Sometimes A Grain is Just A Grain

Sorry for the long lull in posts. I'm getting a little bored with the concept, but have yet to figure out what's next. If anyone has ideas, let me know!

But I had to post about tonight's meal, because it epitomizes the freakish nature of my best weird meals.

I had stuffed peppers for dinner, with a side of toasted ravioli and scotch.

Not weird, you say? The pepper was stuffed primarily with oatmeal...

I have been experimenting with fermentation for awhile now- first a sub-par cider, then a strange grape concoction. I approach it with the same disregard of rules I apply to cooking, so I'm comfortable producing sub-par things, as long as it's kind of educational.

In any case, this morning I started my first quasi-beer by boiling some grains in water- about 60% oatmeal, 40% red wheat. I made my quasi-wort, then wondered what to do with all the leftover grains. Needless to say, I don't have a cow (which is where brewers ditch the byproducts of beer-making), but the grains weren't overly mushy. I ate some for breakfast, a la cereal, but had a ton left over.

Around dinnertime, I realized I had a ton of veggies I needed to eat. Stuffed peppers sounded good, but I didn't want to have to cook quinoa, kasha, or rice. And then I remembered the oatmeal.

I was grossed out by the concept, but a little curious. And in the end, it was a great call. I added a little mozzarella, then baked them for close to an hour. The cheese made the grains taste sufficiently savory, to the degree it was very tasty. I couldn't have distinguished the grain primarily as oatmeal based on taste.

We'll see how the quasi-beer turns out in a few weeks...In the meantime, my Glenmorangie is pretty decent.

Stuffed Peppers at Home

First, a note. I have been super-busy the last week or so, but I wrote a guest post last week over at CardioFoodie about packing lunches (Jon says I sound like Martha Stewart, so I apologize in advance). I know CardioFoodie, aka Karissa, from our time living in Texas. She always has a lot of awesome advice about healthier eating and fitness, that I aspire to (and sometimes successfully do) integrate into my life. So go check her out.

In other news, Jon decided to go pesca-veggie last week. Completely out of the blue. I know it's healthy, I am no stranger to alternative proteins, and I love whole grains and veggies, but it's a little weird coming from him. Not because I don't think he can sustain it (apparently he was quasi-vegetarian for several years in college), but because I'm used to being the fiber-conscious, veggie-pushing nut around here. I might go a little crazy. We'll see.

In that context, tonight's dinner was roasted red peppers stuffed with quinoa, mushrooms, onion, cashews, cumin, and cinnamon, with a TJ's brand Dunkelweisen to drink.



Jon actually cooked dinner, despite being in the midst of finals. As you might have guessed, he is amazing. He was able to minimize the active cooking time by making the quinoa in our rice cooker (yet another reason why my rice cooker is the best thing ever).

It was SO tasty. The cashews made it very hearty and filling, and the red quinoa we used was super-healthy, with a great, slightly chewy texture. It allowed me to eat a ton of healthy crap, without the slightly hungry, nauseous feeling I usually get from eating a ton of veggies.

We found the recipe using Whole Foods Recipe App, which is- despite my skepticism of food apps and general dislike of following recipes- also awesome. They have a ton of great recipes targeted to our urban-foodie-freak demographic, indexed according to selectable categories like "vegetarian", "gluten-free", etc., as well as an ability to search by ingredient.

The Dunkelweissen was also pretty good. I couldn't remember which TJ's beer I liked best from the mixed 12-pack we got last month, so I bought some of their Vienna-style in addition to the Dunkel. I definitely prefer the heavier Dunkel, although all of their beers I've tried are decent.

Peppers and Eggs at Home

For dinner, I had some red and yellow peppers, raw, and a Cadbury's orange creme egg. Okay, two creme eggs...



I had a late lunch of kasha and salmon, so I wasn't terribly hungry tonight. Moreover, our journey to the grocery store was not very successful. I've been craving lots of veggies lately, and Schnuck's had very few. I suppose it's in between seasons? I'm still craving roasted fall veggies like squash, beets, parsnips, and carrots, but their squash and cauliflower were really sad looking. The parsnips looked great, except for the creepy wax coating. I really don't like peeling my root veggies, so that was a dealbreaker. I didn't even see the beets. I ended up with some peppers, carrots, and onions.

Then I saw the Easter candy. I LIVE for Cadbury's creme eggs. The dilemma was choosing a flavor. So many good ones...

While perusing the Easter candy, Jon told me I should get some Peeps for the Washington Post's Peeptest (Peeptacular? Peep-o-rama?), but I know they no longer accept entries from outside the DC metro area, and I HATE Peeps. DC people, this is your reminder. Start Peeping. I will blog about it if you do...

Pizza at Home

For dinner, I had pizza and a glass of malbec.

Pizza is a great way to get rid of lingering leftovers. Plus, I'd heard good things about Trader Joe's pre-made pizza dough and wanted to try it. I chose the whole wheat dough- my whole grain obsession rears its head once again- and paired it with garlicky, herby olive oil. I'm not a huge fan of tomato sauce. I added some chopped roasted red pepper, black oil-cured olives, goat cheese, parmesan cheese, and spicy italian-style chicken sausage.

The toppings were good, and the dough didn't stick to my pizza stone as much as I thought it would. But the dough was barely ok- really dense and grainy. Moreover, it smelled like wet paint when I first removed it from its plastic bag. Too much fermentation? I'm curious to try their white flour dough, but I can make tastier whole-wheat pizza dough at home with my white whole wheat flour.

The malbec was La Finca, also from TJ's, $3.99. There are a lot of gorgeous Argentine malbecs in the $7-10 range, and next time I might just spring for one of them. The La Finca wasn't bad, but it was watery and undistinguished. It reminded me of bad California Pinot Noir.

In other news, I ordered a DSLR. It should arrive tomorrow. I have high hopes for more impressive food photography, and hopefully fewer battery issues. It's used, but 6.2 megapixels is still a step up from 3.1 megapixels.

Tapas en St. Louis

For dinner, we had tapas and sparkling wine.

The impetus was the boquerones (left over from a few months ago) languishing in the fridge, ready to expire in a few weeks.

I paired them with some roasted red peppers from TJ's (at $1.99/jar, they're cheaper than buying and roasting my own), some goat cheese, olives, a sliced baguette, and some homemade garlic alioli.

I hadn't made alioli, or indeed any mayo derivative, in years. Mayo doesn't like me. Usually I use my mini food processor to make it, but I'd forgotten in the intervening years that food processors don't like me, either. My egg yolks lacked volume, to the degree that the food processor's blades couldn't even reach them. I added dijon and copious quantities of lemon juice and garlic, hoping it would help. It didn't. I ended up tilting the food processor precipitously to blend the ingredients, then giving up after adding perhaps three tablespoons of oil. Yes, I know you're supposed to add a ton more, but my heart wasn't in it.

It worked out surprisingly well. My theory is that the excessive quantities of lemon juice I added denatured the egg proteins, causing it to thicken. Although I quit while it was still very runny, it coagulated to a nice consistency relatively quickly.

The sparkling wine was Albero sparkling wine ($4.99) from Trader Joe's. It was a nice complement to the tapas, dry and refreshing but not terribly remarkable. I never drink sparkling wine, but it reminded me of a vinho verde. Maybe I'll have more to say about it once the alioli wear off- I can't taste much after all that garlicky deliciousness.

Edit: also, note that boquerones are not appropriate snacks for pets.


This is Adria, my sweet rescue dog. I let her lick the extra fish oil off the package of boquerones, and she immediately had some respiratory problems. She started wheezing and hacking, and I worried she had a heretofore unknown fish allergy. She mostly recovered, but is still hacking off and on, hours later. We think it was the vinegar. So, don't feed boquerones to your dog.

Salmon Burgers at Home

For dinner, I had a salmon burger with a baked potato and a beer. I also roasted some red peppers, but forgot about them until I was done eating. Maybe breakfast?

The salmon burger came from Dierberg's. Dierberg's is quickly becoming my favorite non-posh grocery store, only because they tend to be pretty average. We live right between several nice neighborhoods and several very, very bad ones (not to glorify crime, but the local paper just came out with this really cool murder map), so most of the local grocery stores vary hugely based on the socio-economic neighborhood they're in. Going to the grocery store has become a sociology dissertation in itself, so sometimes it's nice to just go somewhere and not have to get angry that the one in the "bad" neighborhood has crappy food and the one in the "good" neighborhood has an entire aisle of organic produce.

In any case, my salmon burger was surprisingly tasty. Between copious use of breadcrumbs as filler and its error-riddled instructions (I pity the inexperienced cook out there who believes its "precooked- no cooking required, just re-heat" instruction label), I expected something bready and excessively fishy, but no, it was good.

The potatoes were less successful. One unfortunate side-effect of having a Trader Joe's in town is that I never want to buy any produce items TJ's sells anywhere else, because they're always cheapest at TJ's. I bypassed the cute little dutch creamers for this reason, and ended up with some funky-looking russets instead. Despite my heretofore foolproof methodology (wash, dry, coat with oil and salt, roast on pizza stone for close to an hour), the potatoes smushed into little, oddly sticky chunks when I tried to split them. I added some grated garlic and butter, which made them passable.

In other news, there are no pictures, still. Not (for once) because I'm lazy, but because my camera (a very sad 3.1 megapixel relic from five or six years ago) has finally died. No photos til I get a new one. If anyone has any camera recs, or if you just want to send me the DSLR of my dreams because you love me so much, let me know.

Tapas in St. Louis

For dinner, I had some homemade tapas, with a tinto de verano.

The idea came from today's trip to Whole Foods- my first here in St. Louis. I was hoping for a wider variety of produce than Trader Joe's, and was somewhat disappointed. In any case, they were having a sale on vinegar-cured anchovies (aka boquerones) that I couldn't pass up, so I decided to go for tapas.

First, I need to pontificate about tinto de verano, aka "tinto verano". It's crappy Spanish red wine mixed with European Fanta, or whatever facsimile one can find in the U.S. The idea is to find something with at least 8% real orange juice (EuroFanta does, American Fanta does not), and mix it in 1:3 or 1:2 proportions with red wine. It's supposed to be cold and refreshing, and not terribly sweet. It's brilliant, and I love it, but no one in the U.S. seems to know what it is. Outside of the 9th Door in Denver, I've never been to an American tapas place that has even heard of it. Waiters and bartenders look at me like I'm crazy. Granted, it took more than a month living in Spain before I heard of it, and most American tapas places are in it for marketing rather than a passion for Spanish food, but still. It's too simple and yet delicious to remain unknown.

In any case, I made my tinto with Condesa de Sarabella 2007, a grenache I found at Trader Joe's for $6. It was good enough to drink alone, but I made my tinto anyway, mixing it with some "Club Orange" soda from Ireland I found at the Global Market a few days ago.

In addition to the boquerones, I roasted some red peppers and topped them with goat cheese, and marinated some mushrooms in a garlic and wine broth. It made for an interesting and relatively easy dinner.