit you to no pasta! In a pinch, even a coffee maker can be used to heat the ramen water.

4. Broil the marinated artichokes for 20 minutes still at 350^OF.

Wrong on so many levels.

5. Mix everthing together with two additional garlic cloves added into the dressing and drizzled on top of the lot.

A recipe for a long and sleepless night. Garlic count: 11 cloves. 11!

Enjoy at your own risk.

This is the part of my blog called legal issues

2007-10-17T21:30:00.001-04:00

I'd like to address the concern about incrimination that was raised in a critique session for Anything But Spaghetti. Since this blog is a project I have begun for a creative writing class, and so that there is no gray area surrounding my honorable intentions towards my college, I'd like to lay down a disclaimer: Don't steal from the dining hall.

Recently, I was asked by The Collegian to run my blog-entry recipes as articles. You may remember (among other posts) "Couscous on the Loose", a vitriol-filled diatribe against the dining hall which, upon further review, seems to promote stealing from the dining hall. For the integrity of my blog project, I'd like to leave all entries as they stand online. However, if you read The Collegian article you will notice that this:

"The great thing about this recipe is that most of these ingredients can be found (and stolen out of) your standard college salad bar. If your college doesn't have a salad bar, then I am very, very sorry for you. What do you do on nights when absolutely nothing is edible and you've already swiped your card? Which, being the nature of a college, once your card has been swiped there is NO TURNING BACK. No, the computers at a college are completely incapable of undoing a swipe or re-crediting a meal account. I hope that I am not the only one to whom this makes NO LOGICAL SENSE. Anyway.

It makes me feel very ninja to sneak things out of the dining hall once I've already eaten. My college has this other utterly moronic rule of not being allowed to take out any food once you've already begun with the intention of eating in. So say, for instance, the jock next to you suddenly starts puking up his Coke, pizza, fries, and hamburger, and you find this incredibly unappetizing and wish, on second thought, to take your meal with you while you try to get back something resembling an appetite… the dining hall would rather you put your whole tray of steaming, lovely food in the trash than take it home with you to eat later. Apparently this rule is enforced to keep people from eating a whole meal and then also taking out a whole meal. But under its tyranny, all suffer.

Moving back on topic. Which is that sneaking food out of the dining hall has become the game that everyone loves to play. I heard of a girl who once snuck out grapefruits in her pants. Others I know have carried out paper coffee cups of milk, in multiples of six. But the reason why you should be interested in everything I've just said is that with a little planning, and a little cunning, you can use your dining hall's salad bar like a grocery store. In fact, almost everything can be "bought" at this particular grocery store if you remember to bring you backpack (or your pants with super-large pockets)."

has magically morphed into this:

"The great thing about this recipe is that most of these ingredients can be found on your standard college salad bar. Sneaking food out of the dining hall has become the game that everyone loves to play. [Dining Hall folklore speaks] of a student who once snuck out grapefruits in her pants. Students have carried out paper coffee cups of milk in multiples of six. A student recently pilfered a whole tray full of display pineapples.

But being a dining hall ninja needn't mean sneaking a backpack into the dining hall to acquire the ingredients for this meal: with a little planning you can still use your dining hall's salad bar like a grocery store. Once you've swiped your card for a meal, even if a quick search of the offerings show nothing appealing, there is NO TURNING BACK. Meal accounts cannot be re-credited, so you may as well grab a take-out box."

I feel that the second is a clearer statement of what I do and do not advocate. If you get caught literally pilfering from the salad bar or illicitly shoving fried chicken legs into your pockets, don't say that I told you to do it. I am hereby banning all readers of Anything But Spaghetti from doing anything so despicable. (I've been warned that besides the consequence of horrible grease stains on your trousers, you could possibly be called in front of the honor board for such an offense. And so could I.)

Continue to find fault with lackluster WCDS offerings. Continue to experiment with dining hall food. Continue to view the salad bar as an alternative to the Acme or Superfresh produce aisles. Just do the right thing and get a take-out box from the register first.

Ramen Remix #1: Spaghetti Soup

2007-10-16T22:52:00.001-04:00

A quick Goggling provides that I am (no surprise) not the first to play with the adaptability of Noodlius Ramenus. There are at least two books featured on Amazon.com which solely focus on the ubiquitous packaged noodle. Although Toni Patrick may have scraped together 101 recipes, Eric Hites's Everybody Loves Ramen seems a far better resource for a college student, seeing as it was written by one. Reading a snippet with the Search Inside feature, however, made me feel less like a young adult and more like a toddler. Following each recipe is a worksheet in a cartoonish typeface. A college student does not need to be taught the skill of note-taking, Mr. Hites. He quantitatively investigates ramen. This week, I'm going to quantitatively investigate three of my own journeys in ramen cookery, without referencing Dr. Seuss.

Today I'm focusing on that easiest and most often associated adaptation of ramen: the soup. As a latch-key kid, I made the afternoon snacks for myself and my neighborhood friend, L. Our favorite choices, which we kept in constant rotation, were ramen and Spaghetti-O's. No mussing or improving – just straight up Top Ramen and Chef Boyardee.

Freshman and Sophmore-year Olivia's habits, sadly, did not much differ from this pattern. In the last two years, I've learned to take great pleasure in tossing those little foil flavor packs straight into the trashcan. Now that I've given them up, I could never go back. Dining hall cuisine provides ample salt for my diet; if I'm going to add more, it just has to have something… well, more to it than just salt. A few drops of soy sauce, sesame oil, and vinegar, a pinch of chicken bouillon or a splash of stock, and a hearty helping of fresh veggies (think: lettuce, green onions, sprouts, bell peppers, Bok Choy) and you've got a fine Asian-style soup that's rich enough to be a midnight snack of distinction. Either this, or I run with the leftover concept, my favorite of which has to be spaghetti sauce ramen.

Yeah, I said it. Spaghetti sauce. I'm not gonna tell you how to make good spaghetti for a couple of reasons, but the only one I really need to spell out is this: you already know how to make it. What I do offer you is a suggestion for what you can do with any leftover sauce that's missing its recently digested noodle counterpart. I think you know where I'm going with this, but I'm gonna say it anyway: pitch, lob, fling, dollop, or otherwise chuck it into your ramen.

What you'll end up with here is a seasoned tomato noodle soup. Rather than making more spaghetti noodles to go with your sauce – which can rapidly devolve into a cycle of having either too much sauce or too many noodles and always having to make more meals of spaghetti to compensate – ramen soup is an effective use of leftovers that reinvents (if only by a margin) both soup and sauce into something that hopefully doesn't taste too much like yesterday's dinner.

I have to give the credit for the original idea to my dad, the innovator of the "toss the leftovers in the ramen" technique. Sundays always began for me in the afternoons – MAD tv, Red Dwarf, and old school Dr. Who reruns kept me glued to my bedroom boob tube 'til the wee hours of Sunday morning – to the wafting aromas of spaghetti ramen soup. It was our tradition – I'd tramp downstairs bleary-eyed, Dad would say "good of you to join us" and serve up my soup and sandwich while we watched the Game in the family room. Wednesday's spaghetti (and Wednesday was sacred to me as my dad's spaghetti night) became Sunday's soup. You don't have to save this soup for Sunday's though, as it makes a rather excellent quick lunch or snack.

I'm going to put my lot in with Dad and say that Spaghetti Soup is best served with a B.L.T. or a Marshall Field's Turkey Sandwich. I've paired it here with a roast beef and provolone, simply because that was what hunting in the dining hall's deli section provided on this particular expedition. It's not terribly inspired, but it worked just fine.

Spaghetti Soup

Things you can pilfer from the dining hall:

½ cup tomato sandwich slices

½ cup lettuce slices

1-2 cups spaghetti sauce

Things you will probably have to buy:

1 package Top Ramen noodles

2-3 stalks green onions

spices (To taste. I use yellow curry spice, basil, oregano, garlic salt, and red chili powder in mine.)

Chop the tomato slices, green onion, and lettuce into ¼-1 inch pieces.
Bring 3 cups of water to a boil; add in spaghetti sauce, tomatoes, spices, and lettuce. Stir and bring back to a boil.
Add ramen noodles and cook for three minutes, as per package instructions.
Add green onion and boil for about thirty seconds more.
Remove from heat and serve with your sandwich of choice.

Enjoy!

(Decidedly Not) Guilt-Free Parfait Cones

2007-10-15T17:59:00.001-04:00

"You know what else everybody likes? Parfaits. Have you ever met a person, you say, 'Let's get some parfait,' they say, 'Hell no, I don't like no parfait'? Parfaits are delicious." – Donkey (in Shrek)

I have to agree with Donkey on this one. Parfaits are delicious. Of course, not everybody likes them, but you've got to give him some credit. He's a donkey for starters, how many people could he have possibly put this query to? Granted he is a remarkably loquacious donkey with absolutely no concept of personal space, but he's still a donkey, none the less. He's also not entirely wrong: lots of people like parfaits. As far as guilt-free desserts go (despite the high sugar content and, in proportion, low nutritional value) parfaits are pretty well liked across the board. And hey, if you can buy it at McDonald's, doesn't that pretty much make it a staple of the American diet?

Besides being generally well-liked (and not-so-surprisingly easy to make), parfait will always be tied to one particular experience of mine that never fails to put a smile on my face.

On the night of my senior prom, eleven of my friends and I met at one of our houses to have dinner. Our parents had gotten together, designed a menu, dressed up as waiters, and served us the food. I don't remember the main course, I think because I was too busy trying to keep my lipstick from smearing and laughing at the spectacle we made in our lobster bibs and fancy dress. You try keeping a straight face with eleven other teenagers all dressed to the nines – sequins, silk, taffeta, bowties, glass beadwork, and cummerbunds – having to put on a crinkly plastic bib with a giant red lobster on it. Yeah.

Anyway, dessert came out, and I completely forget how hideously the red of the lobsters clashed with my maroon dress. (No snide comments about the wisdom of maroon – it was school colors and I was seventeen.) Perhaps the first shock was my mother sweeping in with her totally 1900's coat-and-tails men's jacket looking every inch the fancy French waiter. But the second, and surpassingly more delicious, was the parfait she was ferrying in.

Arranged in stemmed glassware, the layers of pinky-red strawberry, deep red raspberry, calm blue-violet blueberry, and white cream looked delicate and rich. The smell was an amazing promise – pure sugary, syrupy heaven. The first spoonful floated around the mouth, light and airy yet focused in staccato bursts of tart blueberry. I've never been fond of over-large, sickeningly sweet berries. The littler, sharply sweet ones have always been my favorites. I've never had a parfait that compared. (Sorry McDonald's.)

Since I knew I'd never be able to make perfect parfait, or afford the stemware, I decided to go with an untraditional approach when creating my own. I figured that since Mickey D's has hit on a good thing with the granola, I'd throw dieting to the wind and put in something crunchy but decidedly not guilt-free: waffle cones. McDonald's has their bubble-topped cups, prom night its stemware, and I have my waffle cones. If you're going for dessert, you might as well indulge yourself, I always say.

As an added bonus, all ingredients come from our old buddy, Monsieur Dining Hall. (On a good day. Try this one time when they stock vanilla pudding instead of chocolate. Heck, just try it with the chocolate; it'll probably be even better.)

A note: Photos courtesy of Emma, who has a lovely camera and a lovely eye for detail. Plus, you know, my third arm hasn't grown in yet, so I did kind of need her for this. Thanks Emma!

(Decidedly Not) Guilt-Free Parfait Cones

Things you can pilfer from the dining hall:

1 cup vanilla pudding

1 teaspoon (or two packets) sugar

½ cup strawberries

½ cup mandarin oranges

6 sugar or waffle cones

½ cup blueberries (when available)

Slice the strawberries into thin slivers, discarding the stem and inner white core.
Mix everything – except the waffle cones, of course – together in a large bowl, reserving a few strawberries and oranges for decorating the top.
Fill the cones with your parfait mixture and top with one or two of your reserved fruit slices.

Tip: To fill the tip of the cone, use some of your mixture without any fruit in it. Otherwise, you'll have an empty last few bites of just cone, as the fruit slices won't be small enough to fit down there.

Enjoy!

Nobody Doesn’t Love Cheesecake

2007-10-14T15:17:00.001-04:00

"Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all." – Harriet Van Horne

I would go further than Harriet here to say that food is love. Without love – love of food, love of people, love of self – food isn't food so much as barely digestible fuel to be shoveled straight down the gullet as quickly as possible, hopefully bypassing all taste buds in the process. Love is what guides our hands to the spice rack, to the tasting spoon, to the finger dipped hastily into the brownie batter while grandmom's back is turned. Love is getting your hands into the food and putting your mark on it, your own individual twist. Love is what is lacking from the college dining hall.

That isn't to say that there aren't a few lovely people working in my college's cafeteria; it's just that, in the mind of the corporation, they're used as cogs in a machine. Where's the wonderful stir-fry wiz who taught me (albeit indirectly) how to properly exploit every ounce of flavor out of garlic? Shuttled to the cashier's post in the student center's convenience store or not seen at all. Perhaps he is backstage, doing what he can to fix the overly bland food coming from the kitchens, but who knows. And where's the "omelet guy" who made weekend breakfasts – a scarce and unimaginative wasteland of breakfast sausage and syrupy pancake mush – worthwhile? Gone, in all probability, to make way for the new corporate regime. And there are others, shunted to shuttling burgers and French fries, restocking salad bars, and refilling milk bladders in the juice machines.

As an institution, WCDS squashes creativity and individuality. Recipes are corporately owned, ingredients come from Sysco in bulk, and food sits in cold trays from breakfast 'til dinner, leftover from a catered event for people more important than students. The stir-fry bar – such a hit with students that the line is often 30 minutes long – lies dormant at most dinners, and more and more frequently at lunches, too. The main dishes are almost all interchangeable: brown, starchy, and bland. Potatoes, chicken, spaghetti, rice, lentil cakes, French fries, burgers, pizza.

WCDS has to serve roughly 2000 people per meal, that's including staff, guests, and all enrolled students plus a bit of overestimating. WCDS's solution is to try to please everyone, with the philosophy that nobody doesn't like the most basic of basics. But what ends up happening is that they please almost no one. It's no wonder that when they actually serve a dish with some personality to it, like General Tso's Chicken (which was as bland as I've ever tasted that dish), the tray is decimated in less than one minute.

The next time that something remotely edible is served, watch the students. They line up, sometimes for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. When, finally, the (vastly underappreciated) dining hall worker fights her way to the top of the line, the saran wrap is barely pulled back before ravenous hordes descend on the "delicacy." Of the fifty or so die-hards hanging around in line for this one dish, only ten to fifteen people get a reasonable serving. Before Ms. Dining Hall Worker has made it back to the safety of the kitchens, her fresh steaming tray lies empty, scraped clean of everything remotely edible. Time it sometime. It's the most entertaining event the dining hall has to offer.

But where was I going with all of this? Well, my well-worn rant against WCDS culminates with dessert offerings. Nothing says I couldn't care less about you than pre-packaged desserts. "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" indeed. There are quite a few WCDS desserts that this nobody doesn't like. And it's not that their desserts are awful, just that they have no love in them. I've worked in a bakery before – albeit as a lowly sales drudge who wasn't allowed anywhere near the actual ovens unless I had a mop in hand – and I feel that the quality of desserts at WCDS is going rapidly downhill. Although the bakery I worked for claimed to be gourmet, the great majority of their offerings came to them pre-mixed and pre-measured, only wanting to be popped into the oven to be called "cookie" and not "dough." I actually lost weight working in the bakery because the only things worth eating were the master baker's specialty cakes, and those came few and far between. Those specialty cakes though, man those were ACE. Rich, buttery rum cake with layers of bitter-sweet chocolate ganache dripping down the sides. Those cakes were loved, they were art. It was no wonder they sold faster than we could ring them up. Lucky for us, even lowly bakery drudges got samples before they went on sale.

But even on a home-based scale, I bet you could tell the difference between your grandmother's brownies and ACME's. There's no comparison. Even if granny relies on Betty Crocker to do most of the work for her, they'll still taste better than anybody else's grandmother's brownies. And that's because of love. Poured into every baking tin and absorbed from the atmosphere of family. Sugar, butter, eggs and baking chocolate never tasted better than when I was swinging my legs beneath my grandmother's laminate kitchen table, using my finger to clean the bottom of the mixing bowl. It was love, and it was delicious.

I'm not really sure what WCDS could do to put more love into their desserts. They are, as previously mentioned, preparing food for a largely anonymous, needy, unappreciative crowd. But when considering how ridiculously easy it is to hand-prepare even the simplest of cheesecakes, which would be child's play to convert to larger quantity without sacrificing quantity, it seems well, ridiculous that WCDS should serve pre-packaged, dry, and unloved cheesecake. And if that cheesecake they've served is not from Sara Lee, or Jell-O, or the venerable Ms. Crocker… then something is seriously wrong.

To combat the scourge of the loveless cheesecake, I propose this recipe. Nobody doesn't love cheesecakes. (Unless you're lactose intolerant. Or just plain weird.) They fit every qualification for my kitchen: fast, cheap, and easy. Fast: the actual preparation time is close to five minutes. Ten tops. This is because all the baking can be done while you studious students are otherwise occupied. Cheap: every ingredient in this cheesecake was filched from the dining hall on top of a regular meal. Finally I'm getting my money's worth. Easy: see Fast and Cheap. Also, once made, these babies can last up to a week (if you hold off your roommates and, most especially, yourself with saint-like abstinence and a pointy stick), providing no-fuss breakfasts and desserts. This is a good recipe to make ahead whenever you have a free half-hour at home. Once made, anytime is cheesecake time.

The only problem I ran into in this recipe was the filling of the crust. The crust that I came up with – crushed Life cereal baked in a mixture with 3 TBSP butter – tended to pull away from the dish in a failed attempt to run away from home with the filling. Not that I blame it, the filling is so delicious that I would certainly run away with it if I had the chance, and the cereal crust itself never quite got to the gooey quality of graham cracker. (Perhaps I should have used more butter ;-P)

However, this was only a problem because I wanted my finished result to look extra pretty for the camera. A loved food does not have to be a pretty food. It will still taste much, much better than pre-packaged even if you have a few grains of crust dusting the top of the filling.

But enough of that fiddle faddle, let's get started.

Nobody Doesn't Love Mini-Cheesecakes

Things you can pilfer from the dining hall:

2 cups cream cheese

3 Tablespoons butter

2 cups LIFE cereal

1/3 cup sugar

Sprinkle of cinnamon

Things you will probably have to buy:

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 ceramic ramekin or Pyrex baking dishes (Two for a dollar at Target, and found cheaply at every big box chain store around the country. Look for something 8 oz in size and oven safe.)

Preheat toaster oven to 350^O F.
Double bag the life cereal. Now here's the fun part: crush the living day lights out of it. Crush it until everything is the same size as the gigantic sugar crystals that find their way to the bottom of the bag.
Mix the crushed cereal with 3 Tablespoons melted butter. (20-30 seconds in the microwave should do the trick). Line the bottoms and sides of your 8 oz dish with the mixture.
Bake crusts 14-16 minutes or until golden brown.
Mix cream cheese, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar. This will take some time (and can be done while the crusts are baking) as well as some book-toting muscles if you either a) don't have a mixer or b) don't use soft cream cheese. Luckily, most dining hall cream cheese is soft and served in a tub. Try the blender if you must, but I found that hand mixing worked better and wasted less filling.
Remove crusts from oven and let cool 10 minutes.
Fill crusts with cream cheese filling.
Chill in refrigerator at least 3 hours. Eat whenever.

Enjoy!

Getting on Schedule

2007-10-14T14:50:00.000-04:00

I'd like to apologize for the recent lack of updates. 'What happened to dessert week?' you might ask. Well, life happened. I'm a student, sometimes ten page papers, midterms, and general classwork get in the way of things like blogging.

But I'd like for it to not happen again. I'm rechristening today and Monday as the final two entries for dessert week, after which I'm (really really) going to stick to three entries per week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. See, I even put a widget in my sidebar that will hold me accountable. (-->)

So I'll see you (or, rather, you'll see me) on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. If there are to be changes to this schedule, I will update the sidebar and give you a heads up.

And now, without further ado or stalling... the second installment of dessert week: individual mini-cheesecakes!

Delicious Failure

2007-10-03T14:59:00.000-04:00

It was a painful lesson, but I think I've finally realized that there is such a thing as too much butter.

I never used to think that there was such a thing. I was the type of kid who put so much butter on my mashed potatoes that they were literally swimming in butter soup. Not unlike the recipe I bring to you tonight, actually. But it makes me wonder where my butter obsession came from.

Thinking back on high school, I have a friend who then used to make her special kind of cake with six sticks of butter. Yes, you read that right: six. So it was more like fudge than "cake" per se, but the point is that it was utterly delicious. In that "Ah, I can hear my arteries clogging already" kind of way.

But even before high school, my family always said that, unlike chocolate, you really can put butter on anything. It's the flavor-booster of choice in my house, and I have to say that I've never been able to eat biscuits and jam without butter. It makes salty things pop and sweet things melt on the tongue.

But now I know that too much of a good thing can truly be too much.

What I was going for this time was baked cinnamon apples, not unlike those which, to me, make the perfect complement to Baby Back ribs at Chile's restaurants. What I got was baked cinnamon apple soup, so totally unlike the Chile's version that it's not even the same species.

Still, I think I can guess where I went wrong. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was the three tablespoons of butter. After my failed attempt, I looked up some recipes online and found that I had tripled the recommended amount of churned cow cream. Oops. That would be why my apples are swimming in a glistening lake of oil.

I could have stopped at this point and thrown the soupy concoction away, but despite (or perhaps because of?) my over-zealous use of butter, the dish smelled absolutely divine. The apples were moist and sweet, and I decided to just go for it and layered some on top of a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The piping hot apples and butter soup sauce made short work of the ice cream. However, while this looks like something to fill a slop bucket, the taste is out of this world. Truly. It is like a root beer float, if the root beer were replaced with apple-butter sauce. It eats like a soup, but tastes like dream.

I have modified the directions so that the soup phenomena may not occur so badly, although if you want cinnamon-apple-ice cream soup, please feel free to triple the amount of butter.

Look for more dessert ideas (and hopefully not disasters, although hopefully just as delicious) all this week.

Butter-Cinnamon Apples and Ice Cream

Things you can pilfer from the dining hall:

Vanilla Ice Cream

2 Gala Apples

Honey

Cinnamon Sugar

1 Tablespoon Butter

Things you will probably have to buy:

3 teaspoons Brown sugar

Oven-safe covered baking dish (Try your local second-hand store. I found mine for $2.00 at Goodwill.)

Preheat toaster oven to 350^OF on Bake setting.
Peel, core, and slice apples into even sized pieces.
Layer 1/3 of the apples in the bottom of your baking dish. Sprinkle on 1 teaspoon Brown sugar. Layer in 1/3 Tablespoon butter. Drizzle honey. Cover layer with a thick coat of cinnamon sugar.

Repeat until all ingredients are used. The goal is something like baked apple lasagna, with apples for the noodles and everything else for filling layers.

Bake at 350^OF for 30-45 minutes. The apples should be bubbling and filling the room with wafting cinnamon apple smells before removal.

Carefully remove from toaster oven. Let cool 5-10 minutes. Layer over scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy!

Super-Cheesy Mac & Cheese

2007-09-28T23:24:00.001-04:00

Have you got the Blue Box Blues?

I know I do. And I've got them squared.

See, the trouble with out-of-the-box macaroni and cheese is that most of it tastes like something is missing. Even the fairly good, organic, REAL cheese versions. Most notably, these boxed mac & cheeses are lacking in flavor. Well, okay, I suppose they do have one flavor, but I don't think "fake cheese powder" should count.

Still, every few weeks I get that homesick craving for mac & cheese, and something must be done to satisfy it.

I wanted to use real cheese, but that begged the question of means. Microwave or toaster oven? I didn't know. I managed to cook the sausage in the microwave (and it came out quite tasty, too) but melting cheese seemed like a different animal to me. And, well, I'll admit it: I've got a case of what I'll call toaster oven snobbery. It pays off well to reheat such things as French fries, corn bread, pizza, and a plethora of other foods in the toaster oven. Less soggy and less like leftovers. But then, on the other hand, I'm also equally… impatient. So I can't totally bash the microwave, it has its moments of glory.

In the end, I just decided to try both and see what happened.

Baking in the toaster oven (7 minutes at 350^O F) gave okay results. But, surprisingly enough, the microwave actually worked better. The cheese was creamier, having less of a tendency to clump together during mixing. However, if you're looking to impress, the toaster oven version did come to the (coffee) table looking a lot prettier. However, as far as taste and texture, the microwave definitely won.

Pre-experiment:

Microwave Results:

Toaster Oven Results:

Note: This picture may be misleading in the deliciousness factor. That cheese up there that looks nice and gooey and presentable? It's actually hard and tacky. Which is why the microwave wins at life... er, or at melting cheese anyway.

I'd like to give one more note of warning. This recipe is really and truly super cheesy. I made the original with double the amount I've recommended here. Eight ounces doesn't seem like a lot when you're layering it over a whole pot full of noodles. Trust me, it really is. I could barely finish a serving with all that cheese weighing it down. But if you love cheese like it's the new Elvis, please, go ahead and double the amount recommended in the recipe. But don't say I didn't warn you.

If you're still craving that super-cheesy goodness, here's what I've come up with:

Super–Cheesy Mac & Cheese

Things you can pilfer from the dining hall:

1 cup red pepper slices

¼ cup milk

4 Tablespoons butter

Things you will probably have to buy:

1 box macaroni & cheese mix (Toss the powdered cheese. You know you want to.)

4 oz shredded cheddar cheese (You may want to have a of mix white and yellow cheddar, as I have.)

3 stalks green onion

1 package sausage links (use one sausage of approximately 7 ounces in size)

Cook macaroni according to box directions. Add peppers to macaroni with one minute left on the timer.
Slice sausage into rounds. Cook according the packaging microwave directions. Make sure when you buy it that the sausage can be cooked in the microwave.
Drain macaroni. Mix in onions, milk, butter, sausages, and some garlic salt and chili powder. Arrange cheese on top.
Melt the cheese in the microwave on HIGH for 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Enjoy!

Tuna Boats, or something like it

2007-09-26T22:15:00.001-04:00

Being a creative cook doesn't always have to mean making up your own recipes. I'm going to share with you one of my favorite re-imagined recipes which I'm going to call "Tuna Boats."

Last year, my parents gave me my favorite cookbook ever, Quick & Easy Healthy Eating. But I'll tell you a secret: I've never made any of the recipes in it. I've come close, to be sure, but to me it's been more of an idea book than a fool-proof plan of what's for dinner.

I have learned pretty quickly that Quick & Easy, in addition to not being quick or easy most of the time, often requires wondrous and mystical ingredients. Like mackerel, which I can only find in the cat food aisle, or several miles away at the seafood market, which is not only out of the way but too expensive on my kind of budget.

So why, then, is Quick & Easy my very favorite cookbook? Because it is chocked full of great ideas. Take today's recipe: the original ("salad with tuna-stuffed bell pepper" by Conrad Gallagher) isn't actually that different at its core from my version, but it did require some extras that I'd rather not fool around with. For instance, it calls for making your own French dressing, which is only good for a week or two, and, I've found, is entirely superfluous to the actual taste of the food.

The original also has capers, whose only purpose seems to be making the tuna taste saltier. I've come to the conclusion that capers are, by and large, included in a dish to make it sound more chef-y. Really, any time you see capers, you could just add more salt and save yourself the trouble of buying a 12 ounce jar ($6) that sits around in your refrigerator so long that it's been to school and back at least three times before you finally pitch it, still half-full.

The original also calls for skinning the peppers. This was less than successful. After 10 minutes in the toaster oven, my peppers were nice and blistery, just as the recipe said. I sealed them in a large mixing bowl under saran wrap, just as the recipe said, and when they were completely cool, I pulled them out, ready to strip those peppers down to their tender, naked selves.

Alas, this did not happen quite so smoothly. Taking the skin off of those peppers was not unlike trying to scrape away layers of enamel from a tooth. I eventually succeeded in squashing my first pepper into a pile of unusable pepper goo and taking about a dime-sized piece of skin off the second before I decided to leave off with the pepper abuse and just leave the skins on. If anyone out there has ever successfully skinned a pepper, and has some tips, let me know.

So those things don't sound like good ideas, or at least they didn't to me. But the heart of the recipe is a good idea, and it's what I made today: yellow bell peppers stuffed with tuna salad. Plain and simple. This dish is supposed to be served cold over salad greens. My version does away with the salad greens, jazzes up the tuna, and calls for cooking the whole thing in the toaster oven, making it more like a tuna melt – except without the cheese or the bread. So really not much like one at all – than a salad.

The moral of the story is that all recipes can be taken as suggestions. Try it once the way that the original chef intended, but if you don't like the way it turns out: don't give up, just get creative!

Tuna Boats

(adapted from a recipe by Conrad Gallagher)

Things you can pilfer from the salad bar:

½ cup red onions

2 dill pickle spears

½ cup celery pieces (or 1-2 stalks of fresh celery)

1 cup tuna (sometimes this is on the salad bar at my school. If unavailable, use 2 cans of drained tuna)

1 – 2 tablespoons mayonnaise

Things you will probably have to buy:

2 stalks green onions

1 yellow bell pepper (yellow peppers are the sweetest of the commonly available peppers; orange bell peppers are a fair substitute)

Preheat your toaster oven to 350 ^oF.
Chop any "dry" ingredients (i.e. – everything except the tuna and mayo) to uniform size. If you have canned tuna, make sure to drain it thoroughly. Mix the chopped ingredients with the tuna.
Now you can mix in the mayonnaise. If you have added too much mayo, and everything is starting to look like tuna-soup, just add more tuna until it has the consistency you want.
Cut bell pepper in half lengthwise, removing the stem, seeds, and inner membrane. Fill with tuna salad mixture.
Bake the tuna boats at 350 ^oF for 10-12 minutes, or until the tuna has started to brown at the tips and the food is making a pleasant sizzling sound.

Enjoy!

(Carefully. Barbarian drooling of food juices may occur if you attempt to eat this without a knife and fork. In fact, it may happen anyway. This is part of why I call them Tuna Boats. Be prepared. Bring a towel.)

Couscous on the Loose

2007-09-21T23:06:00.000-04:00

Domestic is not a dirty word. Or maybe I just don't want it to be because today I found myself barefoot, in a dress, cooking in the kitchen without a recipe. When I was a freshman, that would have scared me. Too girly, too tame, too stereotyped. Well, so maybe the dress thing and the barefoot thing are a separate issue. But the cooking thing, that, I think, I was just scared of.

Maybe you're like me. Maybe you think that cooking is reserved for someone older, someone domestic (or even just plain someone female), or maybe you just don't think you have the time, or the money, or the skills. I aim to show you that even a college student can learn to cook, and I'm going to start by teaching myself.

Now, you college students. Yes, you. I know that you like prepackaged. I know that you like junk food. I know that you like, let's call it, "thrifty buys" (now, now, it's true, isn't it?). I know this, because I am just like you. Now it's time to take it a step further. Everyone can cook spaghetti. (And ramen, and Mac & cheese, and hamburger helper…) So let's just skip to the next step: real cooking.

Welcome to College Cooking 102. We're going to get beyond the basics (and try our hands at spicing them up, too). I'm going to warn you now, this dish requires a little bit of multitasking. If you are a true beginner, do not attempt this alone. Rope your roommate into helping (or your best friend, or your significant other, or whoever happens to be wandering past your door at the time). The serving size is for two anyway, and you might as well make whoever's freeloading off of you help. This is always extra fun in dorm rooms that would fit whole with room to spare in your closet at home. If you are going to make this by yourself and make leftover (and this makes wonderful leftovers, btw) just make sure to do all the prep work before you start. This means cutting the vegetables, measuring the ingredients, and mixing the spices into the milk.

The great thing about this recipe is that most of these ingredients can be found (and stolen out of) your standard college salad bar. If your college doesn't have a salad bar, then I am very, very sorry for you. What do you do on nights when absolutely nothing is edible and you've already swiped your card? Which, being the nature of a college, once your card has been swiped there is NO TURNING BACK. No, the computers at a college are completely incapable of undoing a swipe or re-crediting a meal account. I hope that I am not the only one to whom this makes NO LOGICAL SENSE. Anyway.

I've made a note of that below, so don't be intimidated by the long list of ingredients. The spices you will have to buy, and the couscous. But spices are awesomeness and couscous is relatively easy to make and goes with lots of foods, so these are good purchases even for the thriftiest breed of college student.

Couscous on the Loose

Things you can pilfer from the salad bar:

1 red bell pepper (or one cup red bell pepper slices)

1 cup milk

1 cup button mushrooms

½ cup shredded mild white cheddar cheese

1 tablespoon butter (in a pinch. But you should probably buy your own if you plan on cooking in the future)

Things you will probably need to buy:

5 stalks green onion

1 sm yellow onion (although, if you want to substitute this for onions, they could be found on the salad bar, too. In which case you'd need about ¾ - 1 cup)

1 cup couscous (in my dish, I used tri-colored couscous, but any kind will do)

2 cloves garlic

¼ teaspoon chili powder

2 teaspoons curry powder (the milder yellow Indian curry powder. Not the red madras stuff, which is like the super-spice of all super-spicy spices.)

¼ teaspoon salt

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Slice the yellow onion and simmer in oil over medium heat.
While the onion is starting, cut up the mushrooms, red pepper, and green onion. When the yellow onion is starting to go limp, add the mushrooms.
If you want to save yourself trouble, go ahead and do all these preparation steps ahead of time. The reason why I have them separated here is to give you something to do while the onion takes its good old time getting done.
In a medium saucepan, heat the milk. Mix in the butter, salt, curry powder, and chili powder. Bring to a boil.
When the mushrooms begin to change color from white to a light brown (1-2 minutes, depending on the size of your pan and the amount of heat), add the red pepper.
When the water boils, mix in the couscous, cover and remove from heat. Let this sit for five minutes.
At this point you may be freaking out about the multi-tasking thing. Don't be, it's really going to be okay. You can now ignore the couscous until the timer goes off. In fact, please ignore it; opening the lid at this point may alter its consistency. More on that later.
When the red pepper starts to look limp, add in the green onion and pressed garlic. Stir and cook for an additional minute, then remove the vegetables from heat.
After the couscous has cooled for five minutes, fluff with a fork.
Do not be fooled! When the couscous is ready to be fluffed it is usually the consistency of polenta made with superglue. Well, at least it feels that way. This is the fun part. A.k.a. the part you fob off onto your helper. Helper (or cook) roll up your sleeves and use those biceps!
Arrange on plate and sprinkle cheese on top. To melt the cheese: microwave for 30-40 seconds.

Enjoy!