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Cooking benders
Sep. 8th, 2014 01:04 pmYesterday, the kitchen was busy from 7 am until 9 pm. I was woken up, for the second morning in a row, by the five-year-old. This time he came in to announce that two glo-sticks were still glowing from the night before. We will continue working on establishing boundaries, like knocking and asking before coming in, even when I leave the "cat gap" for miss Emma (she yells at me if the door's completely closed, even though she doesn't actually want to leave the room).
So I got up, headed to the kitchen, and made the usual Sunday morning pancakes with whipped cream. Also, yogurt. More lentil-pecan pate happened the day prior. Actually, I guess there was a gap in cooking after that. Then it was J's turn: he made pesto with basil, pesto with sundried tomatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Maque choux with soy-rizo, to use up the week's okra and the final soy-rizo sausage from the abundance earlier in the summer. Oh, and chocolate ice cream. We also reheated the leftover okra croquettes from the night before, and I opened one of the last two containers of green tomato relish to mix up with mayo as tartar sauce to eat with the croquettes. So much okra these days. The spaghetti squash pile also keeps growing faster than we can figure out what to do with them. Spaghetti squashes are mostly a chore and a source of fiber, as best as I can figure it. There are better vehicles for delivering salt, cheese, and butter to my face.
Someone made the suggestion of turning the maque choux into burrito filling, except there was a slight problem: no tortillas. I've learned, over the past month and a half, why my friend J all of a sudden declared a strong and passionate love for corn tortillas: he no longer wants to buy any bleached flour products because the chemicals used to bleach flour are nasty business. This should indicate to you that I am living with someone who has the same kinds of food neuroses that I seem to have developed. So 'twas time to learn how to make homemade, whole-wheat flour tortillas, with this recipe. They were tasty, although a bit tough; I'll need to be more strategic about kneading them next time. I wish I could just buy all this stuff from someone. In the very least there's someone selling good whole-wheat sourdough sandwich bread at the farmer's market.
We also pulled my medium cast-iron skillet and J's cast-iron waffle iron out of their week-long lye bath, scrubbed them down with salt, oil, and a potato, applied a thin coat of flax oil, and baked the pans at 500 degrees for an hour. Layer 1 seasoning complete; only 6 or so more layers to go. The iron of the waffle iron is red and smooth, in places, and the red isn't rust. J thinks that means it may have been overheated at some point, maybe in a fire, and the red spots don't appear to be taking the seasoning quite as well as the rest of the pan. The internet isn't saying much about the phenomenon, so it remains to be seen whether the waffle iron will be sufficiently functional. No harm in re-seasoning it, in the very least. My cast-iron skillet looks fantastic even with just one coat.
I convinced J to put three identically-sized non-cast-iron frying pans into the Goodwill box. They hadn't come out of the cupboard in a very long while.
Tonight I will make more carrot-raisin muffins (link is an .rtf, for...reasons). The five-year-old, like many five-year-olds, prefers to subsist on a diet of cereal and milk, but gobbled up two muffins in rapid succession a few days ago, so they appear to be a good way to get him to ingest carrots.
So I got up, headed to the kitchen, and made the usual Sunday morning pancakes with whipped cream. Also, yogurt. More lentil-pecan pate happened the day prior. Actually, I guess there was a gap in cooking after that. Then it was J's turn: he made pesto with basil, pesto with sundried tomatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Maque choux with soy-rizo, to use up the week's okra and the final soy-rizo sausage from the abundance earlier in the summer. Oh, and chocolate ice cream. We also reheated the leftover okra croquettes from the night before, and I opened one of the last two containers of green tomato relish to mix up with mayo as tartar sauce to eat with the croquettes. So much okra these days. The spaghetti squash pile also keeps growing faster than we can figure out what to do with them. Spaghetti squashes are mostly a chore and a source of fiber, as best as I can figure it. There are better vehicles for delivering salt, cheese, and butter to my face.
Someone made the suggestion of turning the maque choux into burrito filling, except there was a slight problem: no tortillas. I've learned, over the past month and a half, why my friend J all of a sudden declared a strong and passionate love for corn tortillas: he no longer wants to buy any bleached flour products because the chemicals used to bleach flour are nasty business. This should indicate to you that I am living with someone who has the same kinds of food neuroses that I seem to have developed. So 'twas time to learn how to make homemade, whole-wheat flour tortillas, with this recipe. They were tasty, although a bit tough; I'll need to be more strategic about kneading them next time. I wish I could just buy all this stuff from someone. In the very least there's someone selling good whole-wheat sourdough sandwich bread at the farmer's market.
We also pulled my medium cast-iron skillet and J's cast-iron waffle iron out of their week-long lye bath, scrubbed them down with salt, oil, and a potato, applied a thin coat of flax oil, and baked the pans at 500 degrees for an hour. Layer 1 seasoning complete; only 6 or so more layers to go. The iron of the waffle iron is red and smooth, in places, and the red isn't rust. J thinks that means it may have been overheated at some point, maybe in a fire, and the red spots don't appear to be taking the seasoning quite as well as the rest of the pan. The internet isn't saying much about the phenomenon, so it remains to be seen whether the waffle iron will be sufficiently functional. No harm in re-seasoning it, in the very least. My cast-iron skillet looks fantastic even with just one coat.
I convinced J to put three identically-sized non-cast-iron frying pans into the Goodwill box. They hadn't come out of the cupboard in a very long while.
Tonight I will make more carrot-raisin muffins (link is an .rtf, for...reasons). The five-year-old, like many five-year-olds, prefers to subsist on a diet of cereal and milk, but gobbled up two muffins in rapid succession a few days ago, so they appear to be a good way to get him to ingest carrots.
