Food food food!

Well, loyal readers, it's like this: only one of you responded to my comments about food porn in a previous post, and s/he was very positive about the extensive food porn I've been posting. So here you go, L!

This is all from our trip to New England over the xmas holidays. My in-laws responded to my taking pictures of food the whole trip with varying degrees of bemusement, though K seemed to totally get it, and the kids just giggled. (I did and said a lot of things which caused the kids to giggle, so this was well within form.)

Zucchini, onions, tofu, and garlic for:

Hot salad!

I think this might have been the prep for the hot salad, but honestly, I'm not really sure. I did a lot of cooking in the week and a half.

All the fixings for a hearty vegetable stew.
Unfortunately, the finished product was too shy to pose for a picture.

J baked fresh bread in less than two hours beginning to end with the ingredients on hand. It's more impressive than it sounds, when you know what ingredients are usually on hand.

Frying polenta rounds, in two stages, with crispy fresh thyme from the fall garden in the back of the pan for flavoring.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS!

My sister in law had a lot of brussels sprouts. Six bags, to be precise. So we did a little Iron Chef style routine: I flash-fried mine with olive oil and salt, while she roasted hers with olive oil and salt. Not to be too immodest, but: I won. Hers were very good, but everyone at the christmas table preferred mine.

Then again, my prep took about ten times as long, with cleaning, halving, and then cutting a little divot to get the harder part of the stem out on each side, and maintaining the frying.

Happy, clean brussels sprouts.

And three stages of frying, out of order, with the end product in the middle bowl.

And not a man, woman, or child alive doesn't love fresh guacamole, right? (Reference: SH. Hope you're well, wherever you are.)

Asparagus, onions, and zucchini for stir fry, with carmelized onions making a cameo in the back.

If it seems that certain ingredients are making appearances over and over, well, in small town Vermont in the winter, you gotta work with what you have.

Windows

No, not that kind of windoze. Rather, the glass ones: I've recently discovered that my favorite thing about our condo, the great views, are enhanced when I have the blinds on all the windows wide open. Ummm... duh?

Been on a painting binge lately: repainted the ugly beige main wall in the living room:
to a gorgeous sage green:

And both walls in the bedroom (the other two walls are floor to ceiling windows) from an ugly gray:
to a nice enough yellow:
only to discover that the yellow the previous homeowners left behind has terrible coverage and so I didn't have enough, so the west wall got changed to the gorgeous sage green:

The contrast is actually really nice:

And now I'm in the stage of looking at my results with much satisfaction, only to discover all the little places I've messed up:

I also painted the trim in the bathroom, but it doesn't make for very exciting pictures. Which is to say, not as breathtakingly tantilizing as the above images, or the food porn and gardening images to come!

Back in the saddle

Okay, okay, it's been quite a while, and you, my loyal readers, have been clamoring. Actually, you haven't. Only mom has noted the absence of posts, in the context of saying something like I'd fallen off the face of the earth. In any event, more posts to come soon, and pictures from the New England trip. (And yes, L, lots of it WILL indeed be food porn! Yay!)

The trip to New England was fine, if a bit too long. It's always so damn nice to sleep in my own bed after a long trip, and this one included sleeping on four different beds in fourteen days.

J and I went on something of a home organizing binge yesterday which will continue today. We bought a big bookshelf, a printer table/office organizer (aka a shoe rack), and a low TV table to get a bunch of stuff up off the floor. No, we don't own a television, and that may or may not change any time soon. I also went through the various paint the previous owners had left behind, of which we can only tell that two of four actually go to anything in our condo.

For a big fun New Years Eve, we continued our maddening search for a roll-aboard suitcase that is 18" or 19" so it will fit on all of Delta's bizzarrely small overhead bins, and the search failed (again.) We looked at rolling tool chests at Sears only to decide they were too expensive. We discovered that Costco is too obnoxious to update their voicemail system with holiday hours. Then we came home, cooked, and went to bed at 11pm. Somehow after waking up at 6am to fly home from Boston, staying up for midnight just didn't grab us, so we drank the cheap champagne yesterday while mixing paint and organizing.

Uhhhhh, yeah: more food porn!

Anyone getting sick of all the food porn? My advice: get your own damn blog! Ha!

Here are some avocados in the Mercado de la Boqueria in Barcelona. The market really had some amazing visuals:

These funky mushrooms were all over the market. I have no idea what they are, or what they taste like, but am sad I didn't have the ability to do any cooking while I was in BCN: these would've been fascinating to try.

More funky mushrooms.

A wide variety of funky mushrooms.

Hot peppers!

A general fruit and veggie stall.


Okay, okay, OKAY ALREADY. I've heard the complaints, so here are some images that aren't food porn.

Some fun graffiti near the beach.

Buskers make these really elaborate sandcastles on the beach. Some are truly amazing. This was one of the few where I saw someone actively working on it.

"My first recollection is a day in December... 747 tracing lines through the sky"

More food porn!

Can't get enough of my food porn? Don't really have a choice, since it's all I feel like posting? READ ON!

Basically my start with photographing food porn was when I was cooking on the Sea Shepherd ship. (Scroll about halfway down for the food porn.) J mentioned that she'd seen a bunch more images that I hadn't blogged, so I dug some up:

tomato salad

soaking potatoes in saltwater overnight for breakfast

A local school came for a tour, and brought us massive amounts of fresh herbs from their school garden. It literally took me a week to process it all. Here is a bowl of sage leaves.

The aforementioned sage, a random avocado, and a jar that I'm making rosemary-infused olive oil in.

Self explanatory.

Yes, people really would just take stuff from the walk-in. Of course, this threat probably wouldn't be taken too seriously, since it involved a non-vegan dish.

The crew had this strange aversion to leftovers. So I usually didn't bother to tell them when something was a leftover: I either incorporated it into another dish, or just waited a week or so until they'd forgotten the dish. SUCKERS!

Here is the self-service area, with a broad selection. (Some of it is leftovers: don't tell!)

Fresh fruit for the juicer!

The results of peeling all that fresh fruit, other than my hands smelling good for a couple hours.

Fresh fruit with most of the juice removed in the juicer "waste" bin.
(Trust me: it didn't go to waste.)

And here is the result of some juicing!

Random veggie prep: I have no idea what this would have turned in to.

Food porn!

Since we're leaving for New England in a couple days, we realized we have a ton of fresh food we need to deal with. So we began a busy weekend of cooking with breakfast:

vegan pancakes with pink lady apples

boiling potatoes (yeah, I know: boring, right?)

but add some baked tofu,

and SHAZAM! it turns into something more exciting

pretty exciting: Thai tofu red curry with yellow, orange, and red peppers, onions, and zucchini

spicy Thai peanut noodles with tofu
(seeing a theme? it was actually accidental)

prepping brussels sprouts for Fresh Brussels Sprout Salad
from Earth Eats, a podcast I love.

adding green onions to the brussels sprouts

Unfortunately, the brussels sprout salad was kinda disappointing.
In fairness, I didn't have the toasted sunflower seeds or the red pepper flakes.
But I did have tofu and a hot skillet, which did wonders.

Another disappointment: Thai peanut cakes from an otherwise normally fantastic cookbook, The Gate Easy vegetarian Cooking , from The Gate vegetarian restaurant in London.

I know what you're thinking: what kinda lameass food porn blogging cooks are we that we need the "easy" version, rather than the full version ? Well, we also have the full version, and it has some amazing recipes, but the dishes can take hours, and the ingredient lists are often super complex and obscure. So many recipes might be feasible if you live in San Francisco or NYC and have hours to shop, but you'll have to trust me: it's much more difficult in Atlanta.

Why a disappointment? Well, they just didn't hold together in frying. At all. And since they're vegan, we couldn't cheat with a binder like egg. I mixed in a bunch of flour, which made them hold together better, but also took away the fluffy texture and made them taste a little more mild. I still have some of the mix, so I might try to work on them more tonight.

Three people, one dinner party: six wine glasses, five pint glasses, one small wine glass (the chef's share!), two digestif glasses.
Among other delicious libations, we enjoyed a 1.5 liter magnum of Anchor's Our Special Ale 2009 , their always delicious xmas ale. Yum.

And here's just a hint of what a three dish dinner party does to your kitchen. (It was well worth it.)

Play with your food

No, I actually wasn't bored in Barcelona. I just felt like playing with my food, okay?

The cast & crew.


Huh? Why are you anthropomorphizing me?

HEY! I'M TALKIN' TO YOU!

Fine: we're gonna make a run for it!

Hey! Wait for us!

This is what happens when your food tries to run away.

And this is what happens when you let someone else play with your food for you (at the Sal Cafe.)

Spain's favorite pastimes

Top Three, of which I share none:

1) Smoking. Everywhere possible. I regularly came back to my room without having patronized a smoking bar or restaurant, and still smelled like I'd been bar-hopping in the mid 90s.

2) Ham. It's everywhere. On a rather silly wine show on the plane on the way back, Andrea Robinson mentioned in her Madrid visit that there are apparently over 400 varieities of ham in Spain. Yuck. Tapas in bars often seemed to be a slice of ham with some cheese on top of ham, garnished with ham.

2a) Footnote to my badmouthing Andrea Robinson: she *is* a Master Sommelier, and she was the first female master sommelier in the US. Oh, and her newly developed "you only need one wine glass" glasses, called "The One" , bear a very strong resemblance to the red wine glasses we have. From Costco. That cost $14 for eight, not $49.95 for four. But to continue my random digression, her show is amusing, except that it's really more about travel and eating and being lovey-dovey with her somewhat oafish husband John, and kind of not about wine. And she ooohhhs and aaahhhhs about every dish that is brought out to her, and loves every one, as well as every wine. Apparently she never gets even an average dish or bottle, or they just edit that crap out. In any case, she never really gives details about any of the wine she's drinking, beyond a couple adjectives, and some moaning.

3) Public nose-picking. Aggressive public nose picking. Like, not trying to just subtly clear up one that is really bothering you, but sticking your index finger way up your nostril and tunneling. Diggin' for gold. I'm not alone in this observation. Just google it, and check out quotes like this:

Though marvelously dressed, Spanish men often accompany their wardrobe with a finger in their nose. There is something about the climate or allergens in Spain that makes mucous glands run on overdrive. After about a week of being here, I understand the need for Madrileños to probe their nostrils in search of a green gooey reward. I take a more refined approach to my menacing mucus and blow my nose often, yet the snot never seems to stop. Even mucous glands cannot resist the vigor and vitality of Spain.

"The nose picking here is continuous," said 22-year-old Palo Alto student Cristina Mireles."I suppose the people here must have really dry boogers or enjoy it (nose picking) as a hobby."

Okay, now I really have to get some other stuff done, like send in my passport for renewal.

Back from Spain, and better living through pharmeceuticals

After an 11 hour* plane trip yesterday, got back and had delicious spicy peanut noodles with tofu, green onions and cilantro with J, and soon went to sleep. Well, after a week of being jet-lagged and generally sleeping poorly in Barcelona (which might also have had something to do with other guests in the hostal coming in from clubs through the wee hours of the morning) I took 2/3 of a melatonin before going to sleep, and got a good night's sleep for the first time since I left North America.

*11 hour plane trip? That sounds really long, right? Well, a bozo in business class (essentially first class since it was a two-class 767 ) decided as we began to taxi for takeoff that his tum-tum hurt. So the flight attendants called for doctors, and and Totally Inappropriately, announced the reason why they needed a doctor ("really bad stomach cramps.") Two guys, ostensibly doctors, wandered up from coach to business class, and after about ten minutes, the decision was made to go back to the gate. And get the idiot off. And then wait for his checked baggage to found and pulled off. And then wait for "1300 pounds" of fuel to top us off (which seems like an immense amount of fuel for taxi, but whatever.) (And here is what going down the google rabbithole can do: a cautionary tale about switching between the imperial and metric systems.)

So we finally got back into queue for takeoff about an hour late, and got up into the air. In the air:

* Four Christmases was surprisingly funny for much of it, until it turned into a stupid, formulaic romcom in the last 15 minutes.

* Four returning LDS missionaries were on the flight. First amusing thing was when one of the flights attendants (cue up Total Inappropriateness, Round 2!) just assumed that they were continuing on to Salt Lake City (they weren't, but the hyper-aggressive niceness of the LDS missionary caused them to be, well, really nice about it.) Then as Four Christmases cranked up, you could visibly see one of the two male missionaries get quite wide-eyed at the somewhat edgy pickup and sex scene in the very beginning, and the other look totally mystified.

* The plane was only about 1/3 full in coach, so people were playing musical seats most of the flight, which got surprisingly irritating. But I had a two-seat wide exit row to myself, so I can't really complain about the people who were stuffed into prison cells of Delta's 767 coach configuration needing to move. J and I flew to Belgium a couple years ago on a Delta 767 in coach, and I swore never again. I apparently forgot this when I booked the Barcelona trip, but the exit row made it totally tolerable.

More observations and some images to come: this post is already getting really long.

Barcelona

The city, in many parts, is teeming with people. Then it will feel oddly empty on some sidestreets.

Yesterday included putting my feet into the surprisingly pleasant Medeterranean, and lots of walking, and some mediocre tapas, and some decent wine.

Not sure what today's plan is. Still sleeping poorly, waking up every couple hours feeling wide awake, so I don´t have a ton of energy. Un cafe solo is definitely in my immediate future.

Taking a fair amount of pictures, but not sure how many are worthwhile. I´m starting to think about the literally hundreds of gigs of images I have on the computer at home that I mostly haven´t sorted.

Okay: time to do something not involving a computer!

How to get cheap green onions in Barcelona

1) Go to the market, and ask nicely for them.
2) Be mystified when the woman cuts off the top parts, but the green onions are enormous, so there is still plenty of stuff left.
3) Ignore the sign on top of them: it's wrong.
4) Don't speak or comprehend adequate Spanish, so when the woman rattles off the price too quickly and you give her forty euro cents too little, she is too frustrated with your crappy Spanish to bother, and just tells you it's okay.
5) Proceed to the ripe avocado table, and buy one for 27 euro cents.

A nice flight, lovely hostal: Hostal Campi, a nice three hour nap, some good walking around, an amazing museum: Museu d'Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona (MHCB). More of same for tomorrow (well, probably not another flight.)

Barcelona: Absurdly cheap wine. Amazing crowds. Lots of energy.

It's nice to be challenged to use my Spanish. I really wish I spoke more.

Okay: time for picnic dinner in the room.