blue artichoke

It's been one month and a day since my grocery boycott began, and, except for a few ingredients for a fancy Valentine's dinner at home, a few items for Gentleman Caller's lunches and kitchen staples, I haven't brought any new food items into the house. At this point, I think I can last another two weeks, even though I really miss fresh vegetables.

I'm so excited to see the emerging vast expanse of white, ridged shelving in my freezer and refrigerator. The big items have been easy to use up; the real challenge is the odd assortment of jars in the refrigerator door. Using up the tahini was a huge boost, but what about jars of relishes, sauces & juices that have earned squatters' rights to valuable shelf space? Trickier. I feel sort of like an Iron Chef, with a now very limited arsenal of ingredients and a secret ingredient of sweet pickle relish. Sounds like there might be a potato salad in my future...

Oh, and this weekend's muffins were super! Orange-date muffins were more orangey than datey, and are now near the top of Gentleman Caller's favorite muffins. Mine too.

Dinner last night: breaded pork chops in Dijon-orange sauce; orzo with peas and sautéed mushrooms.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks for the suggestions on how to use up my tahini. Alas, I have no chickpeas or pita bread, so hummus is a no go. I found the recipe mentioned by Red Momo, for tahini cookies with almonds and cherries and happened to have everything (or good substitutions) on hand: almond paste, almond meal, orange juice, tahini... I used Bran Flakes for the "multigrain flake cereal," though I saw afterwards that it was supposed to be a multigrain hot cereal, like oatmeal (but multigrain). Whoops. Bran Flakes taste good and give a nice crunch. I also subbed dried cranberries for the cherries and regular sugar for the turbinado sugar. I didn't have high hopes for these cookies, but they are excellent! They taste sort of peanut-buttery and sweet and tart and smooth all at once. Good suggestion, Red Momo. However, as cookies are the enemy of the snackdown fitness challenge, I ate two and packaged the rest to send in to work tomorrow with Gentleman Caller.

Just in case anyone else has this same odd assortment of ingredients stashed away in their cupboards, here's the recipe:

Tahini Almond Cherry Cookies

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup roasted tahini
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup almond paste
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange juice 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup multigrain flake cereal
2/3 cup dried sour cherries
3 tablespoons turbinado sugar

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets, or line with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, tahini, brown sugar, 3/4 cup of turbinado sugar, and almond paste until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla and orange juice. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, almond meal, and cinnamon; stir into the batter until well blended. Mix in the cereal and sour cherries.
3. Drop dough by heaping spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets. Sprinkle the remaining 3 tablespoons of turbinado sugar over the tops.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden at the edges. Cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheets, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Recipe from Allrecipes.com

I still have some tahini left. I'm becoming obsessed with tahini. Not eating it, but getting it out of my kitchen. When looking for the cookie recipe, I found a recipe for a tahini chicken salad. I'm roasting a chicken tonight, so I'll use the leftovers for a chicken salad.

Dinner tonight: Roast Chicken Provencal; leftover baked potato and onion casserole; corn

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've made quite a dent in my overflowing cupboards and freezer. Now there is room to see everything with minimal shuffling. Mostly I've been paring down the things we like to eat fairly often: leftovers, frozen vegetables, canned vegetables and so on. I defrosted a giant log of ground beef and made lots of meatballs (which I froze) and a classic ground beef lasagna. I combined all the various styles of canned tomatoes in the cupboard and made some marinara, which I froze in ice cube trays and put in a baggie (and used in the lasagna). We somehow managed to eat all the ice cream in the freezer. This is a tough undertaking. So, while I'm making room in the freezer, I'm still adding things to it. Today, I used a falafel mix that's been in the cupboard for a long time. Finally, I'm using up those things that sounded good at the time, but only languish in the dark recesses of the cupboard. I also had a jar of tahini, so I made some tahini sauce to go with the falafel. Now I have to find something to do with the rest of the open bottle of tahini. Any suggestions?

I also made another loaf of banana bread:
Banana Bread #3, Blueberry Banana Bread
This recipe is from Taste of Home, and is a more traditional banana bread than the first competitor (which was more desserty, like a banana pound cake). It had a golden center flecked with banana threads, and a thick, dark (but not burned) crust. The flavor was sweet with a pronounced banana flavor. The blueberries were a nice addition, adding some moisture and sweetness, but the bread could easily stand alone. This is a really good banana bread.

Dinner last night: Spice-rubbed pork chops with mango-lime salsa; oven-baked potatoes and onions
Dinner tonight: falafel salad with tahini dressing

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 08:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sometimes I forget how great cupcakes are. When I'm thinking of a treat to make for a birthday or other special occasion, I think of cakes, cookies, brownies, but never cupcakes. We went bowling Friday night and Blue Chocolate brought a dozen chocolate cupcakes to the bowling alley. They were super! Gentleman Caller and I brought home the leftovers and had them for breakfast this morning. Sort of like a muffin. Only sweeter and with frosting! I only wish my bowling skills could be so sweet.

Dinner tonight: grilled cheese, sliced apple, pretzels, beer

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Snackdown Banana Bread competition transcends all loyalties and pits grandmother against grandmother in a no holds barred, spit-out-your-teeth-and-throw-another-elbow battle. You know that my grandmother's recipe is the standard against all other recipes are competing. The second competitor is a recipe from my other grandmother. Here's how it fared:

Banana Bread #2, Banana Oat Pecan Bread
This recipe uses corn oil; I subbed canola because it is healthier. I also omitted the nuts, because I don't really like nutty bread. It included oats, which gave it a rough texture, but still rather moist. The biggest drawback to the recipe was the lack of sweetness and a slight bitterness, perhaps from the baking powder. Sorry Granny, but this recipe suffered some career-ending blows.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I broke the grocery ban. Microwaveable Indian food didn't seem like an appropriately fancy Valentine's Day dinner, so I planned a nice dinner that required only a minimum of purchases and left few leftovers. The menu:

Beef Tenderloin Roasted in a Salt Crust

Warm Potato Salad with Gorgonzola, Baby Spinach and Walnuts

Baked Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese

Dark Chocolate Soufflés with Cardamom Crème Anglaise

2003 Robert Mondavi Carneros Pinot Noir

I bought the meat, potatoes, gorgonzola, spinach, asparagus, wine and a small bottle of whole milk. The rest of the stuff I had on hand or made approximate substitutions. I am left with some spinach and a few potatoes, but used up everything else. Oh, I also bought some mushrooms for a soup I decided not to make last night. Maybe I'll make it tonight. Now, I'm back on track with the boycott. It sure was nice to have some fresh vegetables, though.

As many of you probably discovered last night, Valentine's Day is the busiest day of the year for restaurants. I had to work the last two VDs; being able to cook one nice dinner for two is so much more enjoyable than cooking 150 nice dinners for two. It's even better being able to eat that nice dinner in the comfort of your own home, without a server hustling you out the door to flip the table for the next couple waiting in the lobby, stomachs grumbling.

And after dinner, we watched an episode of The Ultimate Fighter from season one; nothing says romance like mixed martial arts.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Frozen ripe bananas have black skins and a more pronounced banana flavor than do fresh ripe ones. So I usually have a few bananas in my freezer, chilling out (pun intended) and waiting to be made into banana bread. I always use the same recipe for banana bread. It is my grandmother's recipe that was passed along to my mom, and then to me. My mom made a few alterations to the recipe and I have made further changes. It's pretty close to perfect. But still I keep collecting recipes for banana bread, thinking that maybe I'll find something even better. There could be a gem, but I'd never know because I never stray. Until now. I have around 20 recipes that I'll test over the course of the next few months to see if any can rival my grandmother's. The Ultimate Snackdown Banana Bread Battle has begun!

First up: Cream Cheese-Banana-Nut Bread:
The recipe is from the Southern Living Cooking School 2005. I omitted the nuts. Sometimes I like nutty banana bread, but usually I don't. The bread has to be good on its own. I used 3 bananas from my freezer and fat-free cream cheese. The result was a very thick batter that baked into a golden brown loaf with a nice thick crust and a moist crumb. The addition of cream cheese made the loaf rather dense, like a pound cake. The flavor is delicately sweet and, because the bananas were stirred instead of beaten into the batter, there are chunks of banana throughout the bread. A mighty fine start, I must say. This banana bread is really, really good. Like sneak to the fridge in the middle of the night good.

Dinner last night: leftover beef & noodle casserole; green beans
Dinner tonight: ?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My rock star Gentleman Caller had an out-of-town show this weekend, so I made our weekend muffins early. I've been slacking a bit on the muffins for various reasons, but they are a nice weekend treat and a good way to use up some odds and ends in the cupboards, so I'm back on track. I made Dried Cherry Crumb Buns. I don't know why they are called "buns" instead of "muffins." Maybe it sounds fancier. Whatever the name, I call them super-delicious. These are the best so far and definitely go to the top of the "keepers" list. Here's the recipe:

Dried Cherry Crumb Buns The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Buns:
2 c. flour
1 T. baking powder
¼ t. salt
1/8 t. cinnamon
½ c. (1 stick) butter softened
1 c. sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 t. vanilla
1 c. buttermilk
1 ½ c. dried cherries
Topping:
2-¼ c. flour
1 ½ c. unpacked light brown sugar
1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened and cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 325.

Grease and flour 16 large muffin cups.

To make the buns: In a med-size bowl, sift together the first 4. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the low speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, ~3m. Add the eggs 1x1, beating well after each. Beat in the vanilla. Add the dry alternately with the buttermilk, in 3 parts, beating well after each. Stir the dried cherries into the batter. Spoon into muffin cups.

To prepare topping: In a med-size bowl, mix flour and brown sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle topping over buns, being sure to keep crumbs w/in muffin cups; otherwise they are difficult to remove.

Bake 20-25m until lightly golden or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Makes 16 buns.

I used regular-sized muffin tins with paper liners. I made 16, but overfilled the cups so they spilled out a bit. I should have made 18 for better batter distribution. Oh, and I also don't have any buttermilk, so I soured some regular milk by using 2 T. of lemon juice and adding enough milk to make 1 cup, then let it sit a few minutes to sour. Neat trick.

Dinner last night: dippy eggs, fake sausage links, slice of rye toast
Dinner tonight: no idea.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Groak (GROHK), (1) n.: one who stands around while others eat, in hopes of being asked to join; (2) v., to stare at other people's food, hoping they will offer you some

I once knew a guy, Sean, who was the biggest food moocher ever. We worked together; when people from work went out for lunch or drinks, he'd clean everyone's plate, in addition to his own. Most of the time he'd ask, "Are you going to finish that?," sometimes while the person was still eating, mid-chew. Sometimes, he'd just reach across the table and help himself, but several slaps on the hand let him know that we weren't cool with that. The rest of us who went out together regularly hated his mooching. We finally started mashing our leftover food together to see if he still wanted it. He ate soggy fries, chicken fingers dipped in beer, licked nachos, everything. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but we were young, idealistic and convinced that mooching off others was the principle reason for the decline of society, capitalism and freedom. I wish I knew the word groak when I knew him. Not that it would make much of a difference, but I'd be able to sit back while he polished off the dregs of various meals and think smugly, "Man, what a groak!"

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok, so perhaps I unfairly outed Gentleman Caller's most desperate snacking fixes: honey and chocolate chips (but not together, as far as I know). Red Meat also goes for chocolate chips. I usually go for chocolate milk, or I cook up something decadent and desserty. When I was little, I would sneak into the pantry and guzzle pancake syrup when I wanted something sweet. People used to ask me, "Where did you get such nice brown hair?" (a blue artichoke with brown hair? Weird, I know). Most of my family has dark hair, so I thought it must be the pancake syrup that set my hair apart. After all, that was the only thing I did regularly that they didn't. Now that I think about it, why on earth would grown-ups ask kids where they got their hair?

Anyway, anyone else care to share a most desperate snack fix?

Dinner last night: leftover chicken and dressing casserole.
Dinner tonight: some sort of ground beef/cheese/noodle bake; green beans.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My grocery store ban hasn't been as glorious as I had hoped, because I still have to go to the grocery store. I don't go as often, or stay for as long, but I've got to feed my caffeine addiction and keep Gentleman Caller's precious lunch supplies well stocked. For some reason, I oppose dinner leftovers for lunch. I like dinner leftovers for future dinners, probably because that means an occasional night where I don't cook. Anyway, on my short and infrequent trips to the grocery store, I stick to my list of the basics and haven't strayed yet. I buy milk, eggs, butter, cheese, lunchmeat and diet Coke. I also bought some bananas and apples. After a week and a half of eating what's on hand, we are almost out of fresh vegetables. I have some onions and half a bag of baby carrots. I have some frozen veggies and a few cans of tomatoes that I think I can make last another week. Plenty of meat: pork chops, ground beef, chicken breasts, one whole chicken and a pork loin.

We are also running out of things to snack on. I caught Gentleman Caller eating honey one night to satisfy a sweet tooth craving, so I made some granola. The first batch I made used wheat bran cereal, almonds, walnuts, coconut and raisins. It was awesome. Then, last night, I made a batch using oatmeal, walnuts, dried cranberries and dried apricots. It too is awesome.

Dinner last night: garlic-herb chicken and rice; baby carrots

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

According to the fitness plan, I should be ten pounds lighter by now. But the funny thing is that I'm not even close. It seems that working out 5 days a week and eating healthier (except for the snackdown party cookies) makes me gain weight. And sitting on the couch for two weeks eating cheesecakes and sweets has no effect either way. Odd. I'm going to start a food log to see where I'm going wrong. And I suppose I'll keep with the daily workouts in our new fitness center. How's everyone else in the Snackdown Fitness Challenge doing?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)