The Forest and the Outlaw

Perhaps you noticed that we are well past week 7! I’m actually more behind in blogging about resolutions than I am on completing resolutions. Which is why these are quick and dirty summaries.

Recipe 5: Veselka’s Cabbage Soup

I made this twice. It is tasty. It also freezes better than I expected.

Recipe 6: Sour Cream, Cheddar, and Green Onion Drop Biscuits

I burned these and so only ate the insides, but I think they need more cheese and less onion.

Recipe 7: Cooks Illustrated Roast Chicken

My coworker Charles told me about this recipe years ago, but I could never make it because I didn’t have a dutch oven. But now I do! It’s very moist and delicious but is an ugly damn chicken, since it doesn’t brown at all. This is not a problem since I’m not cooking for anyone else.

I will not post the recipe because I don’t want to incur the wrath of Cooks Illustrated.

Book 5: Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut

I got this for my mom for Christmas and borrowed it. It’s basically what you’d expect from a collection of stories that previously weren’t considered good enough for publication. That said, mediocre Vonnegut is better than 90% of the books out there.

Book 6: Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones
Book 7: Drowned Ammet by Diana Wynne Jones

I had big plans to read David McCullough’s thousand page biography of Harry Truman, but I started watching Bones and discovered that a romantic comedy procedural is basically tv made especially for me, so I was binging on that instead of reading. But I still wanted to keep up with the resolutions, so I went with quick read fantasy novels I bought months ago and never read. They were okay.

Week 4 Recipe: Flour tortillas (Texas-style)
Recipe here

Not being Texan, I’m not sure if these came out right. It does say they should be thick and chewy… but mine are really thick and chewy. Possibly they weren’t rolled flat enough. Possibly this is because I don’t have a rolling pin, or even a bottle of wine, and was using the flour jar, which is large and bulky. They taste okay, though!

Please note I cooked something with more than three ingredients, but just barely.

Week 4 Book: New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

I’m reading these books for cultural awareness. They are dreadful. Anyone thinking I am a secret Twihard, keep in mind that I am never ashamed to admit that I like terrible things. For example: I like Chasing Liberty, the Mandy Moore remake of Roman Holiday. I liked She’s the Man, the Amanda Bynes modernization of Twelfth Night. I like the music of Kelly Clarkson. I genuinely and unironically enjoy these things. The best I can say for the Twilight books, on the other hand, is that they are sometimes amusingly bad.

I didn’t actually make my New Year’s resolutions until January 18th this year, and I was not particularly ambitious: my goal for 2010 is to read one new book per week and cook one new recipe per week. The only reason I don’t do these things already (since I have abundant free time and thus no excuse) is that my natural inclination is to repeat the familiar, because it takes less effort. Because I am lazy. Hopefully, I can push myself out of my comfort zone at least a little.

I will blog to keep myself honest.

Week 1 Recipe: Fennel Soup

3 fennel bulbs
2 small onions
2 small tart apples

Chop everything, including the fennel greens. Saute until tender. Add 4 C broth. Cook together. Blend.

This recipe was posted by a big pile of fennel at the Saturday Berkeley farmers market, and I thought, what the heck. I’ve been trying to east seasonally and this seemed like a good opportunity. It was pretty good! I ate it for dinner for a week with bread and cheese. Okay, and a couple times with tortilla chips. They were my Christmas tortilla chips, I had to eat them sometime. And, I discovered that chopping fennel after chopping onions gets rid of the onion smell on your hands!

Week 2 Recipe: Lentil Soup
Recipe here

I’ve already made this twice. I love that it’s vegetarian, I love that it’s healthy, I love that it’s cheap, I love that it’s reasonably tasty without the yogurt and totally delicious with the yogurt. Basically, I’m going to have this for lunch every day until spring. Yes, I know that goes against the purpose of the new recipe each week, but I still have dinners to be creative with. Besides, I hate being hungry at work and this fills me up.

Week 3 Recipe: Tomato sauce with onion and butter
Recipe here

I don’t usually eat pasta sauce, so this was a real experiment. I ended up liking it! It’s very buttery, and I had to cook it 20 minutes longer than the recipe called for (maybe I had extra-wet tomatoes?) but it ended up all right.

This is also the first time the resolution paid off. I didn’t really want to cook tonight (which is to say: I wanted to eat Kraft Dinner tonight), but it’s the last day of the third week, so I opened up my Julie & Julia Netflix and got to it.

Next week I’d like to cook something with more than three ingredients, because this is silly.

Week 1 Book: Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede

I re-read all my Patricia C. Wrede books between Christmas and New Year’s, but I had never gotten more than a few pages into this one, probably because it is written like, “Prithee, wouldst thou gather herbs in yonder wood?”, which is… pretty awful. Which is too bad because it was otherwise pretty good.

Week 2 Book: The Magic City by E. Nesbit

Another unread book from my shelf, this one purchased over the summer in Ottawa. Nesbit has an outstanding ability to capture the inherent joy and tragedy of childhood without being melodramatic about it like I was when I described it as “the inherent joy and tragedy of childhood,” and this is a good example of it.

I was three days late reading this, but I hadn’t made the resolution yet, so it doesn’t count.

Week 3 Book: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

This book deserves most of the praise it’s gotten, and I can see how it would be excellent for getting high school kids excited about a book, and more importantly, about discussing a book and the (good, important!) issues it raises, but man: there is no way Berkeley would become a police state. Seriously, the city council would pass a resolution banning the Department of Homeland Security within days if they tried to pull that. And Code Pink would form a militia. An annoying militia that would turn the rest of America against us.

Uh oh.

Today’s experiment………………………………….failed

via this recipe

Have you ever felt the need to create convoluted excuses for desserts? Like, if I wanted some pie today I might say, “Hey, February 19th is the feast of St. Conrad of Piacenza. You can’t spell ‘Piacenza’ without ‘pie’. I know what I’m feasting on!” Such was my situation when Sam of Becks & Posh posted this Jasmine Dragon Pearl Tea cookie recipe. On one hand: tea flavored cookies! I am all about that! On the other hand: making cookies every time I am inspired to do so is not a good way to keep to a new year’s diet. So, when February 12th rolled around, I saw opportunity.

As I previously mentioned, I’m an evolutionary defender by day, so it seemed as if we would be remiss to let Darwin Day pass without some kind of celebration at our office. And if Darwin = English = tea is an acceptable formula for NOVA producers, then, by george, it’s good enough for me.

So, the cookies. Not having any jasmine tea on hand, and feeling the need to be a little more English anyways, I opted for some of the Earl Grey that I seem to have in excess. I also lacked the caster sugar the recipe called for, and the confectioner’s sugar the recipe it was based on called for, but it turns out that blendering the hell out of regular sugar works just peachy (thanks for the tip, Internet!). Then I was reminded once again how awesome it would be to have a Kitchenaid, as I slowly mushed a cup of very hard butter with a fork. Also, I overcooked the first tray.

The end result was not what I expected – chewy when I was expecting cakey – but very, very tasty. Even the almost-burned ones were pretty good. They were rapidly consumed and it was suggested that I make more. Verdict: heck yeah.

Recipe at link above.