adventures in sourdough

One of my major Someday When I Quit My Crappy Job projects was homemade sourdough. Who’s ever looked at their counter and seen something resembling this gurgling up at them?

It is SO FUN.

Except.

Like so many out there, I’ve internalized the ancient Greek great grandmother kind of thing that says “DO NOT WASTE FOOD”. It’s powerful, and frankly I think wasting food is just morally reprehensible.

However, when making proper sourdough, waste is an inherent part of the process, or the euphemism in the recipes that coaxes you to “discard” half of the starter before you “feed” it. I ask you, once you’re humanizing it enough to talk about “feeding”, how on earth can you just casually then dump it out? Moreover, you are putting a LOT of flour into the dough, on a DAILY basis.

So the gist of it is, rather than taking half the starter and throwing it out, I just started a new starter. Obviously this will multiply verrrrry quickly which is where I found myself as I prepared to make eight. Yikes.

So fortunately for me, the King Arthur website, which’d been what got me hooked on this idea through their quite helpful sourdough tutorial, had recipes for “unfed starter”. I called my best friend, a savvy and experienced starter maker, and she skeptically told me that any starter under two or three weeks old wasn’t going to do much.

But I looked at my sourdough, just a few days old, bravely bubbling.

 

And frankly, it was odorous enough that I knew something was happening in its innards and I just sort of wanted it out of my kitchen.

And this fabulous and incredibly easy recipe for sourdough pretzels had a little added yeast in it, that I figured would pep up my starter, immature though it was.

And guys.

I AM SO IN LOVE WITH MAKING PRETZELS!

Things I love about making pretzels:

1. It prevents sourdough starter waste (Duh. The whole premise for this post). I am going to start Sourdough Starter Waste Awareness. It’s going to be a thing.

2. Rolling it into perfectly even 18-inch tubes is lots of fun. You can twist it in the air, you can do a twist-y pull-y thing on the cutting board that makes you feel like you are a pastry chef with magical hands that finesse perfectly even tubeys.

3. The recipe is sooooooo forgiving. I didn’t have dry milk so I just put in liquid milk instead of water. Worked beautifully. In one of my many batches (oh, just wait) I forgot to add the oil to the dough so I just mixed it in after it had risen. The dough didn’t care.

4. Making it into perfectly pretzel-y bows is fun. And you can involve your whole family (my mom’s off work, my sister’s home from school, hurray! We also all went to Zumba together!). My sister is particularly skilled at making the bows. They look like ribbons for AIDS, breast cancer, or another serious issue like sourdough starter waste awareness. (Please take that in the joking spirit in which it was intended, and recognize that sourdough starter is a trivial issue I am being snarky about but food waste is a BIG DEAL and even making a small difference in your own home can radiate outward into your social group and have a significant impact. Maybe only buy one bag of prebagged lettuce this week. Put your bread in the freezer if you’re not sure you can eat it all before it molds. See how it goes.)

Back to my project. Even pre-baking, they already look like real pretzels!

 

4. Brushing it with sugar water to make it shiny is fun.

5. Sprinkling it with salt is fun. And kosher salt is pretzel salt enough, in my book.

6. It smells awesome coming out of the oven.

 

7. I have TONS OF STARTER which means I’ve been making TONS OF PRETZELS.

8. Word on the street is that sourdough has a lower glycemic index than regular bread. Who knew? Word on the street is also that sourdough is better for those afflicted with Irritable Bowel syndrome. Who knew?

9. Pretzels contain lots and lots of carbs, and as everyone knows, carbs are the best.

10. If you are related to me you are getting pretzels for Christmas.

   

11. I am not a ballpark mustard girl at all- count me in for snobby Grey Poupon. But imagine my SHOCK to realize that I HAD HOMEMADE PRETZELS AND ALL I HAD TO PUT ON THEM WAS GREY POUPON.

It’s actually good. It’s okay.

  

12. My sister has accompanied the pretzels with fig jam and marinara sauce. She reports good results.

13. VARIATIONS GUYS! Basically once you know how to make pretzels the sky is the limit. Auntie Ann’s is at every mall and airport in the world, yet I know no one who buys Auntie Ann’s. This has to mean something. GIVE ME PRETZEL SUGGESTIONS.

14. Oh what’s up, cinnamon sugar pretzels.

+6 T sugar and a heavy dumping of cinnamon in the dough
-salt on top
+cinnamon sugar on top, duhh

Chewier than the other ones. Like a portion-controlled incarnation of a cinnamon-raisin bagel.

15. EVERYONE’S FAVORITE. Parmesan Pepper Pretzels- delicious and alliterative.

+black pepper!
+lots of Parmesan cheese!

Cheese bubbles cheese bubbles cheese bubbles!

Pardon the pictures, as I have yet to take these out of the oven during daylit hours. There are more in my future, but suffice it to say that this recipe is worth a gander.

 

16. I have a blog. Which enables me to poll the net.

What flavored pretzel shall I make next?!

makin’ some cells

Hello friends!

I have spent the past three days popping over to an out building of the hospital to get my injections! Injections of filgrastim, a drug that makes my clever body make lots ‘n lots ‘n lots of stem cells. Those stem cells then overcrowd my bone marrow and get pushed out into my blood. Where they will be waitin’ and circulatin’, for the very nice doctor types to extract on Wednesday. Where they will then be put on a plane to…? (they can’t tell me!) to a 33 year old woman with acute myelogenous leukemia. And, God willing, my cells will then find their way to her bone marrow and grow her a new immune system.

Actually having friends-of-friends who have benefited from these transplants, I truly do feel what an incredible honor it is to be matched with someone (your odds are only 1 in 540: thus the importance for registering! You can do so here!)

And I myself am benefiting from truly truly just taking care of myself. Being absurdly grateful for being in such good health that the benefits extend beyond my body to that of another’s.

So anyway yesterday was actually my birthday… not knowing how I’d be feeling with side effects of meds, I didn’t make formal birthday plans (though I’ve still been spoiled senseless by my loved ones and will continue to be). It was a lovely day (well,ugly in terms of weather… but lovely in terms of experiences) that involved pho (my iron’s low, per a CBC they did on my blood on Saturday, so I have medical permission to chow down on burgers and steak this week), wandering through museums (walking is supposed to improve the whole stem-cell-making process and as an added bonus it helps my near-constant lower back pain), and watching Best In Show. Real birthday celebrations will happen later on.

And in the meantime, I am enjoying all the love around me.

My boyfriend Steve is pretty great, and gave me one of my great loves, Great Harvest! Dakota bread I think is the best bread in all the land.

 

Great Harvest is the shizz, too, and when he told them it was my birthday, gave him a cookie to give me. There are no pictures of it because it disappeared into our bellies too fast.

Having bread is good for this faux-pregnant intermittent nausea thing I have. I can’t eat too much… but I can’t eat too rarely.. and vegetables are skeeving me out… and basically bread is what works.

Also dried fruit, and my oh-so-wise sister must have sensed this, since she sent me birthday love in the form of a really boss fruit and nut platter. I love fruit and nuts always, but particularly now. Also dried fruit=iron! Gosh, look how little of that is left.

 

Also, for iron, I totally demolished this banh mi for lunch today.

Back story: I went to the mall this morning in an effort to walk (slash stimulate cell growth/alleviate back pain) somewhere it wasn’t gray and cold and gross. And also to buy my friend a wedding present! But I went the apparently too-long four hours without eating (seriously?!) and got kinda queasy and also didn’t really feel like cooking anything for lunch but PRAISE BE! Was in the general vicinity of Banh Mi DC Sandwich.

And then I was like “Ok, iron, you should get the roast beef…” but was unenthused about it and then read further on and saw PATE! Aka LIVER, aka iron like whoa. I’ve been thinking about my grandmother throughout this whole process, but particularly when I ate liver. Lady loved her some liver and onions. And pate. She would approve.

This was delicious and I ate it all.

Finally, my mom loves me and has prepared for every possible scenario. She has taken Tuesday and Wednesday off work to tend to me. She emptied CVS of their heat wraps. I am rocking an incredibly sexy gauze and heat pack belt beneath my sweatpants. Just try to envision the sheer allure.She has bought me seltzer, crackers, and popsicles for possible puke-age.

And she joined me in watching/getting misty eyed over this clip. Mr. Rogers loves me (and you).

tea with the queen

Oh P.S. My mom went to the UK last month to visit my studying-abroad sister and have tea with the queen so I was kind of foraging for myself for awhile there.

Which leads to things like this happening:

I sit at the computer being all “God I’m so tiiiiiiiiiiiiired. I’m so huuuuuuuuuuungry. I can’t even stand uuuuuuuuuuuuuup”.

And then going “OH MY GOD I WENT OUT TO LUNCH AT WORK AND HAVE LEFTOVERS! I AM SAVED!”

 

In a (compostable!) leftovers container was a deeeeelicious half a veggie burger from Busboys and Poets. Went on a rare and thus very exciting work lunch out in DC to welcome a new staff member at our DC office.

I kind of ordinarily think people who only eat half a sandwich for lunch are ridiculous and probably hungry all the time, but we had gotten their ridiculously good nachos as an appetizer and their veggie patty is also the size of my face. So.

That half a sandwich didn’t fill me up for dinner (not having preceded it with nachos) so then I randomly chewed on:

Tomatoes and bean sprouts, of course.

And SHOCKINGLY, SHOCKINGLY, eating those things with my bare hands did not leave me satisfied. I know. And then I ate a bunch of other crap. Can’t remember. It’s been awhile. April was not my healthiest month. Trying to get it together now.

Steve came over for meals a lot, because he is good company and my house makes scary noises from time to time.

It was good cause I still had all this food at my house, cause we tend to overbuy.

So I did a his and hers leftovers-utilizing thing.

His:

  

Leftover pasta made into salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, hummus, and vinaigrette.  

Hers:

  

Leftover rice cooked up with hummus, tomatoes, kale. Both pretty good.

 

Then my mother returned!

A welcome to America meal, beautifully arranged, if I do say so myself. Nice colors. Nice textures. Nice flavors.

 

I had leftover black bass from a delightful day of grilling, so I made it into a nice pasta dish with caramelized onions, Swiss chard, and vegetable broth. YUM!

 

And my mom did not return from England empty-handed!

First, this chestnut spread:

Um, literally squeezed it out of the tube and onto my finger. Went, “I know this was probably really expensive and I want you to know that I’m really enjoying it despite eating it like a cavewoman.” Didn’t stand a chance. Ridiculously amazing. Not as thick as peanut butter: more the consistency of frosting. And the flavor of sweet chestnutty buttery… awesomeness.

Zoomed right through these, too:

My mom studied abroad at St. Andrew’s in Scotland (where Wills and Kate later met!) and became passionately fond of oatcakes. They are uh-mazing. Super dense, not that sweet, just… so hearty and satisfying and great. And you can put honey on them :D

Finally, proper English breakfast tea!

 

Proper leaves, so I got out my little buddy that Steve gave me.

 

I call him Mao.

making things

I keep wondering if it makes sense for me to have some kind of career where I cook food on a regular basis. Or, I guess, alternately, spawn a Brangelina quantity of children.

The thing is, I just really like to cook and would often just like to do it all day. It relaxes me, it helps me do my best thinking and work through the stuff in my head, it’s a creative act, it helps show people I love them, it’s a satisfactorily sensory experience between the aromas and the sounds and the colors and the textures.

But only have so many people to feed.

So I make muffins and eat way way too many of them.

 

Apple Greek Yogurt Muffins

1 T ground flax
3 T water
1 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 T wheat germ
½ tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 T brown sugar
1/4 c. canola oil
½ cup Greek yogurt
¼ c. milk
2 small apples, cut into tiny dice

Set aside flax and water in a large bowl; let sit until frothy. Meanwhile, combine dry ingredients (flour through baking powder).To the flax combo, add remaining wet ingredients (maple syrup through soymilk or milk). Whisk together vigorously until smooth and bubbly.

Add a third of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and fold gently to combine. Add half the apples, then another third of the flour, then the rest of the apples, then the rest of the flour.

Bake at 350 for 14 minutes.

This was a good one. Soft and lovely on the inside.

It actually made more than a dozen muffins’ worth of batter (if you fill your muffin tins 3/4 full, as I do. If you pack ‘em and have mega muffin tops, more power to you, and you’re set.)

However, I prefer to have extra to bake into a giant muffin top. Mm. I also sprinkled it with brown sugar, just to make sure it was okay.

 

In other making stuff news, I opened up my latest issue of Cooking Light and saw this recipe for strawberry buttermilk sherbet and thought it looked quite nice.

And I had grocery store strawberries I no longer had any interest in eating straight up becaaaaaaause we had FARMER’S MARKET STRAWBERRIES that look like jewels and taste like sunshine (and we got free “I love local strawberries” pins!).

So I made the recipe (ish, by which I mean my store didn’t have full fat buttermilk so I used low fat and I didn’t have agave nectar so I used stevia and a little bit of honey)

The bright red strawberries looked lovely against the frothy white buttermilk.

And the pureed color was lovely.

  

A trip in the ice cream maker resulted in something that looked a lot more like granita than sherbet, but tasted great.

Finally, making food, or assembling food, or basically just providing people with food, is how I show them I love them and attempt to help them cope with life’s difficulties. Our poor choir director came down with bronchitis the week immediately preceding Easter (where he had to conduct the choir at ridiculous quantities of services). Then his wife got sick too.

So I made them an Easter basket! Of wellness :D

First, soup, cause you gotta have soup when you’re sick. This turned out GREAT and it was all slow cooker.

Headed out to class followed by services on good Friday, I threw in my slow cooker: 1 bay leaf, 1/4 a cup or so of chopped celery, 1/2 a cup or so chopped carrots, 1 cup lentils, and 4 cups water. Put it on auto shift and left for ten hours or so.

I arrived home and chopped up a bunch of Swiss chard and put that in. At that point it was good enough to eat, so we did, some.

But THEN, knowing I wanted to deliver our friends some soup the following morning, I added some oomph, in the form of 1 can of fire roasted tomatoes (the garlic seasoned kind), the remainder of a can of chickpeas, and a chopped up potato.

The next morning (say, 8 hours later?) I turned it off. And the potato was cooked PERFECTLY and the flavors were GREAT!

(Seasoned it with salt and pepper last; as I’ve heard salt can slow down dried bean cooking time.)

Also the ancient Greek remedy of Vick’s vapo rub. True story.

A tea variety (pomegranate white, cinnamon stick caffeinated black, and my all time favorite decaf Good Earth)

And because this is an Easter basket and there must be treats, a choco bunny:

And this fun guy, picked up at the Greek store buying Easter provisions. Like peanut brittle but made with sesame seeds and honey!

 

And now I am home on a day off, writing a whole bunch of pre-scheduled blog posts, and despite the fact that I ate roughly four peoples’ worth of Easter treats yesterday, I still want to cook something!

the most wonderful time of the year

Tis the season for

1. Holiday parties!

They decided to hold our holiday party in our very own warehouse (in the DC office, not the Virginia office where I usually work, which meant for the second time braving my fear of driving in Northeast DC, where the drivers, at least from my point of view, are the craziest).

They did a beautiful job imparting holiday charm via candlelight, wreaths…

… sparkly unicorns? I can only assume it was meant to be a reindeer?

   

Definitely, though, the highlight of the event was all the TALENT! My coworkers have all these secret skills!

There was a string quartet…

  

… a saxaphonist, not pictured, a skit by the nutrition education department and a dance by Partner Relations

And then it was time to eat. Biggest buffet I’ve ever seen?

 

We were supposed to line up “in small groups” so as not to crowd the buffet. Yeah right. Immediately the entire food bank staff got in line.

Amy, my supervisor, was smart enough to bring her own utensil (since apparently we always run out of cutlery at events.)

Behold, the spork! (She gave me one of these for Christmas. Gosh I am so lucky).

Like fifteen minutes later (in which we all chatted about favorite Christmas songs/movies) I at last feasted my eyes on the pretty epic assortment of food I got from the buffet.

From the top: a piece of naan, a strip of roasted sweet potato, shrimp with mango salsa, black beans, guacamole, a deviled egg, mac and cheese (from David! Who made it for our office competitition!), kale salad, corn pudding, Asian-style mushrooms, cranberry sauce, a stuffed mushroom, and some shrimp etouffee. 

Ordinarily I am all over desserts but am trying to not be totally indulgent this holiday season since I’m actually sort of unhappy with some extra pounds that are already lingering on my body, ones I got before the holiday season even began. SO I was trying not to be overly tempted by the desserts, beautiful though they were.

And actually though there were a ton of cakes and fancy things, there was a shocking shortage of cookies. And for me, Christmas cookies are where it’s at (see previous posts!)

So, I got more beans  for dessert :D

Along with some grapes that were garnishing a turkey and I knew would otherwise be thrown away; a wee scoop of sweet potato casserole (which in my mind is a dessert), and in a token to the season, a piece of chocolate covered peanut butter something (which was good but so intensely decadent and butter/cream cheese-y that I actually couldn’t finish it, and didn’t want to) and a taste of pumpkin roll up.

 

And then they unveiled our new logo… via cupcakes :D

Do people like the logo? I think it’s all right. (The cupcakes were dry. We all took bites and were like, “Eh.”)

And now more from the holiday season.

2. Sheila being cute. This happens year round, but she looks like a little Christmas present!

 

3. Cafe Sazon decorating in an adorable fashion. The Christmas tree was backlit, but check out their dazzling display of miniatures!

4. Awesome gift. This was, in fact, a birthday gift, not a Christmas one, but it’s too awesome not to share.

Background: my cousin Nicholas is a very nice person but his diet is just ridiculously unhealthy. Basically all he eats is hamburgers. With the occasional Caesar salad, heavy on the croutons.

When I cook he always says how good it is but he just will not make healthy stuff for himself.

So….

 

(that’s his pet rabbit on the front cover, saying “Please don’t eat me!” I was able to print it because he puts pictures of his pet rabbit on facebook :D

Thoughts on making cookbooks for family members

- Reluctant cooks probably like pictures laying things out, like this roasted veggies “before” and “After”

- Family pictures are nice for creating an association between things that make us happy (family!) and the recipes on the pages (carrots!)

On the topic of carrots, Nick adooooooooooored the carrots I made last Easter because… they matched his shirt. Apparently, he will eat vegetables if they match what he is wearing?

Anyway, I included a recipe, adapted to NOT have to slice carrots with a mandoline (since normal people don’t own them and I regularly nearly amputate things every time I operate mine)

Cachy headings are always nice:

  

And there you have it!

A labor of love (seriously, every homemade gift takes ten thousand times longer to put together than you think it will!) but a really great gift that he seemed to really love.

Back to the holidays, I also adore

5. A trip to the theah-tuh

Going to a play seems to be a year-end treat for me this past few years. My mom would often welcome her kids home from college with tickets to some fabulous musical (West Side Story being the be-all and end-all of the awesomeness, though over the years we’ve also enjoyed Camelot AND Spamalot, South Pacific, Noises Off- which I was actually in in high school!- and lots more fun stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting.)

Well, now I have this super awesome boyfriend who knows I love the thea-tuh and last year he took me to Oklahoma and this year he took me to a fun, new musical at Signature Theater called A Second Chance. We ended up in the FIRST ROW of this cool intimate space and it was oodles of fun. I love the theah-tuh!

5. Romantic proper dates

I am all for hanging out at each other’s house and cooking. It is so lovely and also economical.

But occasionally Steve insists upon spoiling me and taking me out somewhere lovely, so pre-theatuh we went to Extra Virgin, a cute little Italian place in Shirlington.

Pretty Christmas wreaths:

Dim lights and red walls:

 

Insisting on treating the evening like a special occasion, Steve ordered red wine, from two different regions of Italy. We swapped sips. It was weird, it was nothing special on its own but increasingly grew more delicious as it sat out and when it was sipped with food. Which makes sense, since in Italy the wine is supposed to always be served with food.

  

(Gosh, look at how that charming smile ended up in this picture :D)

Bread was average, but WHOA that dipping sauce. Quality oil, quality balsamic, I don’t know what else but it was exceptional.

 

One look at the 600 degree oven pizzas on the menu and I was like YES PLEASE!

I opted to order the “Pizza Profumo di mare ‘Barese Dolce’. Tomato sauce, calamari, shrimp, capers, olives, crushed red pepper, red onion and garlic.

Oh my goooooooooooooodness this was good pizza. SO much flavor from the capers and olives, perfectly cooked seafood (and an impressive abundance for one of the more affordable entrees.)

    

Steve, meanwhile, ordered an eggplant parmigiana-type-dish. It was a bit undercooked. Though it came with polenta, so that’s good. And goat cheese, so obviously that was really good.

Unsurprisingly, what we ate:

Me- 2 slices of pizza, most of the polenta, bread dunked in the leftover tomato sauce from the eggplant thing, scraped the goat cheese out of the eggplant thing.

Steve- everything else!