Catching Up

Last week was a heavy week in grad school. Tons of student conferences, a twenty-page reading journal I neglected to attend to until the week before it was due, hundreds of pages of reading, and so on. Not much time left over for blogging. Now conferences are over and the journal is off my desk...just in time for me to begin grading 50 papers! It's a good think I got some cooking in on Sunday so I have some things to eat.

For lunch I made chana masala, using a recipe modified from Smitten Kitchen. The internets tell me that "chana" is Hindi for chickpea, while masala just refers to a spice mixture. According to wikipedia, chana masala is popular in the Indian states of Punjab and Gujarat, and is typically a "dry"curry. I don't know how accurate that is, but this is definitely a saucy version, so if you are from India or know a lot about Indian food, this recipe might not produce what you think of when you think of chana masala. Deb of SK writes that her recipe is itself a modification of another she got somewhere else, which may explain why something about this recipe wasn't exactly what I expected. It still turned out fine...quite tasty, in fact. But it's lacking something that I expect from an Indian dish...maybe a certain spice, or maybe the proportions are off, or something, but I may tinker with it. Like Deb, I did not have amchur powder (dried mango), which imparts sourness, so in addition to the lemon juice I splashed in a little white vinegar.

2 onions, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsps fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 Tbsp ground coriander

1 Tbsp amchur powder (or, an equal amount of extra lemon juice or white vinegar)

2 tsps ground cumin

2 tsps paprika

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp garam masala

1/4 tsp cayenne

2 15-oz cans chickpeas, or 4 cups cooked (if starting with dry)

2 cups finely diced tomatoes, or 2 cups canned crushed tomatoes + juice (I used canned; if you can only find 30-oz cans measure out what you need and freeze the rest)

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup water

salt to taste

Heat about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large pot. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, and serrano and cook until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the dry spices except salt (I measure them out into a little dish beforehand so I can just throw them all in at once) and cook for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes and stir well, making sure to scrape up any bits cooked to the bottom of the pan. Add the chickpeas and water and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If it seems dry, add a little more water, a tablespoon at a time. Stir in the salt, lemon juice, and vinegar if using. I poured this over cooked rice and ate it with a little plain yogurt on top. You could also have it with an Indian-style bread. Wikipedia also tells me that in Punjab and Pakistan, the dish is often served with a puffy bread called bhatoora (looks kind of like a sopapilla) and is eaten for breakfast. This will yield four to six servings. Vegan! Unless you add yogurt, like I did.

Fast-forward several hours...

For dinner I made what the One Pot Cookbook I bought at a yard sale calls "Asian pork." This seemed kind of...general to me, so I retitled it sweet and sour pork, which may or may not be what it is, but at least it's a little less geographically and racially ambiguous. I was a little skeptical about making this, because the recipes I have made out of this book have been sort of hit and miss (probably why it ended up in the yard sale pile). Some of the things I have made out of it turned out great/just like the picture; other recipes have turned out to have wildly inaccurate measurements and cooking times. In this case, however, it turned out kind of awesome. It did taste pretty much like the sweet and sour pork I have eaten in Chinese restaurants before. The sauce is really good, not overwhelmingly sweet or sour, and not greasy. Yummy.

1 lb boneless pork (I used the remainder of the pork butt I bought for puerco pibil; carefully trimming as much fat as possible off. It worked pretty well), cut into 1" cubes

1 Tbsp flour

1 onion, sliced into thin wedges (like an apple for a pie)

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and grated

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 1/4 cups chicken stock

1 cup pineapple chunks with juice (half a 15-oz can)

1 Tbsp soy sauce

3 celery ribs, diagonally sliced

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 Tbsp vinegar (I used white, but sherry or red-wine vinegar would do)

sliced green onions for garnish

Toss the pork chunks in the flour until well coated. Mix together the chicken stock, the tomato paste, and the pineapple juice (reserving the pineapple until later) until well-combined, and keep it at hand. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy pot. Add the onion, garlic, and ginger and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the onions soften. Add the pork and cook, stirring constantly, until it is browned on all sides. You may need to add the pork in batches; I found that the pieces wanted to stick together in a big clump when I put them in, which made separating and cooking them evenly a bit tricky. Remove from the heat (I don't know why, but that's what the book says). Pour the chicken-stock mixture gradually into the pan while stirring. Add the soy sauce and return to the heat. Continue stirring and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. At about forty-five minutes in, add the bell pepper and celery for the last fifteen minutes of cooking. Stir in the pineapple and vinegar and serve garnished with sliced green onions and a side of white rice. Makes about four servings.

Grocery Day!

Happy two-week anniversary to me. The beginning of the Sexy Divorcee's third week of existence happens to coincide with shopping day, and a new two-week plan.

First, maybe I should review last week's cycle. For the detailed menu, see this post. I'll list what I made from my favorite to least favorite, and rank on a scale of 1-5 for convenience, deliciousness, value, and leftover-worthiness, with 1 being least and 5 being most:

1. Puerco pibil

• convenience: 3 (easy, but time-consuming)
• deliciousness: Off the charts
• value: 3 (expensive spices, but good investment; dirt-cheap meat)
• leftover-worthiness: 4 (reheats well, but is best straight out of the oven. Would probably freeze well? I didn't have enough left over to find out.)

2. Louisiana red beans and rice

• convenience: 3 (simple but time consuming)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 4 (pretty darn inexpensive per serving)
• left-over worthiness: 4 (keeps fairly well; can be frozen)

3. Ratatouille with chicken and rice

• convenience: 3 (simple but time consuming)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 4
• left-over worthiness: 5 (just as good if not better reheated; also freezes well)

4. Summer succotash with bacon

• convenience: 3 (simple to make, but multi-tasking and different cooking techniques involved)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 3 (combo of inexpensive and more specialized ingredients)
• left-over worthiness: 4 (good cold, but loses some crispness)

5. Kofta sandwiches

• convenience: 4 (pretty quick and easy)
• deliciousness: 3 (not bad)
• value: 3
• left-over worthiness: 3

6. Angel hair pasta with pesto and chicken

• convenience: 4 (as easy as measuring and boiling water)
• deliciousness: 3
• value: 2 (basil and nuts are a bit pricey)
• leftover-worthiness: 2 (it was great the first night; leftovers, not so much. I think if I were to do it over, I would definitely store the pesto and the pasta separately--not only did it seem to make the pasta soggy, but also, it didn't taste like much after a few days in the fridge except oily garlic. The fresh basil flavor disappeared.)

So here's my new menu (new recipes are italicized, transitional recipes are in green):

Chana masala (chick pea curry) with rice x 4 --this was the last thing on last week's plan, but I never got around to making it.

Sweet and sour pork x 4

Rigatoni with sweet Italian sausage, arugula and sweet potato x 4

Chicken molé enchiladas x 4

Yellow split pea and sweet potato soup x 4

Chicken with roasted vegetable pilaf x 2

Dal nirvana (curried lentils) with rice and homemade naan (Indian flatbread) x 2

And here's my shopping list, with changes and substitutions in green:

Canned pineapple

Tomato paste

Rigatoni

Dried yeast

Dried pasillo peppers

Dry roasted pumpkin seeds

Sesame seeds

unsweetened Mexican chocolate (They do not carry this. Odd, and sad. :( Now I must go to WF for it)

Almonds (bulk)

couscous Bulgar wheat (bulk)

Green lentils (bulk)

Chicken breasts

Sweet Italian sausage (3 links, just over a pound)

queso fresco Monterey Jack--their fresco was muy exspensivo

Wheat bread

Corn tortillas

Plain yogurt

Eggs

Sweet potatoes (technically, jewel yams) x 3

Arugula (5 oz package)

Green onion x 2

Onions x 2

Italian parsley x 1

Zucchini x 1

Lemons x 2

Fresh fruit (bunch of 4 bananas, 2 6-oz cartons of raspberries)

All for just over $70, which was about what I was guessing it would be. I continue to be in love with Sunflower. The employees are so nice there, and not in the creepy forced way that they are at Safeway. I'm just sad they didn't have my chocolate. So, there's at least one unscheduled shopping detour in my future.

Short Cuts

Hello, blog readers. I apologize for my absence, but it has been a busy week in grad school land. But now that I'm more or less caught up with my work, I can more or less catch up with my blog, too.

This week I made two meals that are each very classic in their own way--Louisiana red beans and rice, and Kofta sandwiches (an ubiquitous Middle Eastern fast food). For convenience's sake, I did not prepare them in the classic way, however. I'm not going to pretend for a minute that taking a short cut with a venerable recipe is going to result in something that tastes as good as the traditional version. But sometimes a tasty approximation is good enough, and I think I achieved tasty approximations with my simplified recipes this week.

No-Soak Louisiana Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage

A traditional recipe would use dried beans soaked overnight. Dried beans yield more flavor and better texture than canned, and they're not difficult to prepare. They just require advanced planning. Sometimes I end up changing my plans at the last minute, so I didn't want to take the chance of leaving beans to soak overnight only to not use them--they don't keep well uncooked (which takes additional time) after they have been soaked. One time I soaked a pot of beans and ended up not using them when I planned to, and they started to ferment and I had to throw them away. Ew. Traditional versions of this recipe often call for a ham hock or other stew meat to be added to the cooking beans to add more flavor and richness. I didn't have that, so I didn't do that, but I did add some chicken broth to the cooking liquid.

1/2 pound to 1 pound andouille or smoked sausage, 1/4-inch slice (I bought fresh andouille from Sunflower Market's meat counter, and the grind of the meat was not as fine as I think you will probably find with a commercially produced sausage. In my case it was necessary to remove the casings, which resulted in chunkier bits than the sausage "coins" you might expect in this dish...just FYI)

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 green bell pepper, diced

3 celery ribs, leaves removed, diced

2 cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 bay leaf

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp cayenne (I'm serious about this! Any more and you will not be able to taste the different flavors, but only the hotness of the cayenne. I speak from personal experience. If you like your food spicy, add hot sauce to the finished dish. Over spicing in the pot will ruin the taste, in my opinion.)

salt and pepper to taste

Fully cook the sausage in a large pot over medium heat. Remove from the pot and keep refrigerated until ready to add back in. Add the onion and garlic to the pot and cook until they begin to soften in the sausage drippings. It may be necessary to add a splash of vegetable oil to the pot to prevent sticking. Add the bell pepper and celery to the pot and cook until crisp-tender; add the beans and spices and stir well to combine. Pour in 6 cups of water, or a mixture of water and chicken stock. Bring the liquid to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has cooked down to the consistency you want. It may be necessary to add more water. After about half an hour of cooking, use your spoon to mash the beans against the side of the pan. This will add a pleasing thickness. Throw the sausage back in the pot for the last fifteen minutes of cooking. Remove the bay leaf and serve in a bowl topped with a scoop of hot white rice. Season with hot sauce and garnish with chopped green onion if you desire. Yields 4-6 servings.

Kofta* sandwiches with tahini sauce

Middle Eastern kofta (as opposed to Indian and central Asian versions) is a highly spiced grilled meatball, made either of ground beef or lamb. The typical way to prepare it is as a kebab; the meat is formed in a long sausage shape around a skewer and grilled. In Egypt, along with taamayya (aka falafel), shish tawook (chicken kebab), shwarma (thinly sliced marinated beef or lamb, similar to gyro meat), and koshary (lentils, rice, and macaroni topped with fried onions and spicy tomato sauce), kofta is one of the more readily available and cheap fast food options. When I lived in Alexandria, I would buy kofta kebabs as a platter with a side of rice pilaf, or in pita-style sandwiches. Not having skewers or grilling capabilities, I improvised and made baked meatballs with kofta-style seasoning, which I put into pita sandwiches and topped with homemade tahini sauce.

Kofta balls

1/2 lb lean ground beef or lamb (I used very lean beef)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsps onion, grated

2 tbsps chopped fresh Italian parsley, or 1 tbsp dried parsley

2 tsps ground coriander

2 tsps kosher salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cardamom

a pinch of black pepper and a dash of cayenne

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the garlic, onion, and spices into a paste. Using your hands, work the paste into the ground meat until well combined. Shape the meat into balls, about an inch in diameter. You should have about eight of them. Place the meatballs on a foil lined baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. While the meat balls are baking, you can prepare the tahini sauce. Serve with rice and a salad, or in a pita with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. Makes 2 servings.

Tahini sauce

In addition to use as a condiment, this tahini sauce can be used as a salad dressing (with the addition of more lemon juice and water), or as a marinade for chicken or fish. It will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

1/4 cup tahini paste (Tahini paste is made of ground sesame seeds. It is a key ingredient of dips hummus and babaganoush. Mixed with a little honey, it is yummy spread on bread. You can find this in the Middle Eastern or Kosher foods section of your grocery store. A common brand is Joyva, and it comes in a 15 oz. tub.)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

Combine all ingredients together until smooth. Tahini paste should be a little thinner than mustard; if it is too thick, add a few teaspoons of water until the desired consistency is reached.

*Arabic word borrowed from Persian meaning ground meat. It is also transliterated "kufta," "kafta," "kefta," or "kofteh," depending on the dialect.

Sexy Sunday Science

I heard this bit on Weekend Edition Sunday this morning about new studies about the science behind willpower. According to a new book, called Willpower, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, willpower is more than just a state of mind; it's an actual function of the brain. And interestingly enough, it's a function that depends on having enough glucose circulating in your blood stream.

In the interview, Tierney said a couple of interesting things about how willpower works that stood out to me. He described how it's much easier to exert willpower to resist the temptation to eat a cookie if the cookie is out of sight. You're more likely to eat some Oreos if they're sitting in front of you than if they are hidden away in a drawer across the room. When asked about willpower and dieting, Tierney explained that one reason dieting is so hard is because it usually involves taking in less food than one is used to eating, and less food means lower levels of glucose, which means willpower can't function the way it's supposed to. "In order to diet you need willpower," Tierney said, "but in order to have willpower, you need to eat."

These two points of Tierney's speak exactly to principles underlying my whole system of shopping and menu planning. To start with, don't buy things that you know you wouldn't be able to resist if they were in your house. Sometimes I crave ice cream, or something like that, but that craving is pretty easy to resist when I don't have it around. More importantly, though, you need to eat. Eating healthfully doesn't mean eating less. In my case, I've found it actually means eating more, but eating better. More protein, veggies, and fruit. Changing my diet turned out to be surprisingly easy, at least in terms of my enjoyment of food. When I have good food in the fridge that's ready to eat, I don't find myself wishing I had a quesadilla or a slice of pizza instead. The somewhat more challenging part was learning to plan ahead, and to get used to making time to cook things more complicated than burritos or tuna melts. I suspect that this is really the hardest part for most people. It's not the idea of changing what you eat, it's changing how you eat--that is, how you tend to shop during the week and what you usually do about making dinner after a long day--that's hard. Planning makes all the difference.

So how do you come up with a plan? Well, I think you have to let food be the motivating factor. You should think about the meals that you really enjoy, and that you know how to make. (Maybe you don't know how to make many things; that's a problem unto itself that I will need to address in a different post. I always say, however, that if you can read, you can cook. I think that a lot of cooking failures, my own included, are the result of not reading a recipe attentively. Just following the directions carefully is usually all good cooking takes.) Think about it this way, if it helps: if you were going to go out to eat all week, what kind of restaurants would you like to go to? Thai? Italian? Mexican? OK. So, is there anything you get at that kind of place you could make on your own? The answer is often "yes." A simple example is your basic taco, that you can get from any taqueria, which is just a corn tortilla, some spiced meat filling, topped with chopped onion, cilantro, salsa, and lime juice. This is one tasty meal that is about as easy to make at home as it is to go to a restaurant and order it. And you can dress it up or down as much as you want. Anyway. Can you come up with three or four things you wouldn't mind eating throughout the week? Alright, then, you've got a menu.

Once you've got a menu, it's fairly easy to come up with a shopping list to get the things you need. Even if you have a menu that's kind of complicated and disparate, and requires a weird mix of items, don't let this intimidate you. It's far better, I think, to spend more money in one go, knowing where that money is going, than to shop frequently and randomly--buying fruits or vegetables you have no clear plan for that end up going bad, buying bread that languishes until it's moldy or stale, buying staples haphazardly so you end up with dozens of cans of something you use infrequently while you never seem to have enough pasta or rice on hand, etc. Make a shopping list, get everything that is on it, and don't get anything that isn't on it.

Getting motivated to cook is the hardest part. You need to think of cooking as a necessary task that needs to be done regularly, just like laundry, or cleaning the bathroom. And just like laundry and cleaning the bathroom, cooking need not be something you do every day. If you want to make something complicated, make it on your day off, and on the nights when you have no energy for cooking you don't have to do anything but reheat it. In addition, having an arsenal of simple, quick, tasty recipes at your disposal, like the pesto pasta I made the other night, or the succotash, or those tacos I mentioned earlier, is great, because you can throw them together anytime without a lot of effort. The key is to make things in the proper quantity. Make enough of something that you can get some leftovers out of it, but not so much that it will go bad before you finish it. Most of the recipes you'll see on this blog will make about four servings, or enough for a person living alone to feed themselves four times throughout the week. If you live with someone, doubling the recipes for two may cost you a little more money, but the increase in time and effort will be negligible. I actually think shopping for two (assuming that you have two incomes) can be more economical, because buying things in bulk often means you pay less for something per ounce. That's why they call big packages of things "economy-sized."

So back to the willpower thing. A final thing John Tierney said about willpower is that you can build it up and train it, like muscle. With practice, you can develop stronger willpower over time. I have found this to be the case with me and cooking. It used to make me tired to even think about, but now I'm used to it and it doesn't seem like such a chore any more. In fact, I really enjoy it, to the extent that for me it can be a way of procrastinating from working on something else that needs to get done. Well, maybe it's not procrastinating. Maybe it's just my brain craving the food it needs in order to focus on my other work. Right?

Friday Nuttiness

I don't know about you, but I'm glad it's Friday.

I'm not going to get all fancy with this post, which is appropriate, because I didn't get all fancy with dinner, either. Sometimes, though, you can make a really simple meal that seems fancy. Pasta with pesto sauce is one of those things.

The basil pesto you're probably familiar with--garlicky, silky, rich, and bright green--is usually made with pine nuts. Unfortunately, thanks to climate change, there is currently a pine-nut shortage, which means they are craaaaazy expensive. I saw them selling for almost $30 a pound at the store. The good news is you can substitute other nuts. I've seen recipes that substitute cashews, which in my opinion are kind of bland. I decided to go with walnuts. That...walnutty...flavor (I'm at a loss to describe it...if you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it), I think, meshes well with the other flavors, and you still get that same sense of nuttiness you get from pine nuts.

If you eat at my house, you'll always come away with a sense of nuttiness.

Walnut Basil Pesto

When I threw this together, my measurements were a little fast and loose. These are just my estimates. Play around with the amounts until you get the combination of flavors and consistency you like.

2 cups (neither packed too tightly nor too loosely) fresh basil, chopped

4 large cloves garlic

1/3 cup walnut pieces, lightly toasted

1/3 cup olive oil

1/4 cup grated parmesan or similar hard cheese

1 tsp kosher or sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

Throw it all in a food processor and pulse until it's a paste. Alternatively, if you don't have a food processor, but do have a broad, sharp knife, you can do it the way nonna did back in the old country and rock your blade back and forth over the pile of basil leaves, garlic, and walnuts until it's very finely minced, and then just mix it up with the other ingredients. By the way, simply omit the cheese for vegan goodness.

This should make enough for 4-5 cups pasta. I just tossed it with some angel hair and some cooked chicken. Fast, easy, delicious.

Leftover Love

Here it is, midweek, and I have three tasty things in my fridge to choose from to eat, and all I have to do is reheat them. I had some of the ratatouille for lunch today. Ratatouille, by the way, is one of those things that gets better with age (up to a point, of course...). While I was looking around in the fridge, I couldn't help breaking into the puerco pibil leftovers and stealing a couple chunks of pork magic. I want you to see something:

I know it's a little hard to see, but can you see the orange goo that seems to be suspended in place despite the fact that I'm holding the container almost vertical? Yeah, that's achiote paste...and rendered pig fat. Lots of it. Did I say I made healthy food? Ha!

Well, the truth is, folks, that animal fat is an essential part of making a lot of things taste so darn good. I try to use the leanest cuts of meat I can get away with in most cases, but you just can't produce a pork dish as melt-in-your-mouth as this without a starting with a fatty cut. You could try this, maybe, with something leaner, and it might even be good, but it wouldn't be puerco pibil. Authenticity--and flavor--sometimes trump doing what's best for your arteries.

I'm going to go out on a limb, here. I'm no nutritionist, but I'm going to argue that a decadent fatty meal like this has a place in healthy, nutritious eating. The portion I ate last night (or rather, yesterday afternoon, since I couldn't bear to wait until dinner time), was a reasonable size. It was probably half the size of a serving you would get in a restaurant. I had it with rice, some avocado, and a little salad. And a beer...an extra indulgence, I will admit. But I didn't have chips, I didn't have beans cooked in lard, I didn't have any cheese. I had sensible portion of meat for an adult, rounded out with sensible sides. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If I had a Big Mac every day for lunch, and then came home and had pot roast and mashed potatoes every night, I would have a problem, and so would anyone else who does that. But I don't. Eating healthfully, I think, means being moderate. That's my thought o' the day.

Puerco Pibil (Robert Rodriguez, Te Amo)

"Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck." --Robert Rodriguez

If you don't know who Robert Rodriguez is, he's the director behind the films El Mariachi, Desperado, and, most pertinent to this post, Once Upon A Time In Mexico. In Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Johnny Depp's character Special Agent Sands is obsessed with puerco pibil, a traditional Mexican dish of slow-roasted pork in achiote sauce. I don't know why I decided to give puerco pibil a try; it wasn't because of the movie. However, when looking for a recipe, I came across a video of Rodriguez demonstrating how to cook this dish like in the movie. Being a fancy-pants director and all, the video is very well done, and fun to watch, so I encourage you to check it out.

The main component of puerco pibil, aside from pork butt, is achiote paste, a Mexican spice blend utilizing achiote (aka annatto) seeds, which impart a distinct yellow-orange color to dishes. Not having the items on hand to make traditional achiote paste, I was honestly going to fudge it with some turmeric, but after watching Rodriguez's video I felt I would be doing the spirit of the dish a disservice if I half-assed it. So I made an unscheduled run by Whole Foods on my way home from school and picked up the requisite spices. Now, while I try to avoid unscheduled store runs as much as possible, I defend them where spices are concerned, because spices can make or break a meal and, more importantly, they are an investment. Shelling out for the spices needed to make, say, traditional Indian food, may set you back quite a bit initially, but it will be a long long time before you have to buy them again, and the range of culinary possibilities a well-stocked spice rack allows you pursue is well worth the initial cost. Anyway. About this pork.

Something that comes to mind after eating my puerco pibil is, gosh, it must suck to be a Jew, or a Muslim, or (god forbid) a vegan. They are so missing out on the glory of this pork. Oh my god. This might be the most amazing dish I have ever produced with my own hands. Seriously, it's so good that when I took a piece out of the package to test if it was done, I almost cut myself in my rush to get it on my plate. And...it...was...SO...EASY. You do need a food processor or a blender, though.

I must admit, I did not follow Rodriguez's recipe to the letter. I did not, for instance, throw in a tablespoon of "the finest tequila I could find." I'm not much of a tequila drinker, nor am I a fancy pants big shot movie director, so I opted to not drop the money on a bottle of tequila just to throw a splash into my meat. I did, however, pick up a six pack of hop shock IPA on my unscheduled store run, and a splash of that did just fine.

Here's Rodriguez's recipe with my slight tweakings. I made a much smaller amount than he did. However, I would suggest that you make the full amount of achiote paste and use only as much as you need and freeze the rest for another day.

Achiote paste:

5 Tbsp annatto seeds

1 Tbsp whole black pepper corns

8 whole allspice

2 tsps cumin

1/2 tsp whole cloves

8 cloves garlic

2 Tbsps salt

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup white vinegar

Grind the spices together in a very clean coffee grinder (no coffee residue) until very fine. Add to a food processor with the garlic, salt, orange juice and vinegar, and pulse until smooth. Use 1/5 of this amount of achiote per one pound of meat; freeze any leftover paste.

The pork:

2 lbs pork butt, cut into 1-2 inch cubes

2/5 of the achiote paste made using above method

2 serrano peppers, minced (Rodriguez uses habanero, but that may be a hotness bridge too far. Start out with the milder serranos and work up to the habanero if that's what you're into.)

Juice of two lemons

1 Tbsp tequila, if you have it. I used beer.

tin foil (my substitution for the more-exotic and authentic banana leaves)

Preheat the oven to 325. Combine all the ingredients and mix well to coat. In a roasting pan or baking dish, lay out two or three pieces of foil, rather larger than the size of the dish, and overlap to keep the juices from running out. Pour the pork and all the sauce into the tinfoil and fold it up into a tight package. Roasting time is approximately 1 hour per pound of meat. Serve the hot pork over rice or hot corn tortillas topped with fresh avocado slices and a squeeze of lime. And have a beer on the side. Holy shit, is it good. Make this for all your friends.

Thufferin' Thuccotash

I never really thought about succotash as an actual food people in the 21st century might eat. Its sole association in my mind has been Sylvester, the cartoon cat with the speech impediment. I think somehow I inferred from the depression-era vintage of those cartoons that succotash must be a mushy, nutrient-rich slop only eaten by people in Steinbeck novels who had fallen on hard times. It seems to me I did have a vague idea that it involved lima beans, which did not boost its appeal in my mind. I can't remember the last time I had lima beans, but I can say for sure I do not have fond memories of them. Lima beans, like broccoli or brussels sprouts or spinach (all delicious if prepared well), have a reputation of being a punishment food--you know, the last thing left on your plate, an unappetizing obstacle standing between you and dessert. On their own they are not unpleasant, but I can imagine how they might take on a chalky bland consistency if overcooked. In any case, there's no reason why it should occur to me to make succotash for dinner.

I chanced, however, on a recent post from Smitten Kitchen, a cooking blog I intermittently follow, with a recipe for "summer succotash." It looked amazingly good, and totally easy to prepare. I had some corn in the freezer that I had been thinking about using, and I wanted to make a simple meal out of it that was a little more appropriate for the hot weather we've been having than a chowder of some kind. Succotash was the solution. I made it tonight for dinner and the result was light but filling, and truly yummy. I made some changes from the original recipe; I didn't have some of the specialty items called for, such as sherry vinegar, on hand, but the result was quite pleasing, nevertheless. Because I was concerned that the succotash itself wouldn't be enough for a meal, I cooked up a little pasta to pour it over, pasta-salad style, and that was pretty satisfying, all in all. Here's my somewhat less fancy version of Smitten Kitchen's recipe. I've rounded portions up a bit to make four solid servings; I had to skimp on some things, and ended up with about three.

10 oz bag frozen lima beans, thawed

10 oz bag frozen corn kernels, thawed

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 sweet onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, mined

6 slices bacon

Juice of one lime

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

Bring a pot of water to boil on the stove and cook the lima beans until just tender (think "al dente"), about five minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water and set aside. Meanwhile, combine the lime juice, sugar, salt and pepper and let sit. In a large skillet, cook the bacon until crisp and set aside to drain on a paper towel. Pour off most of the bacon grease, leaving only about a tablespoon left, and add a splash of olive oil. Cook the onion in the bacon grease until it starts to soften, about a minute. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the corn, tomatoes, and lime-juice mixture. Cook just until the tomatoes begin to lose their firmness. Crumble half the bacon and toss it with the lima beans, and add both to the skillet. Cook until just warmed through and remove from the heat. Toss with the fresh basil and garnish with the remaining bacon. If, like me, you are eating by your lonesome, set aside some of the crumbled bacon and basil in a plastic baggie until you get around to eating the leftovers. Can be eaten cold. It would be easy enough to eliminate the bacon, if you are not a bacon eater, and turn this into a vegan dish. I would suggest eating it with some quinoa (a grain high in protein) for a balanced dinner.

Enjoy!

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

What a beautiful September day in Tucson! After two days of heavy monsoon rain, the air was fresh and clear this morning, with a steady--dare I say it--crisp breeze. It felt almost fall-like. Let's hope it keeps up. Anyway, it was great weather for riding to Sunflower Market. Let me say a few words about Sunflower. I think I might be in love. If you've never been to one before (as I never had until two weeks ago, when I happened to go with a friend), it's kind of like a Trader Joe's on a bigger scale. Like Whole Foods, it has a lot of natural and organic options, and bulk grains and nuts and things, but like Trader Joe's, you can actually afford the prices and the people who work there are very nice. They had everything I needed (except 1% milk quarts, so I went with skim). The produce section is great, and so is the meat counter. I found fresh andouille sausage, which they never seem to have at Safeway. The cost was pretty close to the $70 range I was predicting; the total bill ended up being $74.23. I suspect that I would have spent at least $100 at Whole Foods for the same items. So here's that list again, with some notes:

1. Bacon (1/2 pound bulk)
2. Pork (3 lbs boneless pork shoulder)
3. Andouille sausage (1/2 pound)
4. Quart of 1% milk (not available in quart size so I got skim)
5. 1/2 quart of lowfat plain yogurt (Nancy's brand)
6. 1/2 gallon of orange juice
7. Frozen lima beans
8. Coffee beans
9. White rice
10. Walnuts
11. Peanut butter
12. 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
13. 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
14. 2 15-oz cans red beans
15. Fresh fruit (2 6-oz cartons of raspberries and a pound of pluots)
16. Lemons (3 for $1)
17. Limes (3 for $1)
18. Cherry tomatoes (1 pint)
19. Avocados (3)
20. Bell peppers (3 green)
21. Serrano peppers (2)
22. Celery
23. Fresh basil
24. Salad greens (red-leaf lettuce head)
25. Whole-wheat pita bread
26. Freezer bags

So here's what I'm going to do with this stuff. As I mentioned previously, I plan my menu out for two weeks. To be more specific, I plan for 28 meals: 14 dinners and 14 lunches. (Breakfast isn't included because it often doesn't involve cooking. On most school mornings when I'm pressed for time I just have a bowl of oatmeal of a smoothie or something.) I allow for about four meals eaten outside the house in the course of two weeks (one dinner + one lunch out/week), which means I need to shoot for 24 meals. Because I am not about to make 24 separate meals, I come up with seven or eight recipes yielding 3-4 servings each (or more if it's freezable) that complement each other in terms of the ingredients required, the amount of prep time required, and the variety of flavors, to stick to and stretch out over the two weeks. Usually I'll have a couple things that are a bit heavier on meat and other things that are mostly vegetarian, some things that are more labor intensive and some that are quick and easy. I also try to incorporate at least one new recipe into the mix. It's not unusual for me to end up with more of one thing or less of another than I anticipated, but it works surprisingly well. Finally, if I do things right, I'll end up with at least one "transitional" recipe that will get me through the end of the two weeks into the next shopping cycle.

So my menu items for the week are as follows. Recipes that are new to me are italicized; transitional recipes are in green:

Tuna salad pita sandwich x 1

Ratatouille with chicken and rice x 4 (possible extra for freezing)

Puerco pibil and rice x 4 (adapted from Robert Rodriguez; possible extra for freezing)

Summer succotash with bacon x 3 (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Red beans and rice with andouille sausage x 4

Angelhair pasta with walnut pesto and chicken x 4 (hopefully extra pesto for freezing)

Kofta (Middle Eastern spiced meatballs) and rice x 2

Channa Masala (chickpea-tomato curry) x 2

Et voila! 24 dishes from 8 recipes, all of which function as complete meals within themselves including vegetable, protein, and a starch.

Since ratatouille is going to be my dinner tonight, let's end with my ratatouille recipe. Ratatouille is a highly-spiced vegetable stew with a tomato base traditional to French and North African cuisine. It's a good choice for a weekend meal because, though it is not difficult, it takes a bit longer to prepare. The cooked vegetables freeze well, so this is also a good recipe to double, so that you can freeze half and turn it into an easy meal sometime in the future. Ratatouille pairs well with rice, but could also be served with some rustic bread or couscous, or even a chunky pasta like rigatoni. Because ratatouille is pretty hearty, I prefer to have chicken with it instead red meat, but I imagine it would be tasty with beef or lamb kebabs. To turn it into a balanced vegetarian meal, add a can of drained chickpeas to the pot just before serving.

Because I don't have a grill, I plan to saute my chicken. If this is something you're unfamiliar with, it's quite easy. It works best if you pound the chicken breast first so that it's of an even thickness. You don't want a thick part staying pink inside. Place the chicken breast in a freezer bag or wrap well with saran wrap (maybe a couple of layers--there's nothing grosser than having pulverized bits of raw chicken flying at you). Beat the shit out of it until it's about a quarter inch thick. You can use a mallet, or if, like me, you don't have one, a rolling pin or the bottom of a small sauce pan will do. Heat a little olive oil in your skillet. Rub your chicken breast with a little olive oil and a spice rub of equal parts cumin, paprika, cinnamon, salt and pepper (this is something you can mix a quantity of and have lying around so you don't have to measure the spices out every time). Place the breast in the skillet and cook about five minutes on each side. That's how you saute a chicken breast. Easy. On to the ratatouille:

You will need:

Olive oil

1 yellow onion, sliced in thin half-moon slices

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 medium eggplant*, peeled and cubed

1 zucchini, cubed

1 yellow (summer) squash, cubed

2 cups crushed tomatoes and juice (about half a 28-oz can)

(Optional: 1/4 cup pitted green or kalamata olives)

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp ground cloves

salt and pepper to taste

In a deep skillet, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until the onion begins to soften. Add the eggplant and cook until the eggplant softens, stirring constantly. This is important, because eggplant is a squirrelly vegetable. It can suck up oil like a sponge, with the result that half your eggplant chunks are oily and the other half are bitter and dry. Stirring will ensure that it is evenly coated with oil. Once the eggplant is soft, add the remaining ingredients and, stirring, bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 1/2 an hour to an hour, until the vegetables are all soft and the sauce has thickened. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve. Yields 4 servings.

*You may want to salt your eggplant cubes before using them. Salting draws moisture out of the flesh and makes it less bitter and easier to cook. Toss the eggplant with salt and let sit in a colander for an hour. Rinse the pieces well and squeeze them in your hand to expel moisture. Pat dry with paper towels or a clean dish towel. You can do this with squash, too.

And On Sunday She Shopped

I've worked out a system for grocery shopping and menu planning, taking my various restrictions into account (schedule, money, distance to store and mode of conveyance), that seems to be working pretty well for me. The system mostly arose out of the circumstance that getting to a reasonable grocery store* is a giant pain in my ass. I've been schlepping down to a Safeway about 3 miles from where I live. (I recently discovered a Sunflower Market, however, that is somewhat closer to me, and safely accessible by bike. I did my last grocery run there and was really pleased with the overall experience.) I realize that may not seem that far, but bear in mind that: 1) I live in a place where the temperature routinely rises above 90 degrees by midday for much of the year, 2) I must negotiate fitting all my groceries in bike baskets and a backpack, which makes for cumbersome riding, and 3) I must brave bike lanes on some pretty busy streets. The whole process of getting there, shopping, getting home and unpacking can take upwards of two hours, on top of which it requires a good deal more cleverness and physical exertion than hopping in one's car. So my menu planning has become an exercise in uber-efficiency; a not-unenjoyable puzzle, the endgame of which is a schedule of meals, requiring a number of items within the limits of what I can reasonably afford/carry that will sustain me healthfully while not boring my palate for two weeks. In short, I must come up with a way to only go to the store once every two weeks.

My list of ingredients and cooking-related groceries for tomorrow's excursion is as follows:

1. Bacon
2. Pork
3. Andouille sausage
4. Quart of 1% milk
5. 1/2 quart of lowfat plain yogurt
6. 1/2 gallon of orange juice
7. Frozen lima beans
8. Coffee beans
9. White rice
10. Walnuts
11. Peanut butter
12. 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
13. 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
14. 2 15-oz cans red beans
15. Fresh fruit (I am usually open-ended about fruit and will buy what's in season/what looks good)
16. Lemons
17. Limes
18. Cherry tomatoes
19. Avocados
20. Bell peppers
21. Serrano peppers
22. Celery
23. Fresh basil
24. Salad greens
25. Whole-wheat pita bread
26. Freezer bags

26 items for two weeks of eating; not too bad, I don't think. Notice how I've grouped things that are kind of alike--cans with cans, etc. This makes the process of shopping quicker and easier, so I'm not zig-zagging back and forth across the store. I will update you later about my plan for all these particular items, what if anything I had to cut from the list, how much it ended up setting me back (I'm guessing $70), and any other mishaps or items of note that may occur along the way. But for now I am off to bed. Goodnight, internet.

*On a side note, I live within walking distance of a Whole Foods. This is odd, because the surrounding neighborhood is mostly working class, and let's face it, Whole Foods is pretty mockably boojy. I have shopped there occasionally, and, I don't know, maybe it's this location, but it always seems to be poorly stocked and poorly staffed. The prices are outrageous, for reasons that are nebulous to me. I know they promote themselves as some kind of pro-sustainability, more-ethical-than-thou alternative to a regular grocery store, but I'm not sure I buy it (literally). This piece from Slate and this open letter from Michael Pollan to Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey partially inform my view. For the record, notionally, I am down with sustainable agriculture and the whole "locavore" movement and organic produce and fair trade and all of that. Practically, I think there's a long way to go with all that. I could (and at some point probably will) write about my thoughts on the topic at length, but I'm not going to do that here and now. I would love all my food to be squeaky clean, ethically and otherwise, but when we come right down to it, I'm a shopping pragmatist. When it's reasonable for me to buy, say, cruelty-free eggs, organic milk, local produce, etc, I generally do it, even if it costs more. There are several "natural" products I prefer to the generic brands, which I buy regularly. Laura Scudder's peanut butter, for instance, or Brown Cow yogurt. But my biggest motivator as a shopper is not being wasteful, and I do that by shopping for things that I can afford and that I know for sure I will eat and not end up throwing away. If that means buying the non-organic tomatoes from Mexico at $1.99 a pound instead of the local organic heirloom tomatoes at $5.99 a pound, I can live with that. By the way, although I wouldn't consider myself a Michael Pollan disciple or zealot or anything, an awful lot of what he says about food and food culture in America makes sense to me. Take a look at his work, if you're not familiar with it.

Cooking For One: An Introduction

Hi. I'm the Sexy Divorcee. Welcome to my blog. Let me tell you a little about what I'm doing here. (Sometimes I use bad words. Please don't be alarmed.)

I am a reasonably healthy adult, but the desire to be healthier was the push that started me down the road to becoming a more conscious cook. I have been slightly overweight since my mid-twenties, and I realized that once I hit my rapidly approaching thirties, just maintaining my weight was going to get harder, and losing weight was going to get significantly harder. Although I bike and walk everywhere and enjoy outdoor activities, I have an abhorrence of anything resembling structured exercise. If I was going to maintain my weight, changing the way I eat was far more realistic than suddenly becoming a jogger or something. I fuckin' hate jogging. Anyway.

I think diets are bullshit. If I was going to change the way I eat, the change was going to have to be permanently viable. I had to be able to continue to eat all the foods I like...that is, all the foods period. But I was willing to make some concessions in terms of frequency and amount. I didn't think this would be too hard; I don't eat a lot of junk food, and I don't have a big sweet tooth. I do love fries and pizza and stuff, but I only have those things occasionally when I'm out with friends. I cave to fast food cravings maybe three times a year. And I almost never spend grocery money on packaged snacks or highly processed quasi-meals. No pop tarts or hot pockets or soda or any of that crap. Once in a great while I would buy some tortilla chips (an entire bag of which, I will admit, I could easily have eaten in the space of two days, but still). So I didn't think making changes would be that difficult.

I went on the USDA's "my pyramid" website (it has since become the more sensical "my plate") and got a little obsessed with their menu planner tool. When I started plugging in the things I would eat on a typical day, I learned a lot about the state of my nutrition. Things I was eating too much of: Empty carbs, butter, and cheese (...and beer). I guess that wasn't a surprise. If somebody told me it was acceptable human behavior to do so, I could probably be content eating nothing but buttered sourdough toast and quesadillas for days on end. What I was surprised and intrigued to learn was how out of balance the rest of my diet was. I tried to be sure to eat fruits and vegetables and lean protein regularly, and I thought I was doing OK, but the truth is I wasn't getting enough of any of it. I realized that I was going to have to be very clever and creative if I was going to achieve a more balanced diet.

Now, after several months of experimenting, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. I don't think my diet is perfectly balanced, but I'm not striving for perfection. It has gotten a lot better, and I know that I feel better in general as a result. I tend to be happier and have more energy, and I've even lost a little weight. Trying to meet my nutritional goals was frustrating at first; I spend probably twice as much money on groceries now as I used to. But I eat out less, and I waste a lot less of the food that I do buy, so it evens out. Also, incorporating more whole grains into my diet and cutting out all the butter and fatty dairy was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I've also cut back on the beer. Picking up a six-pack when I went grocery shopping used to be a matter of course; I only get beer occasionally now. (I haven't cut back on my beer consumption when I go out with friends, however. All things in moderation, including moderation, right?)

There are a number of challenges unique to my situation that I should probably outline. I have a very small kitchen, with virtually no counter space and a wee gas oven and range only 18 inches wide. I have no car, so all my grocery shopping has to be done by bike. Hence, all my groceries must fit on my bike. I live on a graduate student's small stipend (I won't say how much I make, but it's well below the poverty line), and I have a graduate student's hectic schedule. And, perhaps the biggest challenge, I live alone. I love living alone, but cooking healthfully and with variety for one requires a lot of creativity and adapting. Most recipes yield at least four servings, and the most economical and practical dishes--meals that can be made in one dish and keep well, like casseroles--typically yield job lots. A lasagna, for example, is a practical, healthy, affordable meal that will provide at least two dinners for a family of four. But if I made a regular-sized lasagna for myself, chances are it would go bad, or at the very least I would get sick of eating it, before I finished the whole thing, and I would end up throwing much of it away.

Must a single lady or gentleman subsist on burritos, sandwiches, frozen dinners, and takeout? Many do, but that gets monotonous and expensive, and doesn't allow for much control over nutrition. Through this blog I want to share my experiences with menu planning, shopping, and cooking to show that it's eminently possible for a person living alone to eat well and scrumptiously without expending tons of time and money. This isn't meant to be just another cooking blog. There will be a lot of recipes; some original, some adapted, some outright cribbed from other sources. But the objective is to present a record of the entire process: planning, shopping, cooking, and enjoying (or not) the results.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. I think this will be fun.