culinary Information About Me

Cooking isn't just a great excuse to wear an apron...

Everyday Cooking: Cooking vegetarian dishes is fun. I never feel limited by not using meat. Actually, the opposite is true- to get a varied diet, I try new foods all the time

Desserts: When I don't feel like cooking, I like baking cheesecakes and other desserts- they're more fun to make, decorate, and eat. Recently I found out that cheesecake has between 300 and over 600 calories... per serving! That might be a problem further down the road.

Veggies: On March 20, 2007, I decided to cut meat out of my diet "cold turkey" (yes, thats a pun, what are you going to do about it?). So, no meat (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, bunnies, fish... animals in general). Update: I'm trying to avoid gelatin and have therefore abondoned yogurt and marshmallows.

Soda: That's a big no-no for me. Sodas are not thirst quenching- they contain caffeine,which actually dehydrates you. Colas stain your teeth and sugar deteriorates them. It's just generally a bad idea all around to drink soda, so I don't. Water is so much better!

Shopping: I like shopping for ingredients to cook. I like big supermarkets with lots of choices and sometimes free samples. I also enjoy shopping at health and imported food stores like Trader Joe's, Sunflower Market, and little rinky-dink imported food stores
 

Current Culinary Experiments

Rice, Rice, Rice

I wish rice was not the cheapest food at the store. Even with the almost half Euro per kilo increase in price since earlier this year, it's still the best value. One kilo makes many meals and is still less than 3 Euros for delicious Thai rice. However, rice gets old. And since variety is the spice of life, sometimes I have to flee to the nearest Doener place for some Falafel or some Doener (vegetarische, of course). Speaking of which, it's doener for dinner time! Tschuess!

Coconut Cake 7/24/07 - 7/29/07

Day One (Tuesday): Make Coconut Extract

• measure out about 1/3 cup shredded coconut
• put into glass jar, and pour over it 4oz. vodka (my choice: Smirnoff Blue Label, but any cheap vodka will do)
• close jar and shake!
• store in cool, dark place
  

Day Two (Wednesday): Continue Preparing Extract

• Shake jar
  
• place back into cool, dark place (the basement)

Day Three (Thursday): Continue Preparing Extract

• Almost forget about extract
  
• Try to locate jar
• Find it, shake it, put it back

Day Four (Friday): Continue Preparing Extract

• You get the idea, repeat
  

Day Five (Saturday): Continue Preparing Extract

• I think I forgot about it today... woops

Day Six (Sunday): THE CAKE!

• Off to the store to buy: 1 whole coconut, eggs, and butter. I think I have the rest of the ingredients...
• 3:00 PM- I have opened the coconut and shredded it for the coconut milk and coconut cream. I am waiting one hour for the aforementioned to be ready
• Eventually, I finished the cake

I don't want to go too much into the recipe, but suffice it to say, it was way more involved than expected. Finally, however, I finished it and ate a piece... it was yummy, but not healthy by any stretch of the imagination.
Basically, after i finish eating this cake, if I never see/ hear about/ smell/ think about/ taste/ imagine another coconut, I will die a happy woman. I'm going to wake up at 4am in a cold sweat seeing coconuts everywhere. I'm going to develop an allergic reaction wherein if I hear the word "coconut" my throat closes up and I die (this will be a defense mechanism that will really be for my own good). I've had it with this coconut business, I'm going to go do some yoga.