Snack Trek: BRIAN’S SHAVE ICE (West LA)

February 18, 2013
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Somewhere, eating a rainbow…

Today I couldn’t stop thinking about wanting to try Brian’s Shave Ice, which is down the street from yesterday’s Blockheads trek.

I kept hinting to Sam that driving down the 405 to get Hawaiian shave ice would make today feel like a real day off — it would be an adventure, and it would be really Presidents Day appropriate because Obama is from Hawaii. Eventually, I got him to see things my way (or maybe he just wanted to shut me up) and we headed to the Westside. Bottom line, Sam was going to get some shave ice out of accompanying me (/driving me) on this trek. So he made the right call.

And then I made a literal call to Cole, and arranged for him to join us. Because apparently my calling in life is convincing men to drop everything and come to the shave ice shop. (Now… how do I capitalize on that?)

One draw of Brian’s Shave Ice is that they have Dole whip, which is rather legendarily only available at a few locations, including Disneyland and Hawaii. (And some place in WeHo, which people went crazy over when it opened.)

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Hooray Dole whip. Hooray lactose-free.

I was pleased to find out that the Dole whip is lactose free. But I countered that by getting condensed milk on top of my shave ice, because it’s what the cool kids do. I had to try it. (I felt slightly queasy shortly after we left… probably the condensed milk, possibly the Dole whip. Ah well. I’d do it again!)

You may have also noted on the menu that there is a flavor called tiger’s blood. That’s not a new one, but it’s always amusing.

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Making a shave ice. Possibly tiger’s blood.

They had some pre-set flavor options, and Sam ordered the one called rainbow. Which was a good call, because it was beauteous. (See top photo.)

I ordered watermelon, lemon-lime, and asked the guy at the counter (possibly Brian??) to recommend a third. He suggested boysenberry, so I went with it. I liked it. But it wasn’t as pretty as rainbow.

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Looks aren’t everything.

This was a quality shave ice — the kind that isn’t grainy, and melts as soon as it hits your tongue. It’s a very fine shave, I guess you’d say. It reminded me of the time the Tropical Shave Ice truck came to my old office. Ever since I’ve wanted to find really good shave ice at a brick-and-mortar location, so this was a wonderful discovery.

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The inner Dole whip.

All in all, it gave my day off a festive twist. It’s always fun to squeeze in an impromptu trek. And for $4, it was a very affordable “vacation.”

xoxo…

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Happy Valen-times 2013

February 18, 2013
The new pizza frontier.

The new pizza frontier.

After a successful Valentine’s dinner last year, Sam decided to do it again. This time, no steak. And this time — the only thing I knew about the dinner was that mussels would be the APPETIZER. Yes, there were courses. Secret courses.

Well played, Mr. Tea.

Bonus points — the meal was not so heavy as to throw us into food comas. After we ate, we went to Santa Monica and had a nice digestive stroll.

It’s easiest to sum up the meal with this picture, which I happen to be in. Sorry?

Welcome to my table.

Welcome to my table.

As per usual, Sam cooked on Saturday (a few days after Valentine’s Day) because he needed plenty of prep time. I arrived to find a table with a CLOTH on it, wine, candles, flowers… very impressive stuff.

And a big bowl containing four pounds of mussels. Of course.

The appetizer was Steamed Mussels with White Wine, from America’s Test Kitchen. The salad and dressing were a Mark Bittman recipe. The entree, Ziti with Eggplant & Ricotta, was from Lidia Bastianich’s Favorites cookbook. And there was bread. Of course. There must always be bread!

I thought I’d spied a pizza when I walked in, but Sam was coy about it. He did say that dessert would be a show-stopper… and he was right. It was pizza, dessert-style (from the Pizza cookbook I gave him for Christmas)!

Whoa.

Whoa.

The crust had honey and cinnamon in it, among other things. And the sauce involved ricotta and chocolate chips. And obviously there were strawberries. And not so obviously, there was hot chocolate fudge on the side (not pictured). It was really an ideal combo of dessert-things — chocolate, sweet fruit, bread-y goodness, and a bit of spice.

One interesting fact — the crust still had a bit of mozzarella on it, because if you bake it without, it will poof up too high. Also, the crust had these sort of interior layers to it that you don’t often find in regular pizza. I’m not sure why, but I liked it.

It was a great meal, made even better by the knowledge that it was planned out just for me. If you’re hoping to create a special meal but you’re not as game about spending a day over the stove, remember that in these situations it’s the thought that counts. Whether it’s cooking, nabbing a great reservation, or gathering some key foods for a nice picnic, food is definitely a great way to show you care — and that you know what your partner likes. And — best of all — you get to share in the eatin’!

And I must say, it’s always nice to be surprised! Mystery is a spice that you can’t find on any rack. (Oh God, did I just write that?)

And in case you’re wondering what I got for Sam — it’s that gift sitting on the table… the 36 Hours book. Because we have many cities to visit over many weekends, if we want to get our travelin’ snack treks on.

I hope you all had a great Valentine’s, Galentine’s, Palentine’s, etc. It’s a holiday that I think we can all manage to appreciate no matter the relationship status… because it involves candy.

xoxo…

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A Tale of Two Pizzas (800 DEGREES & PIZZA REV)

February 18, 2013
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800 Degrees. Dough tossin’.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been eating a lot of pizza lately. One of my favorite trends is custom pizza places. And today I’m going to talk about TWO of them — 800 Degrees (in Westwood) and Pizza Rev (in Studio City).

Chronologically, I visited 800 Degrees first. It’s a very buzz-y place in LA right now. Sam and I happened to be in Westwood for Rufus Wainwright’s Christmas concert (I got half-price tickets on Cyber Monday), and since we were early we decided to grab a bite. It was cold and rainy and the line was out the door and down the street, but we decided to take a gamble. I mean, how often are we in Westwood? (Not often.)

Also, Sam got Neapolitan pizza flour for Christmas and we wanted to do some very important “what-does-good-Neapolitan-pizza-taste-like?” pizza research.

Almost everybody had somewhere to be by 8pm, so there was a lot of discussion along the line of whether we’d make it to our various events in time (a UCLA basketball game being the majority’s destination). Standing in a very long line seems to make friends of us all! (Especially when you realize you’re in line next to a USC alum — safety in numbers.)

It took at least thirty or forty minutes just to get in the door, but once we did the smell convinced us that we had made a sound decision. I liked the decorative pizza boxes & pizza peels on the wall.

We each ordered our own pizza, which at 800 Degrees yields a large-ish pizza. (I ended up taking half of mine home and eating it later, partly because we were in a rush.)

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I think 800 Degrees wins the impressive mozzarella contest. (Pizza Rev is pre-shredded.)

Here’s another view of the assembly line…

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The yum zone.

From there it takes a quick trip into the old-fashioned pizza ovens, which are presumably 800 degrees.

For all our waiting (probably an hour total from getting on line to receiving our pizzas), we did end up finding a table right away — which is always nice. And I think both our pizzas and a soda were about $20 total… which is about the same price as Pizza Rev.

And hey, not every pizza place has a chandelier. (And a Santa moose head, which I just noticed.)

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Merry pizza.

It was hard to get a good pizza picture in the low light. I believe this was a Vege, with added eggplant.

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No time to Vege.

This was almost two months ago. But I seem to remember a pleasantly chewy crust. The edges are puffy but the inner crust is very thin… almost a sog-danger? I think. Man, I need to go back. I don’t want to mis-report on this.

And the Rufus Wainwright concert (actually it was a family concert but I’m being lazy about describing it) was quite enjoyable, and unexpectedly moving. Songs were sung in many languages. The Royce Hall pipe organ was played (!!!!). (And we were almost too late to get in, so… leave yourself plenty of time for 800 Degrees.)

Pizza Rev is not as fancy as 800 Degrees — and it’s not trying to be. When you walk in, there are pictures of various animals posed with pizza. It’s cute. It’s not as big. There’s no crazy line. There’s not usually much of a wait. Yes, the cheese is pre-shredded — but you can also get low-fat, which I appreciate.

At 800 Degrees you place your order and don’t really get to micromanage the construction, whereas Pizza Rev is more like Subway, and you can make weird last-minute requests like, “Just a light dusting of fennel seeds across half the pizza, please.”

But it’s not a Subway, in the sense that it’s a perfectly lovely eat-in place. (Sorry, Subway.) Here are some photos…

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More low-key line at Pizza Rev.

That lady and her kids were capital-V Vegetarians. She kept saying “our vegetarian pizzas.” When it was my turn to order and I said I didn’t want any meat, she turned and gave me the biggest smile. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’m not a vegetarian, just a person who wasn’t in the mood for meat in that moment. (Although I’ve since ordered my pizza with chicken, and I’m not sure I’d do it again… I liked it better without.)

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My pizza (right) and Sam’s.

I got olives and Sam got sausage. The nice thing about personal pizzas — you don’t have to like each other’s toppings. (We have a lot of mutually appreciated toppings, but it’s fun to go nuts when you can!) (My definition of going nuts is really lame.)

The big distinction with Pizza Rev is that the crust is so thin, it’s in the cracker crust family. I like it because it’s thin and crispy, and I don’t feel bad about eating a whole pizza when the crust isn’t heavy and dough-y. You can eat one of these pizzas and have plenty of room for dessert.

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My Pizza Rev creation. It has my name on it. And light cheese, of course.

The Pizza Rev in Studio City is right near the Chipotle. The latter used to be my go-to, but lately I’m less excited about Chipotle. Dangerously enough, I’m ALWAYS in the mood for Pizza Rev now. It’s my new Chipotle. We’ve gone at least three times since our initial visit. It’s an obsession I need figure out how to deal with.

And Sam has figured out how to do a Pizza Rev crust…

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Crispy times.

It’s a quick-rise dough, pressed very thin and baked hot (like… 500 degrees, which is probably the Pizza Rev open temp).

So I’m a very lucky girl indeed! And I REALLY need to get back to the gym…

But anyway — yeah. 800 Degrees is the place to go if you’re in Westwood, have some time, and want to have the experience — Neapolitan and otherwise. Pizza Rev is where you go after work… but not every day. If you can help it. I like them both. And they are both reasonably priced. So… there’s no excuse NOT to go. Which is proving problematic… but in a good-problem way.

xoxo…

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Snack Trek: BLOCKHEADS SHAVERY CO. (West LA)

February 18, 2013
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Fluffy like a penguin (?).

First of all, I would just like to state that WordPress seems to have changed since the last time I was here. I can’t figure out how to resize the pictures, or link to URLs. So I’m pulling them to my desktop and uploading them? Whatever, technical blah blah. But it feels like WordPress is different every time I get around to blogging. Annoying. I hope it doesn’t look crappy. Know that I am powerless against the crappiness!

Anyway, I am here to tell you about Blockheads! The word “shavery” makes me feel weird (shaving… weird), so I’ll just stick to Blockheads. A while back (summer?), Whitney and I found this article about Taiwanese shaved ice and were planning on trekking around to try it out. But then… I don’t know, we live on the Eastside, and none of these places were close. And then it got cold outside.

Fast forward to yesterday. I’m visiting Cole on the Westside. I ask him if he happens to live near any of these fad-y shaved ice places, and he says — Yeah, I’m within walking distance of TWO different types of shave ice places. So we had to go. (Apologies to Whitney.) The first was a Hawaiian shave ice place, which is allegedly Great. But the second was Blockheads and the line was out the door, so I was like — not to be a lemming, but I want to try the zeitgeist-iest thing.

I could not figure out if Blockheads was dairy or non-dairy, and we decided to just go with it and let my stomach be the judge. (Not always a good idea, but HEY, gotta live a little.) I ended up feeling fine, but later that night I did some more googling and realized it’s made with reduced fat milk. But it’s very light, so… I don’t know, be aware, but don’t necessarily be deterred. For me, cream is the real problem ingredient. But if you’re seriously lactose intolerant and you visit this neighborhood, the Hawaiian place is a better bet. (Unless you add Dole whip. Then all bets are off.)

Here is an article about how the two shave ice places are having a war! Honestly, Cole is the luckiest guy in the world because if I lived within walking distance of these places I’d probably have one for morning snack and the other for evening snack. I’m a Hobbit. And shave ice is amazing.

ANYWAY.

So we stood in line at Blockheads, which gave us plenty of time to observe le menu.

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Le menu. Click to see it bigger.

Because it was crowded and they didn’t seem to have samples, you just had to go with your gut. My gut doesn’t know what grass jelly tastes like, so I kept my order fairly simple. Green tea, mango puree drizzle, strawberries, graham cracker. Cole got a similar order, so I kinda copied him. (BTW, he informs me that black sesame tastes like peanut butter.)

We stood waiting for a while after we ordered, which allowed me to watch a lot of orders process through. People seem to love lychees and what I believe was honey boba. (It looked a lot like the lychees, oddly enough. Very eyeball-y.)

(I once read a short story about a play where lychees were used to double as King Lear’s stomped-out eyeballs, so I’m kinda leery of them.)

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Honey boba or eyeballs? This was a huge amount for a whole table to share.

Here is a block being shaved.

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Whee!

The last thing they do before serving your order is drizzle your puree of choice on it. For a lot of people it’s condensed milk. For Cole it was coconut puree. These teens were standing behind us as Cole’s order was prepared, and one of them (a guy) was going, “Oh yeah, this is a good one, I’m into these toppings.” (I don’t know, teens are weird.) Then, the coconut puree was added. And the kid was not pleased with the addition of white goo. It was quite amusing. Teens! Bodies! Shaveries!

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I approve this photo.

I really love green tea ice cream (especially at Benihana… that frozen bowl), so I enjoyed this very much. The light, almost fluffy nature of the shaved “snow cream” was very appealing, as was the sweetness of the drizzle of puree. This is a sometimes snack for a lactose-wary person, especially because it’s on the Westside, but I would definitely go back. I enjoyed the whole experience of watching all the orders being filled with the unconventional (to my Western eye) toppings. I don’t mind waiting, when I’m in no rush. (And when I’m talking with Cole/eavesdropping on funny teens.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the next Pinkberry-esque trend, though I know nothing of plans to expand. With lines out the door, I could see it happening.

But next time, I will try the Hawaiian shave ice place. (Insert “hang loose” hand symbol.)

After you eat your ice-whatever, you can walk north a half-block or so and check out the novelty shops. In a gallery called GR2 (Giant Robot 2), I found what might be my spirit animal — a snake made of macarons. Hey — it could happen. (No… it probably couldn’t.)

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Don’t tread on me. I’m too delicious.

Happy Year of the Snake!

Also, if in the future my Flickr explodes — this post will maintain its photos, because I had to upload them from my desktop. So… I can sleep better at night, re: THIS ONE POST.

xoxo…

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2012: A Pizza Odyssey

December 28, 2012

Yum.

A year ago, I gave Sam a gift that kept on giving: a pizza stone. He would often talk about his dream of getting a pizza stone, so I thought it was a pretty inspired gift. I ordered it really early, and hid it in my trunk.

And then my trunk got hit by a tree, in a windstorm.

About a week later, I went to the car hospital and secretly recovered the stone. On December 5th I brought it to Sam’s place as a surprise/early gift. Also… I wanted to see if the tree had broken it into several pieces.

It survived!

Luckily, the stone was very well insulated in its Amazon box. And the pizza experiments could begin!

For our first night of pizza-making (December 8th), we… well, we made a lot of mistakes, big and small. Here’s a short list, in retrospect: No pizza peel (the wooden thing), no corn meal (to keep from sticking), use of pre-made dough & too thickly laid out (from Trader Joe’s), use of pasta sauce, use of pre-shredded cheese.

Here are some pictures…

First pizza ever.

Without a pizza peel to prepare our pizza upon, we used a metal pan. And without any cornmeal under the dough… it stuck. So, we ended up baking our first pizza on the pan. Stone fail.

The same night, we prepared our second pizza right on the stone.

Crust much?

Taste-wise, I think the biggest offender of that night was the pasta sauce. It just isn’t right for pizza-making.

I definitely had a moment that first night, where I thought… if this is what homemade pizza is going to taste like — what have I gotten myself into? I tried to remind myself that just as Rome wasn’t built in a day… neither was the perfect pizza. (It might have happened in Rome, though. Definitely somewhere in Italy.)

First slices.

We were excited to correct our mistakes in the next round. Little did we know… some of our funkiest mishaps were just around the bend.

One of our first mistakes on our second night of pizza-making (December 18th) was using pre-made dough again. Trader Joe’s was out of the regular dough, so I had to buy the herb stuff. I’m a thin-crust person, so starting with the Trader Joe’s dough… there’s only so good it can be.

One improvement: Sam made the sauce, using canned tomatoes. (Although he never did that again, so I guess it wasn’t a major hit.)

Pizza peel acquired, but looks like we were still using pre-shredded cheese.

We used corn meal, but it was either not enough or the pizza was overloaded, because when the time came the pizza would NOT transfer onto the peel.

No dice.

Sam was really frustrated and I was saying helpful things like, “Just drop it on.” And I was also giggling like crazy. (I found the situation funny.) A few minutes later, I was laughing so hard that I was lying on the floor. And Sam was… no less frustrated. But I convinced him to cook the pizza, once it finally found its way to the stone. And this was what it looked like:

Creature from Pizza Lagoon.

We still ate it. It was too doughy. Not a shock.

On January 6th we resumed pizza-making. I don’t remember much about that night, but luckily I made thorough notes in my Flickr set: “This time using the dough to make 2 pizzas, more cornmeal, Trader Joe’s pizza sauce, baking the crust a bit before adding toppings. The lighter crust slid easily onto the stone. Success! Next time — better quality mozzarella. (Can I eat that? Maybe a cheeseless one for me.)”

This was right around the time when I found out I was lactose intolerant… I think we made these pizzas before I went to the doctor, and I was labeling them just after.

Tools of the pizza chef.

The pre-baked dough (I think it was still store-bought?) resulted in delightful bubbles. (As I recall, we were pre-baking the dough sans-toppings because we weren’t sure we could transfer the pizza to the stone with toppings on it.) (I also think we only brushed olive oil on the crust that one time, although Sam now likes to drizzle it atop his pizza before baking.)

Bubbles ahoy!

My high praise for our third night of pizza-making was, “Tastes like DiGiorno!” (The frozen pizza brand… which I think is pretty good.)

Looking better, for sure.

And then… perhaps due to my lactose intolerance, or Sam’s new job, or just life in general… we didn’t make any more pizza until November 7th. Or at least I don’t have any photos. By November, I was more lax about my lactose stuff… so I just had “light cheese” on my pizza. (Also, the kitchen looks a little different… new roommate.) (The meat pizzas are typically for the roommate… Sam and I love our veggies.)

On this night, Sam made dough (the recipe that came with the stone) and also grated his own mozzarella.

You may recognize the date… it was election night.

Sam voted (for Springsteen?)… and made dough.

At some point we settled on using Prego Veggie Pizza Sauce. I think Sam tried the regular Prego once, and preferred its Veggie-est version. For now, we’re sticking to that… although we’ll probably continue to experiment, depending on the type of pizza we’re making.

Here is an action shot of the pizza sliding effortlessly from peel to stone… triumph!

Dreams do come true…

I was thrilled by the air pockets in the crust (NOT pre-baked this time).

Hello, friend.

The picture at the top of this post is from our Election Night pizzas. They were a good bunch… the first time our pizza-making felt like it could rival ordering a pizza. (I think the better-tasting pizza results spurred more frequent pizza-making… there’s a direct correlation, as math-doers might say.)

Here are a few more snaps… you can see the self-grated cheese of my “light cheese” pizza.

Pretty pretty pizza.

And here are two pizzas, chillaxing.

Hey guys.

Since we live in CA, Obama was declared the winner before we even finished baking the pizzas. So it was a pizza party.

Then I sprained my ankle and we ordered a lot of pizza at my apartment. But that’s a different post. (Maybe.)

In part because he was so good to me during my ankle times, I gave Sam his pizza cookbook a few weeks before Christmas. We headed straight to the New York style chapter, and Sam pre-made some dough for our first night of NY-style pizza-making (December 11th).

NY-style crust cannot be rolled with a rolling pin, so Sam had to teach himself to do the classic pizza toss. He didn’t drop it!

Action shot!

My pizza, ready for the 500 degree oven.

Love my veggies.

And after…

Almost looks like a heart.

The pizza was really good, though the crust could have been a touch thinner/crispier.

Sam had made a LOT of dough, so he made another pizza on his own. He said it was a bit improved.

And then… December 15th came along. I asked Sam to make me pizza… for breakfast, basically. Haha. (I think by the time it was cooked, it was lunchtime.) The NY-style crust was thin. The sauce was our Prego standby. The cheese was low-moisture (on the previous NY pizza night, it had been fresh). We didn’t use tomatoes as a topping (too water-y). The peel and the cornmeal worked as planned.

The result was… an excellent pizza. With lots of crust pockets!

YES.

The crust was crispy and wonderful. And overall the pizza tasted better than a few of the places we’d ordered from during my ankle convalescence. We were competing with restaurant grade!

I’m hungry just looking at this.

I tried to get a cross-section of the crust.

So proud.

So that’s the story of our first year of pizza-making… from blob-monster to restaurant-good. Next up we’re going to try Neapolitan style… Sam’s roommate got him special flour for Christmas, and Sam and I even took a field trip to 800 Degrees to see what Neapolitan is all about. (A very, very thin crust, for one thing.)

I’ll try to post the results here, but you can see the full Pizza Chronicles set anytime on my Flickr.

And if you got a pizza stone for the holidays… happy cooking, and hopefully you manage to avoid some of our gnarlier mistakes.

xoxo…

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Do It Yourself: Mishap #3 — Overflowing Cauliflower Stew

December 17, 2012

This image basically says it all.

Okay, I want to end this series of mishaps. Then I can move on to more important subjects. Like pizza. (And pizza mishaps.)

Speaking of mishaps, I’m out of the ankle boot but still on orders to take it easy. The gastritis (I think) that the naproxen seemed to cause has cleared (I think), as has the cold/cough that hit me the day I got the boot off… I’m hoping for a healthier 2013. (You may recall that January 2012 was the start of a long line of stomach annoying-ness, including my lactose intolerance “diagnosis.”)

But honestly, I’d rather have another bout of gastritis than something more serious. This year was really not so bad, universe! Excuse me while I knock on wood.

And now let’s talk about cauliflower.

This was actually the third dish I cooked on a day of many dishes. First I made a tuna salad. Second I made a kale salad. Third, I made this stew, which I found via Pinterest. And then I churned some almond milk ice cream for dessert. (Why not?)

And then like two days later I fell and sprained my ankle, so it’s good I got my cooking in.

I was pumped about this recipe because I already owned all the spices I needed. And I was excited to use San Marzano tomatoes, which come in such cool cans. I also bought a bucket of tricolor couscous for the occasion, because I like tricolor everything.

Ingredients, assemble.

My closest grocery (Albertson’s) doesn’t sell pre-chopped onions, so that was my SECOND chopped onion of the day. I chop them under cold water, with more emphasis on FAST than technique.

There’s something very satisfying about breaking a head of cauliflower down into florets.

My lovelies.

Somehow it didn’t really compute in my mind that all that crap wouldn’t fit super easily into my biggest pan. I was just like… oh, everything will reduce when it cooks. Vegetable shrinkage.

Really, the first mishap was the crushing of the tomatoes.

Hug me, squeeze me.

My mom has this classic story about how she went on a date, a fork was stuck into a tomato, and wardrobe stain-age ensued. But for some reason, I squeezed into these whole, peeled tomatoes without a clue as to what might ensue.

Tomato juice got everywhere, is what ensued. (See the photo at the top.)

But I forged ahead, adding everything else. (Again, see the photo at the top.)

At that point I was like — I cannot bring this to a boil. It will explode. So I called upon my new soup-making pot, which had been sitting unused for a while. And a great migration began.

Much roomier.

While that boiled, I rinsed and chopped some farmers’ market spinach, hoping it was approximately 5 ounces.

And vegetable shrinkage eventually did occur!

Receded into the juices.

The spinach got added in the last two minutes. I have pictures of it, but it’s spinach. You know the drill.

I was also excited about this recipe because it utilized that really simple couscous cooking technique of just adding a bit of hot water and letting it sit. It’s a handy technique if you’re going to serve the couscous with a hot stew or something liquid-y — because the couscous doesn’t cook 100% until you add said hot liquid thing to it. If you just want plain couscous — boil it with some olive oil, or whatever the instructions are. Trust me. Or you will be eating hard couscous.

This was the finished product:

Very colors-of-Italy.

I didn’t love it at the time, I think because the blog from which the recipe came really RAVED about this stew, and I felt they’d oversold it a bit. Also, it was really filling, and I realized that it would take way too many meals to get this out of my fridge. (One night, a friend came and helped me eat it — bless her.)

I was like — wow, I have a crapload of “meh” food, mostly vegan. All in a day’s work!

But I think in the transfer, I may have lost some of the spices (maybe they were sticking to the pan)? And, a few weeks later, I am weirdly craving this stew like no other. So… I guess it was kind of a hit, with my stomach. I’ll probably cook it again soon.

Next time I’ll know to start it off in the big pot. And I’ll probably buy pre-cut, pre-washed cauliflower and spinach… out of laziness, I guess. And I’ll hold the tomatoes way down into the pot when I squeeze them, to minimize the mess.

This concludes my trilogy of mishaps… until next time.

Because these things always happen in threes, right?

xoxo…

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Cookbooks for You & Yours

December 14, 2012

My menorah has a menorah.

Well, today turned out to be unexpectedly shitty. (I feel that I must acknowledge this, lest I seem callous or clueless.)

But I’ve been meaning to jot a quick blog about cookbooks, because they’re a great gift if you haven’t pulled together your gift list yet. And food/shopping for gifts is always a comforting distraction. Usually.

I will openly admit that I tend to look up recipes on Google as needed, but this year I’m really hoping to get in the habit of flipping through my cookbook and picking a few meals for the week.

Already I’ve gotten 3 cookbooks for Hanukkah 2012: The Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook, The Moosewood Cookbook, and The Flavor Bible. The first two came from Sam. I’ve been a Top Chef fan for a while, and recently roped Sam into watching. His parents are big fans of Moosewood, which was first published in the 1970s. I guess it’s a testament to my less meat-cooking life that I didn’t notice that it was vegetarian as I was flipping through it. I was just like… yum, yum, more yum! And there are lots of cute doodles. And… seriously SO MANY recipes for each category. Every type of soup you can think of.

The Flavor Bible came from my sister, and honestly I’m still not 100% sure that it’s a cookbook (I mean… it’s a bible), but it seems cool. I think it’s more of a guide to pairing flavors, which I always wish I had when I’m trying to figure out what I can throw into my various concoctions.

Serious Eats put out a list of their top ten cookbooks of 2012, and there are a lot of fun-looking gift options (for yourself or others). I’m a big fan of Smitten Kitchen, and I’m sure her cookbook is as fun as her site. Jerusalem: A Cookbook looks delicious, with a lot of beautiful vegetables. I’ve already sent out a couple of these books as gifts… so I’ll keep mum about the rest. (And I already gave Sam a pizza cookbook, but not the one from the list. We’re having fun with the various crust types.)

And just yesterday I came across this awesome idea — Middlewest Magazine, which will be published on recipe cards. The video of the cake-making on Kickstarter has pretty much convinced me that I need to subscribe. I  haven’t watched it with sound, but I’m pretty sure it’s lemon poppy seed. I have a major weakness for lemon poppy seed. (They’re already far over their fundraising goal, so it looks like I’m not the only one.)

What are your favorite cookbooks?

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Posted by yapplebee

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