ginger is hot

So ginger seems good for you, so I added sugar and made it candy. It turned out great, but I didn't really expect it to retain so much of the hot spiciness through the candying process. Oh well, it helps me eat less at a time. As an added bonus, I used too much water for the sugar crystallization step, so I poured off about half the liquid after it had boiled for like 15 minutes and used it as a syrup for quasi-ginger ale by mixing with some cranberry lime seltzer. It was great! Also spicy.











Recipe by Alton Brown. Another successful application of my mandoline slicer.

BRIAN OUT.

i hate learning about cooking!

every now and then i learn lessons in cooking. these lessons are not traditional, like how to cook that with this or how to use this in those, no. it's more like when a child or caveman first touches fire. "youch!" they say, "i won't do that again because it's extremely painful!" tonight is the first time i cooked something truly, extremely painful.

it started with those spices i bought from the spice house. while browsing their site, i decided to grab a can of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, an ingredient i remember seeing in an alton brown chili recipe. yesterday, the spices arrived, and after buying a big hunk of pork i decided tonight would be a perfect chance to pull out my mom's pressure cooker and take a swing at some chili.



for your reference, i used the following ingredients:
-pork
-diced tomatoes
-diced tomatoes with green chiles
-chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
-cannelini beans
-blue corn tortilla chips

when i opened that beautiful can of chipotles in adobo, the smell was amazing. it smelled exactly like you want a manly, spicy, delicious thing to smell. smokey, yet you'd expect it to be sweet. i looked at the chiles and decided they needed to be chopped up a bit. no problem. dumped them all in the pot.

what i didn't know is that these are super spicy little demons. there i was, grinning while the pressure was released and steamy, wonderful smells filled the kitchen. "ha ha, this will be a chili to remember," i might have said (note that i definitely would not have said this). i filled up two mugs, topped with cheddar, and took a bite.



alarms really do go off in spicy chili situations. whether or not five went off for me tonight, i can't be sure, i fell under a spell. the alarms came in the form of signals from your tongue and throat to your brain, shouting "you are about to have a seizure! you will lose consciousness if you continue! you will never eat food again!" i ignored these and declared it to be much spicier than i imagined, but still delicious underneath the heat. another spoon. the pain did not subside, but i am manly, right? another. amy asks me to add rice to spread the spice around and make it more bearable. she downs a few small spoonfuls and declares it still to be too much, giving up. amy, you are smarter than i. for soon enough, on top of the blaze roaring in my mouth, the urge to vomit grabbed a hold of me and has yet to let go even now, nearly an hour later. milk, water, bread, more water. nothing works.

so i decided that maybe i didn't have enough non-chipotles in the chili to balance the spice. i figured i could remedy the situation by rereading that recipe of alton brown's i mentioned earlier. i thumbed to the recipe and the wave of nausea became a tsunami.

among other ingredients, alton listed:

1 chipotle chile in adobo

there must have been 15 chiles in that can that i gleefully plopped into my chili. he even notes that one should not use one whole can.



so now i'm making pancakes. the chili has been pyrexed and tossed into the freezer as a chili base. i will use 1/12th of it for the next time i make chili.

lesson learned.



BRIAN OUT.

LEFT SIDE, STRONG SIDE

BRIAN OUT.

utility and blood

Sometimes I become sort of addicted to things I can't afford. Everyone probably does this. And seeing that so desired item gets me really excited. So, I put it to you, does this image excite you?



I need to take a minute.



Okay. Wow, I may have to grab another cup of coffee to recover. Not that I really want that specific model, but it is surprisingly dramatic in aesthetic for a knife, wouldn't you say? Actually, I would love this knife, but it costs $300. Not ready for that kind of investment.

Cooking tools are of great interest to me as of late. For a while now, I've been in love with my 12-inch cast iron skillet (and I still am). Over the two or so years I've been really interested in food preparation, I've found that cast iron is my favorite material, because it can handle any heat--any kitchen heat, that is; it probably can't handle 5,000 C as my brother Joe offered up as a challenge. You can cook anything in cast iron, from pad thai to cobbler. Even though it's probably less healthy, I also like roasting in the pan, if for any reason, it looks awesome pulling a browned roast hunk of protein out of the oven on a contrasting deep black, rustic thing of beauty. I mean, look at this turkey:



Hmm, embarassing that I used the plastic red popup POS. NEVER AGAIN thanks to my Polder. Amy hates that I call it Polder instead of thermometer.

I'm working my way into some other cooking methods made possible by different specific pans. I'd really like to get a cast iron dutch oven, but before I do the research and figure out the size I want, I'm going to venture east and start goofing around with a wok my great cook of a mother gave me. Now, it isn't actually cast iron, but rather carbon steel, which will heat up faster and is much lighter. The only issue is that Amy and I used it a few times without knowing about the necessary maintenance, and thus there is a bit of rustiness that will require some steel wool before I recure. The pan already has a beautiful deep black patina in the bottom, but just above it things start turning orange. A regular sponge is not doing the trick. I'm excited about this project. Once I get rid of the rust, I will then begin the curing process which is only possible with frequent use. I seriously can't wait to get the steel wool and get going on this.



Part of my excitement for these tools of the kitchen is that I found out I have slightly high levels of "bad cholesterol" in my blood, also known as LDL or low-density lipoprotein. Pretty much, not good for my staying alive if I let it get worse. So I'm avoiding baking (less carbos means easier to lose weight) and increasing the amount of vegetables and lean meat in my meals. This requires more skill in developing the tastes of these foods, since I cannot rely on fatty methods like adding cheese or frying (I use cheese a lot, as it turns out).

Oh, and I'm also pumped about enhancing flavor by the use of herbs and spices. I went to a really awesome online store called The Spice House, and ordered up a few things like fancy cinnamon (actually Vietnamese Cassia or Saigon cinnamon), a nutmeg, and some allspice (which I have never used and feel like I'm missing out). To use the cinnamon and nutmeg, I also grabbed a microfiber grater. I'll be adding nutmeg to your eggnog like you never imagined. Spicing things up is fun, and maybe I'll achieve a great barbecue sauce or rub or something. Or at least keep my oats tasting great.



Hey, while I'm on the subject of cooking tools, I got a mandolin slicer from my brother Joe for Christmas, and that thing is super great. It allows me to cut vegetables super thin, which I find I enjoy most with carrots. But just for fun, I made a low cholesterol, high health ratatouille style meal a few nights ago with brown rice, carrots, onions, eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, and some on the spot tomato sauce (kitchen ready tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, basil, garlic and oregano). I sliced the carrots, eggplant, and the squashes (zucchini is a squash!) with the mandolin and cooked briefly in my cast iron skillet. The thin slices were really pleasant in my mouth, and although it doesn't seem superior to a more coarsely chopped ratatouille, it was still really freakin good. I had it with a boiled chicken breast (pathetic I know) and was actually amazed at how easily I prepared a healthy meal that tasted so good. Unfortunately, I made a LOT of it, and Amy is gone this weekend, so I've been stuck eating it for lunch and dinner almost every day.

Writing and reading about food is almost as good as eating it, sometimes. And if I'm going to rid myself of this bad cholesterol, maybe I need to spend more time writing about it, anyway. Just a warning.

BRIAN OUT.

the man was smoking two cigars.

in each hand, a stumpy stogy was pinched between unexpected knuckles. he marched like one would normally stroll, casual but studious of his surroundings, but a march it was, and he didn't sense my dog and i ten feet in his wake. the smell was of antique armchairs and reminded me of a childhood friend's visiting grandfather. at the intersection, instead of turning and staying on our quiet block, he glided over to the unplowed sidewalks of roads i've never even bothered to notice.

the trees were taller on those streets, i noticed then, straining unpleasantly in attempts to reach the sun. even long after my dog and i turned the corner, the smell was still there, soaked into my sweatshirt.

BRIAN OUT.

i need a calendar

i'm thinking of making my own calendar for this year.

i guess i could be cool and use some of the better digital pictures i've taken over the years, but that requires a lot of browsing through all 20+ gigs of images I have.

i could always buy one, but it seems silly when you can easily print off a piece of paper with a grid of numbers on it.

i did find this today via Stumble:


click it to see the full calendar, it's pretty cool.

ok. i don't want to talk about calendars any more.

drove down to somerville yesterday morning (in the snowstorm) to meet up with amy and others for brunch at a cool place (johnny d's). unfortunately, the directions i got from google maps were not good enough for the confusing roads of the city, and i ended up getting there an hour late. my french toast was still delicious, though. i learned a lot about driving in the snow, too. don't do it!

since yesterday was her birthday, i gave amy presents. one was a whirley-pop stovetop popcorn kettle thing-a-do, which made awesome popcorn for me to eat too much of. also, i gave her a shiny dell laptop. so amy and i won't be talking much anymore. unless you count sharing links of cool things we found on stumble. or facebook poking. and i guess if you count chatting on gmail as "talking".

leela is whining. we changed her food a week or two ago, and now she poops one extra time in the morning. it's not gross, relax. unless you were thinking about how it smells, or how it feels between your fingers with only a thin, thin layer of market basket plastic bag to protect you. then yeah, it's gross. but it's really more of an annoyance. she goes out every day in the morning at 7am, a chore that amy and i alternate every day. usually she drops a deuce at this time. but since we switched foods, she now requires a second outing at about 8:30, for the exact same reason. it's like the first one never happened. and since amy has a job in the outside world and is not home after 7:30am, I am stuck taking her out at this time every day. i'm in my freakin pajamas leela, C'MON! note that my pajamas are all i wear no matter what time of day it is. also note that pajamas, for me, are composed of the following: either pants or shorts that do not have a zipper, a t shirt with or without a sweatshirt (or two, depending on how much i don't want to turn on the heat), and, perhaps most important, slippers. note on the slippers: leela, in her early pup days, tore a hole in the front of my left slipper, so sometimes my left foot gets colder than my right, and i have to wear socks. she's still whining. i guess i must go.

BRIAN OUT.

this moon. this coffee

dry eyes, alone.
it's not a glow tonight,
it's a beam punching off of everything,
i can see the tops of trees and my shoes,
nobody has a stomach so full.
decaf brewing, blinds tilt open for the light.

BRIAN OUT.