The only fool here is me

[stoney321]

I have mentioned that I hate the wind, yes? Because I do. Like, mortal enemy hatred. Why do I live on the black land prairie again? 45 mph gusts, steady wind of 25 mph. 8 miles today, and I'm worn the hell out from being beaten around by that dastardly wind. And I don't know how it manages it, but I left the house in one direction, came back in another, and was STILL facing the wind. What?? Ocean breezes? Mountain zephyr? I'm good with those. Swirling, abusive, leaf-filled, bird-knocking, shirt blowing up type winds are on my black list.

I'm sure I looked the fool stomping about with a snot-covered face, grimacing at the four miles left to go. :|

In happy news, though, I am going for proper Dim Sum this afternoon with an old friend that I let go by the wayside. (Old timers here: my $60 candle/Type-A friend.) Then there will be shopping for supplies at the Asian Market (I need proper jasmine rice, white soy, miso powder, etc. etc.) Spring weather makes me want light Malaysian/Thai/Japanese foods all the live long day. Mmmm, like that sweet vinegar cucumber salad stuff with little bits of crab and shrimp? MMMMMM I love sunomono! Or hijiki with carrots. OM NOM NOM I love you food, get in mah belleh!

I'm going to make that chai spice cake for Zombie Jesus Day this weekend, I think. I may not celebrate the worship of the second zombie risen (hahahaha, I'm so blasphemous) but I sure like all the trappings like chocolates, devilled eggs, and spring treats in buffet form. Okay, I need to shower and untangle my hair. Yeesh.

Comments

[caoil.livejournal.com]

Yay for Zombie Jesus Day! I love saying that to people. Most of them laugh, but there's always a few who look puzzled. And then you get to be all, "but he died, and rose from the dead a few days later? TOTALLY zombie!"

You may have wind today, but we have a rain/snow mix. Ahhh, yes, what fun.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I even wrote a song for Zombie Jesus Day! It pleases me so.

BAH to the rain and snow mix! Although with how hard it's blowing here, I don't know which is worse. :(

[caoil.livejournal.com]

This weather is making it very, very difficult for me to plant my (now a foot tall!) peas outside. GRRR. Maybe Zombie Jesus would intervene on my behalf if I asked?

[minstrel666.livejournal.com]

Time to start running in goggles and a bird flu mask, or better yet: a full rebreather gas mask. Stylish, healthy and will make you used to the mask for the upcoming zombie apocalypse (the virus will be airborne, you'll see).

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I want one of those recirculating suits from Dune, personally. I could be out for weeks, drinking my own pee, protected from the sand worms, too!

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

OMG! You must listen to this. It's one of my favorite This American Life episodes, and has a few catchphrases you'll be running around saying.

[entrenous88.livejournal.com]

Your excursion sounds crazy delicious! Ahaha, I totally remember that friend. Do not fear if she shows up with engraved sterling silver gardening shears for you; she ordered them for everyone this season!

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH, oh my god, you know something like that is going to happen, too. I'm going to make sure I get the bill this time, oy. SO FUNNY.

I will think of you as I nom some delicious vegetarian cuisine, my sweets!

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, all those foods sound GOOD. You'd love my road; 2 x indian & halal, 1 x greek, 1 x maroc, 1 x oriental, 1 x norwegian, 1 x italian and 1 x polish food stores, plus indian (3), spanish (1), chinese (2), thai (1), italian (2), lebanese (1 and so good, altho sort of alarming at the same time), caribbean (1), specifically jamaican and one greek (forthcoming!) restaurants/takeaways/slightly terrifying one-rooms. If you ever make it over we will go and gorge. I had thai last night with my parents, who were visiting - pork & long beans, AMAZING.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I LOVE FOOD and I would love your block, oh my god I would gain three stone.

We will TOTALLY gorge on deliciousness. I LOVE long beans! I'm growing my own this season - I like to stir fry them in a ginger/fish sauce/soy mix and add dried shrimp. NOM NOM NOM!

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Oh dude! That sounds amazing. What's dried shrimp like, i haven't encountered it? No srsly, I have to look neither to right nor left or it's like O HAI LAMB PASANDA, YOU TASTE SO MUCH BETTER THAN COOKING FOR MYSELF.

Altho I am actually cooking quite successfully now! Although basically. But I'm getting better at making interesting sauces, you'd be proud. For stirfrys and pasta this is. I'm still nervous of cooking meat in case I accidentally kill myself.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

They're a little cello-package of wee-small shrimp, like crumbled bits of bacon. Salty goodness!

Hahahaha, cooking meats are easy: just think that humans have lived with success for 150,000 without refrigeration, so you can't screw up too badly, right? ;)

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

And you just chuck them in stuff, right? I mean, you don't need to rehydrate them or anything? Sorry to use you for Cooking 101 once more (although you'd be so proud, I have cooked every night bar one for WEEKS now, as opposed to sort of ASSEMBLING FOOD or doing something appalling and instant).

This is true. Also not to be gross (although surely all college students are a bit this way?) but if you had to obey every single best before type rule, I would be dead by now. Just because I cook for one it's SO HARD to get through everything before it's out.

What's easy to start with, like, chicken breast or something?

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

you do have to rehydrate them, but I just take a ladle of hot water for noodles and pour them over the shrimp for about three minutes, then drain them off and toss them in with the long beans. They crisp up. I'm sure someone cooks without rehydrating them, but I haven't attempted it yet.

Chicken breasts, yes! If you pound them flat with an empty wine bottle you can cook them in a skillet for about two minutes per side. Take them out of the pan, add mushrooms, a pat of butter, saute that, then pour in a touch of cream, parsley flakes, and some capers and you have easy chicken scallopini. :D We're having that tomorrow night.

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sounds absolutely lovely. Also the image of you pounding chicken breasts with an empty wine bottle is hilarious.

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Wow, I thought the wind was blowing here! it's kicking up so much crud, and I was already all sinus infection-y. Blech!

We oriental marketed this weekend. Sooo many levels of fun. The guy behind me was buying durian popsicles. I have never delved into the frozen sweets section, but will next time.

Fave find this time around was hors douvre sized vietnamese spring roll wrappers! They're the size of a corn tortilla. I can't wait to make a batch of appetizers for our next party.

Yay Zombie Jesus Day! I'm making challah and lemon curd just because that's what I'm craving right this minute!

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Oy, my face was a MESS. I went through all of my tissues on my walk, too. BLEH.

DURIAN POPCICLES!! I've had that, they're better as ice cream, though. Red bean ice cream is pretty nommable, too.

MmmmMMmmmm, I want those wrappers! I'll keep my eyes peeled, what a great idea!

LEMON CURD. I think I could marry you right now, I'm just saying. It is my FAVORITE of the curds. ;)

[windstar.livejournal.com]

At the Asian market we go to, in Arlington, they sell whole frozen Durian, and they have a sign above them that says "ALL DURIAN SALES ABSOLUTELY FINAL". There used to be a dim sum place right by the market, but I think they closed. Need to get back out there, I am out of Pocky.

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

Wind: We had wind the other day that blew the chairs over on my porch and pushed them up against the railing like they were trying to escape.

Zombie Jesus Treats: I was just wondering about this the other day, how my MIL does this huge spread for Easter when, in the fourteen years that I've known them they've been to church maybe four or five times, and at least three of those were when I got married, when my father died and the Sunday after my father died. Soooo. Is it the need for lamb, or in our case, ham, cheese sauce and asparagus? Easter doesn't seem to be as commercialized a holiday as Christmas and...well...is it the chocolate bunnies?

And, well, it would be nice to have a really bitchin' hat.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's just that routine - you make big meals on these days, yea verily. At least that's how it is with us, because we aren't religious at all. Not even spiritual or kinda dabbling in Santeria. :D

I mean, chocolate bunnies, Peeps, devilled eggs... There is no bad there!

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

::scratches head:; We were spending so much time at church when I was growing up, people usually had us over for the Big Holiday Meals, as you know, the preacher's family, so I don't think it's in my muscle memory or something.

Or, my dad would be all, "Okay, we're done now? Let's go to the Ritz for lunch." or something. Or, we'd go home and floop on the couch and have breakfast for dinner, which I always loved. And then everyone would nap.

Naaaaaaaps.

I think they might have some organic chocolate easter thingies down at the natural foods store. Hmmmmm....

[anelith.livejournal.com]

Dim Sum! So good! I do remember your candle friend. :-) Tell us all about your lunch later so we can enjoy it vicariously.

The wind does sound vicious. I think it has a personal interest in you, that's why it changes directions -- just for YOU, Laura!

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, my head isn't quite big enough to believe the wind just wants to be with ME ME ME, yet. Give me a few more acting gigs... ;)

DIM SUM. Mmmm, I had steamed pork and leek buns, Shanghai style buns, some taro root patties that were freaking DELISH, and so much water I'm about to float away. Why do they top off my glass after every sip, augh?

Then I hit the market and loaded up on staples like Hoisin sauce, Furikake flakes, jasmine rice, fish sauce, etc. etc. Time for stir fry tonight!

[tabaqui]

I'm starving and you're making me so much *more* hungry.....
And yes - deviled eggs and candy to celebrate the Zombification of Their Lord!!

:)

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I think this year I'm making the deviled eggs look like braaaaaaaaiiiiins to properly honor Him. ;)

[tabaqui]

Um.

Do you mean grey? I don't think i could bring myself to eat grey deviled eggs.....
*flails*

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

PINK! PINK brains! Healthy under-skull'd brains!!

[tabaqui]

Heeee!
Okay. Pink i could....um.

Maybe.
:)

What's the secret to getting the bloody shell off the eggs without removing half the white? I seem to have lost the knack entirely.
*sigh*

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Ice bath! They have to be completely cool before you peel them. It took me FOREVER to figure that one out.

[tabaqui]

Really? Okay. I'll do that. I'm so tired of the shell not coming off!!

[essene.livejournal.com]

Zombie Jesus Day?

*snorfle* You just made my week.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

HEH. I cannot claim that name, it came from violethamster a few years back when I wrote a parody Easter song to the tune of "Thriler." :D

[crazydiamondsue.livejournal.com]

I took both babies to Penney's this morning to get Jonah's Zombie Jesus pictures taken. I got the stroller out of the hatchback of an '07 Hyundai Accent while bent backwards by the wind. I put Braden in the stroller, locked the brake, and held onto the stroller with my foot while I crawled in the backseat to get Jonah. Then I pushed the stroller, carried a baby and a diaper bag into the store while the wind pushed me sideways, all the way yelling, "You motherfucker!" at the wind sweepin' down the plain.

Pastoral domesticity FTW.

I would steal your cucumber salad for Easter brunch but I can't. You know why? Crab legs are on monster sale here. So I planned my Easter brunch to be eggs with chives, a ham, scones, a fruit salad and king crab legs as something special (not every day we celebrate a risen deity you know) and my MIL was all, "Oh, don't get that for us. We don't eat shellfish because it's so expensive." :( Now, shellfish is the ONLY seafood I eat. And it's my ass wiping all these baby butts to earn the money for the shellfish, so eat it!

What did you and I do in a former life to deserve in-laws that can't be gracious about special occasions, Stoney? What???? In other news, I bet your hair was FANTASTIC after your run.

My double jogging stroller comes in tomorrow!!!

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you didn't saaaaaaaaaaaay, "YOW! I-yip-i-yip-i-YAAAAAAAAY! when that wind came hollerin' at ya. GOD I HATE THE WIND. We only have a few more weeks of it, then it'll be all proper and hot and still like the good Zombie Lord intended.

WTF, who turns down ALREADY PURCHASED crab legs? What the what?! REDONK. If ever there was a daughter in law that deserved a set of in laws that appreciated good food, it would be you.

My head ached from all the tangle-pulling.

Oooh, fancy pants!

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

I made such a wonderful pie a couple of days ago... without carbs! Meaning, no flour! ;-D And it was delicious! :-D

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Oooh, what did you use for the crust, nut flour or something?

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

I got the recipe from a LowCarbHighFat book, since.... Thats the kind of food we eat. :-)

Tacopie with guacamole :-D (Translated from swedish)

4-6 servings

Crust:

4 eggs
1 deciliter cream (the fatty kind) (7 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons butter (the real kind, not margarine)

The content of the pie:

400 grams of minced meat (don't know how much that is with US measurements)
1 crushed piece of garlic
butter to fry in (the fatty kind)
1 tablespoon of tomato purée
2 tablespoons of home-made taco-spices (see further down)
half a deciliter of water (0,4 tablespoons)
cherry tomatoes (as many as you like)
a bunch of onion rings (as many as you like)
2 deciliter of grated cheese (14 tablespoons)
1 deciliter of cream (7 tablespoons) (again, the fatty kind)
½ deciliter of creme fraiche (3 ½ tablespoons)

Guacamole:

2 Avocados
1 deciliter of creme fraiche (7 tablespoons)
1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice
2-3 pieces of garlic
1 teaspoon of nice olive oil

Home-made taco-spice:

1 ½ tespoon salt
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons paprika powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin
2 small pinch of cayenne pepper
Mix and keep dark and dry

How to!

Put the oven on 225 degrees Celsius (437 degrees Fahrenheit).
Just as good to eat cold. Having eggs as a crust don't give you that heavy feeling you get from eating a regular crust. And it tastes great to!

Melt the butter in the pie dish in the oven. Whip the eggs, cream and the melted butter hard in a bowl. In the pie dish and then the oven until it gets a nice surface with lots of colour. Take it out and let it rest and cool.

Fry the minced meat with garlic and spices in butter. Add water and let it simmer until there is near to no liquid. Grate the cheese and mix with cream and creme fraiche. Put the minced meat mix on the crust and put tomato pieces and onion rings on top. Over it all put the cheese-mix. In the oven and bake it for 10 - 15 min, or it has a nice colour.

Kibble all the soft avocado meat down a food processor. Press the lemon juice in there and add the garlic. Comminute on high speed! Add creme fraiche and mix until all is smooth. Add salt and pepper and the olive oil. Taste and see if it needs more garlic.

Serve the taco-pie with the guacamole and some sallad. It is delicious!

I just translated this entire recipe from my cookbook! o.O It wasn't easy, but fun. :-D I couldn't have done it without the online dictionary Tyda.Se (http://tyda.se/). Sorry if the grammar is way out there! I hope you understand it anyway. :-D

Of course you could fill the crust with something else, this is just the way it was in the cookbook and how we did it. :-)

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

OH! Here when you have an egg-based crust it's called a frittata! I was thinking sweet dessert pie when you mentioned it, and was very curious. :D

That's a LOT of work to translate this, thank you so much for going to the trouble, my word! The guacamole portion is very different from how we make it here, cool!

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

Well, since I don't eat any carbohydrates in my food, I eat nothing sweet. So no sweet dessert pie here, oh no. ;-)

It was only fun to translate it, actually. :-) I like sharing my carb-free food with others. ;-) I am even thinking of starting a lj-comm for us people eating lowcarbhighfat food. :-) What you think about that?

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Oh you should totally do that! I have gluten-free folks on my flist that could benefit, I'm sure!

Now I, on the other hand, loooooooove carbs so I will just wave at you as you share recipes. ;)

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

*grin* You do that. ;-) I'll ponder the idea a bit, and then I'll let you know, so you can pimp it a bit. ;-)

[chrryblssmninja.livejournal.com]

mmm good dim sum

[judetwee.livejournal.com]

My dad's Thai so I'm acquainted with native cuisine in Thailand. Fruit everywhere! And fresh durian (it stinks, along with its cousin in odor the jackfruit)! Rice cooked in bamboo shoots! I'm always confused when I go into Thai restaurants here in America because I've never seen half the food items on the menu most times. I even saw Curtis Stone on Take Home Chef do 'Thai food' and he made a custard. A custard! They don't make desserts that require refrigeration in Thailand unless they aren't Thai!

Okay, I'll shut up now. Sorry.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm, durian! I might be one of the only white girls you know that LOVES durian. I love the little moon cakes with durian filling, too.

There's a HUGE south-Asian community near where I live, so I have the luxury of PROPER Thai food. I can't stand "Americanized" Asian food now that I know the truth. :)

[judetwee.livejournal.com]

My uncle likes to eat it fresh and always starts singing a song he made up about 'The King of Fruit', which I can only assume refers to durian. My favorite food is 'pork satay' as I see it called on menus round here :) There's a little place in Nakorn Pathom that my relatives stop at to get it for me. Mmm, delicious! No other place can compare. All of the Thai restaurants I've been to in the US serve big fat slabs of meat (pork or chicken, generally chicken) on sticks, but that little place cuts their pork into 2mm thick slices and has the best curry recipe ever. *drools just thinking about it*

My dad cooks proper Thai food, but only a few different dishes because his other recipes are a little too weird for my mom. She tells me she got on a bus in Bangkok and sat across from a little old lady with a pot that had chicken legs sticking out of it. They also sell bugs in the mall and I saw my dad eating congealed chicken blood once. What an experience! Do you get that stuff at the restaurants you go to?

I also know a few recipes, so if you want some, just ask =)

[denelian.livejournal.com]

when i was nine, i spent most of that year in the hospital. i was in at Standford ovver Easter. my dad felt very bad for me, as my step-dad refused to buy chocolate for me, because i wasn't there to find it (you now, egg hunt sort of thing? we only got the candy we could find, so we "worked" for and "earned" our treats). and my dad is a VERY VERY atheist. and so was the head nurse. and they both read a lot of sci-fi and horror. the collaborated on making me an Easter celebration.
so, for like 7 years (until i was 16 and decided it wasn't cool anymore) every year we did "Rise of the Zombie God" instead of Easter - my dad would melt chocolate and remake it as "zombie candy", using some sort of white cream to make it (supposedly anyway) look like rotting flesh and all. pissed my mother off to no end :p i thought it was just us, my very weird family. good to know we aren't alone

on a totally other note - i told my sister about your Chai cake, and she is very interested and i am interested in her interest because i can't bake but i REALLY wanted to try it, so is it ok if i share the recipe with her?

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Why would I mind if you shared someone else's recipe? I just linked to it, it's not *my* recipe. Go to town!

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i thought it was your recipe ;) i hadn't looked at the entry since you posted it. so, i guess sorry for mis-remembering?
she's going to make it this weekend. mmmmmm can't wait