Cooking Virgins!

Fajita Saturday

2008-01-13T07:24:23Z

I slept for almost 24 hours, which gave me strange dreams about billiards and Kenny Rogers suitcase ghosts.

Today is fajita Saturday, so I'm tremendously excited.

First:
Today I had to buy zucchini, a garlic press (which cost $13!), salsa and tortillas (as I only had one left).
Here are the health properties of the ingredients in my lovely fajita:
Firm Tofu - High in protein with roughly 2% fat, low in "bad cholesterol" (according to wikipedia, of course).

Zucchini - low in calories, contains useful amounts of folic acid (necessary for the production and maintenance of new cells), potassium (important in nerve function), vitamin A and manganese.

Onion - Perhaps effective against the common cold, heart disease, osteoporosis, and other diseases. They contain anti-inflammatory, anticholesterol, anticancer, and antioxidant components such as quercetin. The higher the intake of onion, the lower the level of glucose found during oral or intravenous glucose tolerance tests.

Bell Pepper (Green) - Rich in Vitamin C, and Vitamin B6.

Garlic - similar to onions in health benefits.

Olive Oil - Rich in Omega 3 and Omega 6, vitamin E and Vitamin K.

Preparation:
Things went swimmingly today as I was looking forward to the dish. I had briefly considered that I would order pizza but then the prospect of bread with onions and other vegetables on top didn't seem very appetizing.
I had a little issue when cutting the onions and I was not looking forward to onions in the least (I hate the smell of them and I don't enjoy the taste, but I will eat them because they're not so bad, plus they have a lot of health benefits).
It wasn't a very colourful dish because I used green peppers, so it was a lovely green+white dish cooking in the oven.

Result:
It is so good. I didn't use any fancy salsa, but I put just some regular restaurante salsa in the tortilla with the other ingredients and it really livened it up. I am a sucker for tomatoes so I think any addition of salsa to almost anything would brighten my day.
This is the first dish I have made (Aside from the cookies) that I would be willing to make again and again. The other ones were alright but had a few too many things that I didn't enjoy like mustard and onions.

Note:
If you would like this recipe you can either pick up the Moosewood Restaurant New Classic Cookbook or message me on livejournal and I will forward it to you.

Big Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-01-10T05:52:46Z

I was feeling bored and peckish after a long trek to a job interview out in Burnaby, so I decided to make myself some chocolate chip cookies, following yet another recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook (pretty much all of these recipes will be from there until I get a new cookbook).
I am aiming to make dinner every other day and rely on left overs the day after that (or I get to go out and eat!)

First:
For these cookies I had to buy butter, pastry flour, baking soda, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts. I managed to use up all the butter, chocolate chips and walnuts so I will have to find a use for the flour that I bought (which may just mean more cookies someday).

Preparation:
Apparently I actually own a hand mixer! I was very disappointed with it though as it seemed to overheat when I started adding the flour to the wet mixture, and then it had a strange odour, and then I got frightened. At one point I hit the edge of my mixing bowl (which was, in actuality, a giant Glad brand disposable container (it has more than one use!)) and my mixer jutted out as though it had a mind of it's own, and sprinkled the surrounding area with tiny bits of cookie dough. The little morslets got on my ipod doc and the floor, which I later stepped on, which led to angry, sticky feet.
Cookies aren't exactly new to my repertoire of foods that I can make, but the recipe I used to work with had a lot of guess work and ended up not looking very nice. I was excited to find this recipe in my one and only cook book.

I had to dole them out using my trusty 1/4 cup but I stacked the dough too high on the first batch, so it required an extra 5 minutes in the oven, sacrificing precious cookie tenderness.

Result:
These cookies look fantastic! They may be the tiniest bit too chocolatey for my taste, but other people might find that blasphemous! I wonder what they'd taste like with m&ms.

Note:
If you would like this recipe you can either pick up the Moosewood Restaurant New Classic Cookbook or message me on livejournal and I will forward it to you.

Asparagus Egg Salad Rolls - Day 2

2008-01-10T02:03:55Z

I get a little bit freaked out about left overs.. I guess the mere idea of eating something that I cooked yesterday grosses me out; who knows what is growing inside!

With that in mind I found that the eggs in the salad didn't hold up very well after a night in the refrigerator; they turned a bit greyish and therefore inedible.

Note about the eggs:
I bought these Omega 3 eggs, which promised a sunny yolk, but these particular egg yolks don't look natural at all. They are this colour, which might seem like the right colour but it's not, this is much too vibrant to be natural for a chicken. I just imagine that these eggs would develop into fluorescent yellow chicks.

Also, I have learned that these recipes are way too much for me. My egg salad recipe made 5 wraps and I couldn't possibly wolf that down, not even in two days. So I will cut the servings in half via my ability to divide numbers in twain!!

Asparagus Egg Salad Rolls

2008-01-09T00:30:11Z

I have a sort of aversion to bread or bread-like things (such as tortillas and pitas) but, seeing as this is my first time cooking something new, I should probably start with something that is simple like this asparagus egg salad tortilla wrap from the moosewood restaurant cook book.
On January 6th I started my long journey on the road to a completely raw-food diet and I did so by eliminating chicken, beef and pork from my diet, though I will continue to eat eggs and diary products until about April or May when I'll become vegan.

First things first:
I don't exactly own many of the supplies needed to cook. For instance: I only have three sauce pans, one knife, one small frying pan, and one wooden spoon. This recipe calls for measuring ingredients, so I had to buy measuring cups and spoons at my local IGA Garden Market.
Of the ingredients I also had to buy eggs, terragon (the market didn't have any fresh spices), Dijon mustard, lemon juice, asparagus, tortillas, and lettuce.
All in all I managed to spend $50 at the grocery store (I bought a few other items like milk and dish-washing detergent)! So much for saving money cooking for myself... though I'm certain I can get a lot of mileage out of the terragon, mustard, and lemon juice so it was somewhat worth it.

Preparation:
This may sound stupid but I have never boiled an egg before! Nor did I know what to do with asparagus when the recipe called for "stemming" the asparagus. I felt silly having to consult the internet for such things, but it all worked out well when it came together swimmingly.
I also couldn't find any satisfactory tortilla so I had to buy spinach tortilla wraps and they were not at all big enough or malleable enough to accommodate lettuce, 3/4 cups of egg salad, and one asparagus spear.
I am 6'0 tall and I always feel much taller hunching over counter tops, chopping and dicing stuff. What is the average height of a cook? They built my kitchen for a short person or something.
Side Note: For some reason my Ipod decided to play a horrible Apocalyptica album for the duration of my cooking experience, which sort of made me lose my appetite. I give their album "Worlds Collide" a 1/10 for lack of ingenuity... every time a new song came up it sounded like a douche bag song! There's no better way to explain it. When did I get this album?!

Result:
I am satisfied with my meal but I discovered that I didn't need to buy so much asparagus, as I only happened to use half of what I boiled. I also think that in preparing the asparagus I could have added some extra taste like salt and pepper, because it just tastes like a little bit bitter, raw, cold broccoli stalk, which adds nothing to the egg salad.
In retrospect, this wrap might work better on some kind of soft baguette, rather than tortillas.

Note:
If you would like this recipe you can either pick up the Moosewood Restaurant New Classic Cookbook or message me on livejournal and I will forward it to you.