Culinary Misadventures With the Kiddo, Day 1

Recipe #1: Beaver Dens

[Insert off-color humor here.]

This recipe we uncovered in the kiddo's latest issue of Your Big Backyard, and it just seemed too easy to pass up: Melt some chocolate, peanut butter and butterscotch, throw in some chow mein noodles, spoon onto wax paper, let cool. Plus I'm a sucker for no-bake cookies, although I must admit I've never eaten chow mein noddles in my life. I remember quite well the La Choy commercials that aired during Mum's CBS soaps, and I remember being absolutely fascinated by La Choy's meal-in-two-cans sets, but today was my first day to eat chow mein noodles. (Obviously, childhood poverty didn't deprive me of anything on this account.)

The kiddo was quite enthralled by my makeshift double boiler (which I used even though the recipe called to just nuke the chocolate and butterscotch chips and then add the PB and return for another quick round of nuking), and he was also fascinated by my portable food scale, which we used to measure out double the amount of chocolate (well, carob) chips and butterscotch chips. Yes, we doubled the recipe not because we need yet another batch of no-bake chocolate cookies in the deep freeze but because the original recipe calls for one-eighth cup of PB, and I was too lazy to calculate how to measure that amount when I don't have a one-eighth cup measuring cup (my lovely Williams-Sonoma set didn't come with one, thank you very much).

Did I end up substituting anything? Does a bear defecate in the forest? Is the Pope Catholic?

(That last one I assume is an affirmative. Now I recognize that not all bears live in forests, ergo not all bears defecate in a forest, so a resounding "Yes!" to that rhetorical question isn't a given. But perhaps the question of whether or not I substituted something should be considered a rhetorical one right up there with a bear's excretory functions and the Pope's religious persuasions.)

I stocked up on PB--creamy and crunchy--when it was on sale last week at Target. Being the idiot that I am, I failed to reserve from the deep freezer a jar of creamy. So all I had at the ready was crunchy, and the kiddo didn't reject the notion of using crunchy. What I found odd was that I didn't detect any peanuts in the melty mess before adding the noodles or while spooning out the cookies. Does this mean ConAgra doesn't use real peanuts in its Reduced-Fat Crunchy Peter Pan? I don't think real peanut morsels would dissolve, but I'm not a peanut farmer. (Does anyone have Jimmy Carter's cell number?*)

The kiddo was very helpful during the entire process, and he's quite thoughtful. Here's a sample of our conversation during the making of this recipe:

Kiddo: "I thought peanut butter, chocolate and butterscotch all mixed up together would taste like chocolate."
Me: "What do you think it tastes like?"
Kiddo: "Yummy!"

He's got a way with words, that son 'o mine.

By the way, be really careful using carob chips in lieu of regular 'ol chocolate chips. I haven't done any research yet on this matter, but my experience so far with them tells me they melt in the presence of the slightest bit of body heat. I swear, my kiddo picked up his first beaver den to enjoy (for his after-nap treat), and the darn thing started melting on contact--and he was still standing in the open refrigerator!

Recipe #2: You'll-Go-Ape for Chocolate-Covered Bananas
Last week I nabbed a copy of Emeril's There's a Chef in My Soup! by that kingpin of cuisine branding, Emeril Lagasse. (Nothing egotistical at all about putting your name in the title of the book in addition to having your mug on every page, your name embroidered twice on the chef's coat you wear on the cover image and your name, of course, as the author appearing at the bottom of the cover image.) Sorry, mon ami Emeril, but I picked up your kiddie culinary tome on the discount cart at Half-Price Books for three bucks.

I picked the book up on a whim, hoping that perhaps I could interest the boy in cooking with his mom while he was home from daycare. Naturally, he showed no interest in the book when I first presented it to him, but he was all over it suddenly when Mommy and Daddy were browsing through it and pointing out yummy-looking recipes the following morning. The chocolate-covered bananas looked easy enough for me to only minorly screw up, and it promised to have leftover chocolate for the boy to lick up. Can't ask much more from a "kid-friendly" recipe, can ya?

After the fun of melting carob chips, butterscotch chips and peanut butter together in a double boiler earlier in the morning, the kiddo wasn't all that impressed with melting some leftover microwavable dipping chocolate (from Krishan knows how long ago). He spent a good deal of the prep time playing with his beat-to-hell firetruck in the yoga room (he, Mommy and Daddy were rescuing people from fires, slipping over slippery ice, taking the wrong turns--probably because Daddy was driving, I suspect--and having other adventures in said firetruck), but once I declared 'twas time to coat the bananas and sprinkle them with our sprinkle-ables: leftover chopped nuts (from back when we used to eat Breyer's Fried Ice Cream smothered with fat-free Smucker's chocolate topping and chopped nuts to emulate Pappasito's dearly departed fried-giant-ice-cream-in-a-shell, or sin on a plate with whipped cream and strawberries), leftover chocolate animal cookie crumbs (from the Snickers ice cream cake I made right before that job interview) and, of course, various sprinkles and colored sugars from CakeMate. Being the rainbow nut that the kiddo is, he decided after assuring me he'd want a banana with nuts and one with the cookie crumbs that he only wanted the rainbow sprinkles. Little bugger....

By the way, Emeril calls to melt regular chocolate chips and then pour in some heavy cream to make the dipping chocolate. Not for me, Emeril. Sorry, Bam-meister, but you take your heavy cream somewhere else.

And while we had instantaneous melting issues with the carob chips and the beaver dens, we had instantaneous freezing issues with the bananas and the dipping chocolate. Those bananas were indeed frozen solid after a few hours in the deep freezer, and I had no idea the coating chocolate would freeze practically on contact. That made getting the sprinkles to stick damn hard, which didn't go over too well with the boy.

Instead of following Emeril's directions to place the coated and sprinkled bananas on wax paper to cool, I grabbed a piece of foam from my new tower fan, covered it with a bit of wax paper left over from the beaver dens and plugged each sticked banana into it after the kiddo wrapped up his work, then popped that foam in the freezer until it was chow time. You don't have to be impressed with my ingenuity, but you can be if you want.

Recipe #3: Super Stuffed Shells
Another recipe from Emeril's kiddy book, but made over by the Misadventurous Faudie (and Kid). It's intended to be your basic Americanized Italian pasta dish with a tomato-based pasta sauce on top, but since my kid hasn't been exposed to much Americanized European food, I was leery of how he might take to this dish as intended. So I sold it as a giant shells-and-cheese spin on one of his favorite mac and cheese varieties.

Did I follow any of the recipe? Well, I did follow Emeril's suggestions for how to prepare the shells. And I did use ricotta cheese (fat-free, of course) and some shredded mozzarella (fat-free, of course). I also used some of the spices he calls for: dried basil, dried oregano (from the container we bought at Sam's when I first got my own Sam's card, which happened when we were living in Santa Fe, in the fall of 1995) and some ground black pepper. I did use a little bit of olive oil to saute some onions, just as the Bam-meister suggests.

But that's about it. For the cheese of our giant shells-and-cheese dish, I combined the ricotta with some mozzarella, fat-free sour cream (probably about two tablespoons, maybe three) and some skim milk (again, probably two to three tablespoons' worth) with the sauted onions and kept that warm while I waited for the kiddo and Daddy to wrap up the shells. While I had the boys scramble to get their tuna ready (that was our main protein for the night), I stuffed the shells. Sure, the final dish was more Americanized Italian than mac-and-cheese-on-steroids, but, hey, I was improvising.

The kiddo declared that he liked the stuffed shells, so I felt like this one was a victory. Of course, he didn't eat all the cheese stuffing, but that's probably for the better since the poor kid carries the constipation gene. (We know that when he disappears for 20 minutes or more and isn't making any noise, he's in the bathroom trying to take care of things. We've tried so many different natural ways to help things move along in his colon, but none of them seem to help.) He polished off (to my surprise, for I was damn sure he would reject them) a chocolate-dipped banana for dessert then helped Daddy clear the table and clean up before trotting off to play more trains in the Star Wars room/study.

And that was Day One. Not too bad, all in all. The kiddo seemed to enjoy our culinary misadventures. I was thrilled (most of the time) that he was so keen on washing things--in the sink, no less, not with his tongue or fingers--but at the same time kind of disturbed. Then again, when you go to visit Nana and Papa and see one of them handwashing because they live in this magic pocket of the time-space continuum that dishwashers passed over, handwashing probably seems like a treat. Having grown up in that bubble of the time-space continuum that dishwashers passed over, handwashing isn't that fun. There's nothing like dishpan hands at the age of 8!

*If you want more evidence of what a freak I am, check out the link embedded here. Scroll down to the image of Jimmy in his Navy uniform. Not too harsh on the eyes back in the day. Guess he went on to spend a little too much time in the sun without sunscreen tending his peanuts.)

Sunday Delights and Discoveries

I find myself humming "Back in the Saddle" right now since it's Monday and all the excitement of the race is now well behind me. Granted, this week's going to be a bit out of the ordinary: The kiddo is home since his daycare is closed for staff vacation. Do I let that hinder my normal routine? Not if I can help it! So we've been to the gym (yup, I put in seven miles and a little over 1,000 calories, but I did have to reduce the incline to 2 from 3 after the third mile because my left hamstring was balking a bit), hit HEB for a few goodies and have even whipped up one and a half recipes. Look for several Culinary Misadventures With the Kiddo this week!

But before I get too involved in sharing the tales from kitchen and the kiddo, I wanted to share our adventurous Sunday. Had a few delights, made a few discoveries and just tried to recoup and recover from our weird Saturday.

Delight #1: America's Test Kitchen Can Read My Mind
Mad props to Time Warner Austin and its DVR and digital cable channels in the 1000s that have thematic programming. This weekend the husband and I sat down to go through the daily multiple recordings of America's Test Kitchen from one of the PBS digital channels (the program I set captures every episode on that channel, which is overkill, I know, but I'd rather not miss any episodes) because, hey, watching Christopher Kimball and the folks on the show is a weird sort of fun. (Yes, we are pathetic. But we like our pathetic-ness.)

After sitting through a pan-seared steak and mashed garlic potatoes episode (gads, how barfaliciously all-American), a grilled fish episode, an episode on low-fat fudgy brownies and chocolate mousse (I put on 10 pounds just watching it, but their big trick to lightening up the mousse--using egg whites or an Italian meringue--is the basic mousse recipe I got from Mrs. Beeby for the French Christmas party back during my sophomore year of high school) and a fish and chips episode (which had me hankering for Long John Silvers--disgrossting!--and thinking that I could even manage to fry fish in my own home), there came unto us like manna (gnocchi?) from the great FSM above an episode featuring (insert heavenly host of angel hair pasta singing here) vegetable curry and chicken tikka masala. Do I need to tell you how utterly delighted the husband and I were? Do I need to tell you how hungry that episode made us? Do I need to tell you how all fired up we were to try both recipes out?

Methinks that perhaps our DVR is going to be chocked full of saved America's Test Kitchen episodes very quickly.

Delight #2: HPB on North Lamar Saves Me an Overloaded DVR
Don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I adore the Half-Price Books on North Lamar. It's friggin' huge, has attracted someone (or someones) who drop off recently comics regularly (keep our comics costs low--hazzaa!) and just seems to have little delights about every time we go (which is every Saturday, barring anything out of ordinary, like a 5K run).

This Sunday, my delight was a boxed DVD set of America's Test Kitchen's sixth season. Yes, that's my kitchen karma (culinary karma?) at work. Or is it just a helluva coincidence that after sitting through countless 30-second spots advertising these DVD collections while going through our DVR episodes, we should find a boxed set at our favorite HPB? Even though I already had two books in hand (Sallie Tisdale's The Best Thing I Ever Tasted and a preview copy of Kim Sunee's Trail of Crumbs, which I bought more for the Korean adoptee angle than the magazine food editor angle), I had my heart set on that boxed set, and I didn't have to work very hard to convince the husband to let me get it.

Much to our delight after our purchase, we discovered that the boxed set has episodes titled "Two Curry Traditions" (yummy yummy!), "Asian Chicken" (yummy yummy!), "South-of-the-Border Soups" (let's see how New Englanders do with tortilla soup), "Tex-Mex Favorites" (I bet Christopher Kimball dons a sombrero for this one), "Cookies" (ahh, what treasures might this simply titled one hold?), "German Chocolate Cake" (I'm getting fat here just thinking about it) and, last but not least, "Old-Fashioned Birthday Cake" (which the kiddo assured me he'd learn to make with me). One of the episodes even has a review of chef's knives--and just that morning we'd run out to Target (the husband had read that the Star Wars stuff was being clearanced to make room for the upcoming Clone Wars stuff in August), and I'd done a bit of gawking at chef's knives while there. If karma can come in a box, I think I found it at the North Lamar Half-Price Books.

Delight #3: I Know Copper-Tops and Copper-Tips, But Now I Know Copper-Bottoms
While at Target at 8:30 AM on an overcast Sunday morning, with a tissue crammed under my nose as I suffered through the worst case of post-nasal drip ever in my life (all that dust I inhaled at Auditorium Shores was making a return appearance), I lingered in the kitchen goods area because.... Okay, I'm going to be honest here. I was doing it just to piss off the kiddo. Partially. He was being a brat, and I just felt like being juvenile. Plus I really just wanted to spend a little time browsing because I didn't get to do that the previous day.

After gawking at the chef's knives (and telling myself and the husband, who's also curious about them, that I'd look up the review and recommendations on cooksillustrated.com), me and the crew turned onto the next aisle, the pots and pans aisle, for no particular reason (except to linger and piss off the boy). While we were strolling ever so leisurely down the five, six yards of the aisle, my keen eyes spied a favorite sight: orange clearance stickers. These were adhesed to some Chefmate Choice 12-inch encapsulated aluminum/copper-bottom fry pans and three-and-one-eighth-quart sauce pans. Yes, I already a very nice 10-inch Cuisinart fry pan/saute pan and a very nice Farberware three-quart sauce pan. But the sauce pan was only $10, which I thought was a damn good deal, plus we have a cheapie Mirro three-quart that needs replacing because the handle is loose. The fry pan was only $15, and the 12 inches of that fry pan seem so ridiculously spacious in comparison to the 10-inch Queasy-Art.

Like the DVD set I discussed earlier, I didn't have to try too hard to convince the husband to let me acquire the pieces. He offered them up as a prize for finishing in the top 50 at the 5K (which is still absolutely awesome and f'in unbelievable). Isn't my husband just the best? And he didn't even ask for any Star Wars toys in return. (Perhaps because I acquired the new Droid Factory two-pack he wanted when I was at Wally World last Thursday.)

Delight #1: I Like Broccoli
Or at least I can eat it and enjoy it if prepared a certain way.

We enjoyed a post-yoga celebratory lupper (that's lunch and supper combined, just as brunch is breakfast and lunch combined) at Indian Palace, where we haven't been in a few weeks since we've been on a Madras Pavilion jag. I was needing some recovery protein, and the boys were wanting meat, so we filled up at the buffet.

Said buffet featured, as it often does, a chafing dish of pressure-cooked (I'm pretty sure that's the cooking method) lightly spiced veggies: carrot spears, potato spears, onions, broccoli and sometimes yellow squash, zucchini squash and tomatoes. The carrots and potatoes taste just like the carrots and potatoes Mum used to make along with pot roast in her old Presto chicka-chicka-chicka-chuffer, so they don't strike me as terribly Indian, but they're damn good.

When I scooped out some veggies on my first visit to the buffet, a small floret came along for the ride. Once I'd finished off everything on my plate except for the small bit of basmati rice I'd served myself (and wound up giving the boy), I eyed the floret and chided myself for holding a grudge against a veggie I'd never really tried. So, throwing caution to the wind, I popped that little floret in and started chewing.

Well, I'll be damned! I thought with a bit of a smile. That's pretty good!

So I'm delighted that I like broccoli. Now there's yet another green veggie that only would be consumed by little 'ol me here at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Those were my big delights. Now, onto my discoveries!

Discovery #1: I Am an Idiot
Yeah, I know, this really isn't a discovery. I already knew that I'm an idiot. But I discovered further proof of how big a blithering idiot I am.

After the Tandoori Chicken Saga and the conclusion that perhaps a dry heat source, such as broiling, might make the second go-round with this recipe more successful, I finally got around to whipping out the owner's manual for our ancient Lady Kenmore stove. (May the FSM above abundantly bless the former owners of this house for their organization and foresight in saving the appliance manuals.) It confirmed what I'd suspected: That broiler drawer? Not a broiler drawer. It's a storage drawer.

Now before you laugh too hard, you have to understand that I was under the impression that the drawer at the bottom was the broiler for most stoves--including the Lady Kenmore that conveyed with my house, which was built in 1980 or 1981, making it roughly the same age as my little sister, who's now a grown woman with a solid journalism career, a car loan payment and a neurotic cat all her own. GFurthermore, when I was a kid, Mum often referred to the drawers at the bottom of the stove (the ancient GE stove we had when I was a kid had a small oven alongside the larger one, and it too had a small bottom drawer) as the broiler, so I just figured that the drawer at the bottom of my ancient stove was its broiler. After all, broiling is a cooking technique that places the heat source above the food being cooked, not below it.


As the diagram on page 12 of my Kenmore gas range owner's manual shows, what I thought was the broiler unit is just the removable storage drawer and what I thought might be the broiler is just the removable oven bottom. And there you have it, ladies and gents, further proof that I am an idiot.

Discovery #2: Cook's Country Highlights the Strange Tastes of Whitey
I didn't realize that I'd signed up for preview issues of both Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country until my preview issue of the latter arrived in the mail on Saturday (which we didn't get from the mailbox at the end of the driveway until Sunday because we're a household of lazy, forgetful bastards). My first impression on opening it and thumbing through a few pages: How quaint with that retro '50s look, harkening back to Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and Mother's little helper!

Not only did I receive this preview issue, but while browsing at the Anderson Mill HPB, I happened across the 2007 Cook's Country bound edition, which includes all six (seven?) issues of the magazine in a convenient (if not stain-attracting) hard-cover tome. Initially delighted with my find, I sat back and started to browse, thinking about my initial impression of the publication. It was followed with this one: The foods listed in the table of contents struck me as being very Southern for some reason, but I suspect that's not an accurate assessment.

And then I started looking closer at the recipes throughout the book. By the holy meatballs atop Old Smokey! White people put weird shit in their food! It's a miracle that people survived "the good 'ol days" with all the Crisco being used!

Don't get me wrong: I am a survivor of the all-'merican Crisco-meat-potatoes-Del Monte-veggies-in-a-can diet. Chicken fried steak. Smothered steak. The Bowl (a variation on what most folks know as goulash, I believe). T-bone steak. Dippy bread (ask my Dad). Del Monte corn. Del Monte cut green beans. Del Monte peas. Del Monte cream-style corn (cream of corn casserole was one of my favorites as a kid). Crisco in the cookies. Luckily Mum baked the Ore-Ida fries we indulged in occasionally (our fam of five in Bumblefuck, Okiemolah tweren't exactly rich), nor was she big on frying chicken (guess the field hands she cooked for as a kid preferred beef over chicken). And the last time I checked, I'm very white.

But, sheesh, there seem to be people out there who think adding bacon or ham to just about everything magically makes it better. I'm surprised the icebox Oreo cheesecake didn't call for a slab of ham or a shot or two of Jim Bean.

The issues do have wonderful tips and great product reviews and recommendations that I find very handy, and each one appeared to contain one recipe makeover to make it somewhat healthier (although the original often had at least 30 g of fat, and the made-over version had about half that). However, I found the overall audience for this magazine to exclude me, so I doubt this is one I'll ever subscribe to. Perhaps if I get I job and still have time to cook I'd consider subscribing to its Web site, but only if being a subscriber (which I hope to be) to Cooksillustrated.com doesn't include the subscriber-only content from the Cook's Country publication. Despite this finding....

I Still Heart Christopher Kimball

Keepin' Austin Weird

or
This Former Fat Girl Can Run
Well, it's all over--and boy, am I glad! The evening was hot and windy, Auditorium Shores was dry and, as more people gathered and trotted along the dry grass, dusty. Parking was fortunately not a problem. I felt good--my legs felt ready--as we headed toward the 6 PM start.

How did I do? Pretty well. It took me about a minute and 15 seconds to actually pass under the starting gate, but at least I wasn't way far back in the crowd of about 3,000 entrants (which includes folks in wheelchairs and kids who were entered as participants). Sorry, I didn't wear a costume (maybe next year). I was there to prove to myself that I could do a 5K because, hell, that's only 3.1 miles and I do that easily at the gym on the treadmill. But a treadmill isn't a road race.

I did have to deal with some wind, and that wasn't too bad. Since the course looped and came back to the finish the way it headed out from the start, the decline I enjoyed toward the start was the incline I had to endure toward the finish. I was a little disappointed that just after mile 2, I had to take it to a fast walk for about a quarter-mile, maybe less. Hell, maybe it was just a city block and a half; I don't recall right now. All I knew was that as Cesar Chavez starts to slightly incline heading toward the First Street Bridge, I was starting to feel a wee bit hazy and knew that pushing myself to keep jogging was not the smart thing to do if I wanted to finish the 5K on my own power.

And I finished! I heard the announcer call my number and my name--mispronounced, which is actually kind of rare here in Central Texas given all the German descendants who know how to negotiate that oe phoneme. Of course, feeling damn fine for finally getting to the finish line, I immediately yelled out the correct pronunciation, and I did hear someone laugh.

As I was trotting toward the husband and the boy, who were waiting not too far from the finish and cheering, a woman thrust a ball cap into my hand, and I was too busy huffing and puffing and thinking that I couldn't just stop yet (and risk never being able to move again) and really, really wanted to get some water and pee (I so had to go to the bathroom as I was waiting for the start--damn nervous bladder--but there was no way in hell I was heading to the port-a-potty at that time.) With my two-person fan club hot on my heels, I headed into the event area and over to the runner's village to collect my t-shirt. Because, dammit, I wanted my t-shirt!

(Scored a reusable HEB grocery bag too, which totally rocks. Granted, the things are only 99 cents, but free is even better!)

So I got my t-shirt and grocery bag and some water and was told to go get myself a cupcake. Sorry, I'll pass--I want a port-a-potty! After one of the most relief-bringing squats of my life (second probably only to the one I finally got after holding in for about 36 hours the roughly two gallons of water I'd consumed while en route to, camping overnight at Cherry Creek Park, attending final Mass for and then hiking out of Cherry Creek Park during World Youth Day '93--bladder of steel I used to have, thank you very much) and a chance to wash my hands and then retrieve my towel from the backpack to wipe the sweat and sunscreen out of my burning eyes, I headed back into the runners' village. There, I scored for me and my two-person fan club:

• A big-ass slice of cheese pizza from Mangia (the boys ate that)


• A few bottles of water courtesy HEB


• A four-inch turkey, mozzarella and lettuce sub-let on whole wheat from HEB, I think


• Two-bite cupcakes in peanut butter (the best one, in my opinion), strawberry and lemon flavors from Toot Sweet Cupcakes


• A little cup of julienned red bell pepper, carrots and what looked to be some type of Asian noodle spiced with...something I didn't like (I tossed this after trying a few bites)


• Two little samples of Mexican vanilla and a little sample of Oreo cookie ice cream along with a little cup of Frito chili pie (the kiddo ate it) from Amy's Ice Cream (first time having Amy's signature Mexican vanilla--the secret ingredient is coconut milk, I swear)

If you can't tell, my two-person fan club ate pretty well from the runners' village, eating a good deal of what I brought out. I ate most of the sub myself, although I gave the cheese to the kiddo. And I probably had a fair amount of the two Mexican vanilla and Oreo ice cream little cups, but do you know how long it's been since I had full-fat ice cream? And I'm really not a big fan of Amy's. But at the time, that creamy coldness just hit the spot.

Around 7 or so, we left because, well, my run was over and taking much more food would have just been piggy. I felt pretty good as we walked back to the car, and I'm thankful for the heat because I really think that helped my muscles perform.

After about five or 10 minutes of stretching at the car, we climbed inside, and I finally got a chance to see my t-shirt. It's not bad--just the basic Keep Austin Weird 5K logo for this year on the front and logos from sponsors on the back. Then I pulled out the cap that had been thrust into my hands after crossing the finish line. Didn't know I'd get a cap too, I thought and admired the nicely embroidered Keep Austin Weird 5K on the front. Then I turned it to the side. That's when I noticed something this little bit:

"Top 50 Finisher"

I'm not sure sure if my jaw dropped or if I just started spouting Anglo-Saxon vernacular phrases of disbelief (y'know, that one involving excrement and its blessed status). Needless to say, I was absolutely shocked. I knew that I'd done a damn fine job for myself; the husband reported I crossed the finish line at 27 minutes and some seconds, minus about a minute and 15 seconds, and when I'm on the treadmill at the gym with a 3.0 incline, I can usually get in 3 miles in 30 minutes or just under (as of late). But top 50 finisher? No f'in way.

To confirm that I was indeed a top 50 finisher, the husband reported that I came in not too long after "the women who look like they're real runners." Y'know, the ones who really hoof it and take part in these things every weekend. I do know that I passed a lot of people, and that was nice. But top 50 finisher? No f'in way.

Did I mention that while at the gym this morning, I put in 5 miles on the treadmill? And I did my usual 30, 45 minutes of weights and core work.

But top 50 finisher? No f'in way!

Did I mention that I only started running in November of last year, while I was home helping Mum take care of Dad after he had his knee replaced? Did I mention that I was told a few years ago by a physical therapist I was working with at the time that because of my hypermobile sacroiliac joint and the wear and tear on my knees, doing a great deal of asymmetrical activity--such as walking--was not such a hot idea unless I enjoyed being in pain? Did I mention that since February, I've lost about 35 pounds and taken my body fat percentage from roughly 33 percent to 10.2 percent?

But top 50 finisher? No f'in way!

Thankfully I had my cell phone with us (the husband's cell hadn't charged enough by the time we needed to leave, so we brought mine), so I did what any disbelieving but totally amazed former fat girl probably does when she's one of the top 50 finishers of her first 5K: I called my mom. And then my older sister. And then my dear friend the awesome group X instructor. And then my little sister. (Sorry, Erin, that you were last. But I couldn't remember if I'd told you about the race or not.)

And then we finally got the car on the road and came home.

Top 50 finisher. No f'in way.

Psychoanalyze This

As you can see, I spent a little time yesterday sprucing up the joint. Don't be surprised if in a few weeks or a few months, depending on what rolls my way, I change the look again. During the few years that I had a bedroom all to myself (which, in retrospect, wasn't that long--three, three and a half years is all between when I stopped sharing a bedroom with the little sister and started sharing a bedroom with the guy who is now the husband), I was constantly changing it. One month the bed would be against the east wall, the next month along the north wall, the month after that in the smack dab middle of the room. If I could have gotten away with it, I probably would have been painting the walls quite a bit. But, alas, that was not to be.

While I was busying changing the template, adding some side column tidbits, editing some entries and whatnot, I got an email from the third recruiter this week to evidently track me down through Monster.com. Unlike the first two who were looking to fill a technical writer/instructional designer position at Dell (a job I'm not qualified to do since I lack any kind of real technical training, and a job there's no way in hell I'd take on because I saw what the IDs I edited went through when dealing with service program managers, trainers, purse string holders and other pains in the rump), this third recruiter sought me out to perhaps fill a technical editor position at a firm to be named later. I'll admit to you right away that it's always for me a bit of an ego stroke to be contacted by recruiters because they think I might just have the skills to fill a job rather than me contacting them. Flattered as I was, I eagerly and quickly responded, sending along my resume and some writing samples with a skills statement the husband kindly helped me massage into fine form.

Within moments of sending off the response to the recruiter, I found myself in something of a state. I don't really want this job, I realized. Hell, I don't really want any job. I...I like being unemployed. The FSM help me, but I like having the opportunity to take care of my home and preparing meals and not feeling rushed when I'm at the gym.

Articulating these feelings into an internal monologue was quite a bit of a...well, it wasn't exactly a breakthrough, and it wasn't exactly a revelation either, but there was quite a bit of truth in that effort that made me realize that I wasn't thinking these thoughts out of sheer laziness and sloth. I mean, hell, who wouldn't like just sitting on her or his duff with no real responsibility? Me, that's who. At least not too long ago that was me. Not too long ago, I needed to be outside of my home, doing something productive, primarily for a salary. But with the changes I've made and the transitions I've gone through in the past six months, I....

Well, hell, here's my counterargument: I am being lazy because I'm giving into my old fears. Fears that I'll end up in a job with no flexibility. A job that cuts me off from the rest of the world from 9 AM until 6 PM. A job that's so stressful that I put on 20 pounds. A job that I end up losing in six months, nine months, 18 months due to budget cuts or lack of funding. These fears I accumulated after taking my walk of shame at Dell and getting the hell outta Hell (i.e., the job I briefly had after Dell) and losing one of the sweetest gigs ever (the job I just recently lost). And for as much as I like to think I was rolling with the changes, these fears have clung to me like kudzu.

Since things can't be A versus B with me, here's argument C: I'm just wound up because of the 5K; it's the real reason I'm nervous. Don't be so quick to scoff. Being the high-strung person that I am, I can recognize my little behavior patterns, and I recognize that as the run has drawn closer, I've gotten a lot more anxious. I've succumbed to a bit of nervous eating. I've barked more than I've spoken, especially yesterday. I worked myself up into a right good tizzy this morning over setting out breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen from last night's pizza, all before 7 AM. So, yeah, I'd say there's a damn good possibility my anxiety over the job is just misplaced anxiety over the run.

(This is the point where you and I have a good laugh because, heh, all my years of yoga and spiritual study have done nothing to really help me quell my inner poodle. But who the hell ever said these things I've done should somehow make me capable of banishing anxiety? Of never experiencing tension or fear? Huh? Why the hell should I expect these things of myself just because I've spent several hours on a foam mat and on a kapok cushion?)

What this all probably boils down to precisely is my anxiety about--get this--finding parking for the 5K and making sure that the kiddo doesn't have a whiny, pissy little fit while I'm off running. I'm running my first 5K--which, in my book, is a damned miracle--and yet I'm anxious about my kid having a good time and cooperating so he and the husband can be there to see me cross the finish line. I'm being a bad Buddhist: I'm harboring expectations. I have this glowing little fantasy about crossing the finish line with the husband and kid there cheering me on, the husband armed with the camera to capture that moment of finish in all its digital imaging gory--uh, glory. I haven't fully articulated that glowing little fantasy to the husband (in my bad Buddhist fashion, I expect him to anticipate capturing my big moment in digital imaging glory), and I know damn good and well that if I'm running a race that starts at 6 PM--suppertime for the residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker--the kid's not going to be terribly cooperative, especially since he's doing something that isn't all about him.

Gads, I feel the tizzy stirring within me again. I really should go pop a chill pill.

Getting back to my original quandry of to work or not to work, I can make myself feel a little less guilty by explaining away my desire not to work as simply misplaced anxiety about the run. However, I doubt I'll be all excited about pursuing a possible position that puts me back in the wage slave grind come Sunday morning (or Monday morning, depending on how things go this evening). I do believe that I've transitioned from the person who desperately needed to be outside of her home because said home represented a lot of fears and anxieties and guilts she couldn't face to a person who enjoys being at home because she's faced and learned to deal with the fears and anxieties and guilts that place once represented yet at the same time has embraced or taken on a new set of fears, guilts and anxieties that working outside the home represents.

I seriously need to get out of my head. Say, I've got some celery in the crisper. There's nothing like chopping vegetables to get myself out of my head.

Five Years Ago Today....

Five years ago today, a few minutes after 8 AM, I was sitting at my desk at the Hoov, trying to work despite being a nervous wreck: We were on the last day of the two-week window that comes between when a Korean child matched with parents in the U.S. gets his or her Korean passport and when that child is approved to leave. I'd been waiting for the call every single day since getting the call that our kiddo had his passport. Every single evening I'd head off to the gym depressed and dejected because the phone hadn't jingled. And by this last day of week two, I was at my wit's end.

And then, a few minutes after 8, the phone did ring.

Thirty-six hours or so after that call, four months after the call came from the agency asking if we'd like to consider a certain baby boy, we were on a plane headed for LA, where we'd get on another plane headed for Seoul, where we'd finally meet our son in the flesh, get to hold him and, best of all, bring him home.

Pardon my maudlin moment. The past five years have been...interesting, to say the least. Any parent could probably tell you the same if they're being honest. Sure, I still have many day when I fervently wish Chez Boeckman-Walker were limited to two humans and two, maybe just one feline, and neither of those adults have had many serious thoughts about changing our position on the "just one" decision we made. But then I also can't imagine how dull the past five years would have been without the kiddo. And with him packing off to kindergarten in the fall and starting a new phase of his life, I just...I just get a little maudlin.

While driving the boy home from daycare Monday, I was attempting to engage him in conversation, which somehow steered to the topic of what he wants to be when he grows up. First he said he wants to be a (base)ball player, but then he quickly corrected himself and said he wants to be a person who "drive ships." Not space ships and not airplanes, but aircraft he designs himself that fly in the blue sky. And his ships would only have room for him; Mommy and Daddy, he informed me, would have to design and build their own, as would Nana and Papa. And the kiddo would fly his ship in the blue sky and deliver surprises to people. I offered to bake cookies for him to deliver for his surprise delivery service, and he thought that'd be good. Then he decided he'd also bake cakes to deliver--as a surprise.

I won't add any snerky comments about finding VC funding for that little idea of his, and I'll withhold commentary about how one writes a business plan for such a venture. I think it's nice that my kiddo has an imagination and a desire to do things for others.


With some practice...and learning how to bat right-handed (although being a switch hitter could be a good thing, I understand from my limited knowledge of baseball), I think he'd make a pretty good ballplayer.

Tomorrow I'm off to the races to help Keep Austin Weird by running 5K and losing my road race virginity. It's a good one to lose one's road race virginity too: Ya gotta love an athletic-y event with a bar in the runners' village. Look forward to it!

The Tandoor Saga, Part 2

For all the buildup in yesterday's marinade making, the execution of the tandoori chicken is, sad to say, largely anticlimactic.

New Recipe, New Tool
Early this morning, I had an epiphany as I looked ahead to the day's events: Duh! I have a brand spankin' new grill pan! And I do! Mum bought it for me at Tuesday Morning (did I mention yet how much I love that place?) last weekend, and I figured, Hey, I don't have a grill upon which to finish up the tandoori chicken, so why not try out the grill pan?


Sorry for the overly sharpened image, but the two pics I had a chance to take while grilling the chicken came out blurry (I can't take a picture to save my sorry soul). Thanks to Photoshop, cropping the better of the two and then applying two coats of Sharpen made this one somewhat palatable.

In addition to the chicken, I made some jasmine rice, trying out the cloth-under-the-lid-to-absorb-the-moisture tip I gleaned from The Best Kitchen Quick Tips, and boy oh boy do those folks at America's Test Kitchen know what they're doing! Usually my jasmine rice winds up either undercooked and a bit chewy (because I didn't put in enough water) or overcooked and mushy (because I put in too much water), but this time I had wonderfully fluffy, fragrant rice, so I'm thrilled. Just another reason why...

I Heart Christopher Kimball

Since I only made two chicken breasts (one from a chicken juicin' more than Barry Bonds for the husband and for the boy, a breast from a chicken that had more going for it than I currently do), I thawed and heated on the stove some of my sambar for me to enjoy. I'm happy to report it's just as yummy (if overpoweringly sinus-clearing) after having spent some time in the deep freezer. I can't yet same the same for the carrot halwa I defrosted since I have not had any yet. (I'm taking this blogging time to digest and make room for it.)


My ancient Lady Kenmore has seen more action in the past month than Hugh Hefner has in the past...well, let's not contemplate that one. I just ate, after all.

Alongside the rice and chicken and sambar, I prepared a few pieces of poori. I'm still trying to figure out how to make these suckers puff the way they're supposed to, and I sure as hell didn't accomplish that tonight. The Golden Temple brand are performing better than the MTM brand by far, and perhaps I was hampered by my laziness: I cleaned off and reused the grill pan to do the initial heating of the poori instead of heating a skillet. I still love love love my heating rack/pepper roaster, and as you can see from the picture below, it does help the Golden Temple poori puff partially.


Get that poori some Viagra, stat!

Since the poori failed to perform, I had the husband nuke us some papadum. Those you really can't screw up--so long as you don't put them too close together on the plate. Or overnuke them. Or undernuke them. Or let part of the papadum not rest on the plate.

I apologize that I failed to get a shot of the chicken removed from the grill. By the time it was ready to be plated, I was juggling the poori, trying to get utensils, drinks and other dinnerware out for the kiddo to put upon the table, trying (and yelling a lot) to get the kiddo to set the table, tripping over hungry cats and just letting myself get lost in a culinary craze, a food-prep fugue. As I become more experienced, I hope my frantic end-of-cooking periods come to an end. Then again, if the husband and the kiddo would just learn how to read my mind and the feline kiddos could just learn to feed themselves....

And there you have it, folks--the end of the Tandoor Saga. Like I warned you at the beginning, it's anticlimactic. The husband reported that if the chicken had been baked/grilled/cooked in a drying heat, it probably would have tasted pretty darn close to the tandoori chicken he enjoys at Taj Palace and Indian Palace. The kiddo, as you can probably guess, refused to eat the chicken, but Daddy got him to finish off the small portion he'd been served. (Thank the FSM that I made a full cup of rice for the boy to fill up on!) Will I attempt tandoori chicken again? Probably so--but when the boy's on another one of his visits to Nana and Papa's house.

The Tandoor Saga, Part 1

Since Tuesday's Acapulco chicken threw the proverbial monkey wrench into the supper schedule at Chez Boeckman-Walker, the husband and I decided to move Pizza Tuesday to Friday and to try our hand at making tandoori chicken for Indian Feast Thursday.

Before I went overboard with the Indian cooking stuff, I'd written down a pretty simple tandoori chicken recipe from one of my Weight Watchers magazine-sized cookbooks. There was only one thing that kept us from trying it: It required the chicken be broiled five minutes after being baked for 20 minutes--and our ancient oven's broiler was a cesspool of filth and missing its broiling tray. Well, that second part we solved on our second trip to a Tuesday Morning, and I eventually got around to cleaning out the cesspool shortly after returning to unemployment. (Rescued countless milk jug rings and twisties--placed there courtesy Muffin and Bucket--along with one of the kiddo's Hot Wheels.)

This morning I tracked down the tandoori recipes from Jaffrey's Step-by-Step Cooking and Vaswani's Easy Indian Cooking and compared them to the Weight Watchers version. Needless to say, the WW version on paper seemed flavorless. Plus there's that whole broiling issue, which I have zilcho experience with. Even though the broiler is clean and we have a brand-new tray for it, I don't trust my ancient Lady Kenmore to broil and not burn down the house.

Ladies and Gents, Start Your Cuisinarts
I opted to use Jaffrey's recipe instead of trying to meld the two acceptable ones; I just didn't have that much desire to experiment. And that's fine because I had to whip out the food processor! Woohoo! Any recipe that requires multiple kitchen appliances is fine by me. What's even better is this time I got to make paste from onions on purpose.

Of course, I failed to follow the instructions and steps precisely. (The FSM forbid I do such a thing as follow the instructions!) I used ready-made garlic paste and ginger paste in lieu of the six garlic cloves and 1.5 inch peeled ginger root piece I was supposed to combine with the onions and three tablespoons of lemon juice to create a paste. No, I just paste-ified the onions, then threw in a tablespoon of ginger paste (a total guess) and two tablespoons of garlic paste (totally overcompensating I'm sure, given that half a teaspoon of minced garlic equals one garlic clove). And then I remembered the bit about adding the lemon juice; it went in after I'd already added the cup of fat-free yogurt. But that didn't appear to muck things up.

Crankin' It Up With the Spice Weasel
After the gooey stuff was in and relatively mixed, I got to add the spices!


Doesn't that look yummy?

I did have one substitution: Since I have no mace (and opted not to stop into Gandhi Bazaar this evening on the comics run to pick some up), I bopped over to Cook's Thesaurus and discovered my multitude of mace substitution options. I picked up allspice since I just recently acquired some for the oatmeal fruit no-bake cookies I made a few weeks back.

Both Jaffrey and Vaswani include the option of adding orange food coloring to the marinade to give the final product a more authentic look. While I don't have orange food coloring (which is difficult to believe since I love using that color for the boy; he has orange walls and a purple ceiling in his bedroom, after all), I do have reds and yellows. So after I made sure all the spices were stirred into the yogurt-onion-garlic-ginger-lemon juice paste and saw the...not entirely appetizing mustardy color of the marinade, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try out some food color.


Looks pretty edible, right? Pretty amazing what six drops of McCormick's red and two drops of its yellow coloring will do.

Once the marinade was ready, it was showtime for the chicken breasts. As my husband said while I was prepping the chicky boobs, dressed in the short satin halter nightie I wear post-shower, "There's nothing quite as sexy as a woman who wears a skimpy bit of satin while cutting fat from raw chicken meat." Ahh, thanks, honey!

Unlike the other two recipes we'd considered, Jaffrey recommended making diagonal slashes in the meat and rubbing marinade into those slashes to make sure the meat really absorbs the spices and flavor. Since I'd already thrown caution to the wind with the food color, I slashes and rubbed (using the spoon-shaped rubber scraper--my nails were funky after cleaning out the junk drawer today and spilling Crazy Glue on them while attempting to readhese the magnetic disc to Greg's Vader head magnet), then dunked those chicky boobs into their yogurt bath in the fridge for the night.


Nighty night, chicky boobs! Marinate well! I'll see you tomorrow evening for some fun in the oven!

Speaking of the Bam!-Meister....
By the way, my usual audience/sous-chef, Nickelbucket, was kept from his perch atop the stove (yes, I know, not incredibly sanitary) by the husband, so instead my audience was a family of bats.


Batzarro and Batman live in the spice/drug cabinet. Greg's job is to surprise me with some lewd/crude/bizarre arrangement of the two, often with special guests from the shelves of the Star Wars room/study. They're fun. And with Batwoman in tow, I felt just like Emeril cooking with this fun family in the audience.

Stay tuned for "The Tandoor Sage, Part 2," which I should have up tomorrow evening (after supper, obviously). Trust me, there's still ample opportunity to muck this up.

Two Birds vs. One Stone = Total Awesomeness

Tuesday afternoon turned out to be another Culinary Misadventure--and I still managed to make it to yoga at 4:30!

I have to admit that I had a lot of good mojo going into Tuesday because I had a rockin' Monday. For starters, while I was at the gym Monday morning, one of the personal trainers, who was doing her own thing over in the abs area, asked me if I was training for some kind of event. "No, just trying to keep the weight off," I replied humbly and honestly. Then she asked me if I took part in figure competitions (y'know, chick body builders strut around in teensy bikinis, their tanning bed-roasted skin preternaturally glistening with Ganesh knows what kind of lube, flexing and posing to show off their overdeveloped muscles). Laughing a bit to myself, I shook my head and offered, "I've lost a lot of weight. It's better I keep myself covered up." Finally she smiled and said I should consider it since it's clear I have the dedication for it.

Dedication. Cool.

Monday afternoon, I had my latest check-in at the weight loss clinic, roughly a month and a week after my last appointment. I gained four pounds of muscle but only lost two pounds of fat mass, so my overall weight did go up two pounds. However, that small loss of fat put my body fat percentage at 10.2 -- down another two percentage points since May. Friggin' unbelievable! That's five percentage points below what's considered essential for adults. And yet I'm just fine.

Cool.

So with all this confidence, I headed into Tuesday afternoon looking to have some fun.

Bird 1: Drop Cookies
As I mentioned in the post I added on Tuesday, I found an oatmeal peanut butter cookie recipe I wanted to try.


Not only did I try it, I rocked that baby.


Oh yeah. I rocked it good.

Looking at that close-up pic right now, the cookies don't look terribly appetizing. Look a bit more like pale, gooey diarrhea from a dog in severe intestinal distress. Blorf! But trust me, the cookies are quite delicious.

Taking a cue from either one of my Cook's Illustrated books or my King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, I let the egg whites come to room temperature (or somewhere close to) before I added the brown sugar and whipped them to a foamy consistency. Taking another cue from The Best Kitchen Quick Tips, I used the whisk attachment for my hand mixer instead of the regular beaters.

(I do have a stand mixer. Mum gave it to me some years ago. But I've never used it. It's another kitchen appliance of which I have a long-standing fear established during childhood. Mum's stand mixer to my young eyes and sensitive ears was a behemoth that looked all too ready and willing to take off some little girl's fingers should she dare get within two feet of it. Perhaps one of these days I'll have to get out my stand mixer and throw another stone.)

Of course, being health-conscious little me, I had to futz with an already "light" recipe. As I so often do, I substituted Splenda brown sugar blend for the regular brown sugar, and I opted to replace the cup of all-purpose flour with half a cup of said flour and half a cup of whole wheat flour. I don't know why I'm reluctant to use more of my wonderful white whole wheat flour; perhaps I'm just not thrilled about spending $5 or more to score another bag when I still have plenty of good 'ol Gold Medal all-purpose and Gold Medal whole wheat.

This recipe was my first time to replace the sweetener (honey) with agave nectar. Ahh, agave nectar--can life get much better? (Perhaps if you had one of the other, better known byproducts of agave--tequila!) The agave didn't seem to affect the cookies at all. I couldn't discern any off taste, nor did it cause them to brown or burn faster. Based on my limited experience and understanding, I'd call this substitution a success and recommend to anyone trying out this recipe.

And, of course, being the culinary misadventurer that I am, I did have a bit of a mishap. I thought I had enough reduced-fat creamy peanut butter, but, alas, I was wrong. So my oatmeal peanut butter cookies have some morsels of peanuts because I used one-fourth cup of cream PB and three-fourths cup of crunchy. Oh well. Greg didn't complain, and I didn't notice a difference.

I was feeling so confident that I even experimented. I had a morsel of the dough after I wrapped up blending all the ingredients, and it tasted just like a regular oatmeal raisin cookie. So throwing in some raisins seemed like a natural thing to try. Granted, I threw in a scant half-cup of raisins, but, hey, props to me for expanding on a recipe (instead of trying to just make do with what I have on hand to meet the recipe's basic requirements).

Now, you have to understand what a monumental event my making this recipe as it was intended--as drop cookies--is. Until this day, I've hated making drop cookies because I'm lazy and too impatient to go through the rigmarole of spooning out the drops of dough, watching bake each sheet of cookies to ensure none of them burn, transferring the freshly baked cookies to wax paper, juggling hot cookie sheets, etc. I've just preferred to slop the dough onto a jelly roll pan, bake it roughly twice as long and cut the baked product into bars and be done with it. But not today!

Oddly enough but somehow not surprising in retrospect, I discovered that I actually enjoyed spooning out each drop of dough. I had three baking sheets, and I only had to reuse one. In fact, I found coordinating the swapping of fresh-from-the-oven sheet(s) for ready-for-the-oven sheet(s) to be, well, rewarding because I did it efficiently and without burning anything. Yes, I truly am that anal retentive that I can find pleasure in project planning a batch of cookies. And even though I actually was pressed for time (ChemFree was schedule to arrive between 2 and 4 PM to check on our ant infestation in the kitchen, and I wanted to have the dirty dishes loaded in the dishwasher, which still needed to be unloaded from the most recent wash.), I was calm as I wrapped up my work. The measuring and dropping was relaxing and meditative--a "brain off" activity that's productive just as chopping veggies and trimming and cubing chicken breasts are. Nifty!

Bird Two: The Pressure Cooker
I've already reported on my first (admittedly shared with Mum) experience with my Fagor pressure cooker, and I've already declared my love for it. So I didn't want to wait too long until I had my first solo experience with my Fagor.

(Gads, that sounds so lewd! But you must agree that Fagor would be an awesome name for a comic book monster. Hell, it probably is. Batman versus Fagor--Gotham City will never be the same!)

Anxious to do some pressure cooking, Tuesday morning while I was preparing breakfast, I took down the handy cookbook that came with my cooker and was thumbing through it, trying to remember which of the recipes had tripped my trigger and the husband's trigger. I rediscovered the Acapulco chicken one, showed it to the husband when he came out to the kitchen, discussed the need to make pizza sauce, debated the virtues of making Acapulco chicken in lieu of the traditional pizza (Tuesdays are Pizza Night at Chez Boeckman-Walker) and mutually decided to Make a Change.

(Deviating from the standard course is highly unheard of at Chez Boeckman-Walker. Usually the only thing that can disturb the natural course of Pizza Tuesdays and Burrito Wednesdays is a delay in the weekly comic books, which would then bump Burrito Wednesday to Burrito Thursday. Yes, we anal retentives live by our regimens here at Chez Boeckman-Walker.)

By the time I wrapped up the cookie making and clean-up (after the brief visit from the ChemFree guy), I only had about an hour until I had to leave for yoga. So I ditched my desires to sit and read for a while, whipped out the thawed chicken breasts and got busy slicing off gooey fat deposits (I enjoy this activity far too much) and then cubing the meat. After that, I threw together the orange juice sauce in my fabulous Windsor pan. While I did have to improvise the one and a half cups of OJ (3/4 cup OJ concentrate left over from...something I made a month or so ago combined with 3/4 cup of cold water), the sauce came out perfectly. I had just enough time to throw some plastic wrap over the top of the pan, put the lid atop that, then put it in the fridge and then turn my attention to assembling the remaining ingredients. After that, I was off to yoga!

The actual making of our Acapulco chicken was so unbelievably easy. The olive oil (didn't use anywhere close to the one-fourth cup of olive oil the recipe calls for) heated nicely in the pressure cooker, the chicken browned quickly enough, nothing burned as I threw in the Splenda brown sugar blend, the cinnamon, the ginger, the jasmine rice, the raisins and finally the OJ sauce. Oh! the smells emanating from the cooker were just heavenly!

Building up to the required high pressure didn't take too long, but I'm still learning how to determine with the pressure really is built and when it's still building. Now that I know where the steam needs to flow from steadily, I started the cooking time at just about the right time. I did wait about a minute or two to turn off the heat after the timed 10 minutes were up, and I did opt to let the pressure release slowly instead of using the cold water shower technique. However, after about four or five minutes of waiting and waiting for the pressure indicator to drop, I tried something new (and a teeny bit scary): I clicked the pressure setting from 2 (high) to automatic release. And voosh! We got ourselves a big 'ol steady, controlled release of steam, and within 30 seconds or so, the pressure indicator dropped, telling me I could safely remove the lid.

I'll admit that most likely because I didn't release the pressure as soon as the 10 minutes were up, the chicken turned out a little bit on the chewy side. But the rice--perfect! And the rich, orange-cinnamon fragrance wafting from the cooker had mouths watering.

Of course, we did have a little pre-dinner drama. Once the kiddo learned we weren't having Tuesday Pizza, he had a hissy. "But it's Tuesday! We're supposed to have pizza!" Yeah, I kid you not--those were his words. Yes, I've raised the most anal retentive almost-five-and-a-half-year-old preschooler, thank you very much. And, of course, he took three bites total, if that, before declaring he would not eat any more of it. Crazy kid....

Despite the kiddo's protests (totally expected), I'd call my pressure cooker Acapulco chicken a success, and I can confidently say I've totally conquered my fear of the pressure cooker. Hazzaa!

I Heart Christopher Kimball

After kickboxing, scrubbing out the Booda Dome and sacking up the dead willow along with the yard clippings the fine recyclables collectors failed to pick up last week, I decided to bake some peanut butter oatmeal cookies from a recipe I found in a recent email from Cooking.com. (The recipe's actually from Light & Tasty, but who's counting?) Since I followed some very sage (and pretty darn obvious) advice Christopher Kimball put practically on page one of his The Kitchen Detective (another find from the south Austin Half-Price Books), I first checked if I had enough quick oats, doubting I had the required three cups. Sure enough, I didn't. And since I needed a few other items to make up another batch of Emeril's barbecue pizza sauce for Greg, I thought, Why not just hike down to HEB, swing by Half-Price Books and make a morning out of it since Jackie's not teaching Spin?

So that's what I did. And boy did I find some fun stuff!

Greg should request a restraining order barring me from close proximity to any Half-Price Books (except for maybe the one in San Marcos that was rather disappointing) unsupervised. I walked out with not one but two cooking books. Note that I wrote cooking books, not cook books because one is not a cook book. The Best Kitchen Quick Tips is yet another title from the editors of Cook's Illustrated and is chocked full of the tips for cooking, baking, storing, organizing a kitchen and what have ya that appear in Cook's Illustrated, the various recipe books and, I'm sure, Cook's Country. I truly did buy it with the intention of giving it to Mum or Erin or Melissa (although she probably knows most of this stuff already), but...well, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Anywho, while sucking down the last of my mid-morning protein shake, I was thumbing through this little book (which I still intend to gift upon a foodie/faudie relative) and came across this "Why the hell didn't I think of that!" tip for preparing fluffy rice:

"Once the rice is tender, remove the pan from the heat, place a clean kitchen towel folded in half over the saucepan, replace the lid, and set aside for 10 minutes. Residual heat continues to steam the rice and improves its texture, while the towel absorbs excess moisture that would otherwise condense on the lid and eventually fall back into the rice and make is mushy."

I am a victim of mushy rice. Happened to me just this past Friday while making easy Spanish rice to accompany our fish tacos. Greg usually doesn't have this problem when making the lime-cilantro jasmine rice on Burrito Night, but all my Spanish rice attempts have turned out mushy because of the darn condensation. And now, thanks to Christopher Kimball and his crew in America's Test Kitchen, I have a way to make Spanish rice that won't be mushy. Hooray! And for that reason...

I Heart Christopher Kimball!

(The other book I bought is Laxmi's Vegetarian Kitchen. Yes, I know I need another Indian cookbook like I need a hole in my head, but...but...it has a baked carrot halwa recipe! [I know you're reading this shaking your head in disgust, and yes, I admit I have a carrot halwa obsession.] And a tomato-onion raita that I suspect will yield something closer to the onion chutney from Madras Pavillion than other recipes I've tried or merged and butchered! So how could I resist?)

Houston, We Have Carrot Halwa

Describing my weekend as is an understatement. I'm honestly amazed how much you can cram into a Saturday afternoon and then still have the desire to cram in even more craziness the next afternoon. But I did it. And I dragged my husband, son and mom along with me, screaming and whining and crying and pouting all the way.

Indiana Jones and the Pressure Cooker of Death
During the previous two weekends, I viewed the new Indiana Jones movie after a delicious meal at Madras Pavilion. (I still contend that idlis and medhu vada are great movie snacks and should be available in the lobby.) This weekend had me and the crew back at Madras Pavilion but followed that with several hours of shopping, starting first at Tuesday Morning.

Can I say enough gushing things about Tuesday Morning? Probably, but I won't attempt it. This place is almost as much fun as Half-Price Books: You never know what might be new. After scoring my faboo Cuisinart cookware here before I was unemployed and just starting to build my arsenal of culinary weapons, I came to the store on Saturday with modest hopes of at least finding more of said cookware so Mum could acquire a new saute pan or skillet for the little sister (whose own favorite saute pan was destroyed by a bumbling boyfriend and a strange encounter with mushrooms some months back).

Ha! Oh, why should I have only entertained modest hopes?

Low and behold there upon the shelves near the Cuisinart pieces sat several boxes of the Fagor 10-quart pressure cooker and 11-piece canning set I'd been gawking at on Amazon.com and other places. Granted, it wasn't the Duo 8-quart model I'd also been considering (i.e., entertaining as a potential purchase once I'm employed again) and it has a nonstick coating (oh the evil!). But dammit, the thing looked perfectly fine to me and Mum, and it was affordable (or at least had a price point I could rationalize as affordable for us at our present fiscal condition) and...well, I just wanted to own it! Yes, I'm a weak consumer, I admit it. I have several recipes and ingredients for which a pressure cooker would be ideal, and I'm reluctant to try them because I lack a pressure cooker.

Plus I just wanted to determine for myself if pressure cookers really are the time- and energy-saving devices their makers claim them to be or if they're kitchen WMDs disguised as harmless cookware that are just waiting to detonate beans, pot roast, potatoes or what have ya and take out whatever hapless object might be nearby at the time of detonation. I mean, who wasn't told the tale of the exploding pressure cooker by some mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, home ec teacher, FHA member, fellow fry cook, dorm roomie, dude at the dog park or Joe Schmoe on the street? Even though sites galore assured readers the new models didn't have the capacity to explode, I'm skeptical by nature. And I wanted to get over my own childhood fears of Mum's old Presto chicka-chicka-chicka-chuffer.

So, yeah, I bought it. What the hell I'm going to do with the canning stuff I haven't a clue. (It's currently taking up space in various cabinets that I've recently cleaned out. Give me 10 years to get around to donating it to Goodwill.) But as soon as we got home that evening, I was plotting and planning my first experiment with my new Fagor: carrot halwa.

Carroty Bliss
Many folks eschew the notion that veggies can make for wonderful desserts. My husband, I seem to recall, scoffs at the notion of zucchini cake yet heartily embraces carrot cake and, since he's had it, carrot halwa. He has forgiven me, I think, for stinking up the microwave with my first disastrous attempt at making carrot halwa, and he heartily endorsed attempting the recipe again Sunday morning whilst we were doing laundry, preparing for yoga (well, I was) and all the other travails of a typical Sunday morning at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Mum agreed to help out since (1) she was there and (2) wanted to see a weight-less (a chicka-chicka-chicka-chuff-less) pressure cooker and my new food processor in action. Thank the FSM that she was there because otherwise carrot halwa take two would have been as big a disaster as the first take.

Carrot Halwa After-Action Review
1. It's not surprising we wound up putting in damn near a cup of cornstarch and a full can of fat-free sweetened condensed milk in an attempt to thicken the concoction simply because we were unsure exactly when to start the pressure cooking countdown because even though the instructions informed us to start the cooking clock when a steady stream of steam escapes from the valve, we didn't realize until more than half-way through the countdown where the steam was supposed to escape from, so the carrots were really only pressure-cooked for maybe a minute, not the six minutes (the rough equivalent of two whistles on an Indian pressure cooker) called for in the recipe. Since they were under pressure-cooked, the carrots weren't able to absorb the milk as they should, thus we had to employ other means of thickening the concoction.
Lesson learned: Pay closer attention to the product schematics before operating the first time.
2. It's not surprising we wound up put more sweetener in the concoction because the recipe was a "dieter friendly" formulation. Madras Pavillion goes for the real deal.
Lesson learned: Stop expecting "dieter friendly" formulations of restaurant favorites to taste exactly like said restaurant favorites.
3. Checking that we had all the ingredients in the right quantity before doubling the recipe is really, really smart.
Lesson learned: Check that I have all the ingredients in the right quantity before deciding to double the recipe.

I have about 32 ounces of carrot halwa in the freezer about about a cup or so left in the fridge after having a large serving post-experiment and sending some home with Mum. That I got Mum wanting to make it is a nice, unexpected benefit.

Hmm. Edible food. Midwestern mother interested in trying "exotic" Indian dish on her own. Hey, I'd call this experiment a success!

The Further Culinary Misadventures of a Faudie

Since the kiddo's been at Nana and Papa's house, Thursdays at Chez Boeckman-Walker have become a sort of Indian feast night. Thursdays are usually best for really experimenting in the kitchen because I don't spend two hours at the gym that morning, we don't have a grocery run to make that evening and the leftovers are usually down to slim pickings. So why not make a big damn mess all in the name of dining--it's not like I've got anything better to do. (And the FSM knows there's nothing on TV to watch that evening, so I have plenty of time for cleaning up afterwards.)

Let me just say this about yesterday afternoon/evening's culinary misadventure: Somewhere, millions of Indian women are laughing at me. Madhur Jaffrey is laughing loudest of all. No, wait. I'm laughing loudest of all.

Misstep One -- Recipalooza
The first step for any culinary misadventure is to start things off on the wrong foot: Start preparing ingredients for the wrong damn recipe.

My first experiment was to be sambar since we had a pair of idlis and medu vada that I'd absconded from Madras Pavilion during our last visit. (I know, it's wrong to secret away food from an all-you-can-eat buffet, but I needed to have time to study them closer without looking like some kind of weirdo in public. It has nothing to do with wanting something to munch on during our second viewing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or with my inability--yet--to make these yummies at home! Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) And ya have to have sambar with these treats. The disastrous onion chutney I made during my first blogged-about culinary misadventure would have been lonely without some sambar.

Anywho, I'd found sambar recipes in both Jaffrey's World Vegetarian book and in one of my more recent (thank you, Sur La Table, for putting several of your books on sale at half price) acquisitions, Easy Indian Cooking by Suneeta Vaswani. Wednesday evening, I'd had the chance to look at the pair more closely and had opted not to make the Vaswani recipe because hers was a more stew-like sambar, where I wanted the broth-like version, which is what MP serve (and I could live on, I swear). No slight to Vaswani, though, since the main course, sindhi chicken curry, came from her book.

Because I'm anal and had set out all the ingredients I needed for the curry and the sambar (and the two chocolate-hazelnut no-bake cookie recipes I was hoping to make from my fabulous King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion book) meant that I had a portion of my counter space covered with culinary literature, cans and little Ziplocks of spices. Naturally, being the chemically enhanced blonde that I am and coming off a four-hour cleaning fugue, I grabbed Vaswani's book, opened to its sambar recipe and happily started preparing half a cup of masoor dal. By the time the things were picked over, rinsed and in the pot, I realized I was using the wrong damn recipe.

Since Jaffrey's sambar calls only for a cup of toor dal (or toovar dal, as she calls 'em), I split the difference and threw in half a cup of toor dal to my half-cup of masoor dal. Sure, it wasn't right, but it wasn't like I was going to let that masoor dal go to waste. Once ya got those split peas washed, ya can't exactly put them back in the bag.

Misstep Two -- Misuse Time-Saving Devices
Monday afternoon, my new Cuisinart three-cup food processor (got it for half-price and paid no shipping--woohoo!) arrived at Greg's office, yet I had to wait until Thursday to play with it. (I know--that's some serious suffering.) So what do I choose first to put into the cute little thing? No, not carrots for carrot halwa or cabbage for cabbage poriyal, two recipes that convinced me I needed a food processor to make properly.

No, I threw in a humble yellow onion. Two of 'em, actually.

The curry called for two cups of finely chopped onions. I wound up with about two cups (never measured it) of minced-to-almost-the-point-of-puree onion because, heh, I haven't really a clue how to use a food processor. (Imagine that!) Reading the instructions make operating the device seems so...simple and straightforward. Heh, leave it to me to screw up the simple and straightforward!

But I'll say this: Even though using it to finely chop onions was a disaster, I love my food processor if for only one reason: cleaning it up is a snap compared to that damn blender. Cuisinart provides a special spatula (i.e., rubber scraper) that works like a charm, and the work bowl doesn't have that awful cone-like shape of the blender pitcher, so food doesn't pool far beneath the blade like it does on the blender.

I was this close to using the processor to chop the fresh cilantro (3/4 cup) I needed for the curry, but...well, I figured I didn't want to kill the romance I was enjoying with the device by butchering cilantro.

Speaking of cilantro, I never realized until this Wednesday's weekly Wednesday burrito night and last night's curry adventure how wonderful fresh cilantro is. Until now, I'd always thought the dried stuff we bought from Central Markup or Hole (in the head for buying this stuff at this price) Foods was fine. But no! Fresh has all the flavor and more! As I was chopping at it, I was reminded of the time when the Hoov Editorial department sprung for Chipotle burritos for the entire department; I kept hearing the voice of one of my coworkers lament that Chipotle opted to use "that foul weed" in its rice. Ahh, Ryan delivered that line with such disdain and aplomb!

(And Melissa, I totally understand now why you were lamenting the delay of your salad spinner's arrival in Israel. As I learned from watching...some blonde in a kitchen on Food Network two Fridays ago, you can use those things to quickly dry fresh herbs prior to chopping--which is a must if yer gonna throw 'em into a food processor. Since I have no spinner, I had no way of quickly drying my cilantro, thus I chopped it by hand. But I'm still not quite ready to put a spinner on my culinary want list.)

Misstep Three -- Risk Bodily Harm
Live dangerously: Cook topless. That's all I'm going to say.

Misstep Four -- Tempt the Tamarind Paste of Doom
Since I have several recipes that call for tamarind paste, I shelled out a few bucks (ooh, big spender!) for a block of what's identified as tamarind paste.

Except that what I bought, as I learned from Jaffrey in World Vegetarian, isn't really paste. It's almost paste that you have to tear into small pieces, soak in boiling water and then press ("with the back of a wooden spoon or your fingers") through a sieve to yield paste. Woohoo, so it's an almost-convenience food product!

Because I wanted to be adventurous and take the hard, rutty road to culinary discovery, I opted not to use the lemon juice substitute Jaffrey includes in her sambar recipe and instead plunged into really preparing the tamarind paste. She includes (mercifully) instructions for prepping the paste bits in the microwave--and at that time of day, I was all about convenience. So I tear off a hunk from the tamarind block that I think will yield the two tablespoons of tamarind paste I need, then tear it into little bits, toss them into a microwave Grab It (remember those Corning Visionware ones?), add two cups of water as Jaffrey advises, put the lid on and then nuke the life outta that stuff for four minutes (based on Jaffrey's recommendation of three to five minutes).

Heh, let's just say this: I was rewarded with the opportunity to finally scrub out the lingering ground clove stench from my disastrous microwave carrot halwa from the first weekend of June.

I guess I didn't have the lid completely sealed. Or the boiling water managed to unseat the lid. Regardless of how it happened, all the water (or most of it) overflowed from the Grab It and onto the bottom of the microwave. There were bits of tamarind stuck to the glass tray and to the side walls. And tamarind, my friends, isn't exactly the sweetest-smelling stuff in the world. Combine its odor with three-week-old parfum de clove, and ya have yourself a righteous stench. That I put off fully cleaning up until I had me my two tablespoons of paste--which came out just fine, I'm happy to report. Score one success!

Funny thing about microwaves--I used to be deadly afraid of 'em. Wouldn't touch 'em. If I did, I'd hit the button and dash to the other end of the house. Neurotic? Yes, but for good reason. I was at Graga's house one time, and someone (Graga or one of my younger cousins--can't remember who) was nuking either a frozen slice of pizza or popcorn. Something happened that caused that glass tray to shatter, and that explosion of glass left quite an impression. Plus there's that whole "radiation" thing (I'm a child of the 80s--I know all about living in fear of the nukes). But now the microwave and I are best buds. And I have a clean one to boot.

Misstep Five -- Beware of Popping Mustard
When the recipe warns you that the mustard seeds you're sauting in hot canola oil will start popping within seconds, it's not kidding.

And removing the saute pan from the heat when the seeds start popping everywhere while you fumble to add the dried red chile and curry leaves? That doesn't stop the popping.

So much for my freshly mopped kitchen floor....

And thank the FSM that I threw on my old (but recently bleached back to whiteness) Dean & DeLuca apron before I threw in the seeds!

(Ahh, anyone else remember dear neurotic little Felicity?)

Misstep Six -- Wind Up With Food That's Almost Inedible
Aside from the mix-up with the dal and replacing the four shallots with half a yellow onion, I followed the sambar recipe as precisely as I could--and still wound up with a final product that was largely inedible. Not because I'd burned it or undercooked it or whatever. But the heat was just...well, hot. Damn hot.

And when your husband, who's not as tolerant of spicey heat as you are, overhears you say, "Damn, that's hot!" when you test it again in his presence, you know you're in trouble because you just made yourself a big pot of this-porridge-is-too-hot sambar that you're going to be eating solo because you know you can't bring yourself to just throw it out because that's just damn wasteful and your family doesn't have food or money to waste like that because you're out of work and are too prissy to get a regular 9 to 6 job because you think you need time to work out and play in the kitchen.

So I wound up adding a small carton (looks like a friggin' juice box) of roasted red pepper and tomato soup to the sambar in an attempt to tone it down just a wee bit. I figured that might help--or at least couldn't ruin it too much--since the sambar we enjoy at MP has bits of tomato and bits of green bell pepper in it, so a soup from red bell pepper and tomato out to be okay, right? And it didn't. Greg managed a few bites; unsurprisingly, he was stopped by the presence of the dal. (He has really got to get over his fear of legumes.)

All in all, this misadventure wasn't too big a disaster. Sure, I shouldn't have tried to warm up the idlis and medu vadas and naan on the pepper roaster balanced precariously over the five-quart casserole dish in which I'd made the curry. But at least my latest attempt at mango lassi wan't the unsuckable brew it was last time! I remembered to throw in a pinch of ground cardamom and a bit of rose water, just as I'd read in some recipes. (Yes, I'm cannibalizing recipes again.) And if I'd had more mango prepared, they might have been more mango-y and less kefir/milk blend-y. And the onion chutney wasn't too bad in comparison to the sambar. Flavor is all relative, right? Right?

I ended this misadventure with this revelation: I may never be a great cook, but I'm learning how to clean up a kitchen like nobody's business!