because then the next day? when the salad starts to get wilty? you can just throw it in a pan with some tomato sauce and have a quality meal without having to chop anything in less time than it takes the pasta to cook.

i’ve never been very good at picking a favorite anything, and i’m kind of annoying if you ask me to do so because i will probably give a somewhat lengthy speech like: “well, toDay i think it would be fun to watch the hudsucker proxy, listen to the shins and go bowling. while eating pringles. but last week i totally wanted to watch ET and go to the park. so i Really think it’s more about… sorry. yeah. i’ll take whatever’s on special. thanks.”

but then there is aged dutch goat’s milk gouda, and i think i’m ready to go out on a limb and say that it is my favorite cheese. ever. and yes, i would marry it.

the first time i tried this cheese was a few years ago in some schmancy wine and cheese shop in concord, ma. i was there on a business trip and the other woman i was traveling with and i were exhausted and decided to go buy some cheese and a baguette and a bottle of wine and call it dinner in the hotel room. i think we got some other kinds of cheese, too, but honestly i don’t remember any of the next week because all i wanted to do was eat that gouda all day. work schmork.

it’s funny because this was the same trip wherein i discovered that i have a fondness for tempranillo wine, which is one of the most common spanish reds, so this post sounds a bit big for its epicurean britches now, don’t it?

but to return to the cheese, i came home gaga over it and unable to find any in indiana for a long time, until david rousted some up in indy for the decadent garden party almost a year later, and it was still good, but not quite as good. then sahara mart offered yet another reason to become my favorite bloomingtonian grocer by carrying some for a few weeks. i must have been the only person who bought it, though. barbarians. ;)

anyway it’s not all that hard to find these days, possibly because it’s getting hipper, and i have since located several samples that were all lovely, though usually quite expensive. at whole foods, for example? they have one that is aMazing but it costs like $18/lb. and i’m sorry, but i make it a rule to only donate a kidney to subsidize dairy purchases once every five years.

yesterday though? i found some at trader joe’s for $8/lb. and the past few days have been happy, which is what led to this post. i think my conviction is even more solidified because this dairy sensitivity thing i mentioned in the biscuits and gravy post? it’s quite real, but both hard cheeses and goat’s milk cheeses don’t aggravate it much, so it looks like the thing to do is just pinch pennies and cherish only such cheeses that truly deserve to be cherished. which is how it should be anyway, really. and this shiznit’s at the top of the list.

that was educational, eh? :)

and the first reason it might be fun to live in amsterdam, you ask?
why, the tulips, of course!
i like tulips.
and if you don’t believe that, look here.
there are even two pictures that are named “i like tulips”, so i don’t know what else you thought i meant…

i’ve said it before, and i’ll likely say it again: i like to make biscuits.

i like them so much that sometimes i make them for dinner, and when i do this i often consider and sometimes act upon the idea that i should also make gravy. an interesting thing that i have learned over the years is that i somehow did not end up with a mental model of biscuits and gravy that requires said gravy to be a white gravy with chunks of pork in it, which seems to make me an anomaly. i don’t really care what kind of stuff you put on biscuits as long as it tastes nice, but when i talk with people about the matter (and yes, i do talk with people about the matter), they seem to have a very specific craving.

this has intrigued me for a while because, actually, it’s not just that i don’t think about biscuits and gravy requiring white gravy. it’s that i don’t really think much about white gravy at all. i mean, i know it exists and everything, but… that’s about the extent of my interest: “oh look. people make that. it usually has sausage in it. i don’t eat much sausage. meh.”

recently, though, christy started talking about how her mom nailed a vegetarian biscuits and gravy, and i started thinking about it more. the trouble with vegetarian brown gravy in general is the same trouble with vegetarian broth in general - it’s hard to give it umami. white gravy, on the other hand, has the whole “milk as substance” thing going for it, and the chunks of matter that add flavor of their own. so i had some veggie sausage that i wasn’t eating and i figured i should try to make biscuits and gravy with it.

and i did!

erik says the picture looks gross, but i beg to differ. or actually, i just think all biscuits and gravy look gross. it’s lumpy dairy matter, folks, whaddya want? ;)

and actually, to move on to the second subject of this post, the lumpy dairy matter in this case has only confirmed a suspicion about which i have lately become more and more convinced - i think i’ve developed a dairy allergy. so these biscuits and gravy were damn good, but i rather quickly lost the stomach to enjoy them fully, so it’s a somewhat dampened, fleeting sense of success. now it seems i will have to move immediately on to Vegan biscuits and gravy to feel that i have captured this particular grail, and that’s harder, even without thinking about the butter problem.

i have an idea for the gravy though, involving ground walnuts and tempeh, so we’ll see how long my resistance holds out.

well, i didn’t know what it was going to be like to come home from bonnaroo, collapse on the floor, and wake up to the reality of not having guaranteed gainful employment.

now that it has happened, lemme tell ya: it is bliss.

i got home so late on tuesday that some would call it wednesday, missed the chance to take the light rail from the airport so had to spring for a cab, enjoyed the door-to-door service, performed aforementioned collapse onto the floor, and embarked upon the rest of my week with no schedule to keep but my own.

for the past two days i have slept, unpacked, cleaned the house, cooked what could be salvaged from the fridge (an adventure which included the preparation of what is possibly the best tomato sauce i have ever had the privilege of bringing into the world), listened to music, walked around town, talked to friends, sorted through bills, and charted the first steps along the path towards the next income horizon.

i will save the details for another post because i’m making a website that will explain the idea more fully than i care to right now, but here’re the basics: i’m making lunches. for the people in the office where i used to work. and it’s hella fun. there are few things in this world i love more than playing with food, and right now i’m looking at a world where i get up, take care of myself, find and test recipes, assemble menus, play on my computer, make people happy and healthy, and spend the rest of my time as i wish.

feels good, people. feels good. now we just need to see if i get enough takers to pay the bills for a while.

happy official summer while we wait.

yesterday at trader joe’s i bought these chips that are just deep-fried wonton wrappers. without anything in them. like someone went to make some wontons and then got distracted by the simpsons and just dropped the wrappers in the fryer and didn’t notice until they were done.

you know that has to have happened at least once.

and maybe sometimes people throw them away and curse and do it the right way on the commercial break, but at least once, someone actually ate them, and told trader joe’s about it, and that moment kind of reminds me of the accidental creation of silly putty. or post-it notes. or xray photography.

because seriously, did you ever really like that chewy piece of gristly meat in the middle of a wonton anyway?!

and these only cost $1!!
and do not require you yourself to contend with splattering oil!!

apparently, i am not the only one to believe this worthy of sharing with the world.

i got the mustard flavor, but later i will get the plain flavor and use them to make summery asian-themed salads.

you’re jealous.

my friend deb says:

subject: Something to post on your blog?
I was telling my father in law about your really good (and easy) biscuts and I got a craving for them. I went to see if I even had your recipe to make them, but I don’t have it…

not only am i happy to honor this request, but i already have the recipe in easily findable digital form, thanks to the fact that it has been requested by others since i began using gmail.

so no excuses.
biscuits anyone?

recipe makes 10-12 biscuits, depending on how big you cut them

preheat oven to 450.

combine in a good-sized mixing bowl:
scant 2 c. flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder (4 tsp. if you’re at a high altitude)
1 1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar (it makes them fluffier)
1/2 tsp. salt

cut in, with pastry blender, knives, fork, whatever’s your pleasure, until uniformly crumbly with butter the size of small peas or thereabouts:
1/2 c. butter, cold

make a well in the center and add:
about 2/3 c. cold milk (better less than more)

mix just until it starts to stick together, then use your hands to form a ball and turn it onto a floured surface, kneading a very few times so as to help with the butter distribution but not encourage it in melting.

roll (or pat, i usually just pat) out to about 3/4″ thick, and cut with a biscuit cutter or top of a glass.

place on ungreased baking sheet and bake in your preheated oven for 10-12 minutes.

you may have to add more flour or milk in the balling/kneading phase, depending on how scant your original 2 c. were and such, so adapt as needed.
the keys to a perfect batch (which even i do not always attain), are first to not let the butter get too warm, and then to get the right balance of flour and
milk and not overknead.

the original recipe, which i haven’t had in years, called for a full 2 c. of flour but i often found myself thinking that was too much, so i would add more milk or whatever, but then they would be moist but not flaky, so i started cutting the flour at the beginning and then only adding more if i needed it, and trying
to keep the milk level low enough that i didn’t need to add flour other than to dust the counter and pat it out…it’s kinda just something i feel as i go, which is the main principle of my cooking, so i hope this isn’t all very unhelpful… :)

the final dough should be neither sticky nor stiff, and the best thing i can say is, even though they are not always perfect, they Are always good, so… my best advice is to make them often and enjoy them well.
:)

happy baking.

why do red onions sometimes have lobes like shallots or garlic, but yellow and white onions never do?

i will ask you, instead of actually looking for the answer, because that way i can post something without having to blather on about sightseeing or the job front.
:)

i’ll move on to those topics soonlike.

a week or so ago i made french toast for breakfast, and since i didn’t have my secret ingredient (almond extract… ok i guess secret isn’t the word for it when you post it on your blog, eh?), i had a moment of inspiration wherein i decided to try using some slivered almonds for a fancy “crusted with…” kind of effect. it wasn’t even decadent to think about using slivered almonds because i already had them. i had bought them a long time ago to make granola because they were the only ones i could find in fort william, and i had been carrying them around for all this time. so it was practical even.

the result was quite pretty but i actually don’t think i cared for the effect. it made it hard to enjoy the sponginess of the french toast, and the almond flavor wasn’t very strong.

fun to try, though.

today is the two weekiversary of my move to london, and apparently two weeks is about my limit for eating easy crap while surrounded by markets laden with foods (and particularly spices) that are not usually easy for me to find. i’m actually surprised i lasted this long, though really i’m just surprised that two weeks have gone this quickly. what the hell have i been doing?!

well, part of the answer is that i’ve been looking for a job.
and i found one!
but i’m not sure i want it.
i’m hoping i get offered a different one tomorrow.
i’m somewhat stressed.

but that’s not what this post is about.

this post is about food.

see what i mean?

my new neighborhood is home to at least four curry restaurants and one market per block, and while word on the street is that the restaurants aren’t as good as in days of yore, i’m still picking out the ones i want to try once i have money coming in, and seeing as i view grocery shopping as a form of entertainment, it’s exciting to have places that sell things like bags of coriander that are bigger than my head, vegetables that look like zucchini except they have rows of tiny fingers that make them resemble sea creatures, bags of something that looks a bit like dense saffron but is actually apparently a shredded nut, and buckets of yogurt that are of a size in which small babies could bathe.

because who needs tv when you have baby-sized buckets of yogurt?!

so far, i have just been wandering and window shopping, because stocking up on spices and researching new recipes seemed like an activity that should be viewed as a reward, rather than as a distraction. but today i changed my mind.

not only is indian food, cooked in quantity, one of the cheaper things that i could be eating right now, but i’m realizing that i’m not going to be paid for a while even once my job starts, so i’m just going to have to make other plans for groceries, and since improving my indian cooking experience seems to be a major potential benefit of my living arrangement, there’s no reason not to get started.

apart from that, i need things to do to keep myself occupied and happy. so far the whole not going home for christmas thing isn’t all that bad - i know i’m going home before long, i know that i would regret leaving before i get the chance to do more of the things i want to do, and my parents are spending christmas somewhere i’ve never seen before, so it’s not like i have to be tortured by mental pictures of everyone doing things the way that they’ve done them my whole life without me. everyone is doing something new, and everyone is doing something temporary. it’s kind of like there will just be two years between christmases this time, and the people around me are acting funny and wearing santa hats for some bizarre reason that i don’t really understand…

all the same, i don’t think it would be very wise to spend this week wherein christmas will actually become a reality eating bland pasta and twiddling my thumbs. i’ve already decided that i’m buying myself a computer game so that i can have some of the new toy buzz on christmas morning. and the job thing will be figured out one way or another, which will feel good.

and hey, if i’m going to get distracted and excited about playing in the kitchen with some new recipes, then it seems like a good time to start!

so today i did some research, plotted out a rough ingredient acquisition plan that could unfold in more than one stage to keep me from spending too much at once, and went shopping. i bought ghee, cumin, dried red peppers, curry leaves, kalunji, yogurt, a packet of chana masala spice mix and some little coconut cookies. i spent just over £10.

kalunji is one of the ways of spelling the bengali word for nigella seeds, which i have already played with a little bit because erik got some last year and we used them in the sunday dinner that eventually led to attempts at making naan inside upturned soup pots. it’s fun to find them again here, and to be reminded that they are a key ingredient in bengali cuisine, which is the cuisine of eastern india and bangladesh. the population here in london is heavily bengali, so it’s a good chance to learn about some of what makes the cuisine unique. so far i have learned that one of the major things is the use of fish, since the region is on the ocean. also the use of mustard oil as a principal cooking oil, and panch phanon as a common spice blend (with the spices being cumin, anise, fenugreek, nigella, and mustard (all in seed form)).

oh! and they make a lot of desserts, which is intriguing, because my experience so far has not led me to have any deep love of indian sweet culture, but i’m always interested in changing my mind when it comes to dessert. :)

anyway, today was not really a bengali cooking day, despite these lessons. today was a “get a few key ingredients and use things you already have” day, which means that my plan was to use the chana masala mix with some chickpeas that i already had in the cupboard and some rice that i had made a couple of days ago, and then use the yogurt and spices to make a simple khadi, which is a yogurt saucy soup kind of thing, which the internet says traditionally goes with khichdi (lentils, veggies, and rice). i figured it would be fine with the chickpeas and rice, and then i could make the khichdi another day and already know how to make the khadi, which seemed like a bonus, and a good way to not freak out by trying to do 17 new things at once. seeing as the rice that i was using was fried rice, the authenticity rating on the meal wasn’t going to be that high anyway, so it seemed worth just getting the experience with the spices and using up what i had.

all in all, it worked pretty well.

i made way more chana masala than i originally intended, because i didn’t read the box. turns out it was a much better bargain than i thought because you weren’t supposed to use the whole box at once. i didn’t read this until after i had dumped it into the chickpeas, however, and the only way i could conceive of saving it was to go by more chickpeas and make more. so now i have a lot.

it’s ok, though, because it’s good. :)

i used too much ghee, so the first batch is too oily, but the spice mix and the ghee do their trick, giving the dish that distinct fullness of flavor that is simply impossible to imitate with the wrong ingredients.

the khadi was less successful. again i used too much ghee (the recipe didn’t give an exact amount and i didn’t think about it. i was like “butter tastes good! what will happen?”) and i didn’t pay enough attention to it, so it didn’t emulsify and the result did not look very appealing. it tasted ok, but the double dose of too much ghee (in both the main dish and the khadi) was a bit much. i opted for straight yogurt in the end and decided i’d try again tomorrow. now i have looked at a couple more recipes and i think i have a better idea what i’m aiming for, so it should be fun to try again.

in the not too distant future, i also hope to make roasted eggplant, bengali red dal, and aloor dum (potato curry). if i keep at it, then by the time i leave i should have a few new tricks up my sleeve!

at the very least, you can bet i’ll be packing some spices.
:)

i found a few interesting food blogs in my searches, so here they are if you want to check them out:

• Mahanandi
• One Hot Stove
• Vanesscipes

so today went by faster than i wanted it to, and by 3 or so i hadn’t managed to do any more jobseeking or exploring.

the trouble is that i am really trying to take the whole “spend no money unless absolutely necessary” thing seriously, so i am trying not to transport myself around the city on any whims because the tube is quite expensive, and even if i walk (or particularly if i walk, since the exercise makes me hungry) it can be dangerous to find myself stuck far away and starving, because i am then tempted to indulge in overly priced treats.

this leads to me feeling somewhat incapacitated, and it takes a while to leave the house, even though i understand that i need to leave in order to defeat the problem, because out is where the jobs lie.

the food problem has really been highest on the list, because i know that i need to buy food, but i have been uncertain how to stretch my pounds most wisely. there are loads of interesting markets in my new neighborhood, but culinary adventure is not my priority at the moment (after i get a job it will jump up, worry not), and i tired myself with the lentils and rice route in edinburgh.

so last night, feeling hungry even After indulging in a (not Too overly priced) sandwich in covent garden in the midst of my wanderings, and not feeling inclined to go in search of the apparently nearby but as of yet unglimpsed tesco, i wandered into one of the larger bangladeshi markets and, after staring at things for a good 20 minutes, bought two boil-in-the-bag box dinners and a packet of pre-made naan. it cost £4 total, and i had one of the dinners and one of the pieces of naan when i got home, as well as one of the remaining beers from tania’s and my trip to the black isle brewery, which is now one of my favorite brewers in the world.

no kidding.

anyway, i know my hunger doubtless clouded my judgement, but the food was fabulous. i have enjoyed boil-in-the-bag indian box dinners before, of the tastybite variety, but these are a brand called gits, and based on my sample of one, they are better.

and that’s saying quite a bit.

it’s not really a fair sample because the variety that i had - paneer tikka masala - is not a variety that i have ever had in tastybite form, if they even make it. i was actually quite excited to find it because paneer is something i like, and tikka masala is something i like, but it is not my experience that they commonly go together.

anyway, tonight or tomorrow i’m having the palak paneer, so then i can report more fully on how gits stacks up.
or boils up.
whatever.

first, though, the rest of my story.

well fed as i was last night, today i was still confronted by the awareness that i needed to go grocery shopping, and also by the realization that i could not put off buying a new cell phone charger any longer, because i had given out my number to a few potential employers yesterday, and i was just going to have to bite the bullet and admit that i have lost the charger even though i distinctly remember packing it and even though they cost as much as the phone did in the first place, which annoys me. it does not help that i am certain that there are 5 of them within any given 100 meters that are gathering dust under someone’s bed or creating a fire danger in the back of their closet. but whatever. i’m over it.

finally i got myself out the door and headed in the direction in which i believed tesco would be found. i figured i would also encounter somewhere to buy a phone charger, but i wasn’t actually thinking about it as much because i was getting hungry, so the need to buy groceries was no longer just a theoretical exercise.

as i remembered dominic’s instructions, the tesco was to be found by heading up to bethnal green road, then turning right, then walking until you got there. this seemed easy enough, but i walked a pretty good ways and didn’t see it, so i wondered if he might have meant left instead, and i walked back. after circling around a bit, and getting ever hungrier, i was a little frustrated, so i decided to just go in one of the smaller stores again, but one of the more anglicized ones this time, since what i had decided i wanted was biscuits and cheese and pasta and milk.

i found a friendly looking store with a “costcutter” sign, which made me feel like i could kid myself into thinking i wasn’t getting ripped off that much by going into a little store. i made my selections, felt rather good about the number of meals for which i was now prepared, and checked out. just over £10. good work. i went to hand the guy my card and he said “oh, sorry! we are a new store. we do not yet have credit card capabilities.”

now, many people have chided me for not carrying enough cash, and i must say that, for a short time today immediately after this point in the story, i wondered if i might have arrived at the point in my life where my habits end up changing long term. my new neighborhood seems somewhat short on cash machines, and the majority of the ones it Does have are the stupid fee-charging ones inside kwiki-marts. so perhaps i will learn my lesson. it remains to be seen. in the end, this adventure did not offer a clear interpretation to that end.

(that’s my way of saying you should keep reading ;)

so i left my groceries with the clerk and promised to be right back. he said there was a cashpoint (that’s british for ATM) two doors down, and there was, but it was broken. the next one was less broken, in that it still interacted with me, but it refused to give me any money, and by that time i was to here with the little kwiki-mart machines so i decided that i would look a bit harder for a bank, even though it was raining, and getting dark, and i was now officially hungry.

as a sidenote, a cool thing about britain is that almost all official bank ATMs do not charge a fee.

as another sidenote, there are almost no banks in my neighborhood, which led me to ruminate a bit on the consequences of poorer people living outside the main channels of commerce, which makes it more likely that they will be the ones to pay stupid fees to kwiki-mart ATMs as a kind of penalty. the machines are often right next to the lottery tickets, so it’s like a one-stop poor tax bonanza!

but i digress.

i found a free cashpoint at a post office, but it was out of money, which did not help my feeling that i was the victim of a rude conspiracy. i glimpsed what i thought might be a bank sign (i don’t really have all the logos installed in my brain yet), but it turned out to be a sign for a cell phone/car audio shop. i decided to interpret this, in the way that i like to interpret things, as a sign that maybe this whole diversion was just an excuse to get me to remember to buy my cell phone charger, because if i had succeeded in getting my groceries i would have just gone home and forgotten about it and been annoyed later.

so i walked into the shop, asked for the charger, and they had it! it was a genericky looking one, but i wasn’t feeling picky, so i pulled out my purse. as if on cue, the guy says: “cash only!” and i only sighed for a second, because i already knew i had to find cash, right? so the adventure was just going to continue.

on the way out, i asked how much it was, and he said £5.

this news lightened my mood considerably.

£5! that’s like 1/4 what the official ones are! that’s not even annoying! that’s like FMV for “you left it somewhere, stupid, so you have to pay Something!”

suddenly the hassle of having to walk out of my way in the rain and scrutinize every building i passed seemed negligible, and indeed, it all felt a part of some great plan.

for less than what i had previously prepared myself to spend on the charger, i was going to get the charger And enough groceries for the next few days. it was like getting the groceries for free, as a gift from the universe so that i would remember that, if i just don’t pretend to know where things are headed, unexpected surprises will always present themselves in the most wonderfully poetic of places.

and sure enough, no sooner had i walked from the phone place to continue the search for the cashpoint than, half a block down the road, i found a barclay’s machine, free, and willing to dispense me £20.

so i am now the happy owner of a busily charging nokia mobile phone, and the cheese and salami and crackers and twix finger that i had for tea were heavenly, thank you.

now, if i can only find a way to write a blog entry that isn’t really three blog entries in disguise, and that discusses something other than food, i’ll be off and running.