Occupational Hazards of Professional Eating

I thought Katherine Cole did a brilliant job with this piece in last week’s Oregonian. Before I started reviewing restaurants several years ago, one of my favorite reviewers told me she gets food poisoning at least twice a year. Mmmm!

Talk to Your Food

Interesting food weekend! Really, my favorite kind because I ate a lot of different stuff. I ate at Gold Coin (hole-in-the-wall Chinese), Park Kitchen (upscale Pacific Northwest), and Vita Cafe (downhome, heavily vegan). Now there’s variety for you!

I did some of this eating with my food-obsessed spouse, pal DL, and, S, DL’s friend visiting from LA (sorry for the alphabet soup). There’s not much in life I enjoy more than eating and talking about food with other food-crazy people. And, even better, S has a nut allergy! It was so awesome not being the only food freak at the table for once, though I did feel a little sorry for the server at Park Kitchen.

This roundabout relates to a realization I had this weekend that I need to think critically about food, and, well, pretty much everything else, too. It’s just not enough for me to say: “That was a good meal,” and leave it at that. No. I need to engage with my food. I need to converse with it: How did they make you, little cod fritter? Where, exactly, did this patacabra come from? Why are they calling this consomme when it is clearly not consomme? Call me crazy, but this is how I am made. I seriously do not get people who say “That was a good meal” and then go home and sleep.

Yes, this is the person with multiple food allergies. How did this happen to me?! I’m still baffled.

In other news, I’ve been trying to make sense of Twitter and Foodbuzz. Who would want to follow (“twit”) an obscure blogger? And why put ads on your blog for a few extra cents a month? Or maybe it’s more than a few extra cents? If you have the answers to these burning questions, I’d love to hear it. If you want to reply confidentially, e-mail me directly at mjennings26 at yahoo.

(Vegan) Coffee Ice Cream

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve complained about being too busy on this blog…well, I certainly wouldn’t be panicking about my tanked 401K right now. But seriously, I don’t actually have enough of a 401K to panic, so I suppose I should count my blessings there.

The point is: I get busy, and then I neglect the things I love, like my blog, and my novel, and The Man. What could I possibly be doing that takes up all my time?

For one thing, developing recipes. Yes, I am a slave to recipe development. I tell you, if Cook’s Illustrated ever needs a meticulous recipe tester, I’m their girl!

This week we have been making coffee ice cream, from coconut milk, of course (back to our regularly scheduled programs: Cooking with Coconut Milk. Maybe I should rename my blog “Lots of Coconut Milk Recipes”).

First, we started out, as usual, ill-prepared (do not mention this to the Cook’s Illustrated people!) We got a hankering for coffee ice cream, looked in the cupboard to see what we had lying around waiting to transform itself into coffee ice cream, and found a can of coconut milk, honey, and some canned coffee grounds that we keep for company since we ourselves are not big coffee drinkers.

So, with these modest ingredients, we set off on our journey.

Mmmmmm...

As you can see, we mixed the ingredients together and then ran them through a strainer.

Coffee Ice Cream Mixture with Split Peas Lurking in Background

What we learned from this exercise was this:

1. It’s very difficult to take groovy cooking action shots whilst The Man is out mountain biking.
2. The Brightness/Contrast filter on our photo-modifying software kicks butt and makes for very Martha-like blog photos.
3. Coffee grounds are actually very finely ground and they don’t take well to straining, leaving us with an ice cream mixture more grainy than one would like.
4. That’s okay because it still tasted really good and we will teach you how to avoid this problem in our final recipe.

So you’re probably wondering by now if I’ll include a recipe for this goodness. Here it is:

(Vegan) Coffee Ice Cream

1 can of coconut milk

3 tbs instant coffee – decaf or regular (instant coffee avoids the fine grounds problem)

3 tbs honey or sweetener of your choice (it should be very sweet in its pre-freeze form factor)

Serves two people very hungry for breakfast.

Instructions:

1. Whisk all the ingredients together.
2. Heat the mixture slightly until the honey or sweetener is dissolved.
3. Place the mixture in the fridge and cool thoroughly.
4. Run through your ice cream maker like normal. Mine took only 15 minutes, and this thing is a klunker from 1979.
5. Mange!

Yet more lessons we learned on the coffee ice cream journey:

1. Homemade coconut milk-based ice creams freeze much better than real dairy ice creams. Just take them out of the freezer and let them sit for ten minutes before digging in.
2. Coconut milk-based ice cream does not taste like coconut milk, at least with this recipe, which just tasted like good ol’ coffee ice cream (hallelujah!) I look forward to trying all kinds of flavors now to see how much the coconut flavor does or does not come through.
3. And, my favorite lesson: Coffee ice cream should be eaten for breakfast, otherwise, it will keep you awake all night.

Variations on this recipe would include Mocha Chip, in which you would add 1 cup of coarsely chopped chocolate chips to the recipe. If you want to get really fancy, you could top it with raspberry sauce (heat up some frozen raspberries, add sugar, and blender-ize). In this case, you would call it something like Raspberry Mochachino or something equally outlandish to make it taste better and wow your guests with your culinary and verbal prowess.

Coffee Ice Cream

Farewell, Summer

September has been incredible in Portland this year. I can’t recall one day of rain. It’s been truly spectacular. Alas, the calendar swears it’s fall.

The arrival of fall has made me reflect on my summer vegetable garden. The results were uneven (at best): lettuce good, radishes bad, parsley good, squash bad, pumpkins very bad. We had a pretty gloomy June, which may explain some of the failures (darn, I hate that word). However, it was good just to see green things growing in my garden and to literally not buy lettuce for two months straight. But since I’m a very beginning gardener, and in the spirit of spin (for those of you following the presidential election), I’m going to call this year’s garden “a raging success!”

It’s been said a kajillion times, but really, is there any greater pleasure than eating from one’s own garden? Just look at this:

Tomato-Bacon-Peach Salad with Basil

The tomato and basil came from my garden. Amazing!

Au revoir, ete. I’m sorry to see you go. Until next year, mon ami.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Dear readers,

I’m writing you from a coffee shop while I’m on a much needed vacation. It’s nice to actually smell the green tea, coffee, and pastries around me, instead of rushing in and out of the shop with a banana and tea in hand, on my way to somewhere very, very important. Is this what relaxing means?

When I get back to my real life and to rushing around again, I promise to write more. Until then, happy coffee smells…

Happy Birthday, SK!

It’s a special day for a certain six-year-old in my life. Actually, the special day was yesterday, but Aunt M was too busy doing silly adult stuff, like working, to write this birthday post. So here it is today, Miss SK! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Six is going to be a fabulous year!

SK’s favorite color is pink. Well, it’s one of her favorite colors anyway. So I decided to create a special milkshake in her honor this morning.

SK’s Pink Milkshake

1/2 can of coconut milk, works best refrigerated

1/2 bag of frozen strawberries

2-3 tbs of sweetener of choice (sugar, honey, agave, whatever)

Serves one hungry six-year-old

1. Place your glass in the freezer before you begin. I’ve been finding this works really well to keep your concoction frozen while you’re eating it.
2. Toss all ingredients into the blender and blend well. Frankly, those frozen strawberries can be a little pesky.
3. Pour into your frozen glass and enjoy.

These also do well as popsicles.

SK, I hope you had a fantastic birthday, and may you have an even better year. You are a creative and fun ball of joy to all who know you. Never change!

Love,

Aunt M and Uncle C

SK's Pink Milkshake

Celiac Awareness Day

Darn it! Celiac Disease Awareness Day has apparently come and gone and I missed it. Here’s an informative post at Gluten-Free NYC in case you are staying on top of things.