This dish was inspired:

My CSA has inundated me lately with absolutely gorgeous and delicious tomatoes. I’ve been trying to keep up with them all, and frankly, haven’t been too upset at including tomatoes in some shape or form in all my recent meals.

But this one monster tomato, well, I had to do something special with it. So.. I stuffed it.

Looking for a chance to try out some home made mayonnaise? Here it is.

Serves 2. Easily doubled. This is a pretty low calorie meal, but there’s a decent amount of fat in those calories from the bacon and the mayonnaise, so bear that in mind.

Prep time – 20 minutes
Cook time – 20 minutes

Ingredients…

- 1/2 lb. raw shrimp, peeled and de-veined
- 2 huge or 4 large fresh tomatoes
- 2 celery stalks
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 jalapeño (optional)
- 1/2 cup homemade mayonnaise
- 3-4 strips of bacon

You’ll need three burners – one for a stock pot full of water, one for a pan full of bacon, and one more for either a skillet or a pot.

First, get the things on the oven going. The dish will be served cold, or cool at least, so you want to go ahead and get your cooking started right off.

Poach or sauté the shrimp in your favorite seafood spices, make sure to include some lemon juice. Remember that shrimp really doesn’t need a lot of time to cook, and it will keep cooking for a few minutes after you’ve removed it from the heat.

Cook the bacon to your preferred doneness.

While these are going, blanch, skin, and core your tomatoes. I had never actually done this before, so if you’re like me you’ll need a bit of an explanation.

To skin and core tomatoes, you want to blanch them like you would any other vegetable. Prepare a bowl of ice water deep enough to fully submerge your tomato. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water up to gentle boil – make sure there’s enough water to cover the tomato.

Submerge the tomato in the boiling water for 30-45 seconds, and then immediately shock it in the ice bath to stop the cooking. Let it cool in the ice bath, and then remove.

It’s easier to core the tomato before removing the skin, as the skin will help you from destroying the thing in the process. Cut a sizable hole around the top of the tomato and slightly inward. Twist core and remove, and dig out as much seed from the inside as possible.

If you’ve done it well, this will leave you with a pretty beautiful little vegetable to build your dish on.

By now, the bacon and the shrimp are probably about done.

Remove the bacon from the skillet and place on a paper towel to drain grease. Remove the shrimp from the pot or skillet. Allow both to cool at room temperature.

Vegetable dicing time. Chop up the celery and pepper(s) into fine cuts while the rest of the food is cooking.

In a bowl, mix the mayonnaise with the diced vegetables. If you’re using a plain mayonnaise, chop up some fresh parsley or basil to include for some interest.

Add cooled shrimp to the mayonnaise mixture.

Carefully spoon the mix into the skinned and cored tomatoes. Leave some shrimp hangin’ out for a nice garnish.

Crumble the bacon into pieces in a fresh paper towel, and for your last touch – sprinkle it over the top of your stuffed tomatoes.

This is really a great way to use up a *lot* of tomato all at once. If you wanted to get really crazy, you could even dice some up and include that in the mayo mix, but it might be a bit overwhelming.

I paired mine with Thomas Keller’s creamed corn (recipe from Ad Hoc at Home) – which I can not seem to get enough of – and a biscuit.

What’s your favorite way of dealing with a tomato rush?

So yes – Colorado! And to a lesser extent, Utah. I have to admit, I never thought I’d actually be spending vacation time in… Utah. But yes, I did. It was dry. Hot. Lots of rocks.

Let’s go back a bit first, get a little backstory to fill in the why of this trip. About 29 years – give or take. Early 1980’s. My mother’s father, Alfred, owns and operates a farm in Grand Junction, Colorado. He’s getting up in age at this point and doesn’t have a particularly extensive catalog of farmed products. A few various things here and there, some hay, chickens, a turkey. Occasionally grazing the neighbors cows on his fields. That sort of thing.

This farm in Grand Junction was the central hub of the universe that is my maternal family for many, many years. Spread out across the Western United States, this was where we all gathered every Summer to be together.

I’d love to say that I got a real farmer’s education from this place, but my memories (being the age I was) extend only to feeding chickens, running away from the turkey (his name was George but we called him Monster), collecting eggs, picking cherries and fresh peaches, and floating boats and rubber balls in a race through the irrigation ditches. Very little time was spent in a kitchen, I was too busy playing in the treehouse.

I hadn’t been to this place since I was 13. 16 years ago now – my grandfather passed away in 1994. At that point in my life, I had been coming to the farm every Summer – so it was admittedly a bit difficult to see it all go away like that. There had been plans to sell the farm and move him closer to my parents, but whether a change like that happens abruptly or with anticipation – it’s always a bit difficult.

So last year, my oldest brother Sean, proposes a reunion here. My nieces and a nephew, the next generation, should see the places that meant something to us out there. It had been close to two decades since we visited each other in Grand Junction.

The following is a story of ten days in hot, dry, crazy places, in altogether too close quarters with my family. Don’t worry, it’s primarily a picture tour. I’ll leave out the gory bits. And yes, Thomas Keller’s Rib recipe is coming. It’s ridiculously awesome, I promise it’s worth the wait.

The first three days there were spent at a B&B that our family took over. I mean, we booked every single room in a giant house. There was family there from Virginia, Maryland, Idaho, Washington (state), Montana, Colorado, Louisiana, and Hawai’i. The number fluctuated from 13 to 22, depending on the day.

The bulk of the trip revolved around this hub at Grand Junction (really a nearby town called Fruita, but there’s no real need for the distinction here).

While there, we visited the Colorado National Monument, and a particular trail called the Devil’s Kitchen – a very well known place from my childhood.

We also visited my grandfather’s old property, which had been sold to new owners. They tore down the farm house and built a new home – a shame but the new home was pretty beautiful – and have converted the place into a sod farm.

Not terribly exciting, I have to admit. But sod is a far sight more profitable than anything my grandfather ever did with the property, so there you go. There used to be a beautiful little cherry tree grove about halfway down the field there.

Back at the house, I made Thomas Keller’s pork spare ribs one night, along with some creamed corn. Every time I made food on this trip it felt a little like something out of Kitchen Impossible – I had no idea what ingredients I’d have access to, I’d be working in a strange kitchen that may or may not have the equipment I need, and I’d be cooking for 15-20 people or so. This time it was 20 – I made 4 racks of ribs so I tripled the amount of dry rub I made.

Ingredients…

- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 2 tbsp kosher salt
- 2 tsp sweet pimenton/Spanish paprika (regular paprika will work in a pinch)
- 2 tsp cayenne
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp ground allspice
- 1 tsp red papper flakes

Mix all the above in a bowl for the dry rub. Thaw rib racks, and cut into 2-3 rib pieces. Cover ribs thoroughly with dry rub, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 2-6 hours for the flavors to set.

While the ribs are sitting in the fridge the rub will draw juices out of the meat, so you should make sure to put them on a plate or expect a bit of a mess.

Next, take the ribs out of the fridge and sear them on a grill over high heat – about 2 minutes each side. Alternate them at 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock for a nice cross-hatch pattern.

Remove ribs from grill, and bake in an oven for 2 hours at 250 degrees F. Remove from oven, let rest 5-10 minutes, and serve.

A word of caution – if you double or triple this recipe like I did, you may want to be conservative with the cayenne and red pepper flakes. My tripled recipe turned out seriously HOT. Not that that’s always a bad thing, but it should be kept in mind.

Next up, we drove from Grand Junction down to Moab in Utah, and stayed in some cabins for two nights. Moab is basically the middle of the desert. There’s really not much there at all, except for some serious mountains, a *lot* of bats, and of course Arches National Park.

Arches was very surreal. Like other-planet surreal. The magnitude of this scenery doesn’t translate well through photograph; it was all pretty intense.

We did a few hikes in the park here, and played some music in the cabins. Then we moved on.

Another 3 hour drive later and we were back in Colorado, in a little town called Mancos. Another house taken over by the family. This location was chosen for it’s proximity to Mesa Verde, another national park with all kinds of ancestral Puebloan structure.

Stayed two nights in Mancos. Finally, we drove back up north to Grand Junction again, through the San Juan mountains. We passed through Silverton, near Telluride, an old mining town known for it’s brothels.

While in Silverton, we overheard some cheering down the street and went to go check it out. Turns out it was the finish line for the Hardrock Hundred – a 100 mile foot race through the mountains. The elevation at Silverton is about 10,000 feet, and we got winded just sitting in a car. These people ran 100 miles over an equivalent elevation change to running up Mt. Everest – and back. And the first place runner did the thing in 27 hours, straight through. So about 15 minutes per mile.

So crazy. And inspiring. I can’t even imagine.

So anyway, there it is. 10 days out west. Really more of a tour than a vacation as there wasn’t too much time to spare for relaxing, but we saw some great things. And it was good to spend the time with family.

This post concludes guest week here at MSCK. All posts this week were provided by Hyun, and the photos by Bryan Johns (flickr link). We hope you have all enjoyed the recipes!

-Liam

For the longest time, I had this horrible fear of bread making. Two reasons why:

1. I have issues with failure, and frankly, EVERYONE will fail at one point when making bread.
2. I hate wasting food. To go through all those ingredients for it to fail is such a waste of time, money, and supplies.

Don’t close the screen. There is hope.

In the end, it’s worth it. All the failures I have encountered in bread making have only taught me where I went wrong. Eventually, I got it right and I love it.

My friend Christian is the one who encouraged me to start making bread. I usually consult him with all my baking issues and questions. He’s an amazing chef, a good friend, and someone who will definitely become big in the culinary world.

Christian sent me this recipe from Naturally Ella (it has since disappeared from the site though). It’s simple and straightforward enough, but I did make a slight modification. I replaced the 1/4 cup of sugar with a 1/4 cup of honey and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Honey is the way to go – the natural sweetness of it only adds to the flavors of the challah.

These directions apply to the use of a stand mixer; however you can do this by hand – if you do this by hand, you will have great arms.

Prep time -

Active: 30 minutes
Inactive: 1 hour 30 minutes – 2 hours

Bake time: 25 – 30 minutes

Yields 1 large loaf

Ingredients…

- 3/4 cup warm water (110 – 115 degrees F)
- 3/4 tbsp yeast
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/2 tbsp salt
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 3 whole eggs
- 4 cups flour

In a bowl, combine water, yeast, and 1 tablespoon of sugar in stand mixer bowl. Let sit for 5-10 minutes until yeast activates (foam will appear at the top)

Whisk in 2 eggs, oil, honey and the remaining sugar to the mixture. Once combined, attach it to the stand mixer. Use the dough hook and start mixing while slowly adding flour.

Once all the flour is in, continue to knead the dough in the mixer, about 10 minutes (timing it is highly recommended).

Once dough is kneaded, place dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot. Give it about an hour to rise (until double in size).

I usually put the oven on warm, crack the door open and put the dough right by there. Another option is getting a heating pad, put it on low, cover with towel and put the bowl over it. Room temperature plays a huge role in the dough rising.

After first rise, remove dough from bowl. Divide and braid the dough.

If you’re not sure how to braid bread, there are video tutorials on YouTube – here’s a good one.

Place loaf on a lightly oiled or silicone lined tray/cookie sheet. Whisk last egg and brush the bread. Place the dough in a warm spot, cover and let it rise for about 30-45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Before putting the dough in the oven, brush one last time with the egg.

Optional: you can put poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes – until top is golden brown.

What are some of your most disastrous baking failures?

Guest week continues here at MSCK. This week’s content is provided by my friends Hyun and photographer Bryan Johns (flickr link).

-Liam

I always thought scones were hard to make. Maybe because growing up, I didn’t know anyone who made it from scratch, so I immediately assumed that it was something only for professionals to make. Silly me.

Thank you God for Food Network. Especially for Tyler Florence.

During the blizzard earlier this year in DC, I was stuck at home, bored, nothing to do. So when I’m bored, I bake. I found this recipe on the Food Network site and it looked simple enough, so I went ahead and made it. It tasted great. However, as time progressed, I began wondering whether or not I could change this recipe to make other types of scones. I eventually managed to modify it to make ham and cheese scones, chocolate chip scones, white chocolate craisin scones. Which leads me to today’s recipe and my personal favorite: Oatmeal and sugar pecan scones.

There’s something hearty about this particular scone recipe. It feels like a good quick breakfast, but it would also be great as a dessert…warmed scone broken up into pieces topped with vanilla ice cream. Yum.

This recipe calls for sugar pecans. You can find that recipe here. If you don’t have time to make the pecans, I would recommend using 1 cup of chopped pecans and adding ¼ cup of sugar rather than 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Prep time: Active: 15 minutes
Bake time: 15-20 minutes

Yields: 12 scones

Ingredients…

- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 5 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut in chunks
- 1 cup heavy cream, plus more for brushing the scones
- 1 cup sugar pecans coarsely chopped
- 1 cup toasted oats
- Sugar in the raw for sprinkling over scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Sift flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and ground cinnamon in a bowl. Using either a mixer, 2 forks, or a pastry blender, mix butter in until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour heavy cream. Mix until everything is incorporated, but do not overwork the dough.

Fold pecans and toasted oats into the dough. Using your hands, thoroughly combine the pecans and oats to the dough.

Press the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 14 x 3 inches. Cut the rectangle in 1/2 then cut each halves into thirds leaving you with 6 squared pieces total. Cut the squares diagonally until you have 12 triangle pieces.

Place the scones on a cookie sheet covered in parchment, brush the top with heavy cream and sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of sugar in the raw on each scone.

Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes.

Has there ever been a food you were afraid of making, but wound up being pretty easy to make? How did it turn out?

It’s guest week here at MSCK! This week’s posts will be provided by a close friend of mine, Hyun, and the photos taken by Bryan Johns (flickr link). Please make them feel at home!

-Liam

I love desserts. I would rather eat a dessert than a meal. Ask anyone who knows me.

Cookies are my favorite – it conjures up such wonderful images of children sitting around a kitchen counter with mom eating fresh made cookies and milk. I don’t have kids yet, but this will become a ritual in my household when I do.

When Liam asked me to guestblog, I knew this was the first recipe I would make. It’s so easy and I knew my talented friend Bryan would agree to take the pictures if I promised to give him half of the batch since it’s one of his favorite cookies. You cannot go wrong with bargaining with food (unless they get sick, but let’s not go there…).

This recipe comes from Giada De Laurentiis. I usually take recipes and try to put my own spin on it, but these cookies are so perfect the way they are – spins were not needed. Also, this is an interesting recipe because the cookies almost have almost a whoopie pie cake consistency…actually I think I’ll do that next time: Lemon Ricotta Whoopie Pies.

Prep time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 13-15 minutes

Yields 44 cookies

Ingredients…

Cookies:

- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 (15-ounce) container whole milk ricotta cheese (I used part skim and it was fine)
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 lemon, zested

Glaze:

- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 lemon, zested

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper.

Stir flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Put aside.

Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time until fully and well incorporated. Add the rest of the wet ingredients: ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. After ingredients are combined, stir in the flour, baking powder and salt mix.

Spoon about 2 tablespoons of dough for each cookie onto the cookie sheet. Bake for 13-15 minutes (depending on your oven) until the edges are golden. Remove from oven and let it rest on the cookie sheet for about 20 minutes.

For the glaze (I recommend putting the cookies on a cooling rack since the glaze will drip) combine powdered sugar, juice and zest in a bowl. Stir until smooth. Spoon ½ teaspoon onto each cookie and spread it over the surface. Let the glaze harden (2 hours).

I recommend refrigerating the leftovers – they still stay soft.

What’s your favorite non-traditional cookie?

Last chance to enter the contest! Comment on this post here to enter to win. Contest closes at 6pm EST on Thursday, July 1st.

I’ve mentioned on here a few times now that Amanda and I are trying to adhere to Meatless Mondays. Occasionally some chicken or something might slip into our lunch, but other than that we’ve been pretty good about it for probably almost 6 months now.

As such I’m pretty much always on the hunt for more vegetarian “full-meal” recipes, particularly the kind that can fool you into not really noticing there’s no meat in your meal. Though my mind is willing, the flesh is weak – and even now having done this for some time I have a hard time accepting that I’ve had a full meal unless there’s at least some portion of meat or fish involved.

We also just recently did a major cleansing of all the kitchen cabinets, the pantry, closet, etc., tossing out or giving away all kinds of things that rarely see the light of day and merely just take up space. In doing so, I happened across my slow cooker crock pot. I got this for, I think, xmas maybe three or four years ago. And it’s probably really only been used about three or four times total in those years.

I like the idea of slow cookers, I really do – and I tend to love the final product, too. It’s just I’d never think to use one. So of course I’d have to jump at the opportunity of both finding a new recipe for the slow cooker as well as a new recipe to adopt for Mondays.

Ingredients…

- 1 package (8 oz) seitan
- 3/4 cup sliced celery
- 3/4 cup diced onion
- 3/4 cup diced green pepper
- 1 diced jalapeño pepper
- 2 cloves minced garlic
- 2 ears of corn
- 2 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, pureed
- 1 can kidney beans (drained)
- 1 can kidney beans (with liquid)
- 1 can cannellini beans (with liquid)
- 1/2 tablespoon chili powder
- 1-2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped oregano
- a generous splash of your favorite hot sauce

Prep time: about 20 minutes

Cook time: 8 hours

Serves: 4-6

A number of question marks in the food miles chart this time, but I know at least most of the critical items are coming from nearby.

If you don’t know, seitan is a wheat protein used in a lot of vegetarian/vegan dishes. If tofu is the chicken/white meat replacement, seitan is the beef. Of course both are much more than that, but it’s an easy way to understand it.

This is a pretty easy recipe to put together. It’s going to spend 8 hours in the slow cooker, so if you want to prepare it the night beforehand you can certainly do that.

If you do so, keep it in the fridge and make sure it’s covered.

First, grab a large bowl.

Dice up the onion, celery, and peppers. Add to the bowl.

Puree the tomatoes in a blender or food processor, add to the bowl.

Husk the corn, and hold it lengthwise to cut the kernels off the ear. Add kernels to the bowl.

Open the bean cans, drain one can of kidney beans. Add all of them to the bowl.

Mince the garlic, add to the bowl.

Chop up the fresh herbs, add to the bowl.

Are you seeing a pattern here yet?

Add spices to the bowl.

For more heat, be liberal with the chili powder or replace the jalapeño with a habanero. It should already have a decent bit of kick with the ingredients as listed.

Cover and refrigerate over night if needed. When ready to cook, put everything from the bowl into the slow cooker and cook it on low for 8 hours.

I wish I could say this chili was some great ancestral recipe handed down to me through the generations and accounting for some Southern connection lending me an authenticity that would be hard to debate… but, no, this is just an allrecipes.com chili recipe I adapted a bit. I promise it’s still awesome.

Recommended pairing: cornbread. Take the jalapeño and the fresh corn option.

Working my way through the farmer’s market this past weekend, a big stand of fresh berries happened to catch my eye. The cherries looked to die for and the blueberries were all perfectly plump and beautiful. I had to have some.

I had just recently read a post from evil chef mom Krysta, about how to make fresh cherry margaritas. So, with that in mind, and knowing I’d be spending the day with friends, I grabbed up a whole rack of fresh cherries. And while I was at it, I figured I might as well go with a few blueberries as well.

Well, the fresh cherry margaritas turned out to be quite awesome. We drank a large batch of them last Saturday while watching the US victory over England in the World Cup (1-1 against ENG is a victory in my book). Unlike the game, these cherry margaritas were an incontestable success.

So I got to thinking I should use the blueberries for the very same thing. And that’s exactly what I did.

I didn’t have any chambord, like Krysta’s recipe calls for, so I subbed in a little triple sec instead.

And if you like a little fizz, you can always top it off with some tonic.

Prep time: 10 minutes

Ingredients…

- 2/3 cup fresh blueberries
- 1 1/2 fl. oz silver tequila
- 1/3 fl. oz agave nectar
- splash of triple sec
- fresh juice of half a lime
- fruit to garnish

I made these in the little pint mason jars – they’re cute, travel well, and are the perfect size for the drink.

Preparation is simple.

Wash about 2/3 cup worth of blueberries and put them into a cocktail shaker, mortar, or bowl.

Using a pestle or a wooden spoon, smash them up real good like until you’ve gotten as much juice out of them as possible.

Strain the blueberry juice through a fine sieve – it will be pretty pulpy at first. You can re-strain it a few times if you’re super anti-pulp, but I just did it once and it worked out well.

Pour the juice into one of the pint containers. It should amount to roughly what is pictured in the pint jar in the corner below.

Next, cut a lime in half and then cut that half into quarters. Squeeze out as much juice as you can from the half a lime into your pint jar.

Then add the tequila, triple sec, and agave nectar using a shot glass for measurement.

Once you have added the liquors and agave, the drink is pretty much done. The jar should roughly be just short of half-full. At this point, you can cap the pint jars and seal them up to keep in the fridge until you are ready to drink, but I wouldn’t wait more than a day or two tops.

When you’re ready to drink, remove the jars from the fridge and shake them up thoroughly so all the components are well mixed. Fill to the top with ice (crushed or solid, your choice), and if you want a little bubble to it now would be the time to top it off with some tonic.

Best if enjoyed outdoors on an empty schedule.

PS: Happy Bloom’s Day!

Now that I’ve lured you in with my mouth-wateringly appetizing title let me assure you – these actually do wind up tasting pretty good. Completely counter to expectations from taking a look at the finished product, they are very edible and even pretty tasty.

Despite the final product’s lack of visual appeal, these gruel bars (“gruel” not because they are nasty, but because they are both great and cool at the same time – like when the cute guy or girl decides to talk to you in math class) are actually a great source of protein at about 10g a piece. I’ve been on a search for more protein in my diet lately because I’ve finally been able to get back into the gym and get some activity back into my life on a regular schedule. Those of you playing along at home will remember that I broke my wrist back in January, and then I injured my knee running a half marathon, and even more recently I threw my back out playing with a toddler over Memorial Day weekend. So I’m doing a lot of rehab work – I can only run about 2 or 3 miles at a time, and I’ve enrolled in a yoga class on Thursdays for my back and overall flexibility (which has always been awful).

Funny thing happened this Spring, though, as I went through all this. Without the normal exercise and activity that I was used to getting, I just didn’t really have the appetite that I did before. My stomach shrank, I wound up losing about 10-15 pounds (mostly muscle), and by the time I noticed enough to actually figure out how many calories I was getting on any given day I was generally ending my day at about a 400-500 calorie deficit from my maintenance goal. Not good. Not good at all when you’re my size.

So now that I’m exercising regularly again I’m trying to rehab my diet as well, and in doing so I’m focusing on between-meal options and high protein sources – since the meals themselves that I was eating were still always pretty good. I eventually want to write a post or maybe even a whole series focusing on successful snacking options but in the meantime we’ll just focus on these protein bars.

I had been motivated to try making some protein bars myself because I’ve recently been trying to find some good sources of on-the-go protein, and so far my experience with store bought options has been pretty dismal.

This recipe comes from Alton Brown’s Good Eats (thanks Celia!), but has been adapted slightly.

Calculating food miles for this recipe would be just dreadful. It’s easily over 10,000 miles total, I should think. I’m skipping it this time around because I simply haven’t got the time to write this post as expected, but I have been thinking about it a lot as I assemble things together. I think, at least at this point in the way our food system exists today, you kind of have to give yourself a free pass on a lot of these ingredients because there simply is no easy way to locally source things like flour, sugar, oat bran, wheat germ, etc. I do eventually want to start learning ratios for substituting honey for sugar in many of my recipes, but that knowledge has yet to be learned.

Prep time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 35 minutes

Makes 16 bars.

Ingredients…

Wet mix:

- 1 (12.3 oz) pkg soft silken tofu
- 2 (pastured) eggs
- 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 2/3 cup natural peanut butter (chunky or smooth, your call)
- 1/2 cup unfiltered apple juice

Dry mix:

- 1 cup (about 24g) soy protein powder
- 1/2 cup oat bran
- 1/2 cup wheat flour
- 1/4 cup wheat germ
- 2 tsp kosher salt

Fruits and nuts:

- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped dried apricots
- 2/3 cup almonds (optional: toasted)

Preheat oven to 350 and line a 13×9 pan with parchment paper. Lightly coat with canola oil.

If you’re using almonds, first step is to toast them in your oven (or toaster oven if you have one). Just lay them out flat on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and toast at 350 for about 5-7 minutes. You’ll know they’re done because your kitchen will smell incredibly delicious.

While almonds are toasting, combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Then, combine all wet ingredients in a large bowl – one by one. Start with the tofu and whisk it into a liquid before adding any other ingredients. Beat the eggs before mixing into the bowl.

Coarsely chop up the dried fruit and set aside in a small bowl. If you’re using nuts, you may want to smash them up a bit with a mortar and pestle. I gave the almonds a pretty good once-over, but didn’t smash them entirely to bits as I wanted some full size ones in the bars as well.

Once you have your three bowls all prepped, slowly start mixing the dry ingredients into the wet mix bowl, blending with a fork or a whisk as you go.

After the two mixes are blended, fold the fruits and nuts gently into the mix, and then spread evenly in the baking dish.

Put the baking dish in the oven at 350 for about 35 minutes. Use the toothpick test (stick a toothpick in the center and make sure it comes back out clean) to test for done-ness.

Then pull it out of the oven and cut it up into 16 bars and store in an air-tight container. The gruel bars will last for about a week.

At just shy of 200 calories, with 10g of protein and 27g carbs, these are great meal supplements for someone on a highly active schedule. If you’re trying to actually lose weight, these would make a pretty decent meal replacement too – they are fairly well rounded – but I wouldn’t replace more than one meal per day with them.

In the future, I’ll probably try to make them again varying up the different nuts and fruits, and maybe try using almond butter or even tahini (sesame seed butter) instead of peanut butter.

Did I mention this food was ugly? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever made something this unappealing in my kitchen before. At least, not without forgetting about it in the back of the fridge for several months first.

Mine came out with a lovely green tint that I affectionately refer to as split-pea-vomit-green. It’s because the soy protein powder I used had that shade to it. I had used a vanilla flavored soy packet but it still had a little green. If you used something that had just white or a brown tint it might come out looking a little more appetizing.

Well anyway, we all know looks can be deceiving. What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever cooked up in the kitchen?

NOTICE: CNN is airing a two-part investigative special tonight and tomorrow night called “Toxic America,” focusing on the amount of pesticides currently found in the produce on our grocery store shelves. A brief preview and more information about the show can be found here. Show starts tonight, on CNN, starting at 8pm EST.

So here I am writing this post on my brand new netbook, sitting on the bus commuting in to the office. I was forced to replace my old laptop because of a heat sink malfunction that was frying the motherboard. Manufacturing defect. But the machine was nearly four years old – a dinosaur in computer years – and no warranty or anything was applicable anymore.

I do have to say though, so far the netbook is pretty sweet. It was cheap as all hell, it’s tiny, and the battery actually works like a real battery should. Best of all, the monitor isn’t even any smaller than the monitor on my laptop was. Go figure.

And now I can write on the bus when I need to. I have about an hour long commute each day, most of the way on the bus (some on the subway), during which time I’m usually found reading. Which won’t really change. But writing this blog here can be pretty time consuming, so it’s nice to have the option open to me now to write during that time as well as read.

I think maybe the netbook needs a name. I’m not the type to go naming all my inanimate objects around me or anything, but the netbook.. I don’t know. It seems like it needs it. Any suggestions?

Anyway, enough about that. Today’s recipe is quite literally the first recipe I ever learned. I’ve been cooking this super simple dish for probably about ten years now, which for me is really something. I have no idea where the recipe came from or how I learned it, it was just something I knew.. somehow. I remember making it was back in my early years of college, back when the only other things I knew how to make came in a box that said “Hamburger Helper” on it. I remember I would prepare it when my friends had a birthday and I was too broke to actually buy them anything – I think they probably appreciated the good food more, anyway. Quality food was hard to come by in those times. Not that it wasn’t available, just that we (we meaning most of the people I knew and myself) simply didn’t know any better. Serving a home cooked meal with a salad or vegetables was a novelty, something that satiated the soul in a way none of us really understood.

Looking back now, it’s not hard to understand why a home cooked meal meant so much when the rest of our diet came from the college cafeteria or the Double T Diner. But back then it was all a bit of a mystery. Everybody just thought I was *that* good a cook, but at the time, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

Margarita chicken is really simple. You’re basically just cooking the chicken however you like, and making a sauce to go along with it. The sauce can be used for lots of different proteins – I’ve made it with tilapia, with shrimp, you could probably even use tofu if you wanted a vegetarian option. And you can cook the chicken (protein) in a skillet, on a grill, under a broiler, whatever. It’s pretty adaptable. For this time around, I used my grill.

Ingredients…

- 4 chicken breasts
- 1/4 c canola oil
- 1 tbsp corn starch (sifted)
- 2 jiggers tequila (1 jigger = 1.5 oz)
- fresh squeezed juice from 2 or 3 limes (fresh makes a big difference here)
- 2 tbsp lime zest
- 3 tbsp honey
- salt/pepper (optional)

The tequila travels pretty far to get to me, but fortunately the bottles last a fairly long time – I’m not that big on tequila. We’ve had our moments.

First thing you want to do is start putting the sauce together. Combine all the ingredients except the chicken in a small pot.

Make sure to zest the lime before juicing it.

Place the pot over a low flame.

Don’t take a shortcut and skip the sifting when you add the corn starch. It can leave bumps and lumps in the sauce, and in this sauce, that’s not something you want cause people will be chomping into chunks of corn starch. Not so yummy.

The starch is critical because it thickens up the sauce for you. Learning to use corn starch well is a big step in knowing how to make a good sauce – all you really need for a sauce is just an assortment of flavors and a thickening agent.

Once the sauce has heated up and started to thicken a little bit, take a brush and paint some of it onto your raw chicken. Then place the chicken on the grill, or under a broiler, or in a pan.

For this, I used a Himalayan pink salt slab to cook the chicken on a grill. Salt slabs are totally awesome. I will be posting more about them in the near future.

Cook the chicken, about 5-7 minutes each side (my grill was just shy of 400), and re-apply sauce when you flip it.

Take this time to make whatever sides you want. I made a simple salad and had some cornbread in the oven.

Once the chicken is done, you can add one more liberal application of the sauce and you’re done. That’s it!

Do you remember what the first recipe you ever learned was?

No, I mean three ways to prepare watermelon. What did you think I meant?

Happy Memorial Day! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

We’ve had some great weather this weekend and I hope you’ve all had a good chance to enjoy it. I myself have been busy spending most of the weekend outdoors, rather than at a computer, but I did figure I’d take a short break from that to share a couple quick tips on good ways to prepare a watermelon.

Since it’s now (unofficially) Summer, it’s (officially) fair game to bring out that (unofficial) king of the garden – the watermelon. Watermelon is so sweet and yummy you really don’t need to do anything but cut it up a bit and serve, which is what most people wind up doing, but there are also a lot of little tricks and tips you can do to take it up just a notch. Here’s a couple of my favorites.

Cut up a lime, squeeze lime juice over the watermelon, and drizzle with honey.

Take some salt (preferably some kind of specialty salt – my go-to is Himalayan pink salt) and grate it lightly over the watermelon.

Or get some fresh cut prosciutto, and wrap it around the watermelon cubes.

Remember that salty and sweet nearly always make a good flavor combination, which is why the salt and the prosciutto work so well.

Anyway, these are all very simple touches, and all make a nice way to dress up a watermelon.

Okay bye!