Secret of Life Chili

Yes, I have discovered the meaning of life. I really wish I could tell you, but you are not ready for that kind of spiritual awakening. But, have no fear. When you are ready, that knowledge will literally fall into your lap... Unless you are standing, in which case the secret of life will fall to the floor and your destiny will remain unfulfilled and you will probably wind up with an office job.
So how does one prepare oneself for the secret of life? Mong Beans.
True story:

In India, there was a very saintly person. Mung beans and rice with yogurt was his entire diet. He would make it each night and eat it for breakfast the next morning. That man was a radiant light, just from the food he eat. People would come from all over to be healed by this man. Each morning they would form a line outside his door. Whatever sickness they had, he would give them mung beans and rice with yogurt. And they would be cured! That's why it is called the food of the angels. It has protein, carbohydrates, everything you need.

You can easily check up on the specifics, or you can just look it up Here. The good news is that you can do this and still drink Yogi Tea. All other tea brands will disturb your Qi. The plural of which, and this is important, is NOT "Qis" but it is, in fact, cheese.
I must admit that I accidentally stumbled on the secret of life in the grocery store. I have a pressure cooker which opens the world of dry beans. Whereas, it used to take a fortnight to prepare dried kidney beans, I can now do that in a half hour. So, dried beans are back, baby! And I went a little crazy. I branched out to mong beans and adzuki beans, and consequently have achieved total consciousness. Something that would not have been possible with a jar of Goya Cuban Style Black Beans.
And what did I do with my newly achieved total consciousness? I made chili (something that would have been possible with Goya Cuban Style Black Beans).



Secret of Life Chili
1/2 C mong beans
1/2 C adzuki beans .... Soaked then cooked in the pressure cooker
1 onion
1.5 T olive oil
2 Jalapeno ................. Sauté then add
2 cloves of garlic
The cooked beans
1 C diced tomatoes
1 C water
1/2 C chopped parsley
chili powder, paprika, cayenne, and cumin, salt and pepper

Cook for 30 more minutes and serve over rice and under cheese.

Top side downism

Upside down pizza is, ahem, my own creation. I've decided that I will
make this. And so, to stay true to my resolution, and to not forget what I intend to do, I have preblogged it. This is what long hours of studying and thinking about cycling can do (namely, predispose one to intense and welcome distractibility)... I have been debating the merits of a long slow ride or a shorter slow ride tomorrow. I fully intend to ride slowly. It doesn't usually happen.
What usually happens is that I hit a certain point in a slow ride, let's call it "a hill," and push up my tempo. Then, I become mildly annoyed at how out of breathe I am and I start telling myself, "No, you gotta be able to ride up that hill and keep it going.". And next thing I know I am back at my door after having averaged 20.8 mph for the last hour. I consider that a fast ride. Slow rides are not my forte. So, with that in the background, I have to debate what to eat post ride (to replace the nearly 1000 calories an hour that that pace can burn up)... But I digress (and often).

Layer 1, a melange of toppings. This will begin with something, anything really, sauteed in some olive oil and then mixed with cheese. I'm thinkining a gruyere cheese with bits of thick bacon or thin ham, and onions, peppers and garlic.
So it was 2 pieces of beef bacon, 1 onion, 4 small bell peppers, and 2 cloves of garlic with emmentaler cheese.

Layer 2, sauce. Sauce or sliced tomatoes with a bit of salt and seasonings? I'm thinking the latter...
Wound up being a light tomato sauce more mixed in than layered.

....I think I may go out with my tri-aero bars for a quick and very fast spin tomorrow followed by a long ride on Sunday...

Layer 3, crust. I am gluten free. Not entirely in a gluten will kill me way, but in an I avoid it like cleaning the bathroom way (sometimes necessary, sometimes desirable, but never an ideal use of my time). So, with that in mind, I think I will take some soaked polenta and layer it over the top to form an even crust. I may even stir in an egg so it becomes more of a crust. I will spray oil on the top so it glistens and marginally fries under the hot food warmer lights. Then I will bake it on HOT until it is cooked. Then, i will sprinkle it with Parmesan. Then I will enjoy.
Polenta with some grated Parmesan on top. No egg.

Out of the oven it was delicious, but a bit watery. I sort of expected it to set more as it cooked. In retrospect, I might try that egg in it next time, and I will thicken the polenta (that is, use more of it).


1 onion
Peppers (I used 4 small bell peppers, but one large should work well too)
2 T olive oil.................................... Mix and sauté in a cast iron pan
2 cloves of garlic
2 prices of beef bacon.................. Add to peppers and onions on stove
4 oz cheese.................................. Mix in over heat until melty
Tomato sauce............................... Layered over the cheese and sauteed veg
1/2 C Polenta with salt and pepper, not quite fully cooked






Layer the polenta on top and sprinkle with Parmesan. The polenta is not fully cooked yet so it is more watery and easier to layer. Then throw it in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. Take it out, let it set for 5-10 minutes and serve.

Marmalade and other movements

I decided to make marmalade. It seemed only fitting as it was supposed to go inside a cupcake. I was not about to make the cupcakes, that would involve using measuring cups, but I still felt I should do my part. I found a willing participant who would gladly make cupcakes. My girlfriend is a "stress baker." What this means is that her primary coping mechanism is to bake cookies or, in what has become her new nodus operandi, cupcakes. You can see all the delicious results of her stressful days on here. I really try not to stress her out just for the cookies, but sometimes, I must admit, I do give into temptation.
To assuage my guilt, I try to cook for her. Real food. Manly food. Not especially manly food, because I don't like to grill. My last grilling experience... The grill caught on fire. I was making hamburgers. Little balls of ground beef. Not gourmet, just simple hamburgers. Easy, delicious, what could go wrong? The grill could catch on fire. I know, it's a grill. The fire is how you cook things. That turned into a massive grease fire right under my burgers. Those burgers, they turned into something between a hockey puck and a racquetball.
So, since it does not involve being angered near a grill, I made marmalade. I scoured the Internet for nearly 7 minutes to find the perfect recipe. Most of the recipes read like this: 14 pounds of oranges, 37 pounds of sugar, a home commercial cannery, and a dromedary camel. Not having a camel, only a few oranges, and no desire for a post apocalyptic store of orange marmalade, I nearly gave up the whole project. Ultimately, I four a recipe that made only one, normal sized jar. I read it, took some ideas and then made my own recipe. So here is what I did.

1.5 oranges... I ate half of that second orange, but i probably shoud've used it. I did put the peel into the concoction. I actually used a blood orange and half a regular orange because I was going for a slightly different flavor.
1 lime. This is keeping with that "slighty different flavor."
1/4 C sugar. This is not particularly sweet. Add more sugar if you prefer.
1/4 C water.

Wash the oranges and lime, then slice them thin with the peel on. I then threw them into a food processor and hit pulse a few times to make them smaller. With mixed results.











Throw everything into an appropriately sized saucepan and let it boil. Your goal here is to boil the water, dissolve the sugar and start softening this oranges. Let that go about 10 minutes, then turn it down to simmer for the next half hour. Remove the pan from the heat and read a good book. After waiting until your marmalade has made progress on its way to cooling or you have made sufficient progress toward total consciousness, place your marmalade into 1 appropriately sized jar.
Unless you are planning on stockpiling marmalade in case the whole Y2K thing finally catches up to us, you don't need to do any ridiculous canning process. Just throw it in the fridge until you are ready to make cupcakes.

Pancakerianism

Pancakes. Yes, that is a complete sentence. The recipe follows, and with a little maple syrup, you will see that this is nearly a full paragraph.
I am currently sitting in a review of the colon. This is the culmination of a 1.5 years and about a half million dollars of medical education: the colon. I can now respond to any medical emergency or serious disease or minor discomfort with a crinkled brow and a far off thoughtful look. I may even say, "that's interesting."
Tutu
So, start your day with breakfast. And, depending on how far you are planning on riding, fuel up with more, or less...



1/2 C Oats
1/2 C almond flour
1/2 C Buckwheat Flour
1/2 C Millet Flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 chopped apple
1 T of molasses
.... Mix all this together and then sprinkle the top with cinnamon
Meanwhile, take a pad of butter and melt it in A frying pan then pour it over the pancake batter. When it hits the cinnamon it will release the most amazing aroma. Mix it all together.
Then take that very same buttery frying pan and use it to cook your pancakes.
With a little maple syrup, they are the most worthwhile thing you can do in the morning without soap.

Book Clubism

Ah yes, as I was sitting in my chambers delighting in a fine and well hued scotch, enjoying a delightful repartee with some author whose unquestionable intellectual virtues adorn the pages of this, most delightful tome, I came across the passage:

"Acute liver failure with massive hepatic necrosis. This is most often caused by drugs or fulminant viral hepatitis. Acute liver failure denotes clinical hepatic insufficiency that progresses from the onset of symptoms to hepatic encephalopathy in 2 to 3 weeks. A course extending as long as 3 months is called subacute failure."

I nearly fell out of my chair as I positively exploded in laughter. Subacute... subacute. Very clever, very clever indeed, my dear man. I did not see that one coming at all. Robbins, you old dog, you. You have done it again sir. You have delivered the perfect punchline after the delicious 427 page setup. I must admit, this is anything but bland and predictable. And... oh dear, I have neglected to include the "spoiler alert" warning with this entry. So, for those of you who have not yet read Robbins Pathology, or not yet up to this page, I offer my sincerest of apologies.
It is the little things in life. Like fried eggplant with parmesan cheese. This was both a light dinner with some tomato sauce, then breakfast with a soft boiled egg and some hot sauce... And so simple.

Set your oven at HOT. I used the high broil with the n rack place high.
Grab an eggplant and slice into 1/2 thick slices
1/2 C of flour (maybe more)
1 egg, beaten and mixed with a little water
Salt and pepper
Olive or canola oil spray
Grated Parmesan

Grab the flour... I used a brown rice flour... And mix it with some salt and pepper.
Dip the eggplant in the egg and then coat it generously with the flour and place on a greased or parchmented baking sheet. Spray the top with oil and let it fry. Take it out, turn it over, respray and lit it fry. Once it was cooked on both sides I took the eggplant out and sprinkled some grated parmesan on top.


I served it with some arrabiata sauce and it was amazing.
I served it with a soft boiled egg and some chili sauce and it was amazing.

Those pesky carrotisms

Got a lot of carrots laying around and don't know what to do with them? Pesto them. While not technically a verb, pesto has many uses, although, the best is to serve it with pasta. So I took four carrots and roasted them. Then I roasted garlic. Then, something amazing involving sausage happened and then I ate.

4 carrots
4 cloves of unpeeled garlic
Put these in the oven and roast them (350 for 30 minutes)
1/2 C of onion sauteed in
1 T of Olive Oil with a smattering of crushed red peppers
Meanwhile, I placed
1 C of parsley into a food processor. I let the onion and the carrots cool a little (5 minutes) and then chopped the carrots a little smaller and peeled the garlic. It all went into the food processor with
2 T walnuts
And then I let it rip and I had a delicious orange colored pesto loaded with vitamins and nutrients and healthy fats.

I cooked up some chicken sausage and brown rice pasta and put it all together and it was magic... But not very photogenic.





I have a rule for this bloggedness, I only take pictures with my phone. It keeps things very simple for me.

Your doing wot?

I've decided to make wot. And, in the words of the great Chesterton, "Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly," I set out on my quest. Wot is an ethiopean stew that is often filled with things like hard boiled eggs, chicken, or just about anything.
Step 1: prep the beans. This involved 2 cups of garbonzos with water in the pressure cooker. Boil, let stand until the pressure drops. Then I added more water and 1.5 C of lentils and repeated the boil, let stand, allow the pressure to drop... No matter what I do, I seem to be left with somewhat unpleasantly al dente garbonzos until they have become leftovers.
Step 2: make some Berbere. Berbere (which my iPad keeps capitalizing) is a blend of spice used in the southern mediterranean regions. I roughly imitated a recipe I found here http://www.cyber-kitchen.com/recipes/Berbere_Spice_Mix.htm but only roughly--I abhor measuring in the kitchen, which makes me a lousy baker. I thought for a moment that all was ruined because I had no Cardamom. Oh, but I did.





I had to hull them. I mixed cinnamon, coriander, paprika, cardamom, turmeric, garlic, cumin, red and black pepper, ginger (incidentally, the iPad keeps capitalizing Ginger as though this were that kind of blog...) and whatever else I could salvage from the spice cabinet.






Step 3: sauté the onions with garlic and about a Tbsp of Berbere.
Step 4: mix together and cook. I added more water, a cup of tomato sauce and two more T of berbere and salt. I tasted it and let it simmer.
Step 5: at the last minute, I decided to add some chicken to flesh out some flavors and textures. So I took two rock hard absolutely frozen chicken breasts and added them to the pressure cooker, resealed it, and cooked the whole thing in there for a 25 minutes. I then pulled The chicken using two forks to shred it.
Step 6: things remembered. There had been another Berbere mix that I had looked up that called for a bitter herb indigenous to Africa. So I chopped some arugula and added that. It's bitter and an herb.





The verdict... Pretty good.

2 C dry garbanzos
2 C dried lentils
1.5 onions
3 cloves garlic
Berbere spice mix (paprika, chili, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, pepper, garlic, turmeric, Ginger, allspice, red pepper, black pepper)
2 chicken breasts or a number of chicken legs or parts (just throw them in the pot and cook or just skip the chicken and go veg)
1 C arugula
Salt to taste

Asian breakfast and Turkey Coffee

Waking up early is the next best thing... To a full night of sleep. If you are going to lose sleep, the way to do it is to lose sleep to a productive morning and good breakfast. And that's just what I did last Wednesday. Because it was early, I dispensed with the tea and tried my hand at some Turkish Coffee. Suffice it to say, it is not my forte. I think I have the measurements slightly off. I don't know why, it says very clear: 5-6 gms to 65 mL of water. I don't know what that is in American. The first cup was too weak, so I drank it and made another. It was better, but not there yet (I have since made a third cup and it went even better. By cup 4 we should be in business.






But it is fun to make in it's classy copper Cezve. In case you were wondering, my Turkish Coffee fascination was a Christmas gift from my brother. I made breakfast, then lunch (more on this) and coffee.





Then I studied until it was time for a little morning swim workout before class. 1000 meters in just over 19 coffee fueled minutes! That's not really fast, but it's pretty good for me.





And, for lunch I tried my hand at some sushi. I am not a sushi chef... As I found out. I made up a batch of jasmine rice and let it cool a little.






I spread it over some seaweed and put in julienned carrot and celery and cream cheese and avocado. I rolled it on a sushi bamboo mat (thanks world market). With a little soy sauce, it was amazing. But, more importantly, it was easy.