Stuff:

For Stock:

3 cups of chopped carrots
2 cups of chopped celery
1 chopped onion
6 cups of water
Old Bay, Sea Salt, Celery Salt, Garlic to taste (I add some chili powder too)

The Rest:

1/2 stick of butter
1/3-1/2 cup of flour
1 small onion, chopped fine
2 cups of celery, chopped fine
1 large parsnip, chopped fine
2 large white potatoes, chopped
1 red potato, chopped
1 cups of carrots, chopped
1 cup of milk
at least 2, up to 100 cloves of garlic
sea salt
dill
cracker black pepper
garlic powder
Cholula hot sauce (1 tablespoon for flavor, 3 tablespoons for some heat, 5 tablespoons to win a bet)

Make the Stock:

(You can totally skip this and just go buy some vegetable stock. I won’t tell)

Chop up the onion, celery, and carrots into large chunks. Add the spices sparingly. Boil uncovered for an hour. Taste. Season again. Drain and discard the vegetables, having stripped them of all their nutritional value. Easy peasy! When finished, you should have about 4 cups of stock (reduced from the 6 cups of water)

Potatoes and Roux:

Get the 4 cups of stock boiling, and add the potatoes to the stock. Season to taste with the stuff listed above. After they’ve been cooking for about 10 minutes and are NEARLY soft, add the chopped carrots.

In the meantime, melt the half stick of butter in a saucepan. Add the parsnips, onion, and celery. Cook for 5-10 minutes over a high heat until the vegetables are soft. Stirring continuously, add the flour one tablespoon at a time until all of the butter is soaked up, and no more flour will dissolve, despite your valiant stirring efforts.

By this time, the carrots should be fork tender, the potatoes should be soft, and you should be on at least your second beer. Once you’ve met all these criteria, add the veggie roux to the boiling stock and reduce heat to low. Stir it all up really well (you’ll get a bit of a workout!), cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes. Once all the flavors are blended nice and tasty, add the milk, and keep on the heat just to bring it up to temperature. Serve with a cracker pepper and dill garnish and giant hunk of French bread. Love life.

Notes

I really didn’t mean to put the radish in the picture, but now those veggies are gone and chopped, so deal with it.

1/2 cup of finely chopped vidalia onion
16 ounces of Sharp Cheddar, cut in 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 pound of bacon
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 clove of garlic, minced (or 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder)
2 tablespoons of cholula hot sauce
1 1/2 cups of macroni noodles (pre-cooked measurement)
1 tablespoon of butter
1/4 cup of heavy cream (milk is fine, cream is better)

You’ll need one pot to boil the noodles, and one heavy skillet.

Boil the noodles until they are cooked, but still very firm. Don’t overcook the noodles, or you’ll end up with mush.

In the skillet, fry up the bacon until it is nice and crunchy, almost burnt. Make sure it will crumble, and pat the bacon down with a few paper towels to get as much grease off it as possible. Once the bacon is cooked, drain the remaining fat (don’t wash the pan!) and cook the diced onions one high heat until they have a nice medium brown color, stirring frequently. It should take about 5 minutes. Add butter and reduce heat to low.

While the onions are cooking, crumble the bacon into small pieces. I like to take half the bacon and put it into a ziploc, and crumble it into “bit” sized pieces, and then make “bite” sized pieces with the other half.

Once the onions have a nice color, add everything to the skillet, and give it a quick stir to mix everything together. Try to distrubute the cheese chunks as well as possible.

Cover and WALK AWAY. It should be ready in about 15 minutes, when the cheese has fully melted and gotten gooey all over everything. Kill the heat, and wait a few minutes before serving.

Enjoy, and keep the glycerin tablets nearby.

I made this salsa at the last minute before I had people over for a bar-b-que.  It’s easy, hearty and cheap.  El Ranchero (green bag) tortilla chips are a must for scooping.

1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas)
2 fresh or 1 can tomatoes
3 ears fresh, frozen or 1 can corn
diced onion
diced bell pepper
minced jalapeño (with seeds and ribs for hotter salsa)
crushed garlic
juice from 1 lime or 1/2 lemon
salt to taste
ground cayenne or chipotle

Combine and let it marinate at room temperature for an hour or so.

Ingredients:

1 Tuna Steak
seasonings (I used cumin, “italian seasoning”, garlic power, and a bit of celery salt)
Whatever fresh veggies you have

tiny bit of oil (olive oil if you have it, but canola/vegetable is fine)

Cooking

I had an ear of corn, a few mushrooms, and half a red pepper left over. I diced it all up to make a makeshift “salsa”. Throw it all in a small covered with a tiny bit of oil, and a pinch of salt, pepper, and/or garlic salt. I used just a dash of garlic salt. Cook it all up at a very low heat, stirring occasionally.

For the Tuna, you want to get a good coating of spices on both sides. In my case, it was mostly cumin, with a bit of the other stuff to make it a little more dynamic. Get your pan nice and hot, with just a couple of drops of oil. Tuna has natural oils, so you don’t need much. The coating helps it to not stick also, if you tend to have a pan that likes to eat your food.

For a thick steak like mine, you’ll want about 4 minutes per side, covered, if you like your steak with some pink inside, but hot throughout. 7 minutes each side should cook it white all the way through.

Overall, For about 6-7 bucks, I ended up with a damn good meal. After eating nothing but pancakes, you really learn to appreciate meals like this… almost as much as good friends inviting you and making pork tenderloin.

Cook the potatoes in a pot of lightly salted boiling water for 15minutes. While they’re boiling, finely chop the onion. When you can easily stab a potato with a fork, drain the taters and set aside for a minute. In a skillet, brown the butter and onions until golden. Then add the potatoes and use your spatula to mash them in the skillet. Move them around every so often, so they don’t burn, but allow them to sit long enough to get a brown crust. That’s it! (I’ll get a picture next time I make ‘em, sorry there’s no visual aid).

Right when I walked in, I enjoyed the atmosphere. It was clean and friendly, and a sign saying “Take a menu and sit wherever you’d like” was just the welcome I was looking for. I did exactly that. I sat down at a small 2 person table somewhere near the middle of the restaurant, and was  Within 30 seconds, a busboy had noticed me and brought me a glass of water. Wonderful! The rest of my visit wasn’t so great.

The first thing I noticed was that the menu didn’t seem to have the choices I would expect from a place with “deli” in the name. They did have a few club sandwiches and turkey sandwiches… but the largest portion of their menu seemed to be devoted to their 10 dollar burgers and 12 dollar chicken sandwiches. I had really expected an abundance of 7-8 dollar tuna salad/chicken salad/fresh deli sandwiches.

With a clock on the wall in near view of me, I realized that I waited just under 10 minutes for the server to come by and greet me. He asked if I was ready to order, and by now of course I was, and I started telling him what I wanted. Apparently “Avocado club burger with no tomato on a pretzel bun” was too hard to remember. He stopped me before I could finish my sentence so he could “soak it all in”. I ordered a Sprite, which he seemed shocked at, as he just stared at me for a good 5 seconds before responding. On his merry way he went, and I began counting how long until my beverage arrived. Again, just under 10 minutes. I have a look around, and notice 4 other tables, 2 families, and 2 pairs of young girls.With 2 servers on, there really is no reason why I  should be sitting and waiting at all.

As he set my overful drink on the table, he spilled a good couple of ounces of it on the table next to me, and walked away promptly, obviously with no intention of wiping up his mistake. I waited eagerly for my burger. I’m very hungry. A few minutes later [super] busboy notices the spill on my table, and cleans it up with a smile as I thank him.

My burger comes a few minutes later, and it looks incredible. My beverage is empty, but I don’t have a chance to ask for another (not that I should have to ask), because the server sprints away as if there’s a kitchen fire right after dropping off the burger. The sandwich is a nice big 1/2 pound burger with aioli, lettuce, bacon and avocado. No ketchup or mustard needed here! The are fresh and hot, cut about 1/4 inch thick, unsalted, and crispy. Although it came cooked near-well while I had ordered it medium, it is deliciously juicy. The avocado, lettuce, and bacon are very fresh and crisp. I ate half of the burger, planning to save the other half to take home, and all of the fries and pushed my plate away to let the server know I was finished. He instead had just come back and asked how everything was. [Super] busboy saved the day a few minutes later and picked up my plate to box everything up for me.

The server passed my table 3 more times before delivering the check. I gave the lowest tip I’ve given in probably 2 years… 10% or so.

I didn’t hate the place. The service was very poor, and I think I won’t be sitting down to eat again soon, but they do have a takeout menu, and the burger was very delicious. Overall, I’d give a 9/10 for food, 4/10 for service, and 6/10 for value, giving Frances an overall rating of just over 6/10.

Vegan Fajita

FoodStuff:

flour tortillas
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small white onion, in fajita sized chunks
1 red bell pepper, fajita sized chunks
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 cup of water
1 package Trader Joe’s Chickenless Strips
seasonings (I use cumin, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, in that order)
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

MakeFood:

Steam up your tortillas. I don’t have a steamer… so I just spray some water on them, and throw them in an unpreheated oven until they are not wet, and nice and soft.

Get the olive oil nice and hot in a frying pan, and throw the onions in to brown up for a minute or two. Toss in the bell peppers and let them get a bit of color. A minute or two should do it for those, too.

Keep your heat on high, and toss in the tomato sauce, water, and chicken strips. Season to taste.

Once the water has nearly cooked off, and you are left with very little liquid (a couple of minutes only), add the nutritional yeast, and stir it up well so it all dissolves. They are ready to serve.

Should make about 4-6 fajitas. I made half this much, but it seemed silly to post a recipe with half a can of tomato sauce and half a package of chix strips.

While browsing at the Wüsthofs at william-sonoma.com I came across this recipe. It’s adapted from their book, Soup, by Diane Rossen.

It’s healthy, warm and economical, all of which I’m a fan of lately.

1/2 lb. dried soba noodles
4 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1/4 cup yellow miso (I found it in the refrigerated section at Whole Foods. I’ve been using it to make a simple miso soup that’s printed on the container which is also good and cheap)
1 tsp. peeled & grated ginger
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 cups packed baby spinach leaves
2 scallions

Cook noodles according to directions on the package. In a large saucepan whisk together broth, water, miso and ginger. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat and cook until miso is dissolved (3 minutes). Slice chicken breast and add to broth, cook until just opaque (2 minutes). Add spinach and cook until slightly softened (1 minute). Add sliced scallion and cook for 1 minute more.

Spoon noodles in to deep bowl, add broth and top with cracked pepper. When you’re through with the meaty part of the soup the last sip is an invigorating blend of sweet/salty broth, ginger and pepper.

The basics:

· 2 cups flour   · 1 ts salt   · 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) melted

· 3/4 cup brown suggah   · 2 eggs   · 3 bananas (microwave a bit if frozen)

The extras I never leave out, but you don’t have to use:

· 4 tbs cocoa powder   · 1.5 ts pumpkin spice   · 1/2 cup pecans or any nut   · honey

Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease a loaf pan. I prefer an 8″x4″ pan, because the loaf is taller with a rounder top, but 9″ x 5″ works just as well. Mix the dry ingredients, then mix in the wet – everything but the honey and a fistful of the pecans. Pour into the pan. Sprinkle the rest of the nuts on top, then drizzle honey across the top. Bake for about an hour and fifteen minutes. The test is that you can stick a clean knife in the middle, and it comes out clean. Take it out and cool for 10 minutes before you remove from the pan. Das it! So easy and delicious. Use to make French toast for an extra sweet breakfast.