Carnitas at Home

For dinner, I had beans, rice, and carnitas. With another bad beer.



This was a lazy meal- the only thing I had to cook was rice. And I have a rice cooker, so that doesn't really even count. Don't worry, to make up for this laziness, I made cookies after dinner.

The black beans came from my freezer- I pre-cooked a ton last month to facilitate packing lunches. I hate boring sandwiches, but also hate salty/pricey/weirdly gelatinous canned beans.

I heated the beans, added some rice, a little salt, butter, and Marie Sharp's, and topped the whole thing with some carnitas from TJ's. TJ's seems to have discontinued their delicious garlicky carnitas. These came packed differently and were less tasty- really dry, not as flavorful. Why does TJ's have to discontinue everything tasty?

In other news, I discovered these today at TJ's.



Dried hibiscus flowers. I bought them to eat, but, upon further examination, discovered their true use- art!

They're not very tasty. Too dry. Kind of like a dry cranberry. BUT- they're gorgeous. Translucent, in really nice deep red shades. Some are very structured, like this one, while others resemble little octopi or grassy fronds. They brought back memories of my panicked freshman-year art class final, in which I had to come up with a still life and draw it. Being an inveterate procrastinator, I waited until the night before it was due, only to discover the only thing still-life-ey I had around were some extremely grim and dessicated calmyrna figs. Needless to say, I didn't do very well. But maybe if I'd had some of these, I would have.

Kofta at Home

For dinner, I had some kofta with rice and a glass of red wine.

Everything came from Phoenicia Market, aka the greatest place on earth. Or at least in Houston. My shopping trip also involved picking up their yummy Armenian-style vegetarian dolmades, fresh hummus, whole-wheat pita made by the bakery down the street, Sicilian olive oil, za'atar, and more of my beloved Palestinian-style fava beans.

The kofta was house-made. I wish it had an ingredient list, but no. I think it was just beef, chopped onion, and some spices. We pan-fried it in olive oil until it was nicely browned. It was a little salty, but otherwise much better than kofta I've had at restaurants, which is usually very bland.

The rice was covered in butter and some sumac. I also bought za'atar today, which is a Middle Eastern spice blend that generally contains thyme, sesame seeds, sumac, coriander, and a few other things. It's really good on pita bread (like, addictively good with some olive oil), so I broke down and bought it. I thought about trying it on the rice, but didn't. Maybe next time.

The wine was pretty good, a Marques de Caza tempranillo, under $7. Just a generic and tannic Spanish red table wine.

Quirky dinner at home

For dinner, I had basmati rice with fava beans, and a gianduja-filled wrap.

The rice was cooked in my amazing rice cooker, and dressed with Marie Sharp's mild sauce and sea salt. I mixed the rice with our favorite canned fava beans from the local Middle Eastern market. They are "Palestinian recipe", which, after much fava-tasting, is our favorite. In general, you can't go too wrong with canned favas, but I recommend staying away from the Egyptian-style beans- I don't remember what is in them, but they smell like vomit. They taste fine, but I could never get past the smell. Palestinian-style, however, is so very good. It is typified by cooked favas and garbanzos in a lemony garlic and olive oil sauce.

The wrap probably should've been filled with some of the Sabra hummus we have in the fridge, but we bought the million-pound tub of hummus from Costo awhile back, and I'm hummused out. Instead, I filled our high-fiber rye tortilla wraps (seriously, check out how scary healthy these are) with hazelnut-chocolate paste. A bit iconoclastic, but overall pretty good. I was concerned about the nexus of rye (which I kind of hate anyway- I bought the wrong flavor wraps by mistake) and chocolate, but it was barely noticeable. In the end, it was probably better than using the other wraps we have around, which are tomato-basil flavored.

Butter Makes Everything Better

For dinner, I had crab meat with purple sticky rice, rosemary sourdough bread, and a glass of viognier(!!!).

Steamed and pre-packaged crab meat is awesome. Not as expensive as fresh fish, but very tasty covered in butter, and super-easy to heat up. It smelled slightly funky, but tasted great. Chalk it up to the sodium benzoate preservative, at least until I wake up vomiting in the middle of the night...

My love affair with the rice cooker continues, but I wanted something a little healthier than refined basmati rice. Whole Foods had a few interesting varieties- Himalayan red rice, Canadian wild rice (pricey!), and my final choice, the aforementioned purple sticky rice. I think it's supposed to be used in Thai desserts or something, but it was nice by itself, covered with some butter and salt. The texture was not as horrifically grainy as brown rice, but nicely chewy and fragrant. Complimented with some toasted rosemary sourdough with butter, the meal was very easy and yummy.

To make dinner even better, I actually found a reasonably priced vionier! It is my favorite summery wine, after vinho verdes, and always amazing with seafood. This one was under $10, from Loredona Vineyards in California. It's pretty nicely balanced, although I'd like it better a bit leaner and drier. The flavors reminded me of Ironstone Vineyard's Symphony, an amazing wine in its own right (symphony being a grape variety developed in mid-century California), although Symphony is very, very sweet.