Let's See How Brief I can Be

(Don't hold your breath: recipes, cookies, holidays, ducks in space, poetry on cd? Yes all this and coconut yogurt.

I am running out of cute ideas to use with my yogurt maker. I finally got around to trying coconut milk yogurt- it tastes like coconut milk, which just made me want to eat curry. So I made curry. On the whole, my least favorite yogurt so far. Buttermilk yogurt is a whole other beasty. This stuff came out sour! And it for some reason turned into curded cottage cheese. I invented sour cottage yogurt cream. After a run through the blender, it was delicious, but remained so tart behind honey or maple syrup that its like a heavily fermented beer- front of the tongue, mmm mmm good, back of the tongue, way bitter. A complex flavor I think I like. I'm still not sure though. Yogurt makers are fun. I would like to buy a juicer, but those things cost a lot. Its hard to earn back your savings as a single with wuss picky eaters in your life. If I were to offer Teresa or her family some form of wild beetroot parsley and plum juice I nutritionally designed to be perfect against the flu, they would turn their noses up and say eeewww until they knew they were safely sure to hate the thing, then sip it, hate it, and refuse to drink anymore, saying being sick isn't that bad. If you hear of me on the news for beating up my poor sweet long suffering girlfriend and think what a horrible person, just remember it was for one of three reasons: she got sick and I tried to force her to eat sprouts so she would recover, she got sick and I tried to force her to eat yogurt so she would recover, or she got sick and I forced her to drink some sort of parsley plum juice to recover. Or four, the post office made me insane to the point of needing to punch someone in the teeth, but I was so insane I didn't know whose teeth to punch. That one is equally likely after their most recent antics this December- as both employee and customer.

Recipe time: Here are two options I was happy with lately.

Dinner Design: Spaghetti Squash with Thai Marinara Sauce

Spaghetti squash intimidated me for a month, sitting there and waiting to be used. Finally, I boiled the thing after chopping it in half. Very easy, and very tastey. Sweet and flavorful, way less calories than true spaghetti- also though, less filling. But if you don't tell someone what it is, it will look enough like spaghetti they will think its only as exotic as like oat pasta or something.
I was very pleased with this marinara sauce:

Tomato paste, a clove or so of chopped garlic, few tablespoons olive oil, vermouth cooking wine, lots of whole leaves of italian parsley, and thai seasoning. At the last few minutes of simmering, add one or two fresh diced tomatoes (hot house hold together well in heat) to give a crisp extra zip. Thai seasoning may need to be approximated if you are vegetarian. The real stuff is available at World Market stores and possibly your grocery and should contain: sesame seeds, chile pepper, coriander, cilantro, basil, onion, red pepper,ground shrimp (optional), garlic, cinammon, nutmeg and lemon oil. A tangy wholly original red sauce. My best tomato project since the Maroonara.

And here is a recipe for Italian Semi-Formal Event Soup. A soup dressed up with plenty of bow tie pasta, italian parsley (I am all about Italian parsley right now), meatballs, tomatoes and vegetables, but without quite the class of Italian Wedding Soup.

Start with vegetable or chicken stock. Boil for an hour or so with carrots, bow tie pasta, pearl barley, quinoa grains (optional and uncessary as they nearly dissolve, but nutritious), celery. Simmer then with tomatoes, italian parsely, black olive, olive oil, garlic seasoning, onion powder, and seasoned salt added in. Also add your meatballs. Did you know you can make amazing meatballs with hamburger meat, italian-seasoned bread crumbs, onion powder, garlic powder, and a pinch of white pepper? Mix it all up good, then roll into balls, bake and serve or add to a soup. Use 1/3 cup bread crumbs per pound of beef. Easy. Once finished, your soup will need lots of parmesan cheese to round out the flavors. Not a meal, but a healthy low calorie starter. One I teased William with the idea of over a year ago and finally got around to.

Which is good, as my winter goals include 4 new soups (1 down), going sledding for the first time in 10 years, and 10 new forms of bread- 3 down- (gingerbread as a loaf!, blind oatmeal bread, and persimmon bread). Ginger bread as a loaf is amazing. I love the stuff. Way more hearty than cookies. Mine is called "Crackle Gingerbread". I added a decent amount of blue corn meal to hearty things up. It came out so black you'll consider your stout beer a pale ale. I used all rye and corn thus making Teresa say eeeeewww until she had convinced herself she would hate it, then take a bite of this delicious bread and say "its okay" politely while pretending to gag from grossness. Remember that talk we had earlier about punching.... Well at least her bread afficianado parents liked it. Let's see other winter goals: I'm doing very well on learning yoga. I like yoga now and that helps. I got a book with some great positions in it and they help with strength and flexibility and calm temperament. What is not to like? Also, I have to learn two songs on guitar, which is half a scheme to get Teresa to teach me something. I think she should be a good teacher but is convinced she isn't so she gets nervous when she tries and then says nnnnoooo whenever I suggest this. I should go calm down with some yoga. Oh and another one is to get into my best condition ever by mountain season- which would be going better if I didn't have such a steady burning self hatred that expresses itself in pulled muscles at the rate of one every other workout. I mean who would think a 14 mile bike ride in 30 minutes followed by an hour of weights and rock climbing and then a couple of miles in the pool with as little time to breath as possible would be hard on the body? I do try to go right to the edge of passing out to simulate high altitude oxygen dearths though. So that one is coming along.

The last one I'll mention for now is cold training. As in, getting my body ready to fall asleep half way up Mt Rainier in two years at subzero temperatures it is a two day climb). To do this, I have been walking to the grocery store through the snow at 2:30 am (the coldest possible time) without a jacket, and while fasting (most bodyheat is produced by the food you ate within hours- fat store conversion is a slower fuel and not an efficient one in say -5 ferhenheit). Apparently, one good lesson to take is that carrying cold milk in your hands on such a cold night can overwhelm your system to worry only about the core. So I almost had frostbite in my left middle finger, which would have been tragic, because I use that baby all the time. For a tight purple hour there, I couldn't bend that finger. But it all worked out. Frostbite can set in fast. T and my roomate both looked at me with incredulous disbelief that anyone could be so clueless as to walk to the store at night on at -5 or so and carry milk. They both told me it was -5 or so, as if I hadn't noticed from some poetic lack of common sense. I did not mention my cold training to them. It would only add to their worries over my growing insanity. If you want to add to their worries about my growing insanity then you tell them. What can I say, I don't have -25 so I have to maximize what I do have. I am inflating -5 to a greater intensity to simulate things. I feel its clever. Also, people are too soft in America. I even wrote a poem where Genghis Khan is in an upper middle class lady's home when she gets home from work and she starts ordering him around. So he starts trashing figurines and TVs and slashing bellies and throwing babies at walls. I mean what would Americans do in any kind of hardship?

Well this isn't very brief is it, but at least if I only write once a month, I save time that way. Now that I am in the late renaissance of my poetic mega-productive period, pumping out several poems per week, it is hard to justify putting a lot of hours into frivilous and yet entertaining, but on the whole, too easy blogging. Sure I contribute to food knowledge and the humors of the internet, but let's be honest, its less likely after I freeze to death atop Mt Rainier in two years that you'll find a volume of my collected food blogs and marinara recipes than of my collected poems. When you're dead, your poems don't even have to be good to be creditable. Although now that pop music is poetry (Bob Dylan's dangerous Nobel Prize designed to stir things up) maybe I will never contend with Avril Lavigne and the messages of 55 year old teen demi-god "Pink". So, poems, I even wrote some about food. I would post one here but there seems no way to get one to post.

Ooh a cheese review: marscapone, which is italian cream cheese is smooth, delicate, mild, and delicious with garlic herb wheat thins, and trust me, delicious is not a word I ever thought I would put near garlic herb wheat thins in my life. I only kept the box to remind me not to buy any more, as each time I looked at them I felt nauteous. Way too much garlic. Amish gorganzola is also good, and supposedly is sustainable, although I have my doubts as it comes in a plastic container with a sticker label and a seperate plastic lip inside.

So at my small poetry club we listened to Mary Oliver read her own poems on cd and I immediately went from considering her poems, shallow and dull, to deep and subtle. So I have begun making cds of my poems, including original artwork covers based on surrealist draft clashes of several of the poems. A fun little project. I haven't drawn anything in like 10 years so I am a little rusty, but my favorite cover so far incorporates my poems "Albino Alligator", "Let's Live Inside a Kiss Goodbye", and "Robespierre" (leader of the reign of terror with the guillotine). I'll let you imagine how it might look. Hint: it includes rocket packs. I discuss the poems as well as my crackpot theories such as the true moral of Cinderella being: nice girls finish last, or how loose poor girls can rise to the top. It involves a new angle on the crystal shoe as a metaphor.

I want to add finally, that I hate Christmas, in all its insidious forms, musical or commercial. I also hate missionary work, which comes up now that an incredibly arrogant clueless spoiled eighteen year old who has never washed a dish and owns forty video games is about to ship out to the Amazon to tell some "savages" how to be as happy as him by wearing a tie, chopping down a few trees to build a church and a basketball court and singing hymns in english. And that the only good thing about Christmas is gingerbread bread and cookies, in the shape of dinosaurs and hippos, preferably. Oh and did you know you can get cutesy rubber duckies in space bubbles out of those machines that take quarters at the front of some grocery stores? Not that I have an unhealthy obsession trying to add "Pirate Duck" and "Ninja Duck" to my life or anything.

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I Can't Believe I Wrote the Whole Thing

Everything-but-fish Soup. Business ideas. Mountains and clouds and the usual spontaneously combusting prose.

First, I have no idea why my whole posts show. I want them to just be a summary. Much cleaner look that way no? But the whole thing always sits there, hulking and in the way. Second, would you believe I'm saving money on food of all things? Honest. I haven't bought any artisan cheese since July and my hiking madness began, and I am cooking mostly pasta, rice, and Kitchen Sink soups- basically a glut of water and everything. This week I made Everything-but-fish soup, which had this time around: pasta, rice, red beans, black beans, lentils, peas, carrots, potatoes, pumpkin, olives, tomato sauce, ground beef, cooking sherry, brocolli, cauliflower, canned corn, crushed red pepper, all day everyday seasoning, seven kinds of vegetable sprouts, bay leaves, garlic, onion powder, and probably two or three other things I forget right now. So it isn't quite everything, but you will note the lack of fish. It came out good and will last all week. It also fits with Jeff, my roomate/friend, and my's scheme- he gave me carte blanche to his larder of canned everything and big bags of produce, and I use his goods and then offer him the finished soups and food. Again this works great as he doesn't like to cook, and I am nail bitingly teeth chatteringly cheap and afraid to spend money. How I suffer to spend money! Unless its on fabulous things from Switzerland like Mocha Vanilla Chocolates individually wrapped (against my policies actually) with pictures of Alps and Matterhorns on the front of them, and Wenger hiking shoes which shine themselves at night. Then I just cringe later when I get the bill.

I have decided not to one day spend all my savings on climbing Mount Everest or K2, which is good for me, since I was already mad at myself for doing so someday in the future when I hadn't even begun planning it yet. Mt Rainier in Washington has more prominence (I finally know what this means, thank you Wikipedia) than K2 and there are many mountains in the US. And my dream mountains in- wait for it- Switzerland. The Alps. I would be quite satisfied to go climb an Alp or two as my dream, non-Ghanese-Hippo-Sanctuary-related vacation overseas. Have I mentioned there is a Ghanese Hippo Sanctuary? Or was, who knows how long it will last in Africa, no offense to their chaotic continent. So I listened to an audio book about Africa and was scolded by the author as a non-African for thinking Africans tribal still. She says the continent simply contains millions of micronations, which she then defined as basically, small family units who have lived and worked together for thousands of years and think of themselves as a small unit and not a part of some Western invention of a country like Kenya and so often fall into wars, tantrums, and slaughter one another for pretty much no reason. Umm...I'll let you decide if I am a racist for using the word tribe instead of micronation. Isn't that just semantics- whatever those are? Back to food.

So tonight I made some persimmon bread. Persimmons, according to the ad Teresa read which enticed our interest, are a tangy sweet fruit which will remind you of a cross between pumpkins and plums. Now this is fairly accurate. The recipe I used treated them like a pumpkin (allspice, nutmeg, brown sugar, cinammon), yet they were tangerine colored and sized and inside are like an orange plum. The skin is an odd plastic tomato type feel. You discard it. The bread is decent and part of my Winter Goals. My Winter Goals list is an ambitious and tiring scheme to utilize the extra fifteen hours per week I have gained from hiking season being over. I will no longer be hiking fifteen hours per week and want to avoid sliding into last winter's habit of putting that time to sulking about mountains being too snowy to hike, sulking about it being cold and smelly in the stale air of my apartment, sulking about how someone I live with who will remain unnamed watches- I kid you not I used a formula to slice this person's hours per week up and found a conservative estimate to be- between 55 and 65 hours of television per week!!! and so I am trapped in my own bedroom unless I want to get sucked into watching "news" broadcasts about how I am apparently dying of a flu I didn't even know I had, watching Looney Tunes and other cartoons, and sleeping longer hours like a fat lazy bear. So I came up with many outlandish goals, including starting a home business or five and preparing for Farmer's Market season, figuring out a formula to make my oat bars veganly without butter but still tasting good to improve their marketability, writing much more and finishing some open projects, learning to cook several styles of new foods (we'll get into these hopefully as the winter unfolds), and learning to cook 10 new styles of bread (this can include pastries and cakes). Number 1 can now be checked off. Persimmon bread.

While I think of it, I want to recommend Reay Tannihall's wonderful passive voice infused book, Food in History. A treasure full of wonders, jaw dropping facts, wild speculation (prehistoric man probably enjoyed the taste of spring herbs with wild mastadon in 10641 BC when there might have been a thaw briefly on October 17 of that year for three hours and they discovered the first strawberries and an early prominently thistled basil (a bit of an exaggeration)), Roman welfare plans (Corn for Clunkers), Greek changing landscapes, vampirism, cannibalism, and too many more anectodes and interesting facts to even try to list. I love a good old fashioned, warm, fuzzy, down by the hearth, passive voice book too. Call me old fashioned or the dirty sleeze covered devil dog who deserves to be slaughtered, cloned back to life, and slaughtered again that all my english professors assured me anyone who uses passive voice even once in an essay assuredly is, but I enjoy passive voice. Not in a poem, and not all the time, but I do not feel that every sentence of a historical work needs to crackle with vibrant action verbs. I am not against the words was, is, has, or were. I believe Camila also read this book and that I read some of the same while her mother was over visiting one day at her and William's apartment in Arizona. However, I may be making this up. But the cover looks familiar. My imagination is quite potent though and I also remembered recently when discovering that Jiffy uses animal lard in their muffin mixes that: I knew this or thought to myself, "didn't I know that?", that I could then remember Camila at a time when I was serving her oatmeal bread by Jiffy mmming profusely, asking for the box, hmming curtly, telling me that there was animal lard and so this was not vegetarian, then shrugging and not holding it against me (thanks for that pal, and for the time I made apple brandy tofu which I have been craving, although I may find it not as good as when I served it to you swimming in rendered duck fat because I baked it on the same tray as the duck breasts (whoops and again, sorry)), and proceeding to rebury her face in the delicious oatmeal bread. Though again, I might have made all this up. I can picture it all quite vividly though, including my many many beer bottles which I miss and know that scoundrel Gabe is claiming as his own down in Arizona right now, you know, if he's alive, and not dead in his room and nobody noticing because his huge piles of trash already reeked and were attracting fruit flies- the same piles of trash he would then miss if you went in to clean them out while he was away or passed out- only to go storming up to a female roomate with a bare knife to her throat and wild-eyed threatening death to her if she ever went into his room again- and me all the while wanting to go pick a knife fight with him by saying I did it but I had just finished the whole bottle of brandy and then sucked the brandy and apple marinade dry from the plastic bag in desperation because there was no more liquor in the house- not that ever happened and I digress.

But I do wonder these days if I was an alcoholic while in college. Yes I did once give a speech while drunk and fell asleep multiple times in class from drinking and I will even admit that I drank vodka mixed with orange juice during my early morning classes, and that all of the alcoholics I lived with were quite insistent to me when I was awake briefly between benders on my way to the bathroom or the liquor store or to work amongst the rafters of some Habitat construction project twelve feet above concrete that I was an alcoholic, but you can't trust the judgement of alcoholics, so I disagreed. But in looking back, maybe I was. I have been joking that I simply replaced repetitive swallowing with repetitive steps up rocky mountains, and really, I am not sure which is healthier. I look a lot better now and am apparently on the Man Candy or Eye Candy or some such list at work, which feels nice to be on. (I am one of nine members. Apparently this is why I now sit with a table of all women who invited me over, and would you believe I never noticed there were no men in the group except me until the other day when Man Candy or Eye Candy lists came up for the first time and one girl apologized for such talk and said they couldn't include me since I was a friend now and the other girl then shyly and blushingly admitted I was on the list and that was why they had begun talking to me and then didn't show up for work the next night for me to tease her with the rest of them.) And I am happier although that might be because of a better job and living near my girlfriend and having a better living situation and not the large quantities of empty brandy and beer bottles to trip over. But my several injuries this year question whether long term liver damage is more hazardous than muscle strains and boulder crushings and broken feet. As to that Man Candy or Eye Candy list, maybe Teresa is correct and I am wrong in our ever evolving circular debate. T's position is that women talk to me because I am attractive and desirable. I counter it is because I am there and they are bored. T says she should get jealous and worry about other women wanting me, I remind her I have lived my entire life on two basic premises: I am hideously ugly, and nobody likes me: and that it is too late to bother changing now. Probably she is right. Sometimes I look at photos and think before my inner mechanics begin turning, wow I look good. Then I correct this with something like, no I am hideously ugly, I cannot look good. This really all began at age 7 when I went from being an adorable baby to an awkward child. At six I was a lady killer, and would walk into large groups of girls, or women and announce while holding out some story book, I can't read yet, who wants to read me this story? They would then slap at each other and eventually agree all to read me the story book in turns by surrounding me. I remember this distinctly. My brother hated it, he being the age of these girls often. Then at seven, my teeth became horribly yellow and wide apart and my hair frizzed, my freckles went rabid, then acne mixed in at some point, I had gangly and clumsy feet, was stick thin, with a pot belly, terribly pale, and was despised so much by all females in my classes for liking Star Trek, being too smart, and an affront to the concept of vision, that I hid in dark corners moving as little as possible and never opening my mouth. After six years of braces, lots of testosterone, gaining eighty pounds, mixing Hobbits and space ships with mountain climbing, old movies, six packs of abs, learning how to cook, and becoming all around somewhat interesting, perhaps I and the girls in my classes should have agreed I was not completely undesirable? But by then it was habit and I was halfway through college before any of us noticed and its too hard to change at some point. So even though there has been mounting evidence I am not hideously ugly and that everyone does not hate me, I tend to push this evidence away as it does not compute with those established premises. So I food blog and write poems and have only asked out I think two and one half women and half proposed marriage to one (the half is a half asking out not a half woman- half women being something I tend to avoid)- all without a single yes if you would believe that and only one possible yes (this being T who responded to my epically casual and cool pick up line "if you didn't live 2000 miles away I would probably ask you out" with "if I didn't live 2000 miles away I would probably say yes"). And am now on Man Candy or Eye Candy or whatever they are lists, although I checked the mirror several times since, and still just don't see it.

Now in a way not likely to lead to me rebecoming (possibly) an alcoholic (although as I proved by stopping I could stop whenever I wanted (have I mentioned only three beers since July and only swigging whiskey when I start to feel sick- nature's finest medicine?)), I might begin brewing beer, despite Camila never having suggested it to me. I am reading a book on the subject and would you believe chemistry is actually good for something? I wish I had paid more attention and hadn't thrown away my home town water report listing mineral contents. Now I know I have said I would not brew home beer as one needs to make 5 gallons at a time- but I do not believe this to be true any longer. A terrible Chinese-constructed project known as "Mr Beer" is now available for under $40 and makes 2 gallons, and may be a good way to start. Also I think if I just buy raw materials, I could make as little as I wanted. It would just be days of work for not much gain, but until I can find an outlet (local bars?) for my bathtub moonshine and "Hippo Kiss" (chocolate rasberry stout) beers, I should probably not produce 60 bottles of beer. It wouldn't be so much temptation as a pressure to either lushly drink or waste a lot of edible foodstuffs starving people could have used. This is one of several fermenting ideas I have.

Another is to ferment sodas naturally and then make 4-5 interesting varieties (Winter Goals project) for sale once perfected at the farmer's markets. Another is to cook large vats of one hot item each week (4 bean buffalo chili, chedder brocolli potato and wild rice soup and so on) for sale at same markets. Also to produce calendars with the photos I get while hiking and with T (flowers of the West, Rock Stars (high altitude rock formations), Wasatch Hiking), and children's books I will finally get around to illustrating myself (already written in poem form) and self publish although that is a risk of a thousand dollars or so and I am not sure I believe in myself or my abilities enough to risk that (see above paragraph about everyone hating me). I can also sell sprouts and oat bars, and pass out fliers for my by-then established catering company, and sell my line of Evil Christmas Cards (expanding and modernizing to include Santa giving out swine flu to the naughty list) and newly spawned list of Evil Birthday Cards. I think these would sell well, to people with a sense of humor. And uptight Mormons might buy them all just to burn them so no one can have any fun. Its their way. And I'm not judging as long as the checks clear. So lots of ideas. I even have a side scheme of starting a nutrition advising service- weight loss, weight gain (for high school would-be athletes) and sport specific diets. And what if I had a company called Wasatch Hiking, which would be me, and when tourists came I would set up and guide a hike for them into the Wasatch mountains, based on their hotel location, free time, fitness level and such, and they could pick from a few lunch items and I would cook it and pack it along. I'm sure lots of travelers look up at the mountains and have no idea if trails exist or how to find them or if they are fit enough to do it. And I enjoy hiking, and cooking. But not people. So two out of three isn't bad. And for next year with my insane Mountain Club, I am hoping to lead some Packnic Hikes, where we hike to a mountain peak and then do a pot luck. As some of you know food tastes exponentially better the higher up you are. This is all part of my new plan not to plan on ever having a corporate job again since the way of the world seems like it will have to revert to local businesses and self-employment and since I hate working and most people, places, and things. And maybe it will lead to me being entrepeneurial enough and experienced enough to open a pub and restaurant and publish a culinary and artsy magazine (does anyone do the whole lets talk Joyce verses Woolf in the middle of a recipe for persimmon bread and then question a scientist and a rabbi about the pros and cons of purple potatoes and brocoflower angle yet? I'm thinking no right?) and possibly to sell art right off the walls (restaurants always have motifs and paintings then get sick of them and freshen up by changing it all- why not just sell local paintings or my own photography- come for the food, notice its a gallery halfway down your breadstick) and use the same space to a double purpose? Is this legal or a zoning issue? Probably depends on the city and zone I suppose.

Until next time.

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Violetatoes

Check out photos of my new favorite produce: blue or purple potatoes. I have a better name for them. Oh and a few reminders for your pumpkin adventures.

Well I wanted to do summit two more mountains and I had I figured 2 weeks until the average first snowfall. After that I would just do what my mountain club friends do and go up into canyons, and up short mountains all winter. Well winter came two weeks early and is bombing both spots I wanted to go. So to ease this pain and distract myself (and keep myself awake all night so I would be too tired to try walking through several miles of up to 12 inches of snow and guessing where the trail is all the while tomorrow), I swung into full scale winter cooking mode. (PS Do you see the size of this home grown chard leaf above? I almost saved it to cut eye holes so I could be lettuce for Halloween) I bought 2 large pumpkins, hollowed one out in about five minutes, then baked it at 450 while boiling split peas on top of the stove with some carrots and pearl onion. While doing this I listened to the classical radio station and dug out every seed in the guts. Then I put my peas, along with some blackeye peas and chickpeas into the pumpkin after pulling it from the oven, and added my usual 13 seasonings with an supplement of black pepper- lentils and peas will really only shine at their best when they have claws: so the coarser the better. This all went back in the oven. Here, I would like to make a slight suggestion: be sure to remember that pumpkins dry out as they cook and mush and burn especially on bottom and will sag and sink, so if you do not want your bottom to become ooze and the whole very heavy "bowl" to drip down onto your oven floor, use a pizza tray underneath. The thinner and lighter the better frankly because even before the soup we're talking about 5 pounds or so of food here. Also I do suggest precooking your pumpkin and don't count on anything inside it boiling or meat cooking through- so brown beef, whiten chickn and boil before. Other than that pumpkin cooking is wonderful and simple. Dinner guests will think you brilliant, and you can use almost all the pumpkin. The seeds bake easily and need only one flip at 200 degrees- up to 75 minutes- just keep checking every 15 minutes. I like them with olive oil and garlic or seasoned salt. Scrape the sides as you serve bowls of your ever improving pea soup or turkey soup or anything else, and scrape the sides of what is left to cold store them- these shavings can then later be boiled in a bit of water and mashed when very soft, mixed with butter, brown sugar and nutmeg and allspice and be served as a side dish. Every part of a pumpkin is ripe with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein. It is sad that one of the healthiest fruits in America is used only for a mostly silly holiday, as if Halloween had to be invented so we would have something to do with all these da---d pumpkins. Pumpkins will keep probably into December if you buy your last couple near the end of October. They will also keep your food hot- if you don't keep pulling off the lid to look inside and see if the food is still hot- for hours. And I am talking hit you in the face with scalding steam hot, not luke warm. Put the guts in your composter.

My pea soup really did improve with the violetatoes and pumpkin scrapings. It doesn't get much heartier or healthier. On the side I had thick slices of buttered oatmeal bread made in a mini loaf- William and Camila's favorite thing I cook maybe. One of mine too, although as I always tell everyone in the hopes it will create a demand for Jiffy Oatmeal Muffin mix so that I can find it at a store not called Walmart- it is just Jiffy Oatmeal Muffin mix baked in a mini loaf pan. Just add an egg and a swirl of milk. (And flaxseed or buckwheat to be healthier(did you know buckwheat is a fruit and not related to wheat at all or that wild rice is a tuber and not a rice at all?)) I put no creativity into it. And no skill.

So I baked bread, made thick delicious original soup, cooked in a pumpkin, toasted seeds, and for good measure, toaster ovened some violetatoes in my favorite manor: garlic salt and schzeshwan seasoning. Delicious. I love having a toaster oven, especially a used one which came to us free. It is especially useful for radiation free plate warming and potatoes- if you like fluffy insides and crisp skin- and who doesn't? I need to stash away many pounds of these potatoes if I can find more. I am hoarding my last one right now just in case I have to shove it into dirt and grow my own plant for the winter- which I probably will try anyway. Violetatoes are a big part of my burgeoning scheme to form a catering company on the side/ health food company. I want to do it slowly and see how things go- investing no money and seeing if I can just break even while building up some customers. It will be something to do if nothing else.

Also Eggplant Lombardi as I make it is not Eggplant Lombardi. Eggplant Lombardi entails hollowing out an eggplant, shoving ricotta cheese and spinach inside and baking it. The breaded slices layered with several cheeses and spinach and chard is my own thing. And after trying Eggplant Andrew, Eggplant Achilles, Eggplant Hodgson, and Eggplant Etcetera and Eggplant Something, I have two finalists: Eggplant Dentino and Eggplant Domonoski. My step family is Italian and named Dentino and it was invented at the Domonoski household and Domonoski sounds Italian and cool coming after eggplant. So I will keep you all posted. I know one does not generally name something after someone else (the doctor who discovered Lou Gehrig's disease must have been pissed when it became the only disease of all time not to be named after the discovering doctor), but well, I've been trying out alter egos and psedonyms all my life trying to get rid of a bit of a drab name, so I can do what I want- unless the Domonoskis uniformly object via expressed written anti-consent.

I think I will save most of my other witty thoughts for another post which may include more revelations from festival and fair season, and Fry Bread Tacos and Fry Bread Cheeseburgers- the best food of all time, at least at Julia's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Or it may not. I will say though that everyone always snickers when I say I leave the oven door open after I turn off the heat, but this makes great sense. In winter you pay to heat the following two kinds of air: air in your oven, and air in your apartment/house. Why would you pay to heat air in your apartment/house and then let air you paid to heat in your oven go out through a pipe into the cold night? Conserving the one means you pay for less of the other. Now in my apartment tonight on a night in the low 30s, we did not run our furnace, but when my roomate Jeff went to bed at 9 pm it was 63 degrees and when he got up at 3 am it was close to 68. Again, we were not running the furnace. A house will see much less benefit, but still, it makes sense even if it doesn't show up as noticeable. I suggest you try it and stop snickering at me. Also this means we may be in store for a cheap winter. The people above us are already cranking their furnace and we are half sunk under ground, by about 3 feet on all sides. The people on the other side of my room are running their furnace too. So we may not even have to. Or only minimally. I am sure in Jan and Feb we will need to at least light the pilot. But I almost took off my sweater and wore no socks while outside it froze. And again, no furnace. So we picked a good apartment. I wish more houses were half sunk in the ground- basements don't count since they just make things colder usually by being unfinished and way open.

Oh I forgot! Teresa and I went to a fall apple and cheese tasting for free and our favorite apples are as follows: Honey Crisp- tart, but sweet, and yes crispy: a perfect potent flavor with excellent skin and body and by the way if you find them anywhere they cost about $6.61 for 4. Not that I bought four of them for that price or anything. Ozark Gold: A great golden apple with firm texture and sweet flavor, that rolls. Pink Lady: Teresa's delight is to my taste too mushy. But they will make a great pink apple sauce, which I am craving right now. Good thing it is cooking season.

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Alligators and More

Fall is coming. Fairs are here. Mountains become smaller.

I love a state fair. It represents the highest pinnacle of American culinary achievement. You can get anything you want to eat, shoved onto a stick, then deep fried. Peanut butter sandwhiches, twinkies, oreo cookies, cheese- alligator. Yes, I did eat alligator chunks. A crowd formed around me to ask if it tasted like chicken. Yes I said, like chicken that had been swimming its entire life in putrid bog water. It manages to be both very tough and very fatty. So I wouldn't eat it again unless I were lacking in other vittles. But I can now say I've eaten alligator. And seen two large men from Florida wrestle one for the amusement of bratty nose picking American children. And hold its jaws shut with their chin muscles so both hands are free to tie it up!

I also bought some discount kitchen stuff at the fair, as well as several miniature hippos carved from Peru and Rocky Road fudge. One item was the "Tri-pan" (as seen on TV- apparently). This was $5 and seemed like a risk free purchase. I mean I paid $6 for a sandwhich at a barbecue stand that depressed me for a week it was so lifeless and tasteless, even with sauce added. $5 isn't much. The pan is of poor quality, coming from China. It is thin, and the kind of non stick where your food sticks to it even before adding heat. However, if you use a bit of oil or butter, it is servicable. The gimmic is you can cook three seperate foods and the juices are kept apart. Photo coming in the next post, if I don't die on a mountain before posting again (fall is here I just heard a crow!). So its not an everyday thing, but I like it for breakfasts, and I think for vegetarians like Cam, it might be good, because they can cook their Williams bacon without the juice touching their say hash browns. Don't pay more than $5 for it. And set your expectations right.

Yeah fairs are great. They also had bears dance on balls to country western music. Although during this show I kept thinking how you could never get a hippo to dance on a ball to any kind of music for honey or any other food (or with a whip or by lighting the ground on fire). The hippo would just blink at its trainer and then yawn and go to sleep, or if it wanted the food, bite the trainer in half and eat the food, and maybe the trainer if it was still hungry. That's why hippos are the best animal ever. Lazy and mean. Just like me.

I have been a bit lazy with my cooking the past few weeks, trying to catch up on my mountain hiking after losing much of the summer with that broken foot. Teresa made fun of me for not hiking on it anyway. I can't win. Well her point was I never let broken bones stop me before so why change now? I am almost caught up. A few more mountains and I will be stopped until next May and my ice axe climbing class. The last creative thing I made was a plum pudding cheese cake as pictured above. It was a good combo and achieved my difficult goal of making a cheesecake that I seem to have invented myself. I still eat decent. Though I did actually resort to making hamburger helper on a particularly exhausted day (the proof is above). The thing with mountains is at this point, I never return to feeling rested. I stop hurting but there is like an attritive tiredness so that even though I go up the mountains much easier and now am beginning to scoff at those not 11,000 ft or higher (we're approximately two years away from me doing the inevitable and cliche hike up K2 or Everest with my life savings), I am walking around work every night as if there were a backpack of bricks on my shoulders and people keep asking me if I sleep. Yes actually about eight hours a day- ten last week while my swollen leg was still blue and sucked out all my energy and took all the nutrients I put in myself to try healing, but I feel like I don't. Hamburger helper was good actually. It was the Stauffer's brand which is cheaper and has a less synthesized glue flavor- and I cut up some tomato (speaking of which check out the cool zebra watermelon tomatoes I bought above), threw in frozen peas, and added 11 kinds of vegetable spouts. So it was even a bit healthy. Sprouts I am hoping will help me stay healthy and strong all winter too- lots more fresh home grown produce than I've ever had off season. Rice A Roni isn't bad either as far as preservative filled slop food products go. It helps me after a hike because its slopping over with sodium which I need to replace and is pretty easy, and it comes with only a cardboard box and brown paper bag for the seasoning powder- no wierd plastic bag that isn't necessary inside the cardboard, and no foil-like papery bag thing.

I feel Rice A Roni has done as much to be recycleable as any company can. So they are helping me to keep my waste down. I actually don't produce much even to be recycled. I am doing good trying to buy food which comes in little or no wrappings. Of course this doesn't matter at all because everyone else is trying even harder to destroy my precious earth and sky by continuing to buy bottled water for reasons other than emergency preparation and then complain about how broke they are when there is free safe water in their tap. If it were up to me I would even get rid of the post office, newspapers, and advertisements in the mail. They are all uneccessary when we only get junk mail and credit offers, and everything can be on line. But thanks for employing me post office. Keep the checks coming.

I keep having problems eating on the go during my hikes. Something about sweating, being overheated, wheezing, and pushing at a fierce pace makes me have an upset stomach. Any suggestions? I am taking fruit now: grapes and an apple which go down easy, and oatmeal to go bars- which are now only $2.70 per box instead of the old ridiculous price of $4.00. So I guess no one was buying them. But oats are easy on the gut and for me, they make a lot more sense than mostly gross energy bars which are like $1.50 each or more and basically are the same thing with a sprinkling of soy protein powder. Frankly I don't need the extra few grams of protein anyway. I also take jerkey for the way down, which helps with protein and salt replacement and is very light. My own glorious trail mix with butterscotch, and sometimes a turkey sandwich. If you ever want an energy bar, buy Odwalla, the best tasting and best formulated bar out there. By far. I sometimes take one of these for a long hike too. And I am trying some tofu blocks which fruit and seeds and chocolate in them which are okay. I want to learn to make them on my own. But if you have an idea, I'd love to hear it.

Would you believe the first few cold nights have made me excited? I know my commute will be longer and scarier and slipperier, and hiking will be mostly over. But well, my body wants to hibernate. The thought of lounging for a whole week even seems superb. And pumpkins are here! Seasonal living really is the right way: I think electric lights and TV and all these comforts have put off our kind of biological clocks. We try doing the things we love year round and they become a drag. I haven't been inside the gym I like all summer. I am really looking forward to swimming in the warm pool, hitting the steam room, and lifting a few weights. And the indoor walking track on a day when the parking lot is purple with sparkling ice and cold snow. And for four bean buffalo chili in a pumpkin, and smoked turkey soup in a pumpkin and three pea soup in a pumpkin and roasted garlic pumpkin seeds and hot cider and shivering with a special someone under six inches of blankets while it snows lightly outside. And sledding, and resting. And baking lots of wonderful breads. Winter will be good- hiking yourself into the ground for ten weeks before the leaves change is a good trick to become open to it.

Lastly I am against the President's health care plan. First I think it is wrong to force people to have health care. I have not gone to a doctor in like 8 years, why should I have to pay monthly for the right to? Also I don't think I should pick up the slack for overwhelmed parents because I am single. I choose not to have children, if you choose to, you pay for them. I do not want to be expected to be a male role model to any brat living near me or in extended family whose father is in Iraq or have to pay for some little girl I never met to get a flu vaccine. Its not my responsibility. I think health care should be free or close to it, but until we stop paying for men to get viagra and for obese idiots who refuse to stop eating hamburgers to stay alive for a few more years on incredibly expensive stetsons, health care reform is pointless anyway. Even with reform, the system can't work when more than half of America has diabetes whether they know it or not. I am all for supporting those with weak immune systems and health problems through no fault of their own- those who have met my girlfriend know this. People who are disabled or fall on hard times should be given a good life if we can and a helping hand. But for those who smoke or drink huge amounts of soda or eat nothing but fried crap- well, I don't care if you die. Obviously, you do not either, at least you did not, until that first x-ray showing cancer or the first time your chest clenches up on you. Your troubles are your fault, and I would say no one should have to take care of you, but since as a healthy person I am in the minority, I know I will as usual be shouted down as a commie nazi psychopath completely lacking in human feeling who should probably be locked up or deported to teach me a lesson- just remember, once I'm gone that's one less person adding to the piggy bank and not taking from it. Money for these plans doesn't come from magic: it comes from the taxes of the healthy being spread out to the sickly. Now, if I have to become a Christian Scientist to prove I will not be going to any hospitals and so I have a right to not pay for health care beyond what is already taken out of my check for Medicaire, a system which continues to shortchange Teresa who eats healthy but was born with health issues, and offers expensive and useless drugs to the depressed, lazy, stupid and obese, I will. I guess. I mean since Canada is too cold and Europe wouldn't take an ex pat American anymore.

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The Its Cool to Be Square Jam Session

That's right- your questions answered. A two month catch up YBAC Mailbag. As always, these are real questions to Andrew from real readers. Why would I make these up, that would be a very deranged waste of a lot of my own time.

Why are pizzas round?
-Shawna: Sheboygan, IL

They don't have to be. If you watch Garfield cartoons, you know its because the first pizza chef baked them so hard that they inspired the frizbee. I made a cool square pizza the other night and will now make my own pizzas every time. Its too easy to make one to buy preservative-rich shipped from who knows where possibly due for a recall not nearly as tasty pizzas from the store. The one pictured is a simple crust with 1/4 of the flour rye, and lots of oregano and herbs de provance right in the crust. Also, you can put a bead of mustard around the edge before folding over for a more rewarding last bite of each piece. This one had mushrooms underneath- which were almost as fresh as the day I bought them two weeks after I bought them, wrapped tight in a brown paper bag in the crisper- a trick that apparently does work. And with soft mozerella beneath a crispy browned layer of parmesan. Oh and spinach.

Staying lazy? You don't hike, you don't blog, what do you do?
-Mitchel Prince: North Salt Lake, UT

I have been busy! I made my first zuccini bread batch (delicious) and need a heartier supply of zuccini as I fry them very well too. It is fairly easy, although I suggest using less than the 2 cups of sugar many recipes call for (better if you go half and half brown and white) because it just isn't necessary. A cup and a half will do it I think. I also made 2 batches of pumpkin pancakes with white chocolate chips and walnuts in them, and a new feature to my repertoire: buttermilk pancake syrup. I am even including the recipe for it. I love it with both pumpkin cakes, bars, and my coco craisin pancakes, which also have walnuts. I have never been a big maple person, although mainly I just think pancakes and crepes can do so many things, they deserve more than one sugary sticky goo to smother them in. I also now firmly believe that the wetter and oranger your pumpkin pancakes- the better. The trouble with pumpkin is you can only buy huge cans of it year round. At Thanksgiving Time this year, I am going to buy 10 single pie cans instead of these double ones, because I get pumpkinned out by the time I go through 32 oz of pumpkin in a week. Although, I do love pumpkin. This time I made the cakes really slopping over with it- and they were much better as more pumpkin than flour. Not that there is anything wrong with typical pancakes slightly flavored with pumpkin either. And pumpkin is very good for you- its absolutely slopping over with vitamins and especially lutein and Vitamin A, both of which are good for the eyes. Anything orange or red by the way is good for your eyes: carrots, tomatoes, red bell peppers. Its why a rainbow diet can be such a simple way to know you are healthy: pigments tell you what you are getting because they are created by particular compounds we need. Vitamin C makes things dark red/purple. As does lutein and Vitamin A (or orangey). That's your nutrition tip for the week.

So buttermilk syrup: 1.5 C sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup buttermilk (I use the buttermilk powder with 3/4 cup water), 2 tbsp corn syrup, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 whisked egg. Heat this to boiling for 7-10 minutes, then take off the heat and add 1 tsp of vanilla. If you don't like it, send it to me and I will post a picture of myself eating it.

I also have been hiking- creeks and canyons instead of mountains right now while I get strong again and wait for 99 degrees to go away- my roomate now goes out some times with me, which is great because its nice to have someone to talk to. I spent hours looking up shoes to try that might make my feet break less. I even posted a personal add for people interested in being my hiking friend on the employee board at work. That's not desperate right? Right!!!?

What could be simpler than fresh jam?
-John Miller: Logan, Utah

Finding fault with the idiotic Cash For Clunkers: or the idea that America is now completely sink or swim with the auto industry, the jumbo bank industry, and the same Can't The Government Do It For Me Mentallity- all three of which can't possibly work anymore. I no longer think America needs to eat its Barackoli and will not be printing those t-shirts with his smiling mug on the head of a big hunk of green vegetable. Why not just sink 2.1 billion into say Smart Cars, which are actually environmentally friendly, or any random industry- bean bags. i would rather support someone new and even someone pulled out of a hat than the worst run industries in the history of the modern world. With a 2.1 billion dollar give away program, I am pretty sure Smart Car could produce and sell several hundred thousand units- and create many jobs to replace those Detroit would lose. So auto workers would have to migrate- umm have you seen Detroit? I don't think they would mind once they realized the sky wasn't black everywhere. Why exactly can't anyone envision life without Ford? I once read that when bicycles became big, people stopped buying hats because they spent their free money on their bike (wasn't much flexible income in those days), and the hats blew away while on a bike, and lawmakers at the behest of hatmakers nearly passed a law requiring everyone to buy at least 2 hats per month to protect the jobs of hatmakers. However, eventually, they decided the hatmakers could learn a new skill or starve. Now that is the American way. I either need to get a cut of any future profits or I want my taxes to be withheld from bailouts. I see no reason to be slightly poorer to keep a bunch of frauds and sleezes at the top wealthy. At least give me some CEO heads on a platter and put young hungry people in charge. These guys caused the problem- since when has any American learned from a mistake? Or why not public transportation? Horses and buggies went away, so can cars. If public transportation were not terrible, I would use it. Basically this is just the bad end of Soviet communism isn't it? I support companies and never see the benefits. All for the good of the nation. If you hear about car dealers in Bountiful Utah getting fire bombed with home made lye-based incendiaries, forget we had this talk. Oh yes, and a quick other point: electricity is very cheap in bountiful with an "in-house" plant that produces enough for this town only- and I found out why it is so cheap. Instead of buying and then burning coal, they have paper and cardboard recycling bins everywhere and burn this! Isn't that clever. And Utahns who contemptuosly snear that if God wanted us to recycle he would say so through one of his living phrophets (all currently old white men who are too busy hating on gays and lesbians and Jews and so forth) are willing to recycle to save money. Now it isn't glass burning which I would prefer since few cities even try to recycle glass in Utah, but what a clever plan for a city. I am so proud to live here. Especially with a darling farmer's market once a week, at least, during summer. What was your question again?

Oh- nothing- I am ashamed I have not made home jams sooner. I made a batch of blackberry and raspberry the past two nights and am delighted with the results and process. Here are the steps: 1)Put berries in a pan and poke them with a fork or knife, 2) Put pan on low heat, 3) When you begin to see juice, add a little under a 1:1 ratio of sugar (so say 3/4 cup sugar to 1 cup berries), 4) Stir on low heat then up the heat to boiling, 5) Boil for about five minutes, stirring twice- if berries were large or firm, mash them a bit, and run a jar under hot water while you go, 6) Put berries in jar, let jar sit on counter for 30 minutes, then refridgerate. I think you will find that fresh jam is bursting with flavor much more so than storeboughts, and its fun and makes you feel smart. You can add pectin in the form of apples, any fruit with a crisp skin, or store bought pectin to make sure you get a solid gel, as berries will leave things a bit watery, but nature will make the jam thick enough to spread and stick to bread. Process should be about the same for peaches or any other fruit you want to add (peach rasperrry? Peach blueberry? Apple cranberry? Hmmmm...)

Do you think your feet might hurt because you wore those damn wrestling shoes with duct tape for 6 years?
-Various members of my family: 3 states

No, I do not actually. I think it is from walking down 10% grades and climbing 80% rock walls for miles and hours. Holding the heel of my sky blue wrestling shoes on with duct tape obviously helped, since my feet hurt more now that they are gone. Which is why I just bought some wrestling shoes- its like wearing no shoes at all, and some Wenger Swiss Army Knife shoes: they stretch with each step, and have temperature-treated grip rubber, and anti-fungal insoles and are perfectly balanced to hold up to the Alps and every kind of arch- and fulfill my need of good footwear and mantastic gadgets. Sadly none are not sky blue, but the wrestling shoes are red and yellow and look like Superman shoes and my Matterhorn hikers are sunset colored: orange, gold, and pink. I found some similar sky blue wrestling shoes to my old pair but realized it wasn't the color of them, it was the memories. I had been walking on memories. Sometimes those can be the only thing you are comfortable in, and you just have to give it time until the memories start causing you pain in your knees, back, and heels before you are ready to move on. And by the way, dear family of mine: offering me new shoes and hundred dollar bribes, and trips to Tahiti if I would only stop embaressing you by showing up in Illinois every other year for my two day hi I'm still alive wow who is this teenager and where is that baby you used to have? trips home did not speed things up. You ought to know by now I just like to egg people on until they froth at the mouth and shriek obsenities at me in grocery stores or chemistry classrooms and also should know I am more stubborn than a statue of a sleeping mule and that I loved those shoes and did not want a new pair. Also, I think things should last. I am opposed to buying new shoes all the time and new cars, and new everything. Why do we need to manufacture hundreds of cars? Leaders have so little imagination: if people keep old cars, then there will have to be more parts, and repair shops, and repair men. I'm not saying do nothing, but when you get a hole in your floor from throwing money at it until the boards cave in and your leaders decide, well if we throw enough money at the hole in one big honey-coated ball, it might clog the hole and hopefully won't make it bigger- that's just frustrating. Anyway I got six years out of those shoes and when I threw them out, I am pretty sure people in the Dominican Republic with no shoes would have even thought, you know, maybe my feet will just get hard over time and put them back in the dumpster. I am doing my part world. Ouch my feet hurt.

What are you wearing right now?
-Alexis Bladell, Hollywood

Shoes with ducktape, and an apron with a picture of Beanie and Cecil taped to it. And a bit of beet juice sadly. So right now by the way I am fermenting goat yogurt. That stuff if $6.79 at the store by the way. I paid half that for goat's milk. Now if I just had a cow and a goat I would really be self reliant. So how's about you new Number 1 Hot Celebrity Crush Who I Would Never Want To Meet Or Try Talking To Because She Is Probably Vain, Stupid, Or Otherwise Uninteresting, But Enjoy Looking At Immensely. How's the view from the top? I know you aren't wearing an Oscar for a neckless. Keep starring in movies though- now if only you had a cool internet nickname like ScarJo does. ABlad? Lexell? ADel? Nothing will top ScarJo.

I get discouraged. Do you ever cook anything that flops?
-Kristy: Cactusville, NV

This past week I cooked lamb for the first time. It came out good, but the tagine all around it (fruit-sweetened stew) was sub-par. I used too many cinammon sticks and too much tomato sauce so that my apricots got drowned out. But the lamb was delicious and I took it to a party for my poetry group and everyone thought I was brilliant and now is convinced I am a real 100% juice chef. I told them I was not and thought back longingly to the first tagine I made months ago. So yes, I often am disappointed with my food, but as I told Teresa the other night: quit complaining about your dinner, its good- hating everything you make is only cute when I do it. A good trick is to make something that nobody knows how it should taste: like a lamb tagine. When you say its a lamb tagine, most people don't know what that is so they say okay and take a little and then are impressed. They have nothing to compare it to. Mom didn't make lamb tagine every Tuesday when they were growing up. I even got several people to eat lamb thinking it was beef and that I was joking about it being lamb, and that thinking that they hated lamb. Now the know different. Just stay positive. I am trying that at work now too. It does no good to get mad at your hands and slam them into walls until they nearly break while shouting barbarically if they don't type as fast as you want: stretch them, massage them, put headphones on your fingertips at night so they can listen to Mozart (not that I do that), do fingertip pushups, practice typing. Try to think about what you do and how to improve it. Do you taste one ingredient? That's a good sign to put less in. Could it be sweeter? Maybe a sprinkle of sugar. Too dry? Cook the meat a little less, or sprinkle it with some lemon or lime juice next time. You can usually analyze anything and at least make a deduction of what went wrong (if anything) and improve every time. It leaves your hands less sore and your voice less hoarse.

Are your tortillas round yet?
-Blain: The Future

Some people obviously have an overactive sense of humor. Yes they are almost as round as store bought ones. This week I made a third batch and it went very smoothly, with slightly less muttering curses under my breath. I am good with a rolling pin now. And I melted some good cheese and then folded them around some hoisin-tamari soy Asian sticky rice. I still miss Chino Bandido. And Superstition Mountain. Other than that, Arizona can melt for all I care.

How's that cheese cake coming?
-Asuka: Osh-Kosh, Wisconsin

Shut up I'm totally going to make it soon. And then I will serve it with a delicious plum topping and hot fudge on top of a mountain while school children play delightful kazoo concertos I will write now that I am going to learn about music and composing- and you won't be invited.

How would you fix the world?
-Sarah: Vermouth, Alaska

I am glad you asked, since I so rarely take the time to speak out with my many crackpot theories about everything. My plan is an eight fold path.

Plastic Bags: I hear Oregon has banned these, which I love. What I would love more, is a very American-friendly (as in sure you can do what you want its a totally free country but...) $1 mandatory envirnmental repair fund tax per plastic bag at every store in the country. So you forget a bag and ask for one from the store for your Gatorade Easy-grip bottle of vitamized water- that's a buck added onto your 89 cent sale. You need 14 plastic bags at Walmart- $14 bucks. I am pretty sure people would bring their own bags at that point- either the same paper or plastic ones every week or expensive personalized hand woven custom hemp ones that could kick off a whole new industry since Americans love to buy things. I go rock climbing once a year I need $1000 dollars worth of gear, but no Andrew I don't want to die on the Grand Teton with you. Yuppies. Also last night a guy put bananas in a produce bag. I should have spat on him and then slapped him. They're bananas! They come wrapped! You stupid sleeze bag. When I am president of the world, anyone who puts bananas in a bag will be shot at dawn- firing squad: 8 jobs created.

Glass Powered Plants: All power plants will be converted to run on melted glass or burned paper. I know at least the paper is possible. Maybe melting glass requires heat and does not produce it- which seems likely as I type this- in which case, glass would be melted at the same plants and then reshaped and resold to companies or stores. Towns should be encouraged to construct local power plants. This would be better than Utah paving every still smooth road in the state right now because they weren't sure how to seize any of the free Government Fun Money being passed out right now other than road construction and repair grants- I never see any construction workers by the way so I guess not too many jobs were created.

Farmers Markets: There should be more of these. I see no reason why every city and town can't build a good modern green house using all the environmental control knowledge and tools we have and sell fresh produce year round with a minimal staff of gardeners to keep taxes down and help reduce emissions- sales reps could be volunteers, and community service penalized drivers. Of course grocery stores would complain, but suck it up and sell more cereal. This would also allow year round fresh local produce.

Store size limitation: Why is it legal to meddle in business in many ways but people would flip out about communism if a limit of say 50,000 square feet was put on stores. This should have been done a long time ago, but I guess no one saw Walmart coming. It snuck up on everyone with a hick Arkansas accent so no one took it seriously until too late. Some cities in Utah try to keep Walmart out- after they let one developer buy and zone a massive plot of ground for commercial use, who then sells it to Walmart. Um what did you think would happen? You can't swim in a pool with sharks and then wave them at the other guy and think it will work. Limiting store size would do a lot of good in keeping grocery stores and furniture stores and Ace hardwares from getting dwarfed and undersold by enormous warehouses- and it isn't really anything but a more grounded form of trust busting and 50,000 feet is still a pretty big store. This would also eat up free time, aiding my eighth and final fold- oh just wait till you get there.

Grass: Another thing I love about Bountiful. There is no grass requirement. There are ten houses I drive past that halve half their lawn fenced in with a cute white picket and dedicated to gardening. They then put up a sign with what they produce and what is fresh that day, and are listed on a cool website called Utah's Own which is dedicated to how to buy local. You ring the bell and some live-in grandparent or stay at home mom or kid on summer break earns their keep by helping you pick out your own produce right off the vine and then weighing and taking your cash. What a cute and wonderful idea. Seriously Bountiful is bursting with these, and some then load the back of a pick up truck, back up the sidewalk and sell from the truck bed at the weekly farmer's market. Having watched people in Illinois and Arizona spend hundreds of hours a year and immense amounts of water during drought seasons to make a vile weed-friendly, pest-rich trash herb or whatever it is like grass look good all summer, I imagine it takes little more work to keep a garden instead and make use of the land. The same yard with a single large tree or some trellissed fruit trees or grape vines could make a lot of products for sale and private use. (Trellis fruit trees are very cool- we saw some at Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake. They grow like vines into arches over your head and still produce apples, pears, peaches, and so forth. There are also dwarf trees which never get big but produce lots of fruit.) Grass is a horrible idea. Which is why I have never taken care of it and never will. I despise it, and yet most places ban anything but useless ugly grass and have been since the horrible baby boomers took over. And there is less and less farm land so that a famine is coming, and here every private land owner is devoting their soil to grass.

Grass Root Giveaways: No more free money for failed massive industries. Why create jobs for people? Companies offer less and less and will never stop doing so now that there are too many workers in the field and the advantage is with the hirers. You want to start a business, here's some money, straight from Uncle Sam at this percent. Oh that would destroy the evil banking and credit industry? Good. Good riddance. People should create their own jobs. I don't want to work for someone else, and I don't want to have to go beg Chase Bank for money. I want Chase Bank to go to He- never mind. No more Applebees, no more cookie cutter same as in Iowa as in Montana menus. Variety, local owners. Although the same people who start their own small business then go shop at Walmart.

Culture change: Obviously this all won't work if we keep selling people on the idea they can have a huge mansion, tons of expensive toys, should not have to pick out their own produce (didn't grocery stores get started because people could pick out their own goods and make sure their cans weren't dented, their apples weren't bruised and their sugar wasn't leaking?), that we should fix every law not by rewriting it but by taping a new one over it and adding a footnote to see amendment, page 3600 volume 29, version 4, that the outdoors are expendable and icky, that its a waste of time to look out the window at birds or trees on a windy day but not to watch the Batchelor, and that the best possible thing that can happen to you is to be famous and if someone isn't watching you do something, you should probably find something else to do. Americans take pride in laziness and greed, buying on credit, grass, and other useless and stupid practices. Everything should be easy. The ideal life is to sleep and lie on a couch all day: the more minutes of free time you can sqeeze out the more we have arrived. Well I say that's crap: we must be busy. I would rather slave sixty hours for myself than loaf forty hours for you or some creep who lives in New York. Shoes with duct tape should be the fashion trend I tried to make them. Fast food should be looked down on, (no more propoganda "field trips" to McDonaldses), anyone on food stamps who has a plasma TV should be deported, recycling should be taught in schools, along with buying local etcetera. Sneer at people who don't bring their own bag to the grocery store. I'm pretty sure we can't go back. There isn't enough land anymore for everyone to have a big single family house, and we won't let this swine flu gets its feet wet and thin out the ranks.

Woman, make me a Sandwhich: There are too many people in the job market. Let's say every woman was suddenly back in the kitchen. With half as many employees, these massive corporations would have to start treating people well the way they did for the baby boomers who now say, well I did good, I didn't have a college education, I own a house and two cars and put my kids through college, America is great. I hate you baby boomers. See Generation X, the novel, for more on this subject. A fine book which helped to invent that term. Every family needs to keep one person at home. This shouldn't be legislated, but if we went back to the shame of the 1950s through 1970s every man felt to have to admit his wife worked, then maybe we could get somewhere. And with a limitation on store size, instead of the little woman going to Walmart and spending $300 in two hours and being finished and being bored the rest of the week- she'll be running around all day between kids and check out lines. It doesn't have to be the woman- that was just to get you all to froth at the mouth and shriek about me in offended riled up tones. In face, I hereby volunteer my services as house husband. I promise to keep the sheets folded and you full of cheese-cake- when I make it next month for real. Why did women ever think going into the job market would make them feel fulfilled? What about their man scuffling in every day bent over like hideous customers had ranted at them and demanded to be treated like a prince and like some jerk they work for harassed them repeatedly for not giving 110%, and them then slugging back a few beers and not talking for two hours then seeming to shake out of it for a few minutes before bed and then hearing the sigh as they wake up every morning and realize its a work day made women think, he looks so fulfilled while I am stiffled here unable to show my creativity- I need to go get a job too. We are a society of Marie Antoinettes: playing on a model farm because we don't get to work on one like all the lucky peasant girls. Poo hoo. Of course I'm no better dreaming of little agrarian Tommy Jefferson societies that could never have worked and probably can't now. But's let's try something else, can't we?

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ice cream sandwiches

I made ice cream sandwiches the other day; as a pastime and as a source of deliciousness, I highly recommend it.

I will confess, I was lazy and bought the ice cream (on a great sale, too) rather than making it myself because I did not feel like making ice cream. THERE I SAID IT. I am on vacation and had plenty of time, but I felt like buying it (full of all kinds of preservatives and "chocolate flavored chips" even) rather than making it myself.

Also, the freezer bowl wasn't frozen. So there's that.

Anyway, they were delicious! And quite easy...

I just made Smitten Kitchen's oreos (which I have also made as actual oreos, which were a hit among people who like oreos... which does not include me) but, of course, without the filling. I would also recommend undercooking them a bit, for extra chewiness and less crunchiness.

I filled them with mint chocolate chip ice cream -- softened, of course, by letting it sit in the fridge for a while and on the counter for a while -- squished down, wrapped in wax paper and froze 'till solid.

We then carried them in a cooler onto a river, where we ate them while floating along in tubes. Again, as a wonderful summer experience... highly recommended! I will posit that just while food is more delicious the higher up a mountain you are, ice cream is also more delicious the farther from ice cream trucks you are.

But even if you don't have a river to float down, make some ice cream cookies! they are quite delicious, AND very fun to squish together!

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why I am not a vegan

So, I am a vegetarian. For lots of reasons - environmental, health, moral and also, to be totally honest, because I really just don't like meat that much. It was a completely logical and natural decision for me to give up meat.

Why not just eat less meat? Why not stop eating meat, but without any fuss? Why bother to identify as a "Vegetarian?" Answer: it's easier. It's easier to not eat meat if you have made the unilateral decision not to -- easier to explain to people why you're passing over the main course. "I don't like meat" is an insult to your host. "I'm vegetarian," much more of an exonerating explanation. And it's easier to resist eating the occasional chicken salad, which at this point, might make me sick.

I understand there's a certain amount of baggage to picking up any label - for vegetarians, stereotypes about crazy evangelical types, or delusional "oh-i-couldn't-hurt-any-creature" types. If you eat meat, you really ought to check out your local farmers market to see if you can buy some chicken or beef that was raised humanely and sustainably -- that's about as evangelical as I ever get. And personally, I firmly believe that animals raised for human use should be treated decently, allowed to grow up healthy and be killed painlessly - but I wear leather. I kill flies without guilt. And I am not a vegan.

Sometimes I think I should be a vegan. Especially when you consider the sheer awfulness of commercial egg production, and the difficulty of obtaining local dairy (basically impossible to make a living with small- or medium-scale milk production these days). And I don't really like drinking milk at all, and while I enjoy the occasional poached egg, I'm not a huge fan of boiled, scrambled or sunny-side up. And I have absolutely nothing against vegans or veganism. It seems completely legitimate and reasonable to me, as long as your soymilk is B12-fortified.

But:

Life without CHEESE? life without YOGURT???

life without.... heavy cream??? and butter?

You can't see me, but I am basically swooning at the thought. Look, I completley understand those of you who say, "yeah, sure, I see why you want to be a vegetarian, but I could NEVER give up steak." Because me, I could never give up cheese, not of my own accord.

Goat cheese. Cheddar cheese. Brie. Gruyere -- oh, gruyere! Stilton, jack, creamy ricotta... what would tiramisu be without marscapone? What would pasta be without parmesan? And what, I ask you, what would pizza be without mozzerella? The horror!

Vegan cheese? That's like those people who consider carob an acceptable substitute for chocolate. Look, I'm trying, world. I want to do this right. But I am not, in my heart, an ascetic. I believe in pleasure! In flavor! In taste! I BELIEVE IN CHEESE!

And it's not just cheese. Having tart yogurt with fresh berries on a bright summer morning seems to me a valid reason to be alive. (Speaking of which, I think I need a yogurt-maker. Andrew's math is quite convincing me that it would be a good investment).

And heavy cream and butter... well, there's a bit of a paradox. Savory-food-wise, I'm all about the healthiness. It seems to go hand in hand with flavor; brown rice, wheat bread, lots of fresh vegetables, lightly-dressed salads, fruit. It's tasty, it's good for you, life is wonderful!

But when it comes to desserts... well. Don't get me wrong, fresh fruit for dessert is good, but by all that's holy, there's nothing to beat tarts, cookies, pies, chocolate, ice cream, crepes, chocolate, cakes, mousses, chocolate... and with the singular exception of sorbet, I simply cannot bake, freeze, chill or fry a great dessert without butter, cream or eggs. I'm sorry, vegans and the lactose-intolerant. Ya'll have some pretty good desserts. I've had some quite tasty vegan cupcakes. But I can't give up heavy cream and butter. I won't!

And speaking of reasons to justify human existence, I nominate ganache. In fact, I nominate ganache as one of the most incredible substances on earth. Totally delicious, wonderfully textured, the perfect filling, frosting, topping, or base -- and nothing but chocolate, heavy cream and heat. I make mine with a bowl, a measuring cup, a microwave and a fork. It is a primary reason for my joy in life

The best substitute vegans have for ganache is tofu mixed with chocolate. Which sounds tasty and all (actually, yeah, it does -- I like tofu, I really do). But. No substitute. Nowhere close.

Anyway, the whole point of this epic post was actually supposed to be how much I love cheese. It's a lot, in case you missed that. In honor of cheese, here are a couple of dinners I made this last week. Actually, I could have just put these recipes here under that title, and it would have made about the same point. Oh well.

Goat Cheese and Tomato Tart.

This is SO easy and delicious. Tarts, I have discovered in my last month of frantic tart-baking (I shall have to describe my epic tart pan quest sometime) are greatly undervalued as a food type. They are much easier than pies, and look very impressive, which is also a plus.

1 savory tart shell, unbaked (try this recipe for pate brisee)
1/2 log of goat cheese
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Spices of choice (I used dried basil and oregano)
Really delicious tomatoes of choice (I had a great big yellow one and some red cherry tomatoes)
Fresh basil (I used green and purple)
Salt and pepper

Tart shells are really easy to make if you have a food processor, and pretty easy even if you don't, Make yours, and chill in the refrigerator for an hour or more to make your life easier. Of course, I just stuck mine in the freezer for 15 minutes, because how often am I thinking that far ahead?

Roll out the chilled dough between two sheets of floured wax paper. Make sure the paper isn't sticking -- sprinkle flour on the dough as necessary. When thick enough to cover your tart pan, lay the dough round over your pan, press in and trim/press off the excess dough.

Your hardest part is over. Now, take about 1/4 cup of goat cheese and soften it in the microwave. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, the minced garlic and dried spices. Mix well and spread on the bottom of your tart crust (this will keep your tomatoes from making your crust soggy). Spread a layer sliced tomatoes on top of this. Dot generously with goat cheese. Add more tomatoes, and if you really like goat cheese -- like me! -- dot generously again. Top with some salt and pepper.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the tomatoes look deliciously soft. Remove, top with sliced fresh basil, and serve with a salad.

Say "AHHHH I love goat cheese! I'm so glad I'm not vegan!"


Summer Vegetable Frittata

1 baby yellow squash, sliced
1 baby zucchini, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium bell pepper, diced
A few carrots, sliced (what? I can't remember how many it was!)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Olive or canola oil
5 eggs
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
A few tablespoons of milk or cream
1/8 cup fresh parsley, chopped
Salt, pepper and any other spices your heart desires (I used a pinch of dried oregano)

Prep your veggies -- or better yet, recruit somebody else to. In a bowl or large measuring cup, beat your eggs with a fork, then mix in the cheese, milk (okay, yeah, I used heavy cream here... maybe I love the stuff for things other than desserts), parsley and spices. You should end up with at least a cup and a half of gooey, unvegan delight. I was closer to 2.

In a medium cast-iron (VERY IMPORTANT) pan over medium-high heat, saute your vegetables in a generous amount of oil. You want to make them all almost-but-not-quite done.

My advice: start with the minced garlic (it will brown away to nothing by the end, but the flavor will be wonderfully dispersed) and the carrots. Stir for a minute or two, then add the squashes. Stir for a minute or two, then add the onions and pepper. Keep stirring for another 3 minutes or so, then sample them. Nothing should be mushy, but nothing should be crunchy. Don't you love my technical terms?

Add a bit more oil, because you don't want your frittata to stick, then pour your gooey goodness into the pan. Stir until everything seems will-dispersed, then STOP STIRRING. Turn the heat down to medium, and let your frittata sit for a while. Something like 7 minutes, maybe? At any rate, it should firm up so that when you shake the pan, it seems to jiggle, not slop.

The top will still look firmly underdone. There's a solution! Put the whole thing in the oven under the broiler. Broil for a few minutes, or until the top looks nicely set up. Don't wait until it browns, though -- firm and yellow is good enough.

Remove from oven. Slice in the pan. Do try not to burn yourself in the process. Personally, I am convinced that my fingers will eventually turn into asbestos and this won't be a problem someday.

Serve to delighted nonvegans with crusty bread and a potato-feta salad! Or, you know, whatever salad you like. That's just my recommendation as a clueless cook.

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