Recipe #14 - Sangria

In honor of our visitors Dana and Allistair, who travelled with us in Spain, I made some sangria.  We are experts in sangria because we sampled it from at least 10 restaurants and bars.  

Here's the recipe:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sangria-Sangria/Detail.aspx

I didn't know if carbonated water was sparkling water like Perrier, soda water or club soda but after much research (and buying 2 of them) I went with club soda.

It came out pretty good.  We had it the same night I made it and it was just good, but it was definitely better the second morning.  It is important to let it sit overnight to let the flavors get better.

Notes: I did all the optional components.  Make the day before for sure.

Modifications: None, liked it as is.

Make again? :  Definitely

Bacon Explosion

How can you not want to try something called Bacon Explosion?  Should I make this for the Super Bowl?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html

And check out the slideshow here:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/28/dining/0128-BACON_index.html

And finally, if you're reading this page about bacon, maybe you should click this link and read it in style:

http://bacolicio.us/http://the-best-year-ever.blogspot.com/

Flight, Physical Exertion and Fire

Flight: 13 hours to Chicago, which was in the single digits, then 3 1/2 more hours to get home.  It wasn't nearly as bad as the way there, though.  That one was extremely painful.  Luckily I had some new DVDs for the way back which helped pass the time.

Physical Exertion: 5 hours after getting home from the airport, I left the house to run a half-marathon.  I did pretty well considering the time issues, but I could've done way better.  My heart rate was way too high for the pace I was running, and I think that's due to being so exhausted and completely unprepared the two days before.  I'm glad I did it, though, it was fun.

Fire: I was heating up some food tonight in one of those foil trays with the cardboard-y top.  I put it in the toaster oven and the top caught on fire. I unplugged the toaster oven and opened up the door to it and was greeted by some angry looking flames.  I moved it forward so it wouldn't make my cabinets catch fire and I told Gwen to get the extinguisher.  Luckily after a few seconds it burned itself out.  Toaster, cabinets and most importantly,  the food I was heating up were all fine.

Headed Home

It was a fun week, but very glad to be coming home. 13 hour flight to Chicago, then down to FLL. China is a really interesting place and I'm glad I got to see it. We'll know in a few weeks where our next residency is, so that should be equally cool.

China thoughts

• 7 1/2 hours of class per day is a lot, especially when you add in homework.  At least we have some corporate visits the next couple of days to break up the monotony.
• It sucks to be in China when Duke plays Georgetown, the NFL playoffs are on and the inauguration are all in the same week.
• The smog here is insane.  I don't know how they could let it get to this point.  You can't see anywhere near as far as you should because it's so thick.  Supposedly the government says it's fog, but that's BS.
• I miss being home with Gwen and watching The Office and Top Chef and all our usual stuff.  Awwwww.
• Why did Dad always call mom "China"?  That doesn't really make any sense.
• You can get certain things here ridiculously cheap.  Some people are getting suits tailored for $65.  Someone I know bought a cashmere jacket for $60.  It seems like some people go out almost daily to go get stuff, but I haven't been.
• I slept awesome last night, hopefully I sleep through the night again tonight.
• I called down to the front desk to ask if a meal was covered by the program.  The lady asked the concierge, came back on the phone and said "No, we don't have any mail for you" so I gave up.  A friend of mine called down for chap-stick and they brought him up some chop-sticks.
• The afternoon snack today was octopus salad, boiled bonito and sushi.  I skipped it.

Jet Lag

Doh.  Guess I'm not as adjusted as I thought I was.  I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep.  I've been doing some reading for school and now I'm going to go to the gym for a few.  At least I'll make my insomnia productive.

Back to Tylenol PM for me tonight.

Recipe #13 - Shanghai Wontons

Did you think that travelling to China meant that I could stop my goal of 365 recipes?  No way.  

Today we had some tours that you could choose from and the one I picked was a culinary tour.  It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it.  First we were picked up at the hotel and driven over to a local market.  They had all sorts of stuff, meat, pork, strange animal parts, whole chickens, 

unidentifiable fish, ridiculously large vegetables, an an entire stand for tofu.  We picked up the 

stuff we needed to make our recipe (Shanghai Wontons) and headed over to this kitchen area.  

There were some professional chefs there to help teach us how to do it.  There were actually two 

teams, mine which made the wontons and another team that made Black-Pepper Beef Fried Rice.  The chef demonstrated how to cut the tofu, mushrooms, and bok choy, and then we did it for ourselves.  We mixed in the pork then started stuffing the dumplings.  The chef could do them in 5 seconds but it took us a lot longer, and most of our's looked uneven compared to her's, which were amazing.  Next we boiled them and tried them out.  I attached a picture of one of them served on top of the other group's rice, along with my certificate of completion.

On another note, this made me think it would be a great idea to have a cuban cooking class that we could teach.  This lady has a really small business that looks like it's doing well.  Get connected with some small tour companies or cruise ships or whatever, have people in for 3 hours and make rice & black beans, bistec, fried plantains and a mojito and charge them $50 for the lesson and the food.  We could be millionaires.  Anyway, back to the recipe.

Notes: The meat market here looks a bit different from that of Publix.

Make again : Sure, especially since they gave us a recipe book to take away with both recipes in it.

China

I arrived in Shanghai and I am ridiculously tired.  The flight from Chicago to Shanghai was 14.5 hours!

The movies on the flight sucked and I had a hard time sleeping, so it felt like an eternity.  I'm going to crash now, but all of you can rest easy knowing that I'm still alive.

Pardon the Interruption

I'm off to China, so updates might be slow for a while.  Hopefully I'll get some good pictures and stories to post about.

On the recipe front, I'm still keeping up to date, just need to post the last several I've made.  I'll be gone for a week and a half so I'll have a lot of catching up to do when I get back.  Also, when I get back, it's cycling time, so the lack of blood and major injuries will add some extra interest to the whole routine.

Recipe # 12 - Fast Red Pepper and Tomato Sauce

What?  Making something besides chicken, vegetables or a sauce?  Believe it or not, it's true.  I needed to carb-load before my marathon so it was pasta time and of course I took the opportunity to make a different category of recipe for once.

I have a lot of pasta sauce recipes and they're typically pretty good.  Generally they taste different from the bottled type, and this one did as well.  The recipe claimed you could make this sauce in just about the time it took you to cook pasta, so I tried it out.  I fired up the heat to boil my pot of water, started cooking the sauce, tossed in the pasta and the sauce was done even before the pasta was.  

So, on to the recipe.  I cooked a chopped onion in a skillet until it was soft, added in about 2 pans of canned tomatoes, cooked down for about 10-15 minutes and seased with pepper.  I was surprised (and sort of skeptical) about the recipe not including garlic, but it worked.  I added in a little bit of the optional grated Parmesan for flavor.  For this variation, I added in some roasted red peppers that I bought.  The recipe recommended them from scratch, but I was busy so I went with the easy route.

It came out sort of chunky, with lots of pieces of onion and red pepper.  But I liked it that way and it tasted much lighter than most bottled sauces.

Notes: Would be good to make a large batch and freeze in small bags as the recipe suggests.

Modifications: The book has 20 varations, which I'll definitely be trying.

Make again? : Yes.  It was very easy and there are a lot of variations to make it better, so I'll be experimenting.

Recipe #11 - Spicy Yogurt Sauce

The Dill Yogurt Sauce was such a hit I decided to try another one.  This time, the Spicy Yogurt Sauce which I used with chicken and some vegetables.  Same deal as before, really, a good way to add a bit to the usual chicken and vegetable routine.

The recipe was similar to before, both had yogurt, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, but this one had a pinch of cumin, paprika, cayenne, dry mustard and turmeric.  It didn't seem spicy at first but had a nice spicy aftertaste to it. 

Notes: Recipe had some optional safron, which I didn't have.

Modifications: Would be tastier with regular yogurt instead of lowfat.

Make again? : Sure.  Dill sauce was probably a little better overall, but I liked it and so did Gwen.

World's Fastest Man

I ran Marathon #5 yesterday, finishing the Disney Marathon in 5:00:03.  It was another great experience.  I stayed at my friend Steven's house and he was incredibly nice enough to wake up at 3:30 and take me to the start line.  There were even more people than last year, so it was pretty crowded.  I got there around 4:40 with a little more than an hour to kill before the start.  About 25 minutes before the start I headed to the start line, which was a 0.6 mile walk away.  It was good I didn't wait any longer because I got into my corral about a minute before the start of the race.

The first few miles were fairly crowded, but there was plenty of space so I wasn't really dodging people.  For some reason, people at the Disney marathon seem to do a good job of lining up so there aren't a huge amount of walkers around screwing it all up for the other runners at the beginning.  After a mile or two, we ran through Epcot, under the huge ball, passed all the major stuff there, ran through 2 of the countries and then out the back.  Next, we ran through some back roads on the way to the Magic Kingdom.  There wasnt too much to see on the way, but at one point we ran down an onramp so you could see the thousands of other runners, which was pretty cool.  

In the Magic Kingdom, we ran through the front, went through Tomorrowland, Frontierland, down Main Street, saw all the famous characters, and ran through the castle.  I think the photographer missed me there this time, unfortunately, but we'll see.  When you visit these parks they seem immense, but we ran through the entire thing in about 1 mile, so they're nothing when you compare them to a marathon.  We left the Magic Kingdom, then had what's probably the lowlight of the course, which is a 5-6 mile run down the back streets of Disney where there really isn't much to see.  It's also where it goes from several lanes down to 1 lane, which gets very crowded at times.  I was much more prepared for the monotony of it this time, so it was fine with me.

Eventually we got to the back of Animal Kingdom, with llamas, parots, turtles, goats and all other sorts of animals at the gate with the handlers.  We ran through the length of Animal Kingdom, with some African drummers playing and the photographer got pictures in front of the Himalayas.  We left the Animal Kingdom around mile 18, and this is really where the pain starts for most people.  As soon as we left, you could see a growing percentage of people walking.  

Next up was a highway overpass, which seemed to wipe out a bunch of people.  At mile 20 there is a 2 mile up and back, which is always annoying for me.  You have to run a mile looking at people ahead of you, then turn right back around and see what you just ran past.  

Mile 22 was a big point for me, because that was the point I started walking last year.  There was a hill there that completely broke me down the previous year, and from that point I walk-ran.  This year, I was mentally prepared for it and I pushed through it with no problems.  

Next was Hollywood Studios (previously MGM Studios).  Last year this was miserable for me, but I made it through, still running this time.  It was really hard because at this point I was just telling myself "just run to the next water stop and you can have a short walk there."  Finally, we left the park around mile 24.  Finally, I broke down and did some walking.  I ended up just walking the water stop and I found myself walking for a couple of minutes after that.  Between 24 and 25 there's a path that takes you around the lake and next to all the hotels, and for some reason that part is always really rough for me.  

At mile 25 I started running again and I didn't walk at all the rest of the way (other than to take off my ipod for just a second, because I like to have it off to enjoy the finish).  We ran the last 1.2 through Epcot, doing the whole park, passing under the ball again and out a side path.  There was a gospel choir by the finish, which was very cool, and then the finish.  I saw Gwen and my friend Steven there and crossed the line.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how I did.  I ran a slower pace than in any other marathon, but it was my 2nd best time overall because I walked so little.  I kept up about 11:00-11:15 per mile for the first 23, which I was pretty happy with.  And considering the amount of travel, school, work and family stuff going on lately, I think it would be dumb of me not to be happy about it.

So for now, I'm not signing up for another marathon.  I'm switching to triathlons to see how I like those.  I'd also like to get faster overall, so maybe a bit more of a focus on short runs to increase my speed.  I'll post some pictures of the race when they're posted on the site.

Recipe #10 - Dill Yogurt Sauce

I wanted to try a yogurt sauce with some of the chicken, and I thought a Dill Yogurt Sauce would go well with the Curry Chicken.  Plus, Gwen's a huge Dill fan so more points for me.  

I again used lowfat yogurt, but it turned out pretty damn good.  Very simple recipe, just yogurt, dill, lemon, salt, pepper and I believe that's it.  Just mix, adjust the quantities to taste and let it 

sit for a few minutes to mix the flavors.

I served it with the curry chicken and they went really well together.  Nice mixture of spicy with the cooler yogurt.  Later in the week I also mixed this with brown rice and it was awesome.  It tasted sort of like rice at the Greek restaurant near my house.  I could definitely imagine doing that and then topping with some chicken kabobs or something like that.  

Notes: Would be good to make a decent batch and use with chicken, rice, vegetables, maybe even salad dressing.

Modifications: None, adjust to taste.  Would be even better with regular yogurt, though.

Make again? : Yes.  I'm not as huge a dill fan as Gwen so I can only have a certain amount, but this was good.

Recipe #9 - Broiled Curry Chicken

Mooooooooooore broiled chicken.  It's not easy to try to eat healthy and still try out a ton of new recipes, so deal with all the chicken recipes and like it.

This one was slightly different than most with yogurt as the cooking fat instead of oil or butter.  I've never tried it before but it worked well.  I used lowfat yogurt with some curry powder and lemon and broiled it the usual way.  I think it turned out pretty well.  There was no curry sauce associated with it, so if you're looking for something like that, you would need to add the sauce recipe to it.  We mixed it with a yogurt sauce recipe coming up next.

Notes: Used lowfat yogurt and it cooked fine.

Modifications: Would probably be even better with regular yogurt.

Make again? : Yes, but I'm not in a particular rush to do it.

Recipe #8 - Tomato Salsa (two ways)

I made this salsa with the vegetables I bought from Josh's Organic Garden.  The cilantro smelled too good to pass up, so I put this together.  Recipe was from How to Cook Everything, just like all the rest so far.

I've made a bunch of salsas and I think this one was probably as good as any.  It was nothing weird, just tomato, onion, cilantro, lime, garlic, salt, pepper and some jalapenos or something similar.  The recipe is deliberately vague for some things, letting you adjust the spices as you like.  

I made it two ways - the chunky pico de gallo way and then I also blended some of it to make a smooth version.  It was interesting how different the taste was of the blended version compared to the pico version.  The blended version had a more uniform taste and the pico version let you taste all the different elements.  Both Gwen and I preferred the chunky style.

Notes: Served with chicken.  Mixing with rice later on to try that too.

Modifications: Good as is.  If I wanted to make it blended I'd adjust a little, maybe some more tomato.

Make again? : Yes

Recipe #7 - Roasted Sweet Potato

This is the best sweet potato I've ever had.  I'm serious.  All I did was roast it at 425 for 45 minutes but something about it was seriously magic.  I didn't put a damn thing on it besides salt.  No butter, nothing sweet, nothing, and it was by far the sweetest and best sweet potato I've ever had.  

Gwen agreed, it was amazing.  You should be making this 2 or 3 nights per week because it was awesome.

Notes: Freaking awesome.

Modifications: Change nothing.

Make again? : All the time.

Recipe #6 - Broiled Soy-Lime Chicken

Another day, another chicken recipe.  Yes, we're boring, but Gwen wants to have chicken and vegetables most nights in January so I'm hitting as many of the chicken recipes as I can.

Same technique as before, just with some different seasonings.  This time I used sesame oil instead of olive oil, soy sauce, ginger and garlic.  

Here's the problem - I have toasted sesame oil instead of dark sesame oil.  I've had it in my pantry for a long time now and I used it for this recipe and I wish I hadn't.  The toasted sesame oil overwhelmed all the other tastes for me, although Gwen did like it.  I did some research afterwards and saw some mixed opinions on whether dark sesame oil and tosated oil are the same thing.  One site says they are very different and that toasted oil is much stronger.  Anyways, that explains why it was so overpowering.

Notes: Get some new sesame oil.

Modifications: Use previously mentioned sesame oil instead of the crap one I now have.

Make again? : Yes, with some less overpowering oil next time.

Josh's Organic Market and a UNC Loss

Nice little Sunday, in the words of Frank the Tank.  Gwen and I took Mila for a walk along the fixed up Hollywood Broadwalk.  While we were there, we stopped at this farmer's market I had been saying "we should really go there" for a while, but hadn't.  So since we're supposed to be doing more stuff in 2009, I decided we'd go and we did.

It was pretty impressive as far as farmer's markets in Florida go.  Just about everything was organic and everything was labeled (organic or not, local or not, picked yesterday, etc).  There was a pretty large group there and it seems a lot of people go there regularly.  Definitely the type of place I could go to pick up stuff for the week.  

The prices were just about the same as Publix, maybe just a little more.  Some things in particular looked great, like the cilantro that was picked the day before and smelled awesome.  I bought that, some tomatoes and a few other things and made some salsa (recipe coming up soon).  Good stuff, and a nice walk by the beach.  Here's a picture of Gwen and Mila near the water (they kicked us off right about here and told us no dogs allowed on the beach.

And to top it off, Duke won and rose to #2, UNC lost and dropped below us.  What more could you ask for?

Recipe #5 - Simple Steamed Broccoli

I eat a lot of broccoli, but it's usually from one of those steamer bags that you cook in the microwave.  Those are fine, but I wanted to try making it from fresh broccoli and steaming it.  I've done this before, but again wanted to follow a specific method.  I used the recipe from How to Cook Everything and bought a head (what the hell do you call a whole piece of broccoli anyway?) of broccoli, cut it up, and used my steamer basket.  Cooked for about 10 minutes since I kept the stems on, not just the florets.  

Overall, it was better than the bagged one, but not as much as I thought.  The flavor and texture were both better and it seemed to need less seasoning.  I put some lemon and salt on it and that's it.  

Notes: I ate broccoli.

Modifications: Method was fine.  Obviously would be tastier with a bunch of crap on it, but I'm trying to be healthy and lemon and salt was fine.

Make again? :  I'm back and forth on whether or not it's worth it.  The steaming bag is so easy and tastes just marginally worse.  Surprisingly, the price was basically the same for fresh or frozen.  I will try again because I'm trying to eat more fresh foods, but the steaming bags are getting very close to the fresh version.

(Picture note: forgot to take one.  But I think you know what broccoli looks like unless you have brain damage.)

Recipe #4 - Broiled Tomatoes with Basil

Short and sweet on this one.  I didn't like it and neither did Gwen.  Came out a bit mushy, really, and serving by itself was not a great idea.  The recipe really recommends including this in sauce or a salad, but can be served standalone with basil, which I did. 

Notes: Maybe for inclusion in a sauce, but not standalone.

Modifications: Maybe better with the skin on?

Make again?: As is, definite no.

It's Mila-time

As requested, a few pictures of our new addition:

Gwen carrying her on the way home from North Carolina.

At the dog park.

Going nuts with her Kong toy.

Recipe #3 - Spiced Broiled Chicken Breast

This is a variation on the technique described here.

Interesting spice mix on this one, with cumin, allspice, ground ginger, cinnamon, cayenne and nutmeg.  Gwen and I put it on both sides of the chicken and broiled in the oven.  After it came out, we hit it with lemon juice as in the base recipe.

Notes: The serving suggestions were to pair this with eggplant and yogurt or tahini sauce or some rice.  We just had it with some broccoli and tomatoes (coming up soon).  It would've definitely been better with some sort of sauce. 

Modifications: Definitely some sauce, maybe the yogurt sauce mentioned with the recipe. The spices felt a little gritty without any sort of sauce.  

Make again? : Yes, but not a must.  I think the base recipe was better than this variation, at least the way we did it.

Recipe #2 - 5 Minute Drizzle Sauce

Another day, another recipe.  I actually made this yesterday but I never said I'd post the recipes the same day I made them so get off my back.

This is another one from the "How to Cook Everything" book that I'm probably going to use for the majoriy of my recipes.  This is a series of sauces that are used for drizzling on vegetables, chicken, beef, whatever.  A good way to cook something the usual way and make a quick sauce to put on top to change things up.

I made the base version of this, and later on I'll try some of the variations.  I started with some 

olive oil, cooked some garlic in it for a couple of minutes, then added balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  I adjusted some of the seasonings at the end as the directions said.  I served it on broccoli and chicken to try both out.

Notes: It really did only take 5 minutes total, so this is definitely the type of thing you can do while chicken or vegetables are cooking.  It went well with both things I tried it with.  

Modifications: I'd like to try with onions instead of garlic, and I'd like to get the vinegar a bit more integrated with the oil in the future.

Make again?: Definitely, and will try a bunch of the variations.

Overconfidence

Oh well.

Accidents

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new" -Einstein

Yesterday was Mila's first day without an accident.  I've never been so happy to not have poop on my kitchen floor.

Recipe #1 - Broiled Boneless Chicken

Here's the first of the 365 recipes of 2009.  This is the Broiled Boneless Chicken recipe from page 641 of How to Cook Everything.  It's one of the Essential Recipes that can be modified in a bunch of ways.  I went with the base version, which is basically just broiled chicken with very light seasoning. 

I started with 3 chicken breasts and pounded them a bit flatter.  I covered them with about 3-4 cloves of garlic, some olive oil, salt and pepper.  I let it marinate in the pan for a little while as I made the 5-Minute Drizzle Sauce (which I will 

post about soon).  I turned on the broiler, put the 

skillet in and cooked for about 3:45 per side.   

The second picture is how it looked like when I yanked it from the oven and put some lemon juice on it.  

I've never cooked chicken with a broiler before.  I've done it on the grill and in a skillet a million 

times, but this was really simple.

Notes: The texture was awesome.  It was as juicy and well cooked as any chicken I've ever made.  

Modifications: Next time I could use less olive oil.  I could've gotten by with half of what I used for sure.  Might be worth trying with 3:30 or 

even less of cooking to see if that might be even better.  Lots of variations on the technique in the book to try.

Make again?: Definitely, either like this or with some different spice combinations.

2009 - There Will Be Blood

So, I took out my bike on my first trip to use the clipless pedals today.  The conventional wisdom is that everyone falls with these pedals when they're getting used to them.  For those that don't know, these pedals require you to turn your ankle out to unclip before you stop or your feet will be stuck and you'll fall over.  I was sure this wouldn't happen to me because I was going to pay so much attention that I'd remember to unclip.  I practiced a few times in the driveway and did fine so I was ready for the road.

Predictably, as soon as I get to the exit of the 

community I unclip one leg and instead of putting 

my weight on one leg like I had planned I tried to do it on both and ate it.  Later on I stopped at a light, put my weight on one leg and lost my balance and fell again, leading to both of these exciting cuts.  I probably won't ride again until after my marathon just to make

 sure I don't hurt anything else.

I started off the new year with Gwen at midnight drinking some wine and eating the traditional 12 grapes for good luck.  Next time I'll eat an extra one for good luck unclipping on my bike.