Mad Scientist Waffles

I used this recipe for waffles:

Yogurt Waffles

Ingredients
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups (16 ounces) plain non-fat yogurt
1/4 C skim milk
1/4 olive oil
2 eggs

And I added about 1/3 C of crumbled feta, 1/4 tsp of dill, a pinch of thyme and a pinch of white pepper. I actually used 3 small eggs (from the co-op), as an equivalent to the 2 standard eggs. Nixed the salt, because the cheese had plenty, and the spices and yogurt kept the batter from being bland.

Applied lightening...
They lived!

These unexpected constructs were delicious. They had a light, crispy body and the feta melted in just the right amount, without causing any sticking onto the griddle.

It's not science. It's Mad Science -- mwhahahahaha!

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

Lemon & Lime Fish Chowder

1 small leek, thinly sliced
2 TBL unsalted butter (don't substitute or leave out)
3 sprigs marjoram
1 1/2 lbs white fish (cod and sole), fillets
1/2 a medium lemon
1/2 a medium lime
salt to taste (1 tsp)
splash (around 1/4 C) of mirin cooking sake (sherry or white wine)
fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

I used to think that every meal would be improved with garlic. The problem is how often anything I cook tastes the same as any other thing I cook: garlic, oregano, black pepper. Tonight I set out to cook something that would bring out the best in the fish. Due to too much fish for too small a cooking pot, this became a chowder instead of poached fish. Happy accident!

In a 3 quart (or there abouts) saucepan, melt the butter. Add the leeks and cover. Cook on medium heat until soft but not brown. (About 3 minutes.) Cut a couple thick slices of lemon.

Cut the fish into 1/2 pieces and place in the pot on top of the leeks. Add the marjoram and the lemon slices. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining lemon and the lime, over the fish. Cover and cook over low heat. (About 5 minutes.) Add the mirin. Let simmer uncovered for another minute. Don't overcook; you'll lose the "broth". When the fish flakes easily, remove the pot from heat and gently turn all the ingredients, removing the marjoram twigs, slices of lemon, and any pips or bones that got loose.

If you're serving this, you can garnish it with a pinch of chopped parsley and one of the lemon slices, which should still look pretty good, since this all cooks very fast. I would say that this serves 2 people generously. I ate the whole thing, I will admit, and it was too much. I ate the whole thing partially because it was soooo gooood and partially because I don't think this is something that will hold up to reheating. I was too hungry/impatient/lazy to make rice or angel hair pasta to go with the fish I wanted for dinner; again, I think that turned out for the best. While some crusty bread would compliment any fish chowder, I don't think this needs it.

It's all about the fish and the butter, but the delicately musty marjoram, the mildness of leek, and the zingy mix of citrus, further sweetened with the mirin, were the right supporting flavors. Sole by itself would have been mushy. The fillets are so thin, they are better for flash cooking. Mixed with the cod, which is a pretty robust fish, the sole broke up the dominant flavor and added texture interest.

No photo. I had nearly eaten it all before I thought, "I should post this."

It won't always be a beautiful breakfast

If every breakfast could be fruit and tea, every day would start out pretty awesomely. Today wasn't a fruit day, and maybe not awesome, but still, pretty cool. I cooked bacon on my George Foreman grill. I attempted to cook an egg, but forgot to correct for the slope and therefore got a very thin omelet out of about 75% of the egg. (The rest was lost to the grease collection.) Plus cheddar cheese and corn tortillas, so nutritionally not on par with bananas, apples, and honey.

I haven't wanted to cook anything from raw on the little electric grill, in an effort to keep it sanitary. It makes great sandwiches. Today I discovered that it also makes great bacon. The cut-down-for-size strips cook flat, and to just the right crispiness. They don't swim in a pool of bacon grease and burn.

The clean up is a lot easier, so I saved water, too. Yay!

Eat Pretty

I took a photo of my dinner last night. It wasn't a special meal, but it looked pretty. All it was was battered fish (Trader Joe's calls them Fish Nuggets, LOL) squares with mustard greens that had a little onion, garlic, and lemon. It might end up in the food album on Picasa eventually, though the pic is still on my phone at the moment.

I'm not very good with presentation, but I like what I eat to be pretty, so improving my meal presentation is something I have been working on without realizing that I'm doing it. I focused my intent to do so at some point, and then it ran on autopilot. The splash of warm color that carrots or a curl of lemon zest provide creates an ember of aesthetic pleasure for me.

The good thing is that food is pretty in smaller portions. Also, veggies and fruit are prettier than "brown and white" meals.

Honey, Almonds, Dried Figs, Dried Apricots, and Two Colors of Raisins

The timer is on its final 10 minutes. I've peaked at the baking, and I think it will be done at the projected time.

Wouldn't it be great to stick to the rule of dessert only once a week? It's unlikely. I've already had an oatmeal raisin cookie today (from Little Ray's Bakery, all natural). After dinner I had a craving for something sweet, but not sugary, yet not one of the deliciously perfect gala apples of which I still have two. I wanted something like the baked honey-date-butter-phyllo creation I made that one time a few years back. I didn't want anything that was only at its best while still freshly made, like a scone.

Using a coffee cake recipe as a guideline, I came up with this:

Batter
 1/3 Cup light brown sugar (tightly packed)
2 Tbl butter, cold
1/3 C oil (Canola, because that's what I had on hand)
1 egg
1/2 C plain yogurt (Greek style, in this case)

1 C All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
pinch of salt
pinch of ground Cloves
1/4 tsp ground Ginger (lackluster stuff)
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Fruit & Nut filling
Chopped dried figs, golden raisins, and Thompson raisins simmered in 1/4 of black tea with a cinnamon stick
Chopped dried Apricots
Whole dry roasted, unsalted Almonds
About 1/3 C (a little more than) Honey. (Mesquite honey from Trader Joe's, in this case.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside.
3. Cut the butter into very small cubes and cream into the brown sugar with the oil. I did this by hand.
4. Mix in the egg. Don't overwork it.
5. Mix in the yogurt.
6. Fold in the dry mix, adding a third of the dry at a time while you blend it with the wet.
7. Prepare the baking dish. I used an 8" cake round lined with a circle of parchment.
8. Spoon half of the batter into the pan. It will not cover the bottom layer.
9. Drizzle on half the honey.
10. Spoon on the soaked fruit (no extra liquid)
11. Drizzle on the remaining honey.
12. Layer the apricots and almonds.
13. Top with the remaining batter. Using a rubber spatula, shaped the sides so that you have a dome of unbaked goodness.
14. Bake for 35 minutes. Allow to cool enough to remove from the pan, but serve warm.

I love tea and fruit together, poaching fruit with tea or, as in this case, softening hard, dried fruit to make a soft filling. Black tea adds a subtle flavor. I just used a tea bag that had already been steeped once for a cuppa.

Yogurt is awesome in places where sweet recipes usually ask for heavy cream or sour cream. It's a good way to use yogurt that you don't want to eat, because you have too much of it, or it's been open for a while, or it just crossed the expiry date. (Look at me, using non-American words. Snark not.) Yogurt is less expensive than sour cream and far less expensive than heavy cream. I find it works well in scones, waffles, and coffee cakes (anything levened with baking soda).

Most batter cake recipes that I have made that call for butter work just as well with oil. I like to put a couple of tablespoons of butter to get some of butters oomph. Mixing fats creates all kinds of rewarding results in flavor and texture. Roll out biscuits and cookies have to be made with solid fat, and if it calls for shortening, don't think you can get away with butter. If you make a biscuit recipe with oil, you get a fluffy scone or bannock. Make it savory with cheese, herbs, and olive oil and you have a good thing.

A Scottish Woman Reading Rilke

How tragic that I titled this blog space with "Stories" and filled it with nothing. Now that I have acquired half a dozen food & interest blogs that I am actually interested in reading, and because it is a dark stormy morning in December, and because I am not able to go back to sleep... .

Because I am still not well, I can't do anything too active. That means no bustling about the kitchen making breakfast (I think I want French toast to go with those bananas) or actively starting errands, tasks, and chores. Heck, I was sitting here working up to the making of tea. Bag tea.

It is very important that I don't let myself get anxious about what I can't do yet. It makes breathing harder. What I am recovering from is a wicked case of bronchitis, or what fits the description of reactive airways disease. I have had breathing issues in the past. There was the time I got very sick at 18. Ever since then, I have had more sensitivity to things like household chemical smells (the Garden aisle in a hardware store could kill me), air conditioning, and even milk shakes that are too cold. Chocolate malt, in particular. Go figure on that one.

What I am most afraid of is suffocation. Bronchitis feels like drowning. If I am not sick (feverish) and am only wheezy, I can sit still and calm myself. I taught myself to do this because of how often it happens with seasonal allergies. Be still, be calm, and eventually come to a kind of equilibrium and restored breathing.

It's cold season. I was spinning the Wheel 'O Colds and thought I might have to go through all the variations from the bus riding student population. I think I was significantly impaired by fever by the time I realized that I was feverish. I lost the whole weekend and three days of work being sicker than I can ever remember being. Now, a full week later, I am still short of breath. I know I am mending.

To me, the interesting thing that is coming out of this sickness is how it seems that my physical self has used the illness to insist that I must change my life. My appetite came back, but the only things that taste good are fruit, peanut butter, and healthy foods. I can only eat 1/4 of what I would normally expect to want. I am absolutely sick of sitting and reclining. (Unfortunately, I still have to.) I have to take everything slow.

I can afford to eat good food, now. I can buy organic again. And there has not been a good reason for me not to buy the peppers and onions that I love to eat. I don't have to make meals large enough for leftovers, ever, so I don't have to eat chili or soup for days. I don't have to be always multi-tasking. I don't have to rush home. I do want to clock out for my lunch break and take a walk around the block for the fresh air.

I don't have to be 30 or 40 pounds overweight and irritated by it. It's not so much that I care about the mass as that to me it is a constant reminder of the way I've let things continue. During all the violent coughing, I got an abdominal cramp. It kind of felt good, because I haven't felt that muscle work that hard in a long time.

Food is such a big thing for me! I don't have to eat a lot to be happy, but I do like the things I eat to be made with care and thought.

People like Rilke's poem, "Archaic Torso of Apollo," for the final phrase in the last line, translated as "You must change your life." I think, in general, readers don't get the poem, but they latch on to the force of that final imperative. I first heard it read on a few weeks ago on a show. Another character talks over the whole first part of the poem, and only the last stands out, directed at a man who recently dumped the poem reader. But I think what it is is the sense you might get standing in a church, looking at the beautiful windows and architecture. Then all at once, you hear a voice, feel a voice push at you, and it is as if you've suddenly come awake. You are in the presence of God. You must change your life.

We have names for it because it is a common human experience: wake up call, call to action, satori.
tea.

One of us... one of us... .