Holiday Traditions: Gingerbread Houses

"One thing I should tell you," he says. "These people whose house we're going to...they're Republican. I mean, like, REALLY Republican."

"Okay, so, when I make my gingerbread house, should I just leave off all the snow and say loudly, 'What does it matter? Snow's not even going to exist in five years anyway!"

"Absolutely. Maybe make it very clear that you're NOT adding guns to this gingerbread house. 'What do people need guns for anyway? We have too many guns in this country!'"

"Add a compost bin? Just go straight for the jugular and put solar panels on the roof? And I'll write the woman symbol above my front door in frosting. Two of them linked together, as befits a house that has subverted traditional gender roles."

"To balance you out, I'm personally going to put a gingerbread woman in mine and chain her to the kitchen. On a leash."

Talking About Love With Really Smart People

Him: "What happened with the engagement, if you don't mind my asking?"

Me: "I don't mind you asking! It was coming for awhile; we both agreed, when we had the Ending Discussion, that the relationship probably hadn't been working for almost a year. That doesn't mean it's easy. Or that the Ending Discussions, and associated emotions, are over. The relationship definitely didn't fade away, for better or worse. He and I are both not "throwing a scene" type people, fortunately, but there's some residual bad feeling. 

...I'm not trying to be cryptic. The short version is that we were growing apart, particularly in life goals and life styles. Neither of us wanted to admit that to ourselves or each other. Sadness ensued."

Him: "Oh I can only imagine. It's easy to split when one party does something definitively horrible, providing immediate justification for change if not a complete cessation of the relationship as a whole. Good that there aren't any slashed tires or restraining orders to report, but in some ways those kind of crazy (albeit human) reactions can make the decision all the more comfortable. To a much, much lesser degree I can certainly understand it relative to my last relationship. There was no huge fight or anything like that, we just weren't working in a way both parties were happy. ...I do wish we spent more time interacting.... The logic is all there and I maintain that if we had continued dating the outcome was all but inevitably going to be the same, but yeah- emotional soreness is natural."

Me: "Yes. The outcome wouldn't have been any different even if we had gone to couples therapy five times a week. After awhile, you compromise yourself so completely that you actually become someone else. That's never sustainable. The length of the relationship lives on as muscle memory, like when you see a band they like, or when you try to get on the wrong bus to go 'home'."

Him: "I think the fact that compromise is expected for a relationship to work makes it easy to justify a "keep trying" mentality and if at any point one party decides not to work on additional compromises they can be seen as giving up or quitting. Which ultimately ends up being completely unfair to both parties given that - as you said - you essentially compromise yourself into being a different person and the whole damn thing feels less like a relationship and more like a peace treaty between two culturally different nations."

Me: "...I'm so stealing that last line."

The Benefit of Being Single Again is Meeting New People and Having Conversations Like This

Him: "I'm a little tired after all my caulking work today."

Me: "Must...not...make...easy...jokes..."

Him: "My new caulking gun has a 10:1 thrust ratio. I'm feeling confident I can knock this job out quickly."

Me: "I'm ON THE BUS and there are LITTLE CHILDREN AROUND. You MONSTER."

Him: "Kids need to learn about crucial home maintenance sometime."

Me: "Or else, who's going to tell them? Their friends? I think not. So it's left up to the creepy old guy behind the counter at the corner hardware store."

Him: "'Trim the tip of your caulk at a 45 degree angle,' says this guide I'm reading."

Me: "SEE? You don't want to play around with instructions like that."

A Partial List of Things Blowing My Mind Recently

Layar. The Olympic Sculpture Park is using this app to add future projections, or imaginations, to the existing flora and fauna. The execution is okay, and the idea is partly escapism, partly future-tripping, all broadening.





The Roastery. Just that the concept exists in the flesh thrills me. I'm sitting there right now, typing this, and it's so loud, with loud, expansive, music, and tourists and people everywhere and I adore it. It's places like this that exemplify the fine balance between aspirational living and a firm commitment to quality in everything, and I find that wonderful. SOMEONE has to care about the BEST bag, the BEST coffee. Is it partially ridiculous? Of course. But all of humanity benefits in the end.

Psalm 30, second half of verse 5: "...Weeping lingers over night, but joy comes in the morning."

This exchange from Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 3:

MACBETH ... How does your patient, doctor?  MACBETH      Cure her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR      Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies That keep her from her rest.  DOCTOR      Therein the patient Must minister to himself.

The Song Of My People

Me, getting really excited about explaining the concept of Pi: "...all circles, forever! Hooray!" 
Student: (beat)(beat)(beat) "...YAY!"
Me: "Thanks for the backup vocals."
Student: "You're welcome. I'm really not that excited about it, but you seemed like you could use a hype man."

Sitting Man and Standing Man: A Character Study

A Standing Man grabs the back of a Sitting Man's bus seat for balance. Sitting Man is Not Happy. Standing Man says, finally: "I'm getting off the bus soon." Sitting Man replies loudly: "I don't care."

What is happening here? Is the Standing Man really saying, "I see you?" Or, perhaps in long form: "I see that you're uncomfortable, you don't have to be an asshole about it, I'm getting off soon?"

Like that lady on the plane who stands, and fidgets, and checks her watch fifteen times, and sighs so loudly and graphically that she blows out your ear drums-and every fifteen seconds, too- until someone turns around and says, "Lady, we're all gonna get off the plane, would you mind not driving MY heart rate through the roof by controlling yourself?"

And the head shaking Sitting Man, saying to the standing man, loudly, "I don't care, man."

Standing man: "Well, clearly you do, because you keep looking at me and violently shaking your head."

Sitting man: "I don't care, man. I don't care about you."

Standing man gets off bus.

Sitting man continues to talk to the people around him. "I don't care, I don't care if he comes or goes," (rearranges lunch bag) "I don't care if he shits or blows," (drops lunch bag) "he doesn't feed me, I don't pay him, " (puts lunch bag on floor) "I don't care about him, I know this bus is always packed, that's why I tried to catch the 6:50." (Picks lunch bag off floor, drops it, tries to pick it back up, misses his grab, juggles it for a minute, knocks it over, and finally puts it back in his lap so he can keep an eye on this troublesome object.) He shrugs his shoulders several times. 

And what is the sitting man trying to say, with this performance? Obviously the standing man is correct: the sitting man cares very much. But the sitting man believes, or very much wants to believe, his own vehement denials. (Well. Don't we all?)

Also, the sitting man is wearing "dressy" sweat pants with pockets, which in itself is fine, but he's wearing them *with black dress shoes* like he thinks they're real pants, or, worse, that he knows they're not but he doesn't think anyone is going to notice. Men have been hated for less.

Eye Makeup

The babies that I live with these days are SO CASUAL about their makeup. It amazes me. They sleep in it, they re-touch it the next day, they're like, whatever. They're reminding me that's it not the END of the world if I sleep in my eyeliner; I just get up the next morning looking extra fabulous. Because what matters is LOOKING FABULOUS. And these baby girls look FABULOUS, ALL THE TIME. Revlon should be sponsoring our house. I don't have time for that, of course, because I'd much rather fart around on the computer, so I'm dyeing my lashes and my eyebrows so at least I'm not COMPLETELY untouched. And rinsing my hair with hibiscus dye, and applying dry shampoo made of arrowroot powder and cocoa powder.

Hey, I'm obsessing about it. That alone should get me in the club.

Regrets, Lightly Breaded. Plus Statistics, Math, and Trends.

Note: This post is NOT actually about food. My regrets are lightly breaded in memories.

Twice in my life, a handsome young man has approached me and asked me to take a chance with him.

Both times I have turned the young man down.

And both times, I have regretted it.

But let's go deeper:

The first time was back in high school. A classmate, who I didn't know particularly well but was quite popular, had forgotten that we had to present a chemistry project to the class. He shows up to class, realizes this, and turns around in his seat to look at me. "Want to present with me?" he says. "I need a partner," he says. "Don't worry, I have a plan."

Apprehensive, nervous, and extremely self-conscious, worried about making a fool of myself in front of an entire class--which included my crush at the time--I turned him down. Not the least bit fazed, this guy leaned across the aisle and asked the dude next to him, who agreed, and they went on to present an entertaining and stimulating mind trick. It was excellent. I was sad.

(Interesting ending: Fortunately, this classmate of mine and I are, surprisingly enough, still friends! We live in the same town, and our professional paths cross occasionally. He is still an extremely charming and poised rogue who can talk anyone into anything, and coming from me, that's pretty much a professional opinion.)

A second time, years later, I was out at karaoke. A dudebro type that I didn't know from Adam walked up to me and asked me to sing a duet with him. Less self-conscious by then, but still apprehensive, nervous, and worried about making a fool of myself in front of a group, I again turned this offer down. He found another girl who, it turned out, couldn't really sing, but HE certainly could, and he carried both of them. Again, I was sad. I knew the song well and I would have totally rocked it, but I had no one to blame but myself.

Weird trend, certainly, especially given that I'm normally so outgoing, but then my life is full of weird trends. For example, my parents and I all have birthdays on the same day of the week. If my mother's is on, say, a Tuesday, then we already know my dad's birthday and my birthday will ALSO be on a Tuesday. We're all exact weeks apart. This isn't earth-shaking, but it comes in extremely handy, and if you do the math (I haven't, but maybe I will at some point) the odds of this happening are actually extremely low!  (Okay, I did the math, the odds of this happening are 1 in 343, if I remember my statistics correctly, or about 3 in 1000. About 0.3%. Less than 1%, in my mind, is relatively uncommon. I love it when math proves me right.) (Possibly related: my dad's birthday is tomorrow! Happy early birthday, dad!)

And finally, I knew E and I were right for each other the moment I met him, but it really threw me for a loop when he told me his ski lock combination. "I'm sorry, what is it, again?" I asked.

He told me again. "It's the last four digits of my phone number growing up," he explained. "Why?"

"Because that's the same sequence as the last four digits of my debit card AND my library card," I finally said.

True Story.

More Cooking Wins

Did you want my blog to be about something else besides food? I'm sorry, you've opened a peephole on my life at the wrong time. Go back and read my archives from 2009. They're plenty exciting!

(No, I'm serious. I was re-reading them the other day and even *I* can't believe most of that stuff happened. AND I WAS THERE.)

(The other years aren't bad, either.)

Two big wins today:

Dry Cooking Chicken In Your Crock Pot. This is thing, this is totally a thing, and IT'S AWESOME. I was puttering around my "kitchen"* a few nights ago and happened upon this post and realized I had some frozen chicken thighs (with bone and skin) in my freezer. They were so old that they had frozen into one solid mass, and I figured I had nothing to lose, so I microwaved them just enough to be able to pull them apart (1 minute 30 seconds in total), nestled them skinless-side down in my slow cooker, sprinkled them from On High with a lot of salt and pepper, and turned on the slow cooker. Then I went to bed. (Yes, I realize that night time--or in this case, 2 am--is not the traditional time for starting a crock pot project, but I've never done anything in the traditional manner and I'll be damned if I'm going to start now.)

I woke up the next morning, the house smelled great, and I had EXCELLENTLY COOKED CHICKEN. They did turn out just a hair dry at the end, but only by my standards--I prefer all my meats dripping with fat and grease and sauces, so I'm an extreme case--and the skin is just delicious. I would happily microwave one and serve it to someone, as long as that person was a good friend, and I will absolutely use this chicken in sandwiches and salads next week. It will be awesome. (Note: this does not make shredded, pull-apart chicken. This makes properly cooked chicken pieces, like you'd get at a restaurant with the skin golden and crispy and a side of, say, mashed potatoes or whatever.) The point is, you take frozen chicken and you add salt and pepper and you go to bed, and you wake up with perfect chicken the next day. Although I might cook it a little less, next time, and I could probably stand to season both sides, not that it would matter much if they're frozen anyway.

Note: This compares favorably to the Pepperoncini chicken that is widely touted as The Easiest Crock Pot Chicken Ever. I've done the pepperoncini chicken and although it's delicious and extremely tender, the vinegar taste is a bit strong, and I tend to love vinegar.

UPDATE: After combing the internet, I've decided that somehow I dreamed up this recipe, because apparently the very popular Easiest Crockpot Meat Recipe Ever is Pepperoncini BEEF. You cook a BEEF rump or shoulder or any other tough cut with a jar of pepperoncinis in your slow cooker and shred it, for tacos and and sandwiches and such. That is what you do. The pepperoncini recipes involving chicken and slow cookers also include Italian seasoning (although I bet Ranch would be even better, the buttermilk would balance out the pepperoncini) and some include chicken broth.

Wevs.

Picture of my chicken:

As I bagged this up, I kept sneaking pieces "just to taste." They were perhaps larger than they technically needed to be. I think that's always a good sign.

A Huge Bunch of Win

First, a snack food/dip:

Goat cheese, baked or broiled in a ramekin or other safe container until bubbling and perhaps a little browned on top. Add sriracha to taste and mix. You're done. (And now that I think about it, you could probably mix the goat cheese and the sriracha FIRST, and THEN brown it, but I have no idea what browned sriracha tastes like and so I can't honestly recommend it. If anyone ever reads my blog again and tries it, please report back. Also, what is 2316 like? Do we have jet packs yet?

You can dip anything you so desire into it--plantain chips*, parsnip chips, kale chips, even regular chips (but WHY WOULD YOU**), pretzels. You could spread it on pita or sandwich bread. It might even make a good pasta sauce, if you mix it in at the last minute into hot pasta***. (Goat cheese doesn't stand up well to the longer cooking times of alfredo or bolognese, so don't simmer your pasta IN this dip.) It is freaking DELICIOUS. I can't think of anything, right now, that it WOULDN'T be good on. A veggie platter would shine with this dip. (Excluding perhaps carrots, but who knows?) You could stuff it into red peppers and roast it, and I bet you could add olives or something as well.

The one thing it wouldn't go good with? (I thought of something!) Fruit. Sad but true. Sriracha and fruit do not mix.

Anyway! Other wins:

Herschey's Sugar Free Chocolate Chips. I looked these up online, found them on Amazon AND, thanks to the kindness of internet strangers, discovered that Walmart sells them for one third the price available on Amazon. Well, shucks, I have a Walmart in my area, I'm going to be down there anyway for an airport delivery, why don't I just check and see? Turns out they totally sell them at my Walmart and they are DELICIOUS. Just like the Nestle Tollhouse chips of my childhood, only with zero carbs. Magical. For my next trick, I'm attempting to recreate the White Cookies of my childhood, only with coconut flour and these chocolate chips. Stay tuned.

Picture, just for kicks:

Not pictured: my chocolate-smeared mouth.

*These are technically way too high in carbs for my lifestyle, but they're DELICIOUS and I try not to freak out about eating real food. It's FOOD, for gob's sake. As a treat, why not enjoy them?

**This blog is low-carb and does not recommend you eat "conventional" chips of any kind. There are so many other things that crunch out there! There is no need to eat feedlot corn!

***Or hot faux noodles, as this blog would do. Bonus instructions, to properly prepare faux noodles, rinse them thoroughly in running water for a minute or so, microwave them for 2 minutes, drain any excess water, fluff them with a fork, microwave again, drain, fluff. Done. Dry-roasting at this step is just an added bonus, but it IS cool if you like that sort of thing.

New, Favorite, Thing

This is the most delicious thing, ever. EVER:

It is the chocolate ice cream to end all chocolate ice creams. Every spoonful--EVERY spoonful--has such incredible mouthfeel that you literally never get tired of eating it. Every bite is just as enjoyable as the first one. Watch out.

Things To Know About Me and Food, Part the Third

The point: even though I love bread, I still won't choose really good bread and a bad sandwich over mediocre bread and a good sandwich, and by "good" I don't mean (necessarily) the quality of the meats and cheeses, but more about the balance of the sandwich. After all, Salumi's may have the best meatballs in town, but I've had a better sandwich at Subway: a SANDWICH should be HELD IN THE HAND AND EATEN. If you have to use a knife and fork, then you're not eating a sandwich. (Yes, I know it's possible, but you have to lift off the top of the sandwich, then, and set it aside, and then what are you going to do with that top piece? Eat it plain? Save it for later? Butter it and eat it after wards? I've done all these things, and I like them, but in THAT case you're not really eating a sandwich: you're eating an open-faced meal on a bread base with a second course of a thick piece of bread. And that is great, as far as it goes, especially if the bread is really good. But if the menu says "sandwich" then I want a goddamned sandwich. Held in the hand. Bitten into. Eaten by mouth and fingers.)

Things To Know About Me And Food, Part the Second

I used to love bread, of course, but now, getting older, it just tastes...heavy. It tastes like all I'm going to do is sit there for the next hour and feel full, and have my stomach grumble and my mind go dull, and one of the many, many benefits about getting older is that I can now easily associate those things, the action and the consequences, and the consequences flavor my perception of the bread so that I can easily and willfully choose to not eat it. And not feel restricted, or controlled, or deprived: to willfully and easily choose to not eat it. Like now veggies taste good, because I know I really will feel better if I eat them, and so I eat them, not because I'm told to or because I *have* to, because the editors of Shape magazine are breathing down my neck, but because I really want to.

There are many, many good things about getting older!

Of course, I LOVE bread, or used to, anyway, and still, to my mind, nothing goes better with a good cup of coffee in the morning like a really good piece of bread, toasted, with butter. Not even any cheese--just toast with salted butter, and maybe some heavy cream in the coffee, but no sugar.

Not that it hasn't taken me awhile to come to this conclusion, mind you. I always think, with my More, More, More, mind, that maybe I should add a little cheese to the toast, and maybe a little sugar or chocolate to the coffee, not that I don't love the taste of coffee as it is, but adding chocolate or sugar would make it tastier and more luxurious, somehow, and this is absolutely true. But then I end up with cheesetoast and a mocha, and while I love each of those things, somehow, together they seem a little...overdone. Too much. And I worshipped the idea of melted cheese with a mocha for many, many years: cheese omelets with mochas, cheesy breakfast sandwiches with mochas, a mocha with a baugette and butter and jam, a bagel with cream cheese and an iced mocha in the summer. But finally, I had to admit that I just didn't actually like this combination. It sounds so good in theory, you know, and indeed cheese and chocolate have gone together for eons, in many different cultures. But they usually eat them plainer--just a good piece of cheese and a good piece of chocolate--no coffee and very little bread--and what I'm getting at here is that PLAIN is often the way to enjoy good flavors. Not more complicated. Plain.

Coffee with cream and a piece of plain toast, and the crunchiness of the toast, with the fat of the butter and just that hint of salt, really picks up the sweet caramel notes of the coffee and the heavy cream just carries the mouthfeel, providing a slippery nest for the stretchiness of the gluten strands to stretch and pop over, bursting with flavor.

I'm getting off track, which I tend to do. To be continued!

Things to Know About Me and Food, Part the First

I eat low carb, and I don't miss sandwiches.

I love, love, LOVE a good sandwich, and even a bad sandwich, and it's not even about the bread. The bread is really just there as an excuse to hold the sauces, or to be more accurate, it's not even that I love a sandwich: it's that I love the excuse to spread mayonnaise and mustard on something. Just about anything will do.

So, even eating low-carb these days, I don't miss the traditional "sandwich" at all--that was a very easy swap for me. Does it have lunch meat, cheese, mayo, mustard? Are there pickles? Is there lettuce? Great! It's officially a sandwich. I'll wrap it in lettuce, and if the lettuce breaks, and I get mayo and mustard all over my fingers, well, that just gives me an excuse to lick my fingers. Sometimes I'll take ham and melt cheese over it, then spread the top with mayo and mustard and pile spinach on there, and then roll the whole thing up with the ham on the outside and just chomp into it that way, making little Mmm, Mmm sounds. Sometimes I'll make a full on lettuce wrap, as I mentioned before. Craving pizza? I'll make a mat of pepperoni at the bottom of a bowl, melt mozzerella cheese over it, decorate the top with some tomato paste and basil paste and spread that stuff around with a fork and eat my crustless pizza with fork and knife. And it is delicious.

That's two things I've learned about eating low carb: 1) everything is easier in a bowl, and 2) most of your meals look like a dog's breakfast, and that's okay. Chicken bits with melted cheese, then covered with guacamole and sour cream and salsa; scrambled eggs with pico de gallo and cheese and sour cream; faux noodles with chicken and peanut sauce and sriracha; I don't need carbs for any of these things. And the best part--the absolute best part--is that faux noodles take SO MUCH LESS TIME than regular noodles, and so many fewer dishes and equipment, that I'm beginning to prefer them, and not just because they don't make me feel heavy afterwards.

(Okay, so, occasionally I'm feeling fancy, and I'll make myself low-carb bread and build an actual traditional sandwich, and since we have a George Forman grill, I will press said sandwich and it will be DELICIOUS.) See example:

THAT'S RIGHT, I MADE THAT. AND IT'S TOTALLY LOW CARB, BITCHES. That's homemade almond bread and stuffins from half a sandwich that E didn't finish--I don't know what kind of block the man has about leftovers, I LOVE them--built into an awesome sandwich in about thirty seconds because I own a George Forman grill and it is awesome.

More things I made recently follow.

Cabbage from Whole Foods (mentioned in this post) with WF peanut-coconut sauce, chicken bits (salvaged from a different dish), and sriracha:

Lasted me for two solid days, and for 2.19, I'll take it.

And finally, crustless pizza:

Looks pretty good, right? I THOUGHT SO.

More Food, Plus Some Discussion of Warehouse Cooking

I still can't believe that not only am I still using the George Forman grill, am I actually LIKING the George Forman grill, but even worse, I'm trying to imagine what ELSE I can cook on the George Forman Grill and actually LOOKED FOR AND FOUND THE COOKBOOK.

I haven't opened it yet, though.





It looks much better in the Instagram shot.

More food!

That's right. I made that. AND I ATE IT FOR LUNCH AND IT WAS DELICIOUS. (Okay, so it's not actually my picture, but I swear it looked close.) Mine was made with peanut coconut sauce out of a bottle. But I doctored it up with a dollop of sunflower seed butter--delicious--and added a little sriracha, because duh. For a base I used faux noodles--of course I did--and cabbage salad, sold by the pound at the hot bar at WF, and premade with rice vinegar, slivered almonds, and green onions. Added an awesome crunch. And, at the end, lime chicken, also from the WF hot bar.

All these details are because I'm trying to figure out how best to cook in my warehouse kitchen--for the umpteenth time, but maybe this time around I'll pay more attention--and part of that is buying thing that are slightly premade, so I can mix THOSE things into OTHER things and end up with a restaurant quality dish for less money and time. And fewer dishes, because we literally don't do dishes. At all.

Anyway! Peanut-Coconut Chicken and Cabbage Over Noodles! Goes great with ginger soda--homemade, of course. Seltzer water, ginger juice, and stevia for sweetening. Great sugar-free way to get water--AND get some ginger! Good for what ails you!

Breakfast!

I did something today! This is a pressed breakfast sandwich on a George Forman grill, something which we happened to have lying around the kitchen, and which (although I tend to be a hater of kitchen gadgets) did a bang up job of turning a pile of kale, ham, cheddar, and egg into something recognizable as a Sandwich. 

Notes: I used the Medium setting--hooray for dumbed-down controls! I'm having a stupid hard time getting the hang of our induction burner, for example--and the entire cooking time was less than the time it took to get out the ingredients. Not kidding, it was THAT fast. I did cook the egg separately in the microwave--in paper bowls--and I'm sorry if any part of that sentence offends you, but there it is. I sprayed the grill down with coconut oil, which I will do again, as it improves Ease of Cleaning, and next time I'll spray the paper bowls for the egg as well.

 

Not pictured: the trip to the Cone and Steiner fridge for eggs, since the eggs in OUR fridge were at their best in April, and the accidental purchases that went along with such a trip; namely, relaxation tea and gluten-free frozen Beecher's Mac & Cheese (I KNOW).

I may try broccoli patties next. 

Easy-ish Hot Night Dinner: Gazpacho!

No, it's not 100% low carb--tomatoes have a lot of sugar in them--but it's fast and doesn't require any cooking and it's FULL of vegetables, and, oh yeah, it's delicious.

I followed this recipe exactly, except I used pre-minced garlic out of the big jar from Costco instead of fresh. DON'T HATE ME. I know. I know how much worse it is. In fact, I'm well aware, because, after tasting the Gaz, I had to add insult to injury and add some garlic salt to the mix, just to bring out the gar. flavor.*

I am deeply ashamed.

What this recipe really requires is chopping. Lots of chopping. If you are a slow chopper, as I am, then this will not be quite so fast. I started at (about) 10:40 and finished at 11:15. And keep in mind: that is WITHOUT cooking.

The Gaz is currently chilling, as am I. Because my kitchen is still cool. BA-ZINGA.**

More seriously, folks, I did a few more things differently from the original linked recipe:

1. I didn't strain anything. As I told my partner, partway through the cooking chopping process: "We're actually having RUSTIC Gazpacho, where 'rustic' means 'eat your own dang seeds'," but the truth is more complicated than that. I tried straining the gazpacho through the fine-meshed sieve, and in fact dirtied TWO EXTRA DISHES to do so, but...stopped. The problem may have been that my sieve was perhaps too finely meshed. I was getting mainly pink-colored water as the result, and my partner and I wanted to consume actual calories at sometime before 2 am this evening.*** So I stopped and tried to mix everything back into the same bowl. This brought on some spills, as every one of my kitchen experiments is wont to do, but nothing that couldn't be cleaned up easily.

2. I used a mix of balsamic vinegar and cooking sherry in place of "vinegar", and didn't measure either element. This "not measuring" thing is fairly normal for me, as is "substituting flavor profiles for other flavor profiles that I think might fit."

3. I didn't measure the olive oil, either. The cool thing about being a chemical engineer is that you get an instinctive sense for when bases and acids mix together to form a cohesive, impossible-to-separate, whole. Add too much acid, and you've got separation. Add too much base, and you have the same problem. The trick is to keep them, [cooking word shoutout!]: emulsified. It's also a lab term. If your acids (the tomatoes, and later the vinegars) are in balance with your bases (oils) then you'll get a lovely creamy, soupy, texture to your gazpacho. You could rub it in your hair.**** Mess up either one of those amounts and you'll have soupy salsa.

Thanks and enjoy your cool kitchens.

*I've been reading a lot of P.G. Wodehouse recently. Mom, this is reference to P.G. Wodehouse's writing gimmick of using abbreviations to get inside the head of Bertie Wooster, which Mr Wodehouse did to great, great affect. It's still one of my favorite writing tricks.

**Mom, this is a reference to The Big Bang Theory, a TV show. There's a character named Sheldon who started off (and still technically is) a sidekick, but has become a fan favorite, and he has a terrible sense of humor, but still manages to prank his fellow nerdy colleagues. When he feels that he's scored one on them, he yells "BA-ZINGA".

***I think all start-up employees would agree with me here that 2 am still qualifies as "evening."

****This is a reference to an old family joke: "That sauce is so good, I could rub it in my hair!" BUT it also has a practical meaning! Everyone is well aware of the futility of trying to mix oil and water, yes? Right. So why should tomatoes be any different--after all, they contain water, right? A LOT of water. And yet tomatoes are well known for their affiliation for olive oil. What gives? Well, the acid in tomatoes makes it possible. Like liquid soap, or shampoo: you need an emulsifier to keep the oil and the water together. In this case, the acid is the emulsifier. Why can't you pour salad dressing in your hair? Well, there's a number of sensible reasons, but mainly it's because the water and the oil will stay separate. You'll end up with wet hair, and then oily hair. Adding an emulsifier to the mix makes your shampoo a homogenous substance, an easily used goop that cleans your hair and washes out with water. This is part 11 in an umpteen-part series on Chemistry.

Breakfast

I was browsing Pinterest this morning and I kept investigating smoothie recipes. Then I realized I had a blender in my kitchen.

Today I Learned

That the red chili flakes in Spaghetti Carbonara are there for a REASON. And you should probably add some more pepper, too. Otherwise you're just eating parmesan-flavored egg sauce with chunks of bacon.

Not that that's BAD, necessarily, but it won't be the flavor profile you're expecting. Just sayin'.

Also: I made it with spaghetti squash, not spaghetti. Yay, gluten free.

I Cooked For Myself Today!

Sometimes that's all you can ask for.

(For the curious, which basically means my mom: miso soup made from red miso paste and hot water. And spinach-from-a-bag, well coated with a harissa-cream cheese-champagne vinegar mix that I made up myself.)