Tough Neighborhood. Just be yourself and you’ll be O.K.

Perfect Egg Salad. A bit of honey on the salad with oil, vinegar, soy sauce, crushed black pepper, garlic powder with mushrooms and walnuts. Omelet fried in butter for the non splatter effect. Sometimes I think I have arrived, but then I realize that I am out of eggs and have to go out again. Read the mushroom warning above. The most difficult part of this was finding that the battery was exhausted in the camera, and having to wait for four minutes while it loaded enough for this.

Towering Eggplant/fried mushrooms and pecans with blue cheese sauce. The sauce you do not see. I put it on afterwards, made of blue cheese melted in milk and a small amount of oil. We associate high with good (cakes, ice cream cones, stack of pancakes and syrup). Join the trend to build higher. Eggplant boiled in water up to about half way (in essence steamed) until soft enough to be cooked but not to deflate under its own weight. Heated canned crushed tomatoes with garlic, and spices (mine here are sweet basil, garlic powder, crushed black pepper). Serves two but… because there was no one else around, I ate it all myself.

Not-to-be-forgotten. You may hate this or love it, but I can tell you one thing – you will not forget it. Fried banana with honey on top, veg dogs with blue cheese (any kind will do here) and hummus with pure premium olive oil. The salad you cannot see went with it. I don’t try to get everything needed in each and every meal, but sometimes it just works out that way.

RedpepperBurger. That’s canned stewed crushed tomatoes with garlic inside the fried pepper rings, with sunflower seeds.

When you need protein. The importance of this dish is more than the protein it provides. It is all about garnish (not to be confused with condiments, spices and sauces) where they are not the main dish but added to make the dish better, more interesting, look more appetizing, etc. (in this case, the cream cheese, the mushrooms, the fried onion rings). Food without garnish is like life without Penelope. Who is Penelope? I don’t know. It’s just the first name that popped in, but you get the point. Garnish may have its own food value but its true value comes in combination with other foods. Without it, most of the restaurants in the world would be out of business. Garnish is what makes eating an experience.

This Photo axed. Didn’t look anything like the taste, which was great. If you hate spinach, you will hate this. If you hate something, you just hate it, and will just say that someone is trying to fool you. So stay away from this dish. For those of you who love spinach or at least can abide it, this is a great dish. I started with frozen spinach and added: Sunflower seeds, milk, flour, garlic powder, ground ginger, crushed black pepper, sweet basil, and honey. There were a few others I put in but I don’t want to bore you, and besides they did not help. What did it for me was the ginger and honey. To top it off, I added cheese (kashkabal of course) and hummus. The hummus can be mixed in or put on the side, but with it you have a full meal, and they go great together. After this, for dessert, I had 3 biscuits with blue cheese and a fine Belgium chocolate which my sister sent to me.

“Oh”, you say “Just great. Another bowl of Oatmeal”. No, not just another bowl. It has a lot of ground flax seed in it for Omega3 and potassium (cleverly disguised as a banana).

Apple and banana rice with cinnamon/brownsugar/honey sauce. Says it all. Great mix. Got the idea while cleaning up the fried banana from lunch. As I was finishing it off, I asked myself “What would go good with this?” The answer was rice. And the rest is…. as they say.

This is not just another pancake. This is THE pancake. What is different about it is: Not just the fact that it is done, nor the fact that it has ground flax, banana, and raisins in it, nor the fact that it is crispy, but the fact that there is some extra baking powder added to the already “cake mix” flour, and the fact that it was cooked with the lid on and only turned over when it was done but not browned on top. Bon appitet to myself.

Until you have tried fried apple slices and mushrooms on a cutlet, you have not even begun to experience the taste sensations out there. We were given taste so that we could tell the bad from the good, but also so that we would want to take in all of the stuff our body needs to survive. Read mushroom warning below. 

A light-light-lunch-because-holiday-dinner-cooked-by-someone-else. This is before the mayonnaise went on. Fried mushrooms and onion rings. Read the mushroom warning above.

The perfect breakfast. Caffinated Pancake. This is for the person who is too much in a hurry to drink a hot cup of coffee but has at least gotten the pancake done.  Instant coffee, sugar and almost whipped milk. With some syrup, not half bad. Actually very good. But then I’m hooked on coffee.

If I were to be given the Chef of the Year title, it would be for this. Granted, who is going to give an award for hotdogs. But the flavor, the combination of tastes, the texture were all superb. Hotdogs on a bed of fried onions and mushrooms with garlic powder and sweet basil. Wish you were here. Note: Read mushroom warning at top of page. Dogs are vegetarian. I swear, you really can’t tell in a dish like this.

Sometimes I feel that this is a waste of time. But then I realize that I enjoy doing it, I look forward to the next meal, not for eating but for the creation part. I know that I would never eat as well unless I did this. Tried it and found myself subsisting on cereal from a box. So all things considered, it is definitely worth the effort. I have heard that when you eat regular meals, you do not gain pounds. Something about noshing just because you are hungry seems to add up. But, too many of these dishes cooked in the one pan, and that being a frying pan, also adds up. I am Just going to have to drink less coffee.

 This is a blueberry fold with the pecans being used to batten down the hatches, and blueberry jam – a signature as proof that there are blueberries (well, jam) in the thing itself. You want the whole truth? Couldn’t get the pancake off the bottom of the pan so I folded it bit by bit to try to scrape it without scrapping it. But now that I’ve done it, I’ll do it again. Practice makes perfect. Two things to remember. 1. Never think that there is enough oil or butter or whatever on the bottom when you flip the pancake. Invariably there isn’t. 2. Always save a little of something for who knows what. Like I purposely saved the pecans and now have them to use. I saved back a few this time also. 3. Always come out of anything with aplum (no not a plum but with a b at the end). You never know who you will impress. Usually it is yourself. 4.Never try to move the unmovable. I left the fold sort of off center for artistic effect. Sure! 5. Always know that there are still 100 ways to do something that you have not thought of yet. When our ancestors, the cave men, threw something into the fire and then searched around for it before it was absolute charcoal, they thought that that was all it was good for. His only problem was that he had to wait for the next spontaneous grass fire to cook his next meal. I only said 2 things, so I will stop here.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS

I have to say something about the cat. We have at least 3 good people on my street. I am not one of them. And there are about 20 street cats. Each evening there are three small groups gathered at different places for someone to bring out the evening meal.  I should say that we have 20 well-fed street cats on our street (fixed, or so we are told by the municipal veterinarians who informs us each year that they will take very good care of and return them so there will not be 80 next year).  But new ones keep showing up anyway.

 This one took more than 15 minutes. I only have the one saucepan and had to cook the broccoli patty separately which, by the way, is burned on the bottom because I took the garbage out.  The rice was cooked yesterday in such amounts that I had to freeze 3/4 of it. Cheese on top is combination of great hard slice goat cheese or any cheese other than that yellow sliced stuff. Walnuts are for Omega-3 (see tsingle.info). And the humus (really, if you have never tried it, you should not be without it) I use to cut the taste of the broccoli patty on which  it sits. Actually the broccoli is quite good by itself.

My dishes are getting to look so good that I am thinking of opening a restaurant. But that will not happen. Takes nerves of steel, real expertise, and good customer relations. Well, enough said. Oh, and the use of more than one plate, fork and saucepan.

nah

I don’t plan what I eat. I go into the kitchen and just find myself fixing something. It seems to be right for that particular moment. When it is ready, I look at it to decide if I photograph it or not. If the  feeling is nah, I don’t. Do you see the nah above? That was last night’s supper.

The last fling before nightfall

Picture taken this month. I went out and looked up and saw these clouds about 20 minutes before sunset.  

This (photo to come) is a vegedog (two in fact) if you can see the other one, topped with Rockfort (blue cheese) wedge pieces. I don’t think it comes in slices – would just fall apart, and onions with mustard and mayonnaise. The salad dressing is a special lemon dressing with spices which had an interesting taste. You know, when you are in a fancy restaurant and you don’t quite like what you are eating but you enjoy it anyway because it’s expensive and you are eating it you know where. That’s what I felt about the dressing. I bought it because I knew I needed some change from the thousand island I had been using.  So I liked it anyway.

COMMENT
I am going to have to categorize all of this one of these days, but right now I am just enjoying my meals without the organizing get in the way. If I am going to continue, will have to start using the oven. I’ve avoided it but it severely limits my range! There are severe limitations in using only one frying pan because the other one burned. I have the funds to buy a new one, but I have too many other things to do, and I do not like shopping. Never have. Except for the necessity of buying food to live, I think I haven’t been inside a shop to buy something for myself for 3 months. Take that back, I did buy something for the computer.

I made myself a cup of soup and wanted to put some croutons in it. They were old and tasted like cardboard – had the same consistency. So, I decided to fry them in oil and while I was at it, added some trailmix/granola to it with some walnuts, and added brown sugar (any kind will do). What came out was great. Except that the croutons dropped like a rock to the bottom of the soup. But, for the rest, do not make too much of it at one time. You won’t be able to stop eating it. One suggestion may help – burn it a little. It is also great on ice cream.

I had some ice cream left over and because it wasn’t very much, decided to put whipped milk on it. I have found that 3% milk will whip up to a standstill. Milk with only 1% will also but it all depends on environmental conditions. What those are I do not know. Evaporated milk seems to work under any condition.

And, you can see the results for yourself. Real art. The only problem with this type of art is that it disappears very fast. I have always felt sorry for those chefs who have spent hours slaving over a hot stove to produce something really great. They turn around and when they turn back its gone. What can that do for one’s ego? Well, I guess it is in the job description.

Today it’s two salads. Actually, all I did was buy one of those bags of already cut up salad makings, separated out and chopped up the carrots a little. That’s the lemon with spices sauce which I don’t like too much, but it’s starting to grow on me. The ‘meat’ patty is one half of the original – vegetarian. The other darker greenish one (burned on the bottom like the last one) is broccoli. Maybe I should look at the bottom when I take it out of the box before putting it in the pan. It may already be burned.

On the salad are walnuts (trust me, they’re there), and blue cheese. I bought an extra one by mistake, so it will be featured a lot in this section. Tastes great so maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Something told me to reach my hand into the cheese section in exactly the same place twice.

The cat?

Catching some rays. Ahhh, the good life.