It's been a long time since I wrote here

I'm still eating stuff nobody else does. Last night, for example, I sautéed some kale and added a can of Egyptian-style fava beans, with cumin. You can buy favas in several styles, like Lebanese or Syrian, at the International Market next to the Ya Hala restaurant on SE Washington in PDX. For the same meal, Robert heated some frozen langoustines and made cocktail sauce to go with. The combination of beans and seafood actually worked.

This morning's breakfast: soft-boiled eggs, a whole-wheat croissant from TJ's—not as awful as you might think, strong Indonesian coffee (I keep a little plate over the cup to keep it warm), and some cute little mandarins.

January 11, 2009

I have a cold.

breakfast: Moo Shu pork left over from Fujin, served with a dab of umiboshi plum paste; yerba mate; orange juice

later: rice porridge (brown and white) with lime, ginger, red onion and soy.

later still: baked potato (leftover) broiled with gouda and blue cheese; sardines in olive oil; olives.

all day: various herbal infusions with hemp milk. Lots of water.

dinner: Bob promises steak, baked potatoes and peas.

January 10, 2009

breakfast: English muffin, cream cheese, cherry jam. Cantaloupe. Tea with hemp milk.

lunch: Soba (organic heirloom grains) in chicken broth (homemade) with intense, sweet Japanese yam; egg; soy sauce. Pickled ginger.

juice: beet, orange, celery

dinner: Tuna melt (albacore, cheddar, onion, celery, cornichon, mayo, olive oil, Parmesan), orange juice, Turkish olives, celery

Later: salami, cheese (Dutch sheep gouda, Rosenborg blue), rye crackers, Satsumi mandarins.

Jan 2, 2009

Breakfast: Two leftover sesame-mochi-bean paste balls from birthday dim sum at Wong's King. Followed by a dish of sauerkraut (mix Safeway in the jar with red It's Alive! made locally), a hard-boiled egg, a piece of ham and a glass of orange juice with a shot of pomegranate. The sour was a good antidote to the overly sweet (but delicious) sesame balls.

Lunch: The peerless $3.25 carnitas taco at Maya's, with pinto beans and chips and salsa. Such a deal! And so good!

Dinner: Black bean stew with chard; cornbread

December 29, 2008
Breakfast: English muffin with marmelade, red tempest chai (rooibos based) with hemp milk, banana

Lunch: leftover chicken, bok choy vegetables, roasted vegetables and saffron rice

Dinner: Fruit salad (pineapple, pomegranate, pear, papaya, orange), Bob's birthday sandwich (hard-boiled egg, anchovies, tomato, cream cheese on a toasted English muffin.

Breakfastt: grapefruit on the run
Midday: coffeecake from Helen Bernhard, coffee at Lyza'; a bit of leftover ham at home
Dinner: Bob's perfect scallops; saffron rice; bok choy, celery, scallions and mushrooms braised in a bit of soy

Snow turns to rain, and breakfast is baked apples with prunes, raisins and maple syrup. I'm off dairy, so I use a bit of soy creamer. Not too bad. I'm supposed to be off soy, too, but this is just a tad.

I find rice milk more palatable than almond milk, but not very satisfying, probably because it is so low in protein. Hemp milk has more protein, tastes a bit grassy but is really good in herbal chai.

Lunch: Leftover short ribs.

Afternoon: Cappuccino, cheating on the dairy a bit, and I'm supposed to be off coffee, too. I find I don't miss it. Caps used to be super-special to me, but I'm not missing them, either. A couple of orange-cornmeal cookies. Butter, thankfully, is OK.

Dinner: The chicken breasts I bought three days ago went bad, so we fall back on omelets. Mine with ham and cheese, Bob's with just cheese. Cheating again on the dairy. Soup of leftovers--garlic mashed potatoes, tomatoes, rich chicken broth, roasted red peppers, the last of the brown rice.

Day after Christmas: Leftovers!
Breakfast: More stuffed green pepper
Lunch: Orzo salad and ham
Dinner: Mai Thai takein with Maggie and Jeff. Pad Prik, Larb, Vegetable Lover, Pad Thai.
Snow continues. Shopping still on hold.

Christmas Day
Mostly ate at Lyza's, where the theme was ironic retro '50s. Ham with pineapple rings, green bean casserole, yams with marshmallows, Jell-o with whipped cream inside. But also orzo salad, pumpkin pie, really nice wine, cookies, fruitcake, deviled eggs, Cambozola cheese. And David had bought some absinthe, which he kindly shared.

December 24, 2008

Breakfast: piece of the light dried fruit and nut fruitcake.

Lunch: Vegetables! Mashed potatoes topped with braised brussels sprouts, half a stuffed green pepper, chard with raisins and bacon.

Snack (Bob, Lyza, David, Maggie): Wasa, flax, saltine crackers; garlic toasts; blueberry muffins; sour cream herring; It's Alive! sauerkraut; stuffed grape leaves; cheddar and gruyere cheese; cornichons; peperoncini; cookies; candied peel.

Dinner: Nice pressure cooker stew of short ribs, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, parsnips, parsley with red wine and tomatoes. Salad with romaine, escarole, scallions, clementines, raisins and walnuts dressed with dijon vinaigrette. Ice cream for Bob. He remembers the short ribs from his youth, but they were never part of his bachelor repertoire.

December 23, 2008
Breakfast: watm tapioca pudding, sliced bananas, blueberry muffin, chaz chai (black)

Lunch: leftover garlic mashed potatoes with a little gruyere and cheddar, stuffed green pepper (see Dec. 22), corn. Here's why I prefer steaming to microwave heating,

Dinner: two-egg omelet (shoulda been three) with onions, green pepper, mushrooms, cheddar. Clementines.

Breakfast -- smoothie of banana, orange juice, frozen raspberries and brown rice By the time I had blended the dickens out of it, you couldn't distinguish the rice from the raspberry seeds. It was intense.

A bit later, some sour cream herring (Vita this time, see Kettelman's below) on Wasa bread. Leftover carrot-orange juice. Then I made some lemon-blueberry muffins. Those for lunch, with clementines and some radishes, and later some TJ pate on Wasa. I buy a slab of pate once in a while and freeze it in little chunks. It doesn't take much for one snack.

Oh, and some Concord grape juice from the freezer. Heavy on the tartaric acid because I used the Champion juicer, which ground in some of the seeds.

Tried stuffing green peppers for the first time ever. Leftover brown rice, mushrooms, onions, raisins, pine nuts. Uh-oh, out of tomato sauce. Try El Pato enchilada sauce from the back of the cupboard. Too spicy! Cut the heat with some regular canned tomatoes.

Bob doctors legume soup he's made from one of those plastic sleeves that has layers of different dried beans and peas. They remind him of his childhood. He adds garbanzo beans, thyme and pieces of leftover cube steak. Orange juice is good accompaniment

Gorgeous breakfast of leftovers. Put the brown rice in a bowl and top with chard sauteed with raisins and bacon, brown rice, and a cabbage dish from The Quick After Work Vegetarian Cookbook. Green and red cabbage with onion, orange, raisins, black mustard seeds. A nice complement to the chard. Put the bowl in the steamer, and in 10 minutes or so it's toasty warm.

Lunch: Leftover seafood pasta from The Italian Joint. Still pretty good.

Snack: Mexican orange-cornmeal cookies. Have yet to dip them in chocolate. Fine just plain. I make a light fruitcake of nuts, dates, apricots and golden raisins. It's late, but it will be able to sit for a couple of days. Plans are to make toffee and another cookie, perhaps pecan meringues, as well.

Dinner: I've never made cube steaks, but that's what Bob bought. Garlic mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts that Bob pan-seared then braised with pine nuts. We are working our way through a box of See's chocolates, so thoughtfully sent by my brother Michael and his wife, Debbie. Thanks, folks!

Now I'm free

Took the buyout. I'm "retired." Funny, I still don't have time to post. But I'll keep trying. Still eating various meals of crazy ingredients.

breakfast

Pickled herring from Kettleman's bagels. Their own recipe. Silky but a bit spicy.
Homemade sourdough garlic toast with the rest of the Kettleman's lox schmear from a few days ago.
Rice milk
Chaz chi with a bit of red clover
Fruit leather, mixed flavors
Clementines

Aug. 8 lunch
Salad of arugula, curly endive, scallions, feta and cured olives, with a balsamic/wine/garlic vinaigrette, sprinkled with this three-nut mix from TJ's that includes pine nuts, slivered almonds and pepitas.

Also, a chunk of sheep's milk brie with hazelnuts and dried cranberries. Some crunchy black-pepper Mary's Gone (non-gluten) crackers.

Aug. 7 dinner (with Sevin Koont)
Bob's special borscht (beets, potatoes, herbs, brown sugar, lemon juice, yogurt. Scallions and cucumber added after it's cooked. Hard-cooked egg slices and more yogurt (Greek-style) at the table.

Also kasha and kasha varniskes (the second being kasha and bowtie noodles); Bob wanted to make both. Then perfect Ranier cherries that Sevin brought (with lovely pale-yellow flesh) and watermelon that passed muster with Sevin, who is Turkish and thinks watermelon should taste as good as it did in Turkey.

Daily diet August 2008

Folks,

I'm going back to keeping track of what and how I eat. Bob and I have such varied meals, and we are always making things off the top of our heads. It will be good to have a place to check back on how we did things.

Dinner at 7

Since I started getting off work at 7 p.m., Bob and I have been having dinner together. We sit across the table from each other and congratulate ourselves on how well we eat.

Last night, for instance, scallops lightly sauteed and finished with cream, brandy and shallots. Lemon at the table. Spinach that I steamed with a crushed garlic clove, then sauteed briefly in some olive oil. A variety of rice that was new to me, kalijira, a small-grained basmati. After the main course, a relishlike salad of cucumber, green pepper and onion rings with cider vinegar, salt and red pepper flakes. I thought the strong flavors would overpower the delicate scallops, but the contrast of tart and crisp matched perfectly. The red pepper was not needed; I’ll leave it out the next time.

The cucumbers were the Persian variety you can buy at TJ’s. They were new to me. More like English cucumbers, they are crisp and sweet and not very watery, so I was able to cut them in chunky matchsticks. The skins did not seem bitter.

Morning

Today, breakfast
cornbread
slice of bacon
greens from a bunch of radishes, sauteed until limp in some of the bacon fat, dash of hot sauce
orange juice

Yesterday
toast with Marmite
red Anjou pear with Dubliner cheese

Before that
homemade granola (oats, almonds, cinnamon, honey, vanilla)
raisins and dried cranberries (the organic bush-harvested ones with the deeper flavor)

before that
Cream of Wheat made with milk

Tasty vegetables

I'm reposting this to clarify what I mean by chili garlic sauce. I bought a bottle of the red stuff with rooster and the green cap, only to realize that it was chili sauce, not much garlic. That's the bottle with the thin neck that you see on tables in thai (and some other) restaurants. It made an OK sauce, but it didn't have that dynamite punch.

So, what you need for this recipe is the stuff in a bottle with a wide green cap. You should be able to see plenty of chili seeds floating around inside. It can still have the rooster on it, but there are other brands as well.

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Usually, I take fresh vegetables to snack on at work. But sometimes, I take steamed vegetables: cauliflower, broccoli, yams, beets, cabbage. They can be pretty dull eating on their own.

Yams benefit from a bit of balsamic vinegar, a few drops of sesame oil and a scatteing of sesame seeds. Also for them, as well as other vegetables, I've developed a sauce that's so good I can't get enough of it.

I don't have exact proportions because I've been eyeballing it. Next time I make it, I'll make a larger amount and keep track of the ingredient measurements. For now, though, try this.

Mix
a few tablespoons chili garlic sauce (the kind that comes in a clear plastic bottle with a rooster on it and a green cap)
some rice or other light vinegar, maybe a teaspoon or two
a few drops of sesame oil
some tamari or soy sauce, not a lot, just enough to give it a salty edge

Serve it
on rice, other cooked grains and/or steamed vegetables. Sprinkle over some toasted sesame seeds for flavor and sunflower seeds for crunch.

This mixture is quite spicy, so a little goes a long way. I find the combination of chili garlic sauce and sesame oil to be intoxicating. The sunflower seeds take it to a new level. I used raw, unsalted seeds.

Since all its ingredients can be kept at room temperature, the sauce can, too.

The chili rice thing

I found out today that this dish is as good with chicken (I used hindquarters and wings) as it is with beef, which is very good indeed. I developed the recipe maybe a decade ago when I was researching pressure cooking for FoodDay. The beef version of the recipe ran with the article in The Oregonian.

Oh, and did I mention it was fast? Open a few cans, toss in the meat -- it's all ready in less than half an hour (pressure cooking time is only 15 minutes, although it takes a few minutes to get the pressure up).

The Chili Rice Thing

3/4 cup brown rice
1-1/2 teaspoon lard or oil
1-3/4 cup water
Bay leaf
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 4-ounce can diced chilies
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chili powder
3/4 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons beef (or chicken) base (Better Than Bouillon is a good one)
1/4 to 1/2 pound piece of beef or pork or a couple of pieces of chicken (2 hindquarters or 8 wings, etc.)

In a pressure cooker bottom, brown the rice in the lard. Add the water, bay leaf, tomatoes, chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, beef or chicken base and meat.

Put the lid on the pot, bring it to a boil and cook at high pressure for 15 minutes.

The result is a bit soupy; serve in bowls.

Serves 2-3.

No pressure cooker? You can probably put everything in a pot in the oven for maybe 60 to 90 minutes at 350. But I haven't tested the recipe that way.