oatmeal muffins

Let's recap. I wake up on Saturday morning. I have an oral exam-- to prove that I actually have a dissertation field to begin writing in-- in three hours. I've been preparing for something like three months. I have slept for three hours. Half of a chorizo burrito is somewhere between my stomach and my throat. It doesn't feel good. I check my email. I have negative three hundred dollars in my bank account. Somehow, I guess, for the first time in ten years of automated finances and cash only, I LOST TRACK. Another hundred dollars in overdraft fees. I cry and cry and cry and sit on the floor and cry again.

Getting a Ph.D. is hard, you guys.



Some coffee, a wire transfer, a drive up the coast and a few hours later-- I passed. And while I am still all nerves and, nervously, broker than broke, good things are happening. Good cheap things: swinging on swings, walking around the block, picking apples, watching Mad Men, finally getting a good night's sleep, looking forward.

Because I couldn't go to the store to get bagels for the faculty-- apparently, this is some kind of tradition/bribe-- I made muffins. Because I was pressed for time, I did something I rarely do-- I followed a recipe. And these muffins were really good. They are "supposedly" "healthy" (food studies scare quotes!) but most importantly, not too sweet and not too whole-wheaty either. And with a well-stocked pantry, they are FREE.

OATMEAL MUFFINS
(from Bon Appetit, from Epicurious)

* 2 1/3 cups quick-cooking oats
* 1 cup whole wheat flour
* 1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 2 tablespoons oat or wheat bran (I had wheat bran. You can get it at stores with bulk sections. It's cheap. And delicious in yogurt.)
* 2 tablespoons wheat germ if you have it, I didn't.
* Half a cup of chopped nuts, if that's your thing. Obviously, this did not feature in my muffins.
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup buttermilk (milk with a T of vingar in it, you know the drill)
* 1/2 cup canola oil
* 1 large egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/3 cup boiling water
* 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen berries. I had blackberries.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Plop those cute little liners in your muffin tin. If you have a normal sized muffin tin, this makes 18 muffins, which is to say, a second-day SIX MUFFIN BONUS. The batter keeps fine overnight and eating freshly baked muffins two mornings in a row will ease almost any pain, if this weekend is any indication.

Mix oats and all the dry stuff in large bowl. Blend in the buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla. Stir in 1/3 cup boiling water and let stand 5 minutes. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter among prepared muffin cups.

Bake muffins until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes for standard muffins. Cool for about ten minutes, serve.

provencal scrambled eggs

Back to school!



While I had a great summer with some culinary high points (see below) there were some low points as well. Even though I didn't have to pay rent for a month or so, I literally spent all the money I saved on takeout. Not even burritos wolfed down with joyful abandon: we are talking JACK IN THE BOX DRIVETHROUGH, fistfuls of french fries without bothering to put on ketchup, more than two ice cream sandwiches a day. I guess I started sometime last year when I was busy and it snowballed. So.

Back to school not only has that meet-the-new-kids newness and new-house-commuter-schedule-weirdness but also a relationship with my body I haven't had in awhile.... I am training for a half marathon. It's nuts!

So not only do I have to figure out how I fed myself before The Kummerspeck, but excessive culinary delights (kettlecorn dinner) suddenly make me feel like crap instead of awesome. I don't like the discursive baggage that comes with exercise-- in a lot of ways, I feel like I am too self-aware, cynical, or invested in my academic project to join the ranks of moms with shortshorts and strollers doing jumping jacks in Mission Bay. But maybe feeling awesome is awesome no matter how you get there.

Anyway, here is what I have taken to eating after running. In actual-runner-terms, I am still doing tiny distances, but it still feels good to eat a ton of protein as soon as I get home.

PROVENCAL SCRAMBLED EGGS

Crack three eggs in a pan and keep the heat low low low while you beat them up with a fork.

Throw in a tablespoon or two of milk if you have some that isn't skim because that will just make them kind of spongy and weird.

When curds start to form, stir in about a teaspoon of herbes de provence (or just a bunch of thyme) and the juice of about half a lemon.

Keep stirring.

When the eggs look creamy, toss in some creamy cheese or creme fraiche (or not, but i have been working my way through a block of feta the size of my head that i got at the Middle Eastern market because it was so cheap and i was so psyched to be in the land of bulk-bins and brined cheese.)

Enjoy my cheesy late 90s asphalt-slappin jam:

Spicy Eggs

I was never a fan of hot sauce. Never saw the point. I always felt like those who liked hot sauce had some kind of cultural cache: I guess one time at some point I visited some grown-up in an office and was amazed, amused at a bottle of hot sauce stashed in the corner of a cubicle. Then when facebook was just a toddler and groups were introduced, one of the first to go viral at Columbia, "Hot Sauce Fixes Damn Near Any Food", made me feel the whole internet was at some party and I was in the corner.

No more. Something about replacing white pizza with burritos, the economy-sized tub of Franks Red Hot in the fridge, going out to the desert or cooking in a cast iron pan. Or maybe it was drinking less coffee. Maybe I am just feistier. But I can't get enough. Hat tip to Adam for inventing these and for feeding me so many breakfasts.

SPICY EGGS

+ Heat up oil in a sturdy pan (or leftover sausage fat over a fire pit, if it is dawn and you are in the desert and life is as good as it gets)
+ Fry a lot of cayenne, or cayenne-lime mix. Add red pepper flakes. Add paprika. Add chili/e powder. Sizzle sizzle.
+ Turn the heat lower and scramble some eggs (you know, that you already beat with a fork in a bowl).
+ Avert your eyes while someone else adds a liberal amount of cheese.

banana muffins

Woah!

September, where did you go?

I took a test and it was ok until the end. I am taking too many classes. Two of three have mentioned Kant which makes me feel wriggly in a bad way. My internet was down so I spent a lot of time alternating between being super productive and slipping into disconnected emo fits. Now it's fixed and the repairman gave me wine suggestions: hilarious and strange. Gaucho Malbec? Anyone?

Food! I have been eating pupusas and donuts and guava cheese pie. I made gnocchi without a recipe and that seemed to work out okay. A lot of weekends in Los Angeles: professional development to gettin rowdy. Thinking of ways to use up the colossal bean collection I seem to have amassed. Guys, what do you do with a lot lot lot of white beans? Email me.

Anyway, I make muffins kind of a lot but there aren't really any recipes up on the blog because mostly they have sucked. I try to make them too healthy, then they are too dry, or I add too much fruit and they are soggy. Anyway, I am quick-bread-tarded. These muffins are a beacon of hope! They are delicious and maybe even okay for you. Muffins, tea, leaves, acoustic music! Let's pretend it's fall.

BANANA MUFFINS
+1 to 1 1/2 cup of mashed very ripe bananas (3 bananas)
+1/2 cup wheat or oat bran
+1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
+1/2 cup sugar
+1 egg
+1/4 cup milk
+1/2 t salt
+3 t baking powder

-Preheat the oven to 400 and prep yer muffin tin/muffin cups/etc

-Mix together the wet ingredients. Then add the dry ingredients: try not to have big chunks of baking powder (nasty!) but no need to sift in advance

-Swiftly and decisively fold the dry into the wet. Lumps are ok. Fill your muffin tin. If you like big muffins (hahaha. I don't even know what that might refer to but its sounds awesome. Actually this whole line is chock full of weird double entendres. Eeeee) then fill the tins all the way, none of this 2/3 nonsense.

-Bake for 20-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let them cool a little, then scarf one down with a glass of milk while quickly flipping through "A Very Short Introduction to Kant".

burnout muffins

Well, I decided to go a little "groove as your soul sings" on the Burning Man quickbread collection. I am hoping that any kind of baked good will be like, wow, homey! in the middle of the desert and I will be more inclined to want to eat veggies&oats&seeds in cookie/tea cake form than some other, you know, healthier form. Anyway, I'm not sure if bourbon beet bread is really one for the books, although I guess I do get credit for inventing it. If you can't have ideas about spectacles of abjection, at least you can have ideas about what kinds of produce & booze you can turn into a cake, right?

Bourbon Beet Bread / Muffins
(adapted from but probably not endorsed by James Beard)

+2 cups (whole wheat) flour (or a little less)
+1/2 cup butter (yeesh!)
+1/3 cup bourbon (double yeesh! if you actually plan to eat this for breakfast, use milk. I mean, or not, I won't judge you)
+1 t baking soda
+1 cup finely grated/pureed roasted beets (I had three roasted beets leftover from the market, hence this weirdass combination. Carrots or apples, for that matter, would probably taste less vegetal. Because right now these muffins taste like, well, beets.)
+1/2 t salt
+1 t ground ginger
+1 cup sugar/sweetener (I am almost out of agave and can finally transfer back to the good old granulated stuff... winging these baking substitutions by the seat of my pants is getting old. All my fave cookies have been coming out "fine" but not "perfect" and I think the secret might be "actually following a recipe". Or actually resisting the urge to dramatically cut down the oil and sugar to "see what happens." I can tell you right now that what happens is that things become less delicious. )
+2 eggs lightly beaten

-Oven to 350, mix all the dry stuff and add the wet stuff. It's ok to stir this puppy until its pretty well combined, you have James Beard's seal of approval, thank goodness. He also suggests that you make toasted cream cheese sandwiches with basically every bread in the book, which strikes me as both ultra-elegant and midwestern-grandpa at the same time.
-For muffins, bake about 20 minutes. For a loaf of quickbread, an hour.

tomato tart

This time last year, I had a real job. Hard to believe, I know, but I actually held down steady employment, learned how to make the most beautiful spreadsheets, and kept my shoes on for basically a whole day. It was a great job, and driving by the office on my way to get ice cream by the sound makes me crazy nostalgic for those days. The best, of course, were when I would set up the catering from the Sono Baking Company and hide the tomato tartlets in the back, hoping that there would be one left over for my lunch. These little buttery monsters inspired larceny in my soul, so you know they're good. And now the cookbook is mine all mine... thanks, Mom!... so my east-coast send-off has been filled with the treats I have grown to love (to steal).

Tomato tart

+Pate brisee (otherwise known as pie crust)

*So the recipe in the cookbook is basically the same as Martha's, probably because the author was the mastermind behind her baking cookbooks/shows/etc before moving to scenic south norwalk. You could also cruise smittenkitchen for more highly favored, bendy brisees, although frankly as far as pie crust is concerned I am more concerned with the easy flakey buttery quotient than the picture-perfection-despite-a-thousand-instructions quotient. BASICALLY. End up with ONE PIE CRUST.

+a tomato

+1/2 cup of fontina cheese

+a head of garlic

-Preheat the oven to 425, and toss in the whole head of garlic to roast. If you are pressed for time (because it will take like 45 minutes) you can always boil the garlic, a little trick I learned from my dad that makes me feel like a domestic goddess of roasty garlicy goodness every time I use it.

-Make a pie crust, if you zoned out during that informational stage and neglected to do so. Press it into a pie tin, and let it chill out while the garlic cooks. People think that pie crusts are mega-fussy, but I can personally attest that this wabisabi chef whipped this tart up in an hour so don't worry about the "chill for an hour blah blah" thing.

-Go harvest the sexiest tomato from your container garden and core and slice it pretty thinly. Also grate that fontina.

-Denude the garlic and smash it up with some olive oil, then rub that stinky goodness all over the bottom of the tart crust. Now half the cheese, the tomatoes in an attractive pattern, more cheese, salt, and pepper.

-Bake for half an hour to 45 minutes

Lily's first cookbook book jacket photo, right? I love it.

dutch baby (baked pancake)

Oh my sweet goodness, where has the dutch baby been all my life?

Actually, here's a story. The first time I almost went to school in Chicago, I dragged my family out to visit on the train for spring break. There were a lot of brisk walks and Greek classes and pretentious conversations... The upshot of the whole thing was hanging out with my friend from the suburbs and bumming around and eating at the original pancake house. So, so, so very good. Google now tells me that there are a bagillion franchises-- even one in the S.D.-- but at the time it seemed like a magical, midwestern unicorn of a restaurant.

Oh, right, but the story. So I ate a dutch baby at the original pancake house and it was the first time I had had such a thing and it so filling and delicious that I took my bacon with me in a napkin. And stuck it in my parka pocket. Obviously! Later, we are in the fake coal mine in the museum of science and industry and a bunch of other tourists are like, why does it smell like bacon? And the tour goes on and all of a sudden the whole tour is laughing and wondering about the bacon smell. And that's when I realized that carrying around meat in your pocket is not "what normal people do."

Anyway, I just loved everything about this: the fact that it was easy to make after hours in the car, watching it puff in the oven, nibbling at the sides while standing over the stove waiting for it to cool off. The custardy texture in the middle. Eating something covered in powdered sugar for dinner. Yes indeed, the dutch baby is perhaps the new king of breakfast-for-dinner for one or two people (or breakfast for breakfast! or breakfast for dessert!) which we all know is the best meal in the world. Come to think of it, why don't people have breakfast-for-dinner parties more often? It is basically the easiest and cutest thing. Invite me!

DUTCH BABY

* 3 tablespoons butter, melted
* 1/2 cup flour (whole wheat is delicious here)
* 2 T (heaping? yes I think so) sugar
* 1 T vanilla
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1/2 cup milk, room temperature
* 2 large eggs, room temperature
* Lemon and powdered sugar, or some berry compote, or nutella. Or. Mmmmmmm.

Preheat oven to 425. Let the eggs and milk hang out and room temperature-ize for as long as you can stand it. Melt the butter.

Oh yeah, you better be rockin some kind of ovenproof skillet. Scoop out 2/3 of the butter (that's 2 tablespoons for those of you low-scorers. Oof, SAT joke! That hurts. I'm embarrassed for myself) and put it in yer pan and let that heat up in the oven.

Mix up the rest of the ingredients, butter last so it has time to cool. I am talkin about some real deal mixing. Like in a blender or food processor or with a mixer. Or with a whisk I guess. Take a full two minutes even with a machine to really get the batter all congenial.

Now pour that into your pan (hot hot hot!) and bake for 25 minutes, until it is puffy and golden-brown around the edges. Serve with something delicious, like powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon. So yuuuuummy: tastes like living the dream.

(green bean and "roasted" garlic) quiche!

I like to be out of the house, but if I am in the house, I would really like to be cooking and eating then cooking some more. So the last couple days, in the face of literally thousands of pages of reading for this summer, I have been cooking up a storm. First the curry, then the tortillas (too dry), then those snack cookies again, then THIS QUICHE. My goodness! I was worried about the green beans since I bought them the last week of class up at a farmstand in Irvine and those long days are now a distant memory. But they are still delicious! Then on Monday some buddies and I drove to the mountains-- it was beautiful and California is strange and at its best when not paved. Anyway, I bought some eggs from a sweet old lady just like in Wendell Berry's fantasy and got home and realized I already had a dozen eggs in the fridge. Oops.



I am not Gaston, I mean this time two years ago I wouldn't even EAT eggs. But I made a quiche and even though it used up less eggs than I thought it would, it was a much better way to pass the time of day than reading Diderot... More importantly, though, it was really, really, very good.

GREEN BEAN AND GARLIC QUICHE

+ A good couple handfuls of green beans, enough to make like 2 cups chopped
+ A whole head of garlic
+ 5 eggs (3 whole, 2 egg whites)
+ 1/3 cup milk/half&half/cream
+ Some cheese, 1/2 cup? I used some frozen cream cheese from a smoked salmon binge that I had been hoping would thaw okay and it worked fine. If I were you, though... gruyere!
+ A pie crust that you will make while the veggies are cooking (see below), or one from the store

- Oven to 425

- Steam those green beans until they are bright green and done to your liking. My liking is overcooked, so I'll just assume you know how to cook vegetables to your liking, right? I mean what is this. Sometimes these vegan blogs assume you don't know how to do ANYTHING RIGHT, and just because I don't doesn't mean you need to tell me how to cook a goddamn green bean I can google it ON MY OWN thanks.

- Now is a good time to make that pie crust (see below)

- OK now put those aside and refill your little pot and boil some more water while you separate the garlic cloves, you don't need to chop them or take the skins off. Just free them.

- Now boil the garlic cloves for like 10 until they are squishy. Squish them out of their skins by holding the bottom part.

- Meanwhile beat the eggs with the milk and cheese. Add the mashed roasted garlic and bite-sized chopped green beans. Salt and pepper that baby up right.

- Roll out that nice & cold pie crust and just kind of press it as best you can into a cake pan or a pie pan or a quiche pan or what have you. It can be a kind of Frankencrust, I am not going to call the crust police and no one will see it. Or if you went out and bought a pie crust, you know, that's cool too. Or if you are still doing Atkins and are SO EXCITED about crustless quiches like the rest of the internet... that's not so cool but also fine.

- Bake for 25 minutes until the crust is browned and it smells good and everything. Cool for a bit before eating it.

PIE CRUST
1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 T ice water
1/3 cup butter/shortening

Cut in the fat, mix in the water, roll into a ball (add more water if you need to), chill (in the fridge).

quinoa porridge

Well, kids, I just wrote 20 pages about vegan cookbooks and performing feminism in everyday life. I think I successfully maxed out the number of times a self-respecting human being can write the word panoptic in one paper (7). I also maxed out the number of cookies you can eat in a day (12). This is a recipe from less frantic times. According to Isa and Terry, if you cook quinoa more than once a week you get to be a stage 7 vegan, which I imagine in video game world allows you to cast really powerful healing spells or something.

This is a pretty good way to start the day, you feel like a million bucks. My friend made this for us when she got back from Bolivia... I have been thinking of making it ever since and finally did.

First make or acquire some applesauce. I made mine because I have been reading Vegan with a Vengeance like its the good book and actually do totally agree that if you can do it yourself, you should do it yourself.

SO take 4 apples, peel and cut them up into chucks. Put them in a pot with about an inch of water and cook. Yeah that's right, just cook it down until its applesauce, crushing the apples when they get mushy and adding more water when you need it. Sprinkle some cinnamon on at the end. The whole process takes about 20 minutes... it seems like the perfect congenial task while you are doing other tasks, making everything seem homey and delightful. Because you are paying the bills BUT ALSO making applesauce! You are farting around watching Cougar Town but you just made applesauce! If cooking can't save me from my degeneracy, I don't know what will. Maybe writing 2 more papers in 5 days.

OK so now cook a cup of RINSED quinoa in 2 cups of water with some more cinnamon and honey. I added like 1/8 cup of honey to the cooking water. You can always add more sweet stuff later if you need it, but I think it's good to add some to the water so that the quinoa, you know, absorbs it. And do rinse the quinoa, otherwise it will taste like gross hippie food because of the saponin and what's the point of that? Hippie food can and should be delicious, that's what I learned in school this week.

Boil then simmer for 20 minutes, when the quinoa is done throw in the applesauce and applaud yourself for eating the kind of breakfast a responsible, mature adult would probably eat.

Huevos Rancheros

It only occurred to me last week that you can buy enchilada sauce at the store. That epiphany came pretty much at the same time as the one where I realized that enchilada sauce is "that red stuff that makes Mexican food taste like Mexican food." Which is to say outrageously delicious. My life just hasn't been the same since.

So previous huevos rancheros attempts weren't so good, and I would have to go get them at the only Mexican place in town, where they happened to be the cheapest menu item at 12 bucks. TWELVE! Gah. If you have the foresight to keep some refried beans and enchilada sauce in the house, this is the easiest, fastest, most delicious breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Huevos Rancheros

Heat a (small corn) tortilla in a pan, spread on a layer of refried beans and some shredded cheese. In the other side of the pan, fry an egg to your liking. Plop the fried egg onto the tortilla and pour some enchilada sauce on top.

Repeat as many times as you like. Serve with salsa.

persimmon tea cake

Well, before making this cake the only thing I knew abut persimmons was from this video:



Suffice it to say that I was skeptical. As soon as I bought some at the market and did a little online research, I became even more skeptical. How to tell if my persimmon is Fuyu or Hachiya? Was I going to poop my pants if I did chose wrong? Is this like some kind of whack-ass farmer's market Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail? Well, anyway, I think I screwed it up and used the squat kind you're supposed to use in salads (Fuyu), the good news is that it was delicious. I ate half the loaf in one day. Seriously.

The recipe comes from Beard on Bread, kind of, except I halved the recipe but forgot to halve the sugar. I then added more flour, but make no bones about it: this is a cake. A cake that you eat for breakfast. Because you are a grown-up.

Persimmon tea cake

2 1/2 cups flour (I started with 1 3/4 but the batter was too thin because I screwed up and added some whole wheat until it looked like zucchini bread batter. 2 1/2 cups seems right. Use some whole wheat flour at your discretion)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
shake of ginger and cloves, too.
3 persimmons, chopped up (I'm pretty sure that if you're cooking them, it doesn't matter if they are the crunchy Fuyu or mushy Hachiya kind)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup (one stick) melted butter
1/3 cup water (or bourbon or cognac-- I didn't have these)
Optional: some dried cranberries or raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter a loaf pan

Dump all the dry ingredients in the bowl and mix in the wet ingredients.

Cook for an hour, mine took an extra 15 minutes or so.

Curl up some tea and a good book. Or a not so good book that's due tomorrow. Any book will do.

ricotta

Homestead dream complete! Remember the last year and a half when all I wanted to talk about was how plan B was to learn to make cheese on a mountain in New Hampshire? But I never did it? Then when I pined for classes at the cheesemaking institute at UVM that were about a thousand dollars above my budget? Those days are over.

As the internet testifies, making your own fresh cheese is pretty much the easiest thing in the world. All you need is some cheesecloth or old tights and a big container of milk. Here's for ricotta-- paneer and queso blanco are basically the same thing but unsalted and strained a bit more.

So here we go. Take half a gallon of pasteurized (not ultra pasteurized) whole milk and put it in a pot to boil. You want some space on top in case it boils and starts to foam, which happened one time I made this cheese but not the other. Enh. Anyway, if your pots are too small then just scale the "recipe" down accordingly.

Ok, when the milk is just thinking about boiling softly, stir in a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of lemon juice. Turn the heat down until the cheese starts to form curds. Yum, cheese curds! Don't stir, just let the milk simmer for 5 more minutes or so until the curds really separate and you can see the whey, which is watery and yellow.

Line a colander with cheesecloth and strain the cheese, pouring some cold water over the top to cool the curds and rinse off some of the lemon flavor. For soft ricotta, just a few minutes in the colander is plenty. For a firmer cheese that you can cut into blocks or crumble into tacos or what have you, tie up the cheesecloth and let it hang from your faucet for an hour or so.

Recipe for my bootleg palak paneer to follow, ricotta is delicious all by itself... or with some jam or honey.

Happy halloween, everybody!

granola bars

So much to report! California is madness, but I am (somehow) resisting the urge to eat nothing but rice bean & cheese burritos. I have been pretty busy in the kitchen, yes, but the best thing are these granola bars. They are so good I can't believe it. How many granola bars is too many? Three? Four? A whole batch? I started to just take the whole tupperware with me wherever I went, seriously. So here you go! The other thing that is awesome about granola bars is that you can make them with whatever you want and no matter how bad your allergies are (unless you're straight-up celiac, in which case you should buy special "no way in hell these are cross-contaminated" oats), if you make them yourself granola bars are a go. A cheap, portable, delicious go.

Lily's granola bars
Based on Alton Brown's recipe

4 cups oats (not instant)
1/2 cup honey (or agave, for you dirty hippies)
1/4 - 1/2 cup (brown) sugar (ditto)
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup-ish chopped dried fruit (apricots, cranberries, figs, oh my!)
1/4 cup-ish nut, soy, or sunflower seed butter

In a 350 degree oven, toast the oats on a baking sheet.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized pot heat the sugar, salt and honey until the mixture is hot and gooey. When the oats smell toasty and are brown (15 min? Turn the oven down to 300!) add them + your fruit to the sweet stuff, and stir. It should be almost but not quite enough to get the whole mass to unite.

Glop in some nut/sunflower seed butter and stir.

Now line a loaf pan or cake pan with aluminum foil and press the oaty goodness in. When you think you've pressed enough, press more. Use another pan for even pressure, if you have one.

Now bake for 25 minutes. After you take them out, press some more! Now let the brick cool. Once it's cool you can break it into chunks and store in your cupboard (a week, if they make it) or the fridge (longer, but also less chewy) or the freezer (for self control).

Get creative! Do you have awesome additions? A kick-ass granola recipe? Let me know.

Strata

Delicious! Remember when I got all excited about frittatas and the possibilty of party sized eggs for dinner? This is like that in heaven. I'm trying to make all my own bread here to avoid sesame scares, save money and structure my seemingly endless "down time" -- I'm two for two weeks, more on that later, but the last loaf got stale before I could eat infinity smoked salmon sandwiches from impossibly cheap trader joes salmon. Damn, and now I want more. Anyway, strata! They use up stale bread and are also so filling and delicious, I am now convinced they will become a fixture of my new Californian cookery. Also that you can throw some "what do i do with these veggies?" veggies in the mix, or a not so healthy version with cream and sausage, if you want to go the heart attack be damned church social type route. The NYTimes first gave me the idea here- and this is basically the recipe I used. Lemme break it down for ya.

1 lb fresh (by the way, the la jolla farmers market was described to me as small and it's basically the size of union sq, I guess there's some farmland in between
those strip malls after all) tomatoes
Half a loaf of stale bread or a stale baguette
4 eggs
2 cups milk (skim worked fine)
Molto thyme and basil and garlic
Whatever cheese you have kicking around- I had mozzarella, times guru recommends gruyere

Slice the bread- if it's too hard to get a knife through, soak it in water and wring it out. Holy great recession, batman! Wringing bread??? It works, near with me.

Now toast the bread and rub both sides with a raw clove of garlic. Slice the tomatoes into, uh, slices.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Layer bread and tomatoes in a bakin sheet of pan or what have you, throwing some cheese and the leftover garlic in there, also salt and pepper, naturally.

Beat up the milk and eggs and herbs in a bowl, then pour that on top. Make sure it's all covered and kind of dense, especially if you are weird about eggs. Get all artistic with the top layer of tomatoes, while youre at it.

Pop that baby in the oven for 40-50 minutes, when it's done, it should be custardy and much more than the sum of its parts. My computer is in the shop so photo evidence forthcoming, but I've been chowing down in this for the past 4 meals and I'm ready to go back for a midnight snack... Now.

Bootleg rhubarb-cherry cobbler... ish

Actually what this baby turned out to be is more like a tangy, upside-down corn bread. After ix-naying the idea of a pie (post-work and then post-tutoring, it's 9 and I still haven't eaten dinner yet but the rhubarb was going bad and once you let inertia set in....) I decided to make something a little simpler. Also something I could eat with good conscience for breakfast. My boyfriend's house is notoriously lacking in baking staples (witness the bread made with pastry flour that ended up like a giant, sad biscuit), so I ran into the quickee mart while getting gas to grab some Jiffy corn muffin mix and sugar on the way. Bootleg, but what the hell. I am a busy lady. That's the alibi, anyway.

Chopped up the rhubarb (5 stems or so) and threw in some frozen sour cherries for good measure. I love sour fruits, but if you want to go sweeter, a pear or strawberries would go nicely. Toss it in a baking dish with some sugar (I used not a lot-- 1/4 cup or so. Up to 1/2 cup would not be ridiculous) and some flour to soak up the goopy mess. As a consistency whack job, I do not tolerate goopy mess, so I added probably 3 tablespoons of flour. Not really necessary.

Then mix up the muffin mix with an egg and some milk. I added more milk than the box called for (probably half a cup) so that the batter could be in the oven long enough for the fruit to cook. Oh. And I added some sugar (a couple tablespoons) to the corn mix too which was a good call because your cobbler ends up being like 3/4 bread to 1/4 fruit. So a little sweet is good. Pour this on top of the fruit. Bake at 400 for like half an hour. While totally not a cobbler, it is a good breakfast concoction and the sour fruit moistens up the cornbread and the cornbread soaks up the goopy fruity mess. Symbiosis! With Greek yogurt and honey, I actually am a big fan of sour-fruity-cornbread for breakfast. Try it out, teamola.

Well---- my digital camera died awhile ago, so my illustration will have to suffice. Yes: my workplace rules. To compensate us for our long hours and priceless innovation, there are all manners of free treats just for the snacking. As much joy as it brings me to select my daily soda with lunch, feeling downright aristocratic as I haughtily snub Coke Zero for Polar Seltzer, I am doubly happy when I ferret around and make something (a parfait? does that count?) out of nothing. Here's a fancypants parfait from the office fridge. Oh! The mysteriously delicious nut/seed/soy free granola (of dubious nutritional value, but whatever) is Aurora Natural Vanilla Crunch. Making your own would be cheaper and better, and I promise I'll do it sometime soon-- like when the free granola runs out.

apple pear muffins

Heh! Remote blogging... let's see if this works.

Well, in an attempt to be healthy after becoming addicted to the biggest loser (more productive than dancing with the stars-- "you've given me my life back!" "i am an inspiration to the tongan people!) I decided to make some mornin' muffins. Also to get some fruit in my sad, seriously allergic system. I'm no nutritionist, but these seem like a totally decent way to start the day/make it through the afternoon/ fuel those sweaty "last chance" workouts. Uh. I kind of winged the recipe and they came out more than a little moist. Better than dry, right, Le Pain Quotidien? That was low. Anyway, I guess the way to remedy that would be less wet stuff? Watch out, Michael Ruhlman.

Apple Pear Muffins

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar or just white sugar
  
• 4 tbs butter, softened (this is half a stick)
  
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (could go less if you want a less moist muffin)
  
• an apple and a pear (two pears?), grated.
  

Grease your muffin tin/line up some of those tin liners on a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 400.

Mix up the eggs and sugar. Now cream in the butter. Mine didn't really cream up that well, just kind of chilled out in soft chunks. Oh well.

Now add the applesauce and your grated fruits. Shake your fist at your tyrannical immune system that keeps you from eating such delicious smelling things in their normal state.

Now plop the flour, baking soda, baking powder and spices on top. "Sift them together" with a spoon without incorporating them into the batter yet. Now go! In a few decisive strokes, mix the wet and dry ingredients. Don't go crazy. Muffins are very delicate creatures.

Fill your muffin tin-- 2/3 in each cup. Bake for 20-25-+ minutes. Breakfast! One of these days I'll make granola bars and be truly invicible. If you know how to do this (granola bar making, I mean), drop me a line.