Imprecision Cooking: Can't take credit for these

Ever go to a restaurant, and eating something so delicious that you become obsessed with it and cyber stalk it until you find the perfect recipe for it? Yeah, me too!

Here are my five favorite table-to-computer recipes:

1. Restaurant: Kit n Kitchen; food: chimichurri sauce

Recipe I love: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chimichurri/ 

My husband will put chimichurri on anything.

2. Restaurant: Scratch; food: shakshuka

Recipe I love: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014721-shakshuka-with-feta

My kids love shakshuka so much, my daughter wanted it for her birthday party.

3. Restaurant: My old boss; food: Irish cottage bread

Recipe I love: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/16947/amazingly-easy-irish-soda-bread/

This is the plain kind. It's supposed to be more authentic. I like to make it as a part of a ploughman's lunch. Makes me feel like we are on vacation.

4. Restaurant: None. I've never had this dish until I made it from this recipe (the photos sold me); food: bolognese

Recipe I love: http://userealbutter.com/2013/03/11/bolognese-sauce-recipe/

A note: I don't really think you need 8 hours to make this. Three is still awesome, and even 1.5 will work.

5. Restaurant: Sol's cousin's girlfriend; food: mole

It's really a crazy recipe, but here's a manageable one: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/chicken-mole-with-chipotles-105994

Imprecision Cooking: Frosting

I hate most store frosting. Also, I can only take from-scratch cooking so far. See the chocolate heart on the cupcake above? I bought a huge block of fancy baking chocolate, thinking that I'd temper it and make hearts, easy-peasy. I ended up making a huge mess and wasting 3/4 of this block (into my face!), with chocolate decorations that still melted. I asked my best friend, who is a home economics pro, and she said, "Just mix the fake chocolate melting wafers into real chocolate. It's impossible to temper chocolate."

So there. Only five hours down the drain.

I also hate baking. It usually takes too much precision.

My daughter recently turned one, so to pretend I know what I'm doing, I bought unfrosted cupcakes and a small cake from Sam's Club, and then decorated them myself. Came out pretty good, I think:

But, as everyone knows, a cupcake is only the vehicle for frosting, so a good frosting is key. Here is the best best best frosting:

-Whipped cream, 1 1/2 cups (if you have a really good blender, you can use half and half, or even regular milk--just wrap a blue cooler pack around the cup part when you do this)

-Instant pistachio pudding, 2-3 Tablespoons (some sites say to use the whole packet; resist!)

-Almond or vanilla extract, 1/4 teaspoon

-Green food coloring, couple drops

Pour it all in the blender. Blend! In about 45 seconds, you have awesome frosting that is light, delicious in a sophisticated way, and holds its shape even when it's warm.

You want the pink kind?:

-Whipped cream, 1 1/2 cups

-Instant strawberry jello, 2-3 Tablespoons 

-Red food coloring, couple drops

-Niceties, in this case being orange extract or some other unexpected extract

Pour it all in the blender cup, stir, and let it sit in the fridge for a few minutes to dissolve. Then, blend! This will take a little longer (I don't know why), and is more look and smell than taste, but still quite light.

Imprecision Cooking: Lu'au Leaf

So this is an uniquely Hawai’i problem: we are having a bumper crop of kalo. We (that is, Sol, with me hovering in a completely useful and unannoying way) had moved some stuff around in our garden, and made some raised beds. I planted seeds (basil, tomato, lettuces, green onions, cilantro, eggplant), fertilized with Pro-Em (which is amazeballs, by the way), and in just a few weeks, we had… kalo?!

In my loud but completely unscientific opinion, the kalo bits had gone into hibernation and we awoke them by tilling the soil. There’s kalo everywhere, even in the compost heap!

Most folks know kalo for using the corm for poi and the lu’au leaf for laulau. This kalo, since it’s grown in the garden, have small corm and huge leaves, so no poi for us. And we don’t have an imu handy, so no old-school laulau.

But we make do. Here are three ways to cook lu’au leaf, that don’t require an imu:

1.       Stew lu’au

This is a favorite of my in-laws and about as easy as it gets.

Ingredients

-Meat, 2-4 lbs. Sol likes pork. I like beef. He’s doing the buying and cooking, so pork it is.

-Lu’au leaf, a bunch as big as two or three cats. I said it was imprecise! It will cook down.

Here’s the key: cut up the leaves small, like the sized of your phone, or smaller. Not only will they cook faster, they will fit on your spoon. Lu’au is already a food that non-ethnic people find intimidating and gross; having pieces twice as long as your utensil is like a caricature.

Ok, so cube your meat, fry up in a big pot. Add lu’au leaf. Add water so that the meat is covered. Add salt to taste. Hang out for a while so everything cooks down. Eat!

2.      Slow cooker special

Ingredients

-Ti leaves, 8-10. You might want to take the midribs out.

-Lu’au leaves, 10-15. You can cut them up if you want.

-Meat, a pound or so. Or fish. Or not. I don’t like having meat all the time.

-Coconut milk, two cans. Or one can if you're scurrred.

-Sweet potato, cubed.

-Garlic, to taste. I use about 15 cloves, because I’m a garlic head.

-Salt, at least a tablespoon. I undersalt stuff.

-Niceties, to taste, if you like. Some niceties include: cumin, chili, cilantro, chopped onion.

First, the ti leaves line everything. You could just put everything in one of those plastic, slow cooker bags, but I freak out about plastic, so I’m going with leaves where I can. Make a layer of lu’au, then one layer of meat rubbed in salt and a splash of coconut milk, another layer lu’au. Then chop up your lu’au stems really fine, and make a layer of coconut milk, salt, garlic, sweet potato, and stems. Then, another layer of lu’au, then the meat layer, then lu’au, then garlic layer, and so on. When you reach the top, put a layer of ti leaves, throw that baby on high, and walk away! Set it, and forget it! He he he. Cook maybe 6 hours, but who is gone from home at work only 6 hours? No one. Eight hours is fine.

3.      Just add to stew

Ingredients

-Lu’au leaves, a bunch the size of a cat.

-Beef stew. Or whatever stew you like.

Chop up your lu’au leaves (see directions above). Parboil them while you are prepping your stew ingredients, then drain. Start making your stew. After meat, add lu’au leaves, then make the rest of the stew like normal. That’s it.

And don’t forget to test your food, to see if it makes your throat itchy. If it does, just let yourself get lost in looking up stuff on YouTube, and when you’re done, it will be ready.

Imprecision Cooking: Cookies

When I first started blogging, there was just starting to be a blogging industry. Mostly, folks would post ads from different companies, or try a product sent to them for free. It was still, largely, just for hobbying folks who liked to write and share stuff. And then, everyone started specializing and monetizing: fan fiction sites (you can thank those for Fifty Shades of Grey), homesteading (you can learn about chicken inoculation, combating candida, AND aquaponics in one site!) and, most insidious of all, the lifestyle blog. Through good lighting, macro shots, and shabby chic-style props and templates, these lifestyle blogs made us alternately inspired and depressed by these women’s gluten-free, vegetarian, made-from-scratch lifestyles. Ugh. Like I don’t have enough inadequacy in my life.

Not to knock anybody, because I’ve definitely visited and deployed many a organizational strategy and recipe, but it’s definitely an industry now. Each of these women are selling their own brand of perfection, hoping to be the next Pioneer Woman or Oh, She Glows green monster movement founder (c’mon guys, it’s just a damn smoothie!). Each blog post is lovingly crafted to give you, J. Peterman-style, a narrative about why this smoothie/baked good/pasta sauce/craft came into being, often involving a cutesy story about their kid or significant other. Puke. Perhaps this critique says more about me than them. Hmm.

One day, after working myself into a lather visiting site after site researching the Perfect Cookie, what I realized is what those stories are actually telling me: cookies are comfort and love that you can give to people. When someone gives you a cookie, you say and think, “Thanks.” Precise measurements are not needed for this interaction, and neither are fancy ingredients. Plus, if you’ve been to my house, you know that we’re usually missing half the ingredients, making any attempt at precision moot.

So, I’m breaking down my favorite—shall we say “rustic”—cookie recipe, for when you have more love than raw ingredients.

Ingredients:

-2 cups, chocolate. You can do chips (we buy in bulk), nibs, chopped up chunks. If you want, you can substitute with raisins or fruit. I hope you don’t want.

-3 cups, oatmeal. I use oatmeal because I like my cookies like I like my thighs: thick, but healthy. I don’t make a distinction of quick or steal cut. If you think they are too hard, you can always soften them up in a tiny (like ½ cup) bit of milk, simmered on the stove for a few minutes.

-1/2 to 1 cup, flour. I usually just grind up the oatmeal. It’s just easier, and then I can feel superior about gluten-free cookies. I like a chunky cookie, so to me the flour just helps things stick together, and smoothes out the rough edges—civilizes the cookie, so to speak.

-1/2 teaspoon, baking soda or baking powder. There’s some kind of science going on here. Just one of them is fine.

-Binder. This can be: 1 egg, 1 mashed banana, some soaked chia seeds. If you cooked your oatmeal on the stove, you don’t need a binder.

-1 ½ cups, nuts. I like walnuts or pecans. Peanuts are ok. Almonds can be hard to chew, unless they’re slivered or sliced. I like when there is more chocolate than nuts.

-1/2 cup, melted butter or coconut oil. Anything but sesame or olive oil. I don’t like them too wet, but if you do, you can add more.

-1/4 to ½ cup, sweetness. Sugar, honey, maple syrup. I don’t know about the fancy stuff: stevia, agave. If you are using fancy natural sweetener, then this recipe is too easy for you.

-1/2 to 1 teaspoon, niceties. These include: cinnamon, chili, vanilla extract, almond extract—those little, personal touches that your family friends note and remember, ala, “Oh, Clarissa—she used to make these great cookies, with just a hint of curry.” Or whatever.

-pinch of salt

Dry ingredients in a bowl and stir.

Wet ingredients and stir. Toppings and stir. Oven at 375F. Bake 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven’s temperament. You can make 36 small cookies, 20 decent cookies, or two pans that you can cut into bars. Or eat whole. I’m not here to judge.

40x40 Adventure 2 completed: Combining Complete a declutter project AND Organize the house

As a teenager I had to catch the bus and walk just about everywhere, so I didn't want to carry too much around. A couple years later, I went to college two plane rides from home, and had to pack up my whole life just about every semester. I got into the habit of traveling light, and hopefully living light: ideally, all the things I loved I could mostly fit into my backpack and/or my car. My board. Music. Writing stuff. Clothes. A water bottle.

And then I got married, and the stuff piled up.

My husband doesn’t throw away things, and comes from the “might be useful someday” school of thought. In addition, he is a mixed-media artist, so every damn cardboard box, magazine, piece of plastic, empty model paint container, and bit of styrofoam has potential utility. I find it slovenly and depressing to have so much crap around--some of it years old--but as long as he kept it in his own area, I didn’t mind so much.

And then I had kids who use him as their example, and it became like living in a landfill.

Usually, I just clean up one smallish area a couple times a month, but I decided to really get after the clutter this time, which is why two of my 40x40 list items ended up getting crossed off. Or maybe just combined, so I have an additional item I can accomplish--I haven’t decided yet.

I used this 40 Bags In 40 Days blog post as inspiration:

http://www.whitehouseblackshutters.com/40-bags-in-40-days-2015/

But as you can see, it asks that you do a bunch of planning, and really if I were that organized, my house wouldn’t be cluttered in the first place. I used her idea of doing the entire project over Lent, and I also liked figuring out places to put the clutter, other than the trash.

Here’s how my forty days broke down:

• Bags of rubbish I threw away: 20
• Bags of goods for recycling: 3
• Bags of stuff donated or handed down: 14
• Bags of stuff repurposed: 2
• Bags of stuff used (you know, canned goods, craft stuff, projects finally completed): 3
• Bags of junk my husband threw away from his garage workshop: 3 (I noted this because it is a big deal for him)

Total: 45 bags!

While I was chucking stuff, I realized that: 1, I had a lot more space in some places, so I could put more stuff on shelves, or put similar items together, whereas before they had to go in separate areas; and 2, it wouldn’t be that much more effort to just organize a bit. So that’s how I ended up organizing the following:

• All the closets (sheets, towels, blankets, and clothes)
• The kitchen cupboards (including the small appliances that I will never use [sorry, wedding-gift ice cream maker], reusable plastic containers of varying sizes with and without matching covers, paper goods [I’m embarrassed to say I had about four different stashes of paper goods in random places in my house], and canned goods)
• The medicine cabinet (why did we keep five empty bottles of kids’ medicine?)
• The book shelves (including our books, Sol’s collection of figurine-making magazines, the kids’ books [and I finally got rid of the half-eaten baby board books], and the kids’ collected school work)
• My craft junk
• Our paperwork (ok, so it may not be completely organized, but it is neatly packed away)

I also made the kids get rid of a bunch of stuff once school ended. I mean, they may have put a lot of work into it, but I don’t want to keep all their worksheets and spelling workbooks. Does this make me a bad mother?

Overall, I would say our house is about 20% emptier than it was before. I think we just get in a rut, keeping stuff out of a false sense of sentimentality (like spelling books) or guilt (I know my husband will feel guilty about throwing away things, as if the trash collectors are looking at our bags of trash and passing judgment on us), or even habit (such as all the plastic bags I tell myself I will use eventually, or the plastic containers who have no mate).

Would I do it again: Eventually, I’d like to get rid of about 30% of what we have left, but that will probably have to happen in 3-5% increments over the next year or two. And then there comes maintenance--the whole thing reminds me a lot of weight loss. But, sure! I’ll keep going.

Status: Success!

40x40 Adventure 1 completed: Family participates in a community race or run/walk

The first thing you should know about this whole 40x40 adventure is that I’m starting this endeavor whilst pregnant with my fourth child. Further, I have progressed in my pregnancy past the “glowing, hip-swinging earth mother/goddess” stage and am well into “grouchy and in pain” phase of the game, which I understand that many women never reach, and also those that do get to this, uh, elevated state of pregnancy don’t usually enter it under their third trimester. I’ve been existing--nay, marinating--in this state since about 20 weeks, when I started having to do all the irritating older-preggo tests and simultaneously my hips and pelvic bones started to be angry with me.

And so.

I don’t want to complain (though I’ve been told I’m quite a complainer, though I prefer the term “critically observant”), especially about myself, but I should have picked less physically demanding endeavors for this damn list. I’ve already been working on the 5 million steps thing, but because of the aforementioned hip and pelvic pain, I had slowed waaaaay down on that--from 8k steps/day, to about (on a good day) 5k steps. At about the time my “I’m a waddling mess who can barely move” pity party had set up tables, refreshments, and chosen a caterer (Ben and Jerry’s, natch), my friend Ke’opu posted about putting together a team to do a community walk to raise funds for diabetes awareness, prevention, and treatment. Her late father, whom I had known from work, had had diabetes, and she was walking to honor him. She had done the team organization and all the research; all I had to do is register my family, donate a voluntary amount, and show up with my family.

So I shut my whiny trap and did it, and it was fun, despite my waddling. Of course it was. And mahalo to Ke'opu for the inspiration, motivation, and opportunity!

What I learned:

-Show up early. It’s a good thing it was a walk and not a race, because we couldn’t find parking and so were 20 minutes late and were literally the last people to start.

-You just have to be ahead of the volunteers who are cleaning up in order to still be considered part of the walk.

-It’s nice to walk around Kapi’olani Park on a clear, Saturday morning. Sometimes I forget stuff like that, because Waikiki is starting to be a development wasteland.

-First place and last place both get swag. Last place gets more swag than first because the race organizers don’t have to worry about running out.

-There are lots of different ways to engage with causes and communities, and it’s important to show my family as many as possible.

Would I do it again: Sure!

Status: Success!

40 by 40--one thing i'm doing: declutter challenge!

So I saw on the FBs a declutter challenge:
40 bags in 40 days

And since I've been looking for a declutter challenge, and can count to 40, I decided to pick this one.

I've added a couple categories: toss, donate, recycle, and use. The weirdest one may be use, but here's my thoughts on that: I have a bunch of half-used stuff. Half a bottle of conditioner. Three mostly used ketchups. A face mask sample. A bag full of bath bombs.

Why do I keep these things? If there is a zombie apocolypse, the last thing I'm going to care about is leave-in conditioner. But I don't want to waste it. And the prissy side of me wants to see if it will, indeed, make my hair as lustrous and shiny as it claims. So why wait?

Photos to come. Actually, prolly it will be too, too embarrassing.