Hummus! I got the hummus!

Did you think I was gone? You thought wrong. May ended with a significant amount of time spent out of town (and, therefore, spent eating in restaurants). It would have been easy to rejoice...and yet, somehow, when I went grocery shopping on May 31, my basket was filled with pretty much the same things I'd been buying all month. I really enjoyed MIMM, and while MIMJ doesn't have the same melodious ring, it makes sense to keep up at least some of the habits I've acquired. I'm going to keep making bread (as long as my dad lets me keep the bread machine around). It turns out I love polenta. And even though I'm drinking a Diet Coke right now, I actually think that it might be the last one for a long time; it's delicious, but making me feel pretty jittery.

Last night, I made a salad for dinner that was mostly garbanzo beans (the most delightful of the beans, I think). I had a bunch left over, though, so I made hummus this morning before I left the house. My apologies for the vagueness of this recipe; the main quantity is "some".

Hummus
Some garbanzo beans (I used about a cup)
Some olive oil (I used around a third of a cup)
Some garlic (I used two cloves)
Some lemon juice (I used the amount from a whole lemon)
Some cumin (I used 1/2 teaspoon)
Salt and pepper to taste

Put all of the ingredients except for the olive oil in the food processor. Turn it on; while the machine is running, slowly add the olive oil in a thin stream. Stop and sample - when it tastes like hummus, you're done. The beauty of hummus is that you can add pretty much anything you like - roasted red peppers, chipotles, black beans, more garlic, eggplant, etc. etc. etc.

Day 18: Too Much Cookin', Not Enough Bloggin'

Whew! The past few days have been biz-zay. On Saturday, Dara and I threw a very excellent (if I do say so myself) barbecue, complete with beautiful weather, pleasantly drunk people, and lots of good food and fun. I learned how to make baked beans. I also learned...

• that beans take a loooong time to cook.
• that they're worth the wait.
• that, if you think starting with two POUNDS of dried beans is excessive, you're probably right.
• that people really like baked beans.
• that I actually like baked beans more than I thought!

Yesterday, the weather turned cold and rainy. Such a gray May day (yup) seemed perfect for lentils, since they're all warm and homey. I followed this recipe from Epicurious, though I left out the lamb. Thanks to Dara for all the documentation!

I had to work hard to chop the carrots, onions, and celery:


Seriously, do you own a food processor yet? No? Go get one. Go now. I don't care if it's midnight; Amazon is open 24 hours a day. Never mind the fact that it can chop anything and everything in mere seconds - you can make cookie dough in this thing!

So yeah. "I" chopped all the veggies. Then I checked the recipe, and my documentarian went to the fridge for a beverage:




How is it that we threw a party and ended up with more beer than when we started? We need less generous (or harder-drinking) friends.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I started sauteing the veggies, then, after a few minutes, added the lentils and a cup of wine:



After that, the lentils cooked slowly, sort of like risotto - a ladleful of liquid at a time. It was fairly slow going, since lentils, like beans, take a long time to absorb liquid and come to the right texure. In the end, we had a nice, tasty dish; the taste of the wine made it particularly rich. Dara ate hers with sauteed spinach, and I had mine over raw spinach with some feta mixed in:


And everyone was happy:

Day 13: Vegetable Lust

I had a total zucchini hankering all day.

I know, I know. Let me wait for the snickering to die down. I didn't really care what I ate for dinner, as long as it involved zucchini. Luckily, there was one still lurking in our most recent box of produce, and Dara very willingly let me take it. I chopped it up, and tossed it into a hot pan with some diced onion; after several minutes of sauteeing, I adding two beaten eggs and scrambled the whole mess up. With a little goat cheese crumbled on top, I had warm eggy veggie goodness (which I inhaled so fast I forgot to take a picture).

Last week, I found myself worrying a lot about what I'd be eating for each of my meals; I felt like I had to do a lot of thinking and planning. The past few days, though, have felt easier - I've thought a little about what I want to eat, and then cooked it. And while none of it has been anything fancy, it has been filling, nutritious, and good, which is generally what I look for in a meal.

However, I do have to do a better job about eating meals out. On Tuesday, I spent the workday in the field with one of my colleagues, which meant we ate lunch at a (shockingly good) Indian buffet in Rancho Cucamonga. (Seriously, the 909! I'm a snob.) Last night I found out about a viewing party of "Top Chef Masters" at Border Grill, so we trucked over there for mojitos and tacos. Today was Mexican food at lunch for a friend's birthday. I've definitely stuck to my rule about fast food, but for both my wallet and my project, next week has to see a reduction in food that other people cook.

Day 10: I'm Not a Vegetarian...

...but I apparently eat like one when I cook at home.

There have been periods in my life where I have wanted nothing but meat. When I (finally) grew, for example, in high school, all I wanted was steak and milk. It was awesome. There have been other phases, though, where, no matter how good I know it is, meat smells and tastes rotten. These times are also awesome (I do love me some tofu!), even though they involve less bacon.

Either way, though, I've never been inclined to actually cook that much meat. I'm pretty sure that I've never made red meat in this house, and we've lived here since September. It doesn't feel like anything is lacking - I just don't look at a steak in the grocery store and think, "You know, that's gonna be dinner tonight." And I realized today that much of MIMM, perhaps even more than my normal cooking, has been vegetarian. Today, in fact, was 100% so: toast and a banana for breakfast, leftover saag tofu and rice for lunch, and broiled polenta with roasted red pepper sauce and goat cheese and a little steamed broccoli on the side for dinner. It sounds fancy, but it's really easy to make, yields a ton of leftovers, and is really delicious:



Maybe I'll mix it up and go for an all-meat week four, but then again...maybe not.

Broiled Polenta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Polenta
1 1/4 cups cornmeal
3 1/2 cups water
1 tsp. salt

1. Mix the cornmeal and one cup of the water in a bowl; set aside.
2. Combine the salt and remaining water in a pot; bring to a boil.
3. Add the cornmeal mixture slowly (watch out for splashing), stirring constantly. Allow it to return to a boil, then turn the heat to low and continue to stir for five straight minutes. It's going to hurt - the polenta will thicken considerably. You didn't need to go to the gym today.
4. After five minutes, remove the polenta from the heat. Spread it in a lightly greased 9x13 pan; smoothe to the edges. Put the pan in the fridge to cool. While it's cooling, make the...

Sauce
1 red bell pepper
1/2 an onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
3 basil leaves
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Goat cheese (optional)

1. With a long fork (or something else to hold the pepper - I stabbed it through the bottom with a pair of scissors), roast the red pepper by holding it directly over the stove burner. Turn consistently, as if you are roasting a s'more; the skin should pop, blister, and blacken. Try to blacken as much of the skin as possible.
2. Put the roasted pepper in a bowl and cover the top with plastic wrap; you want to trap the heat and moisture.
3. When the pepper is cool enough to handle - about 30 minutes - rub off the blackened skin. It should come off easily; running the pepper under cool water can help.
4. Position an oven rack as close to the top of the oven as possible; turn on the broiler. This is important for a little while from now.
5. Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil until soft.
6. Combine the pepper, onions, garlic, basil, salt and pepper to taste, and a splash of olive oil in a food processor or blender. Blend until the sauce reaches your desired consistency; add a little more olive oil or a tablespoon of water at a time if you like.
7. By now, the polenta should be cooled and solid. Cut it into small squares or diamonds and transfer to a cookie sheet; brush the top with a little olive oil. Broil for seven to ten minutes, or until the top has developed a golden brown crust.
8. If necessary, reheat the sauce; serve with the polenta and a few crumbles of goat cheese, if desired. It's pretty tasty without, but nearing sublime with.

Note: Dara gives this dish two thumbs up!

Day 8: In Which I Make All the Food

Before I started this project, I had what could only be kindly described as a vague understanding of how tofu is made. It pretty much went something like this:

1. Get soybeans.
2. Do something to them. (Mash them, maybe? Boil then mash them?)
3. Let them solidify.
4. Eat, because now you have tofu!

In very (VERY) broad strokes, that's correct. You take soybeans, you do some things to them, and then you have tofu; tofu is, essentially, coagulated soy milk that's allowed to thicken. But as I discovered yesterday, what happens between steps one and four is an incredibly long and involved process. I relied on this recipe; I'm sure there are a zillion different variations out there, but this one seemed easy to follow and, more importantly, stressed that I could make tofu with the basic equipment I already have in my kitchen. That was essential; while I don't mind buying cheesecloth, I didn't want to go out and purchase a tofu press.

The one thing I didn't have, though, was the coagulant. While the recipe claims I could use lemon juice or vinegar, I wanted to do this right, so I decided to hunt down nigari - it's a natural coagulant, magnesium chloride, extracted from sea water. Sounds fancy, right? Sounds hard to find, no? No. It was lurking in the Japan aisle of the biggest Whole Foods in the world. One stop after work, and I was ready to go.

So yesterday started with soaking some beans:



Dried soybeans are little, round, and yellow. Over the course of the day, they gradually softened and expanded, eventually taking the edamame-shape I'm more used to:



They were also ridiculously good to eat raw. It sounds weird, but they were sweet and kinda nutty (and I JUST REALIZED they would be super good roasted (so much so that when I finish writing this I'm totally going to go soak some overnight so that I can make them into a snack tomorrow!)). When they had fully expanded, I transferred them, little by little, into my brave little food processor, and ground them "until fine", per the recipe's instructions. I wasn't really sure what this meant; what I ended up with was something resembling soybean slurry:



Please note the artistic kitchen lighting.

So essentially, at this point, I had a lot of liquid and a fair amount of finely ground solid - about the consistency of grits. That all went into a pot of boiling water; I stirred and stirred and stirred, then lowered the heat and stirred some more. When it had cooked for the requisite eight minutes, I realized that I was all alone, and about to pour a massive pot of near-boiling soy...stuff into a colander that looked like it was dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein. The potential for disaster was high.




But I poured verrrrry carefully, and then couldn't take any more pictures for a few minutes because I was squeezing the life out of the solids in the cheesecloth. Thank God for silicone hot pads; I was able to wrap one around the outside of the cloth sack and force out all of the liquid I could. And I have to admit - when I lifted up the colander and looked in the bowl, I felt a little bit like an alchemist. Okay, I hadn't turned pewter into gold, but I had turned a whole mess of dried soybeans into legitimate soy milk, and it was damn good. I swear I'm not just saying that because I made it - it was sweet and rich and way better than the stuff that comes in a carton.





I also had a cheesecloth full of okara, the leftover solids. My understanding is that you can cook and eat this; if you find that that's the case, please let me know. I took a picture, realized that it smelled like warm, roasting tofu, and then threw it away.



Not gonna lie: by that point, I felt like I should have been done. But no. Back into the pot went all the soy milk; I heated it slowly, stirring constantly, until it reached 155 degrees. As soon as it did, I took it off the heat. I added half of my water/nigari mixture, stirred vigorously, and let it come to rest; I added the rest of the mixture, stirred more gently, and watched pretty much in amazement as the mixture began to thicken. It didn't look like anything in a picture. Envision, though, curdling milk, and you have the basic idea.

I covered the pot and let it sit for 15 minutes, then came back to ladle the whole mess into another gauzy colander. I folded the cheesecloth over, weighted the top with a couple of pounds of canned goods, and then went away - if I'd stayed in the room, I would have been too tempted to peek.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. I tiptoed back into the room, almost too nervous to look. What if it had failed? What if I had spent the better part of an afternoon immersed in the world of the soybean only to end up with a gloopy, bitter mess? I took off the weights, unfolded the cheesecloth, and -



HOLY CRAP. I MADE TOFU.

Did I squeal a little bit with glee and maybe dance around my kitchen? Yes, obviously, and then I immediately transferred everything to a bowl of cold water and let it soak for a little while longer. This time, I couldn't resist the urge to poke and prod - while the center was a little bit softer than what I'm used to, the edges were totally firm. And it tasted absolutely amazing; it was way creamier than store-bought tofu, with a slightly sour (but in a good way) tinge. Mostly, it tasted like warm soy milk smells. I know that doesn't sound appetizing, but trust me - it was all I could do to keep from eating all of it while standing beside my kitchen sink.

So then it was 7:00. I had a cheesecloth full of tofu and an empty belly. Luckily, I also had the makings for saag tofu. I chopped and sauteed half an onion, three cloves of garlic, and two seeded jalapenos in a splash of vegetable oil; after a few minutes, when the onion had softened, I added a couple teaspoons each of ginger, curry powder, and cumin. (As a warning, those proportions lead to a fairly spicy dish; when I make it again, I'll reduce the amount of cumin significantly.) After a minute or so of sauteeing, I added ten ounces of spinach, and gently folded it into the other ingredients into it while trying not to lose any leaves out the side of my pan. While spinach starts out huge, as it cooks, it loses volume; after a few minutes, I had a couple cups of dark green spicy goodness. That all went into the food processor along with a dollop - probably around 1/4 cup - of plain yogurt; a couple of pulses chopped it down and mixed in the yogurt nicely.

In the meantime, I broke up the tofu into bite-sized pieces, and carefully - CAREFULLY - transferred it to the pan with a little more oil, letting it cook until it was nice and brown on both sides. (As it turns out, I didn't need to be so gingerly, but after all of that, I didn't want to lose anything.)



Delicious! The final step was evening out the flavors in the saag itself. The spices were a little strong, so I added a couple teaspoons of sugar, which made everything perfect; I mixed the whole mess back in with the tofu, put some in a bowl over basmati rice, popped open a beer, and finally had dinner.



Super tasty - and, luckily, there's leftovers.

So there it is. Now I know. Was it ridiculous? Yes. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Will I ever again make my own tofu from scratch after May is over? Not even a chance.

Oh, and I also made bread and cupcakes. I told you it was the day of all the food.

Day 1: And So It Begins!

May 1, ladies and gentlemen! MIMM started off bright and early - literally - as I woke up at 6:00 to go take the SAT. (It's for work. It's another challenge. Apparently my life is one giant competition.) Breakfast was tea and scrambled eggs, since it's important to be both caffeinated and full of protein for four hours of standardized testing, and I brought delicious and nutritious bananas and almonds for snacktime.

By 1:00, though, when the test was over, I was absolutely famished. In high school, after every SAT I took, my dad picked me up and drove me immediately to Panda Express. Today, though, there was no orange chicken in my future; in fact, as I started to drive towards home, I realized that there would be no lunch at all unless I stopped for groceries. Since I'd made a shopping list last night, I forced myself to do an entire shopping, suffered through the longest line imaginable at Ralphs, and walked into my house ready to eat.

Which meant...I had to make something, and it had to be pretty straightforward; at 2:00, I couldn't spend a significant amount of time cooking. So lunch was an open-face sandwich - a piece of toasted whole wheat bread with mashed avocado and slices of tomato and onion. I washed it down with a glass of homemade lemonade; even though beverages aren't on my "make it myself" list, springtime was demanding something tart and sweet to go with the beauty of the day. Dinner was spent at a friend's lovely backyard birthday barbecue.

Here's what I've already realized: I have to have some snacks in the house. I like to nosh; more importantly, when I'm hungry, I really need to eat. Fruit, bread, and nuts will go a long way, but I need to make, and keep, things like crackers or hummus and pita on hand. I'm going to work hard to set menus for dinner the night before so that I can do any necessary prep, and I don't want to ruin that by being so hungry that I have to resort to eggs. Tomorrow's task, then, is to find good recipes those quick and easy snacky things and make at least one of them. And if you want pancakes tomorrow morning, come on by!

Lemonade
1.5 tbs. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3-4 tbs. sugar
Pinch of salt
Cold water

Put the lemon juice, sugar, and salt in a glass. Add water. Mix. Taste. Add anything that's missing. And yes, cocktail friends, I know that making simple syrup would have better, but there was a back deck to sit on and sunshine to bask in.