Tasty Ways to Avoid Starvation

Dressing up pasta with healthy add-ons is an inexpensive way to feed your body in trying times


"Live poor" is one of my big philosophies. I've thought about getting it tattooed across my knuckles just to make sure it happens. Mind you, I'm talking "emerging adulthood" poor, not "struggling to feed three kids" poor. Big difference: I use the phrase to imply a commitment to living efficiently and deliberately without indulging in many of the luxuries that have become standard for many people. True poverty (even the kind that happens in the US) is no fun and shouldn't have to be anyone's lifestyle. Maybe "live small" is a better way of putting it. I try to consume little, spend little, waste little. In a society of excess I try to rein in my own footprint. And that means culling waste from my food purchases. 

"Eat well" is another two-word mantra of mine (along with "hakuna matata"). Reconciling those two modes of living may be a challenge sometimes, but I've figured out how to dumb down my cuisine enough for it to feature cheap, delicious, and absurdly simple recipes. "Cooking simply" might be a better way to describe these recipes, but I figure they're fueled by enough laziness (and poverty) to count. I also miraculously manage to screw these up pretty consistently while pulling off my more ambitious culinary endeavors without much incident. But what can I say? I like the simple stuff. Especially when it requires four utensils and three ingredients to make. 

I've found that dressing up pasta a little is rather an efficient way to avoid death by hunger. Here are some ways I've found to make cheap food taste good. 

Aglio Et Olio


Look! It's got a fancy Italian name! It means you get to feel classy when you make it even though it's really only slightly augmented pasta. All you do with this one is sautee some garlic in olive oil and pour it over cooked spaghetti. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can throw some parsley and parmesan on top of the whole affair. That's it. If done right, it's absurdly tasty. The sweet, earthy tones of the olive oil perfectly cup the sharpness of the garlic on top of your blank spaghetti canvas. Unfortunately, I more often than not start cooking the garlic too early and burn it by the time my spaghetti is edible. That stuff browns fast, so throw it in your oil-slicked pan when you've got about four minutes left on your pasta cooking time. While this dish may seem a little empty, that garlic is in fact pretty excellent for you. It's no health food recipe, but it's not devoid of nutrition either. 

Zucchini and Almond Pasta Salad

More delicious pasta with hardly any ingredients. Veggies and nuts are both excellent nutritional additions to any grain, and the lemon in this gives it a welcome kick. Vegans could easily omit the parmesan for a still-tasty dish. Non-vegans need not even sliver the cheese like the recipe dictates; I've tried this recipe with just grated parmesan and it came out just fine. 

Asparagus, Goat Cheese, and Lemon Pasta

One of my absolute favorite things to eat, this recipe turns goat cheese and lemon into a creamy sauce that binds the asparagus and rotini together. It keeps well and is delicious cold as a pasta salad as well. And it goes vegan just as easily as the last recipe if you omit the cheese and throw in a little extra virgin olive oil and some extra lemon. 

Swiss Chard and Garlic Pasta

A healthier take on the aglio et olio classic, this recipe is extremely versatile. I've included all of the ingredients as listed and I've also made it with just the garlic and chard. It's delicious either way. I find cooked chard to go along with pasta a little better than cooked spinach, but the latter works too. I love the way the soft, cooked leaves play off of the crunchy garlic chips as they bookend your spaghetti.

There you go: pasta plus veggies equals not dying. And that's pretty much all I learned in college. Many thanks to Smitten Kitchen for steering my hunger in the right direction.

Cooking and Sex: Why Not Combine the Two?


 

I’ve seen more than a more than few recipes which include liberal amounts of alcohol, both in and out of whatever meal is being cooked, but this is the first recipe that I’ve seen that includes sex as an ingredient (or as a useful activity to do when waiting for your meal to finish cooking.)

 

The recipe comes from a Slate food writer who advises cooks to have sex while the chicken is the oven. Since the specific recipe calls for the chicken to roast for over an hour, there is ample time for this part of the recipe to be followed. However, the writer also advises that special planning may be required, which should be no problem since “cooks tend to be resourceful and seductive by nature.”

 

Michael Ruhlman advises taking a twice-weekly nooners with your partner with home-cooked meals being the ostensible purpose and sex the real one. His claim is that the smell of food is relaxing and that partners (especially those with small children) need to carve time out of their schedules to enjoy cooking and sex together without the little munchkins around.

 

He seems somewhat shocked that his relatively novel idea was re-tweeted across the Internets, but he really shouldn’t be. Look on any dating site and the two things people list as items they absolutely couldn’t live without are food and sex. This, of course, makes the combination of the two enticing to almost anyone.

 

Of course, if neither of the partners is a good cook, or doesn’t have over an hour to roast a chicken, the sex could be mighty quick. Ready-made sauces with boiled pasta can be prepared in less than twelve minutes, which might put the amount of foreplay at a minimum.

 

Labor-intensive foods don’t necessarily work for the cooking and sex combo either; of course, that’s where the division of labor comes in handy so to speak.

 

You can always save the sex for dessert, but that defeats the purpose of the original intent of the combination of beautiful food smells during sex.

 

And, while Michael Ruhlman’s original idea is for parents to share alone-time together in a different way, I see no reason why the cooking and sex combination couldn’t work for anyone, whether they have kids or not. Taking time to enjoy food and enjoy sex is important in any relationship. Just try not to burn the food while you’re in the bedroom. 

Weird Pizza Toppings (That Actually Work)

Pineapple.

Let the qualities of that fruit pop into your thoughts. It's sweet. It's juicy. It has that tangy bite common to citrus. It's usually paired with dessert items, tropical drinks and candies. But pineapple has another, somewhat contentious application: Pizza. Yes, the infamous Hawaiian Pizza, a classic pie of chewy dough, rich tomato sauce and gooey cheese topped with ham and pineapple. It seems wrong, such a sweet, sunny flavor pairing with the savory notes of that Italian dish, but its supporters can tell you that it works surprisingly well. The sweetness and the acidity of the pineapple mix with its companion notes in the tomato sauce while putting some extra life into the already rich cheese. Taking some cues from the unintuitive genius of pineapple on pizza, consider some of these other, unusual toppings.

Pickles

Pickled vegetables don't get enough love for how versatile they truly are. While few pizza restaurants offer pickles as a topping, there's really no reason why they should skip this common delicacy. After all, pickled peppers stray awfully close to the average pie, either as peperoncini or as banana peppers. The only real difference between pickled peppers and classic cucumber pickles is that the former distract from the strong vinegar taste with pure heat. A softer, milder pickle slice adds a certain top note to the taste of pizza that is unexpected but actually rather pleasant.

 

Plantains

Fried plantains, to be specific. With more body and less sugar than its cousin the banana, the plantain is featured far too rarely in international cuisine. Perhaps this is because plantain slices are work-intensive or because the fruit is rarely imported to the average grocery store, but we're working in hypotheticals here anyway. Plantains give pizza some extra body without dominating the flavor profile. They're a nice alternative to strong, salty toppings like pepperoni.

 

Asparagus

This one works especially well on white pizza, the gourmet variety of pie that uses Alfredo sauce rather than red sauce. Fresh, firm asparagus sliced long-ways provides a nice contrast to the chewy yield of pizza while adding a certain freshness and, for lack of a better term, green-ness to the flavor.

 

Crab

Seafood doesn't get enough love in pizza as far as I'm concerned. Crab is the perfect candidate because it's not too moist, as clams tend to be, nor is it too rich and expensive like lobster. Crab also has a milder, sweeter flavor than shrimp while also tending to be softer, meaning that it will come away in a single bite without any problem.

 

Lettuce

Too often we forget that pizza topping don't need to be cooked with the pie. Cool, fresh toppings added just before eating can be truly delightful, as with crisp lettuce. The extra crunch and pleasant roughage of lettuce has long been a companion to pizza as salad. Why not just add it to the top of the pizza itself?

A Cleaner Buzz: Yerba Mate

South American plant makes for a healthier caffeine high

The US may be a nation of drug addicts, but that doesn’t mean a caffeine habit has to be unhealthy. Black and green teas have long stood as subtler, slower morning buzzes, and now there’s another option for kicking your brain in the face every morning. While not technically a tea, the similarly prepared yerba mate plant has been growing in popularity as an alternative to coffee. The plant grows in South America, where it is traditionally prepared by infusing its leaves and twigs in hot water inside of a hollow gourd. The resulting drink is then consumed through a shared metal straw.

Certain companies have packaged mate and imported it to the States. Sold as an herbal tea in tea bags, mate may be also combined with actual tea leaves for a hybrid beverage. The drink has been trending in the US for its high caffeine content and other purported health benefits.

Yerba mate fuels a pleasant high, a less jittery alternative to the coffee buzz. It contains nearly as much caffeine as coffee, but calms the drinker with additional natural chemicals. Theobromine in particular serves to relax blood vessels and improve blood flow. Unlike coffee, yerba mate might even lower blood pressure in certain cases thanks to its theobromine content. For those predisposed to hypertension, mate can provide a safe mental boost. Caffeine addicts disillusioned with the shakiness associated with large amounts of coffee and energy drinks may also do well to make the switch to mate.

Like most teas, yerba mate boasts plenty of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Its disease-fighting roster includes manganese, potassium, zinc, vitamin C, and B vitamins. It’s a healthy, energizing boost with possibly more overall benefits than coffee thanks to its physically relaxing properties. It manages to stimulate and soothe at the same time. Buying mate teabags will generally set you back more per cup than coffee, so be prepared to shell out for its pluses over our nation’s signature vehicle for caffeine.

Nutella Panini

A sweet treat dessert of marshmallows, bananas, and Nutella.

I recently had dinner at a Chicago hot spot that was opened a couple years ago.  It’s a tiny small plate inspired restaurant nestled in between the Chicago River and Michigan Avenue.  And while most small plate restaurants have a very limited dessert menu that is nothing to write about, The Purple Pig had one, unusual, delicious dessert.  Panino con Nutella, which they described as a sweet sandwich filled with bananas, marshmallow crème and a chocolate hazelnut spread. 

I’d never before experienced the chocole hazelnut spread, known to all as Nutella.  I assume I’m one of the only people in the world that had not experienced Nutella.  But one bite and I was hooked.  Nutella does not taste like nuts as I was expecting, but a sweet chocolate-y  snack, about the consistency of creamy peanut butter.  This Nutella Panini was delicious!  Gooey, sweet, yet crunchy.  The chocolate blended with bananas was familiar and scrumptious and paired with a sweet bread created a nice crunch.  I simply had to have this dessert again.  So the next night, feeling adventurous and gluttonous I set out to make this dessert.

 

Making your own Nutella Panini is super easy.  Just grab the following items from your grocery store.

1 Jar Nutella

1 Jar Marshmallow Crème

2 ripe bananas

4 slices of sweet, sturdy bread such as crusty Italian or sourdough

This will make you two Panini, so add more or less if you are making just one or hosting a party for tons.

Spread 2 tablespoons (more of less depending on how gooey you want them to be) Nutella on one side of each slice of bread.  Top with 1-2 tablespoons Marshmallow Crème (again, more or less to gooeyness).  Peel and then cut each banana in half.  Then slice each banana half lengthwise, into long, thin slices and place the slices on top of one piece of bread from each sandwich.  Top the banana bread piece of bread with the other slice of bread covered in Nutella and Marshmallow.  Toast each Panini in a skillet over medium head about 2 minutes per side or until desired warmth and gooeyness has been achieved.  Remove sandwich from skillet, cut in half, and serve warm.

Enjoy!   And then visit the Nutella website for an array of ideas and recipes.  There are lots of yummy things to do with Nutella, including just eating it with a spoon.  Let me know what you think!

Keeping an Herb Garden

Some of my dearest friends live in the Jacksonville area, and they are what I’d call supreme foodies. They are known for their culinary adventures and expertise, and even keep food blogs about the delicious delights they come up with.

If you’d like to be like my friends in Jacksonville, you should definitely keep a fresh herb garden for your culinary experiments. Some key herbs to have include thyme, sage, rosemary, dill, and oregano, though lemon thyme, mint, and many others will be helpful along your journey as well. Keep them in pots, on window sills, in old shoes or buckets, whatever you like.

New Line of Savory Treats at Dunkin Donuts

Bagel Twists shake things up...

All jokes about Dunkin Donuts and police officers, be gone: there are new snacks in town to dangle over your favorite officer’s head. Dunkin Donuts now has a line of savory treats to indulge in, and boy, do they look tasty.

The snacks are called bagel twists, and they feature the following flavors:

  • Cheddar Cheese
  • Cinnamon Raisin
  • Cheeseburger Stuffed Breadsticks
  • Pepperoni and Cheese Stuffed Breadsticks
  • Warm Apple Pie

I’ll admit that some of them don’t sound so hot—cheeseburgers at Dunkin Donuts?—but the cheddar cheese one has me thinking about traveling over to the store today just to try it out. And why not, when they’re less than a buck fifty?

Now I kid all of the officers out there regarding Dunkin Donuts! When I was in high school, I worked at a pretty well known fast food joint, and we were open 24 hours, enabling us to have the presence of a security guard on many nights, particularly weekends. Two little trickster boys—I say little, but they were both bigger than me; maybe they were little in mentality, or in thoughts of anything beyond ten minutes into the future—used to play such bad tricks on our security guards that we went through them pretty quickly.

You’d think it would be the boys, not the guards, who would have been forced to leave after all of the shenanigans they pulled, but my husband and I think they may have had a little something something going on with the boss. It’s pretty common among fast food joints, really; you definitely don’t want to hear about many of the unhygienic things that I’ve heard about myself.

So these two would put pepper in the officer’s coffee, or make farting noises, or pretty much play any other number of juvenile pranks when they were around. One particularly awful thing they did—if we didn’t have many inside customers—was call out, upon the moment the officer entered the building, “When I say Dunkin, you say Donuts!” And the other guys would echo, “Dunkin… Donuts!” Then they would say, “When I say jelly, you say roll!” The other boys in the restaurant would echo that, too, and they all found it hilarious.

I’ll admit that some of us girls laughed about it the first time; it was just so unexpected, and we were sixteen and stupid anyway; but we quickly grew tired of the tricks, particularly when they wanted to do it all night. The older women who worked there since they were teens would actually get annoyed, as they all seemed to have a crush on the various officers, who would always try to impress them, and it would weird the rest of us out.

Honestly, most of the cops I’ve seen hanging around do drink coffee—but I’ve seen more of them with, say, hotdogs, than Dunkin Donuts. And anyway, who cares if they eat them? With these new savory breads, I’d go for the place, too.

Why I Avoid Coke-Snorting, Vegan-Donut-Eating Bicyclists

Most are Native to the Pacific Northwest

 

Can someone really consider themselves all that much of a health food nut if their idea of a healthy day is snorting a line of coke, taking a ten and a half minute bike ride to the convenience store down the street, and then getting all flustered, frustrated, and flummoxed because there aren’t any vegan donuts left?

 

Not really.

 

But it doesn’t stop the “great exercisers” and coke-snorting vegans in the Pacific Northwest from waxing all philosophical about the benefits of riding a bicycle versus driving a car (even though the convenience store is usually within walking distance), nor does it stop them from droning on and on about how great it is to be a Vegan. (To their credit, they aren’t quite as vocal about the coke part.)

 

People in the middle of the country might not believe that this type of person actually exists, but it’s exactly what a certain sub-section of the population is like in the Pacific Northwest. The coke-snorting, bicycle-riding, vegan-donut-eaters wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t have the self-righteousness that comes with being a Vegan and riding a bicycle and the mouthiness that comes with snorting a line or two of coke.

 

Which is why the rest of the population gets accused of not being healthy enough.

 

Which is kind of mind-bogglingly ironic because the last I heard, vegan donuts are just as fattening as non-vegan donuts; a ten and a half minute bike ride does not make you all that healthy; and the Surgeon General doesn’t necessarily consider coke the healthiest recreational drug around.

 

 

Of course, I’ve never said anything to any of them. For one thing, you have no idea how angry and defensive Vegans can get when they are denied access to their vegan-donuts by a pimply clerk who tells them that the Vegan before them either ate or slobbered on all of their donuts. Suffice it to say, it’s not a pretty sight and one I am loathe to describe in great detail so you’ll have to use your imagination.  

 

And, of course, the lines of coke snorted before any of the great vegan-donut runs is not as helpful for the vegan bicyclists as they seem to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.

 

All of which serves to explain why I tend to avoid coke-snorting vegan bicyclists when I meet them in convenience stores or in the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The folks in the International District could care less if you come there or not

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I spend quite a bit of time in Seattle’s International District. It seems to me that the food there is authentic because it’s hanging, whole and deep-fried, in the window of a shop with no English writing on its sign.  Call me crazy. Housing Malaysian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese and even Cambodian cuisines, the International district is awash with Asian flavors, unique delicacies, a lot of nasty birds picking from the dumpsters, and dusty and dimly-lit grocers.  But the best part is that none of it seems to be there for white people to gawk at, so you don't really feel like a tourist because they don't want you there anyway.

The International district probably seems so isolated because it, like other Asian districts in the U.S. in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was formed because of Asian segregation. In the 1880’s, Chinese workers came to Seattle to lay the railroads, dig coal mines and can salmon.  Most of them settled near what is now Pioneer Square--Seattle's first Chinatown.  During the recession in the mid-1880’s, these workers were despised by Seattle’s white workers, and in 1886, white rioters forced 300 Chinese immigrants out of the city. 

By the early 1900’s, railroads built their main terminals in the area south of Pioneer Square, in what is now the International District. Hotels and businesses were built to accommodate the railroad workers and passengers in the neighborhood. Chinese settlers, soon followed by Japanese and Filipino immigrants, were attracted to this area for the cheap real estate and by the 1930’s, Seattle had the second largest “Japan Town” on the West Coast.

During World War II, much of Seattle's Japanese population was sent to internment camps in the Pacific Northwest, while Chinese immigrants were forced to wear badges declaring that they were not Japanese. Tides changed after World War II, however, and the region diversified with different Asian communities throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s. In 1951, Mayor William Devlin declared the area the “International District".  

In the 1970’s, the city created a number of social services in the district, including low-income housing. The area gained new populations in this decade as immigrants from the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia poured into the city. Today, the district’s mixed race heritage is obvious in the businesses and restaurants of the district.  

A standout is one of the city’s only Malaysian restaurants, called Malay Satay Hut. Like the district itself, Malaysian cuisine is a conglomeration of other cultures and includes India, Thai and Singaporean influences.  The last time I was there I ordered the deceptively simple chicken rice, which consists of white rice in a chicken broth and pulled chicken served with ginger, soy and a spicy red dipping sauce.  We also ordered a smoothie of Durien, a popular Malaysian fruit that smells like a rotting carcass.  Our waitress told us that we had to wait until the other patrons had left before she would cut into the fruit, which has a mild taste, but a nasty aftertaste.  The restaurant is housed in something that looked like a strip mall at first glance, but the building’s bricks near our table told us that the building was built in 1905. Probably originally home a Chinese business, this particular building serves as a fitting history of the changing Asian ethnicities housed in the district.

Another excellent restaurant in the district serves up Chinese dim sum for insanely cheap prices.  The owners and waiters looked bemused at us, a white duo, when we walked into Duk Li Dim Sum, but they have to be getting quite a bit of white foot traffic since they were reviewed in The Stranger recently. We ordered a smorgasbord of dim sum and I’m pretty sure they messed up the order, but I don’t care too much because the only thing they didn’t bring us was our requested chicken feet. The steamed barbeque pork buns were delicious, with a springy, slightly sweet dough covering just enough barbequed pork.  We also ordered two dishes that are not usually served in more mainstream dim sum restaurants, Lo mai gai, glutinous rice with chicken served wrapped in a lotus leaf and a taro cake, which was a gelatinous cake made from taro root that we, and the other table of white folks in the restaurant, didn’t touch.

The last stop that I never miss when I visit the district is Uwajimaya, the huge Asian grocery store that sits in the center of the district.  Housing exotic fish specimens that I don’t recognize, huge vats of kimchi, and Asian crackers and other munchables with little cat faces on the front of the package, Uwajimaya is the fastest tour of Asia that Seattle offers.  The book store in the grocery store is always packed, but it has a huge selection of Asian-American penned books, rows and rows of anime comic books, cute little pen-and-pencils sets with cartoon animals on them and magazine of Asian relevance.

The International District is one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Seattle.  I’m glad I don’t feel like some kind of weird Asian fetishist when I go there, mostly because they could care less if I am there or not. 

Sources and further reading: 

http://www.cidbia.org/history

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/duk-li-dim-sum/Location?oid=3545481

http://www.uwajimaya.com/

http://www.malaysatayhut.com/

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential

The Rock and Roll Life of Cooking

      The best books are blast of fresh air that take you on a ride to a different world and make you disappear from the one you are reading in. One of the last books to do that to me was Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential. It was insanely popular in the early 2000’s. They even made a TV show out of it that was short lived and Bourdain himself has his own show. But if it slipped by without you notcing like it did with me, it’s abosolutely worth finding and reading. I plan to give you a little more detail on the novel and granted it’s pretty much a memoir, but to me it read more like a love story.

      This is not your mother’s cooking book. His book is not filled with great recipes and fusion food. Though it is filled with great stories on how to have a great time. The book is also a nuts and bolts look into a busy kitchen on a Friday night. Bourdain gives you a cold hard look on how chefs cook your food, what kind of conditions the food is kept in, and why seafood should never be ordered on a Sunday. He is a bit of a hell raiser and took a long time for him to find a place in the cooking world. Bourdain along with being a great chef also has a bit of self-destructive edge. So while bouncing around from kitchen to kitchen he also finds time to get hooked on coke and heroin. He shows how working in a restraurant and being a chef catered to his destructive tendencies. That the fast pace, long hours, and constant rush would become a drug in it’s own right. And it’s in these stories and ancedotes that you get a great view of what it’s like to be a chef and dropped in their world. Bourdain puts you in the trenches of being a chef or as he would say a cook.

     While I love the book for every little bit of insight it gave me into cooking. And believe me it helped make me better a cook. But the book itself conjured up a lot in me. It reminded me of my crazy early twenties. It made me think about all those adventures that you can barely remember. It gave me a glimpse of the life I used to live and the calmer rewarding life I lead now. It’s not often a book can make you both nostalgic and fall in love with your current life at the same time. But some how Bourdain pulled it off. If you give this book a chance it will give you a new look at food and it’s place in your life. And if you play real close attention it might even give you a new look on your own life. Hell what else do you want from a cookbook.

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