This might be an obnoxious recipe to those who do not cook as I do.  It’s basically a framework to hang a recipe upon.  The good news is that as long as you follow a few basic ratios (rice/lentils/water) and a couple warnings (don’t burn stuff, don’t salt it while cooking), it’s pretty hard to mess up this dish.

In the broad strokes, it’s:

2 parts white rice
2 parts lentils
8 to 10 parts water
oil
plant matter
spices
salt

In the way I made it last night, I used about 1 ½ half cups each of rice and lentils, so these guidelines will use those figures.  Scale up or down, arithmetically, as needed.

Sort the lentils on a tray, removing stones and broken, freakishly deformed, and very hard or discolored lentils.

Finely chop the vegetable matter you want.  How much?  More than you might think.  Last night I used  about four inches of ginger rhizome, peeled; two (small) bulbs of organic heirloom garlic; and a medium-sized jalapeño pepper, seeded but leaving the placenta.  A shallot or two are awesome, but I couldn’t find any here.  Some people add half an onion, but I’m allergic.

Combine the spices you want in a cup or bowl so that you don’t have to fiddle with measuring them while stuff is cooking.  Here is where it gets super-fun.  Use your creativity here.  I might use

1 tsp each of:

white pepper
paprika
cumin
fenugreek

Somewhat less of:

nutmeg
cardamom

Much less of:

asafœtida

A few leaves of:

bay

And a hellishly large amount of:

turmeric

Seriously, like two rounded tablespoons of turmeric.  In my opinion it’s the key, and will help nutrient absorption, digestion, and prevent gas.  Really.

You can play around with other spices you might like.  If you do enough cooking, you will know what will go well.  You might use some anise (a small amount), if you want to take the dish in that direction.  I haven’t tried ground mustard, but I bet it would work.  Black pepper would also go.

There are, of course, commercial curry powders.  I think that’s no fun at all, but if you’re new to this, you can use solely such a powder, or (better) half commercial prep and half what you design.

Do not add salt.  You will ruin the lentils if you salt while cooking.  It’s a chemistry thing.

Heat oil – about 4 TB – in a heavy pot over high heat until it starts to sputter.  I find grapeseed oil works best.  It’s a bit yummier, I think, made with ghee (clarified butter), but that of course makes it not vegan.  If you use ghee, use medium-high heat and don’t wait for it to sputter.

Add the spices and fry them to dissolve the fat-soluble chemicals.  Don’t let the oil smoke.  Before the oil reaches that point, add the chopped vegetable matter and cook that in the oil to soften the chopped vegetables.  You might find you need to decrease the stove temp, depending on your stove and pot.

When you’re about to faint from how freaking awesome your kitchen smells, add the white rice, dry.  Toss it in the oil, vegetables, and spices, and keep stirring and cooking.  You are trying to toast the rice at this point.

When it’s toasted, add the water.  I used six cups, but you can use as much as 7 ½ or so.  Stir to make sure the other ingredients aren’t sticking to the bottom.  Add the dry lentils; stir again.  Increase heat the the highest setting and, uncovered, bring to a rolling boil.

Cover and immediately reduce heat to the barest simmer.  Set a timer for 45 minutes.  If you’re using green lentils, they need a bit longer; 55 minutes, say.  Resist the urge to take the lid off and check during while cooking.  They’ll be fine.  They’re grown-ups.

After the timer goes off, move the pot off the heat and let it sit for, say, 10 to 15 minutes.  Open and stir (the rice and lentils are likely to have ended up in layers).  Is the consistency what you wanted?  If not – too gruely or too thin – make a mental note to adjust the water as you see fit next time.  If it’s way thicker than you wanted, you might have some luck adding water and simmering a bit longer, but that’s a gamble.

You can salt the whole pot now, but I prefer to salt each portion.  Serve hot.  It makes it not vegan again, but you can stir in sour cream for transcendent awesomeness.  Various Indian-style relishes – the ones Patak makes are great – can also be stirred in.  Their “Mixed”, “Hot Lime”, and “Hot Mango” relishes are among my favorites.

Let cool to lukewarm and put in a sealed container in the refrigerator.  You will have a ton of it – probably more than you expected.

Enjoy!

I was sitting at the bar last week and a patron from out-of-town, visiting for the first time, was deciding what to eat.  I was witness to this exchange:

Patron:  Is this beef local?

Server:  Right down the road.

Patron:  From a small farm?

Server:  If you’d like, I can probably find out the cow’s name.

You are welcome to find this as creepy as did the last person I told, but if you are creeped out and are not a vegetarian, please spend a long moment working through that one.

Second choice of titles: “Thyme’s on my side, but it’s not the heavy hitter”.

To clarify, he did not wake me in order to be let out: he is an indoor cat and never goes out.  He did not wake me because he was in need of food: he has food, even has it the piling-above-the-walls-of-his-food-bowl-and-onto-the-floor way he demands before he will eat.  He woke me for company while he ate breakfast.

It is not sufficient to wake him and escort him into the bathroom, turn on the light, pet him, and go back to sleep.  Lord help me I’ve tried.  No: that will result in another round of raowing.  He needs me to sit on the toilet lid for the entirety of his meal.  I am not sure this says more about his psyche or mine, but whichever (could be both) of is is deviant, I am, undeniably, a less social being than is my cat.

No more flames yet.  But the day is young.

1. I got really tired of throwing away rent money without building equity
2. I got obsessive about my carbon footprint, and
3. I’m too poor to buy an eco-friendly house

It is amazing how one adjusts to one’s environment.  When I moved in I found it impossibly claustrophobic, and now it seems gloriously homey and spacious.  Presumably this has a lower bound — I’m not sure if I’d ever consider a casket to be a roomy domicile — but it works quite nicely.  There are lots of pros and lots of cons to this lifestyle, but the primary con has to be water.  The coupling for a direct water line into the trailer is leaky, and because:

1. I would get really tired of throwing away water without growing anything
2. I got obsessive about my H₂O footprint, and
3. I’m too poor to have it fixed

I get by filling a storage tank once a week or so.  I’m not quite sure what the tank is made of, but I’m fairly confident it’s something like “polyshittylene”.  Good grief is it noxious.  I was buying water by the gallon bottle for months and months, but wanted to stop because:

1. I got really tired of putting plastic into the recycling stream only having used it once
2. I got obsessive about my hydrocarbon footprint, and
3. I’m too poor to buy jugs of water

I bought — OK, “got my mom to buy” — a Brita pitcher.  Awesome.  I put that horrid noxious water through it, and try as I might to detect off-odors or -flavors, I just cannot.  The filtered water tastes better than bottled “Spring Water” (“spring” is a word in a dialect of the local Morongo “Indian” “tribe” that means “tap”).

It is very difficult sometimes to refrain from trying to pour various things through the filter to “see what would happen” — tea, coffee, scotch whisky, soy milk, soy sauce, vinegar, ad literally nauseum.  I’ll spare you the three bullet points that reduce to “I don’t want to waste the Brita filters” and “I’m to poor to do the experiments without corporate sponsors”.

I think my Dragonwell is done steeping.  Mmm: yummy with filtered water.  See you on the other side of the cuppa.

You know what?  They’re really quality food.  Something has happened in the world of TV dinners.  Ten years ago, they were as bad for you as junk food, and as crappy-tasting as airline food in coach.  Now the TV dinners have become tasty, interesting, and not-too-unhealthy.  It’s not haute cuisine, but I would choose Lean Cuisine meals over dinner at, say,  Marie Callender’s or Coco’s.  The offerings include engaging things like “Tortilla crusted fish”, and there are numerous vegetarian offering, including a roasted vegetable pizza that is sublime.  The boxes have gone high-tech, too, folding into things such as a platform that crisps a pizza crust.  In the microwave.

The meals average around 300 calories, 20% – 25% of the calories from fat, three grams of fiber, and (this is not great) 500 mg of sodium.  They’re a pleasure to eat, and, as I said, two dollars apiece.  I need to go get more (I think my tiny freezer, if I remove everything else, can hold 14.)

N:  Deeeeeeetectable, Daddy!

BTW, the smoothie?  Frozen cranberries, frozen raspberries, frozen banana, orange juice, soy milk, soy protein powder.  I’m going to turn into a VitaMix evangelist pretty soon here.  Let’s see who bids on this ad….

But as long as I’m up, I might as well have a go at a request I got today.  I’m supposed to post a recipe.  I shared with my father a couple bites of the chicken I made, and he was positively effusive about it.  My good friend Nathan was a huge fan as well.  Problem is, I don’t cook with recipes and I don’t measure stuff.  If I’m baking bread, I absolutely have to measure everything exactly; I have no gut feeling for the chemistry of gluten and yeast and so forth.  It’s like a really bad chemistry lab or something.  But not chicken.  Absolutely not chicken.

I’ve been requested to try to post the recipe, which I will try to relate while you keep in mind that I’m making up everything numerical as I go along.

So here it is:

2 Tbsp canola oil
4 – 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 large ripe (red) serrano peppers, chopped
4 – 5 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breast
1 can chicken broth
1 can coconut milk
3/4 cup sun dried tomatoes
1 Tbsp fenugreek leaf
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp clove

1. Sautee the garlic and hot peppers in the canola oil at the bottom of a large stock pot until softened.
2. Add everything else.
3. Cook over medium heat until the chicken is cooked through, about 90 minutes, stirring every 15 or so.
4. Step 4 consists solely of a disclaimer that there is no useful instruction following Step 3.

It cooks itself, essentially.  It’s also very cheap to make.  It’s a one-pot meal that you fire and forget: a great bachelor’s food.  What would I do differently next time?  Well, I’d make sure my ginger hadn’t gone bad.  I intended to add about a 1 in. piece of fresh, peeled ginger rhizome, finely chopped, with the garlic and peppers.  And I meant to garnish the whole thing with cilantro.  But I didn’t do either of those things, and it was palatable.

Fenugreek leaf, though.  I don’t really know what to say about that.  I bought it because I didn’t know what it tasted like, and after tasting it decided it was right for this dish.  I have no idea how to duplicate this without the fenugreek leaf.  Maybe ground fenugreek seed and  thyme?  Check the Persian section of your grocery store, if you’re lucky enough to have a Persian section in your grocery store, and buy some fenugreek leaf.

I wish there were some magical secret to the dish, but no, it really is that stupid.  Philosophically, following this recipe to the letter would be like listening to a Miles Davis album so that you can learn to play every note exactly: it’s better to figure out the logic of jazz, or the kitchen, and just use up stuff you have around.  That’s what I did, the only difference being that I’m no Miles Davis.  The sun dried tomatoes would not have been there otherwise.  There was no special trip to a store to make this.

Keep in mind that the the coconut milk will turn from white to deep walnut brown as you cook the chicken, and don’t burn the garlic.  That’s it.  If something doesn’t seem right, change it.  And you’ll be there.

In related news, I’ve drunk a liter of lemon juice today, straight from the bottle, and wish that I had more.

Huh?  Question for New Yorkers, please: what is “regular” coffee if it’s not black, drip, American-style coffee?  When I was a barista mumbleteen years ago, if someone asked for “regular coffee”, I’d probably ask them if they wanted “room for milk”.  That’s it.  The black, drip, and American-style would have been automatic.

The entire point, of course, is to eat while poor, but not to eat poorly.  The new recipe — append “whatever you can afford” to each ingredient:

1 can tuna packed in water
some cheese
some crackers
Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
Tabasco Smoked Chipotle sauce
sourdough bread

This also qualifies as a “one pot meal”, a bachelor’s friend.

Drain half the liquid from the tuna.  Slice some cheese (the more piquant, the better.)  Add both to a saucepan, and heat on medium high.  Add a good squeeze of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (or substitute Worchestershire) and a pour of Tabasco Smoked Chipotle to taste.  Cook, stirring, until the cheese is melted.  Crumble the crackers and add to the saucepan, and cook slightly longer until they are softened.  Transfer to bowl.  Serve warm on toasted sourdough bread.

A note on the Bragg’s and the Tabasco: if you can at all afford it, and are not homeless, develop a pantry of condiments, spices, and flavorings.  They go a long way towards making otherwise boring food palatable.  Yeah, it’s $3.50 – $5.00/bottle up front, but they last a long time, and you will quickly learn what to do and when (sweet paprika here, fenugreek here, Marie Sharp’s there).  They are good for the long haul — except for the Tobasco Smoked Chipotle, discussed before, of which I could easily go through two bottles per week just by myself, and have to throttle my intake for my budget’s sake (one man’s fine dining is another man’s Hidden Valley Ranch, so feel free to scoff.)

The Bragg’s will take you to Whole Foods, and the Tobasco to a “regular” grocery store, but the rest is 99 Cent Only Store material.

Bob Mike, you told me lifetimes ago about the homeless man you had befriended who taught you about his breakfast feast.  It involved Spam.  Do you recall?  Do you want to be guest chef for Eating Poor #3?

Before I first tried it, reader and longtime friend Bob Mike was over for a “special” tea party and horror movie night (he’s a great friend, taking public transportation for about 100km to keep me company during the qvibepr).  He saw the bottle on the counter, which I had picked up out of curiosity, and exclaimed something to the effect of “Isn’t that stuff great?!”  I didn’t know, I had never had it before.

I’ve had it now.

It is amazing.  It’s not a hot sauce, really, just a flavoring sauce.  It’s no hotter than A1 Bold & Spicy.  You can pour it over anything and everything savory: rice, beans, tortillas, soup, hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, whatever.  They hit this one out of the park.  It’s a major keeper.

The Coupon Clippers have a coupon right now for $0.75 off any flavor Tabasco, which you can probably get doubled.  Do it quickly.  I’m not posting a direct link because the current coupon expires on 2 March 2008, but there may be one coming to replace it.  The Coupon Clippers is a great site that charges a small processing fee to clip and mail you manufacturers’ coupons.  For this coupon, the fee is $0.10.  I’ve become a devotée of the site, and I think you will, too: go try it out through this affiliate link.

I have very little income right now, being disabled, out of work, with no disability checks coming in.  I invited my mom over for dinner tonight.  The menu: Sloppy Joes and wine. 

Not an American?  Sloppy Joes are comfort food, frequently (at least when I was growing up) served as school lunch.  Wikipedia: “There is probably no Joe after whom it is named — but … “Joe” is a name that suggests, to an American, a person of proletarian character and unassailable genuineness.”  Can’t beat that with a stick.  Er, switch.  Er, Louisville Slugger.

Ingredients sourced at the 99¢ Only store and low-cost Valu Mart grocery store.  So I worked it out: she had half a hamburger bun, lean beef, sloppy joe sauce, Tabasco Chipotle sauce (yum!), and half a glass of wine (she’s watching her diet.)  $0.72.  Very low in fat, high in protein, and not too bad in the way of sodium.

I feel like Thoreau, detailing cent-by-cent analyses of what it’s like to live simply.  I’m not about to start leaving my front door open or anything, but it’s awfully rewarding to do something like that.

* 4 carrots
* 1 orange, peeled
* 1 grapefruit, peeled
* 1 Fuji apple
* 1 orange bell pepper

Very sweet, very yummy, very orange, and gets the nutrients of a ripe bell pepper into his system, which otherwise would be very difficult.

He has told me before that he eats fish, but not real fish.  Then he told me that he doesn’t eat fish with faces (this is, I swear, completely unprompted.)  Last night I ordered dinner for him.  He was asking me what I had eaten before.  He asked me if I had eaten a ‘gator.

N:  A real ‘gator?!?

J:  Yes.

N:  A whole ‘gator?!?

J:  No.

N:  And have you eaten fish?

J:  Yes.  So have you.

N:  (Big pause.)  Real fish?

J:  Yes.  When you eat fish, you’re eating real fish.  Usually.

N:  Have you eaten really big fish?

J:  Sometimes.  But I try not to eat many big fish.

N:  Why?

J:  Because there aren’t very many of them, and if we eat them all, they’ll be gone.

N:  Gone?

J:  Yes.  If we eat them up.  But Mommy doesn’t eat any fish.

N:  Why?

J:  I think because she doesn’t want to hurt the fish.

N:  It hurts the fish?

J:  Well, yes.  But I don’t think fish hurt too much.  (Alan Rickman intones in the background, “The benefits of a Nirvana education.”)

N:  (Hard drive grinding, grinding, grinding away.  He’s far away.  Then the light comes back on.)  I don’t want to hurt ammamulls.

J:  Not cows?

N:  No.

J:  Not pigs?

N:  No.

J:  Not birds?

N:  No.

J:  Not fish?

N:  No!

J:  OK, then that’s being called a vegetarian.  You can tell people that, or just tell them that you don’t eat animals.

N:  (Trying it out.)  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  The animal has to die for you to make food from it.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  You have to die the animals?

J:  Yes.

N:  How do they die the animals?

J:  (OK, really didn’t want it to come to this.  So forgive me for this one, Jenn.)  Well, usually they shoot them in the head.

N:  They shoot them in the head?

J:  Yes.  Cows, anyway.

N:  I don’t want to hurt cows.

J:  OK.

N:  I don’t eat ammamulls.

J:  OK.

N:  (With determination.)  But I do eat things made from ammamulls.

J:  OK.

He was in the X-Files episode “Hungry”, playing a brain-eating mutant.  Just try to pull off that role in a heartwarming way, but he did it.  And then there’s Taco Bell.  Several years ago Taco Bell filmed a commercial with him overjoyed to be stuffing his face with a taco.  We’ll likely be deluged with the commercial again when the X Games start showing in a few weeks.

Thing is, he filmed the taco commercial after the X-Files episode, as far as I know.  And the X-Files episode has a scene where he compulsively and with great gusto sucks human brain matter off his fingers.  Fictionally, of course.  I hope.  Same expression of glee as in the Taco spot.

So what, did some ad executive see his brain-sucking and think, “That’s the guy for us!  Let’s have him dig into our tacos!”  Did they have an open call for the commercial, or did someone call his agent and say, “Hey, send the brain-sucker over to chomp our tacos!”  Would be interesting to find out.  Probably.

“Its translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady.  Enjoy soft and juicy Kasugai Muscat Gummy.”

Some species are in slightly less dire straits but are still poorly managed, in decreasing supply, or entail significant habitat disruption: salmon, tuna, red snapper, Pacific red snapper, and lobsters fall into this category.  Species that are generally safe to eat are halibuts, mahi mahi, mackerels, squid (calamari), farmed tilapia (also known as Nile perch), crabs (other than Alaska king crabs) and striped bass.

The society provides a whole website dealing with this topic, including “seafood cards” that can be printed and kept in one’s wallet or purse to help one remember which are safe species, and a FAQ list that will help you with advocacy in your local restaurants and grocery stores.

If you eat seafood, please take a moment to commit this information to memory or download one of the memory aids.  As the Audubon society says, “Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.”

Of course, once you find something new you start seeing it everywhere.  I found a discussion on Metafilter from February that I must have read at the time.  And it showed up in the book I am currently reading, Becoming Vegan, as being associated with esophageal cancer.  This is obviously not desirable.  I did some more searching online, and it turns out that the carcinogenic property might be due to its traditionally being drunk very, very hot.  Apparently you see the same results with tea and coffee.  And apparently consumption of vegetables, fresh fruits, black pepper, and turmeric are shown to have some protective effects against this type of cancer (also cheese, for the non-vegans.)

After a few hours, at least for me, the calming and euphoric effects wear off and you are left with a major case of the jitters.  That’s not desirable either.  I can’t get my leg to stop shaking right now, for instance, and my breathing is stuttered and broken.  The jitters might cause one to take more maté in order to get the calming effects back, but this sounds like a feedback loop to me.  I’ve read multiple pages that claim that maté is non-addictive, but this strikes me as absurd, as caffeine can form dependencies and maté is loaded with caffeine.  I mean, no one is going to knock over a liquor store to support a caffeine habit, but there are certainly withdrawal and tolerance effects.  Additionally, as Marion Howard writes, “caffeine perpetuates its own use by curing its own side effects, much like alcohol.”  Maté may be doubly self-perpetuating, if ingesting more maté causes the jitters to subside (I’m not going to experiment with this today.)

But it’s delicious (some say it tastes like “wet hay”, which I think is unfair), and great with soy milk and sucanat as a vegan “maté latté”.  And Guayakí have a great website; they also drip with every progressive cause you could possibly imagine: sustainability, fair trade, recycling, reforestation.  They are so cause-obsessed that they almost seem a self-parody.  But check them out: you might find the trip interesting.