You Are What You Eat: March 1 through March 13
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 361 days and counting.
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 56 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 18
Due to the pandemic, it's been more than one year since I ate in a restaurant, which is certainly the all-time record by a gigantic margin. The last time was in the diner at work on March 12, 2020, which isn't even that exciting of a restaurant. If you prefer something outside of work, M and I ate at Georgetown with Carol & John prior to the orchestra concert on March 7, 2020. That was also the last concert I went to in 2020, but there's a problem.
If you look at my updated stat block atop the post, you'll see that my "streak of not eating in a restaurant" is only at 361 days, or 13 more than last time. While time has been somewhat fluid for the past year, I'm reasonably confident that there were still 365 days. This illustrates a major problem with the historical journal, one that any software developer should immediately understand. In addition to the known problems with memory, manual systems are unreliable and break frequently. In this case, the manual system in question was me adding days to a running total, which as of March 13 should have been 366. That means I was off by 5 days since this total started after Leap Day 2020. Ouch.
With that, remember that just because it's written down it's not correct. Heck, even if it's written down multiple times by different people it may not be correct. When you throw in the shifting systems of calendar and the disagreements and misinterpretations of a sparsely documented written record for most of human history, it's sort of a wonder that we know when any historical event occurred. I guess the moral of the story is that you should only trust events that are specifically tied to astronomical events that can be looked up via mathematics. Even that assumes they didn't lie about the event being on the day of said astronomical event, or write about it long after the fact, so a fairer statement may be that history is not about precision.
In any event, I have zero interest in going back through a year of posts and finding my math errors. That means the stat block will be corrected to this:
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 366 days and counting.
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 56 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 18
In happier news, I made five new recipes in this time increment. OR DID I? Nah, just kidding, I write them all down on a post-it note as I'm making them, and I'm confident I can count to five.
The January/February 2021 Eating Well had two contributions this time. The first was Moqueca, which was the first of several recipes from a feature on Latin American soups that I hope to make. This particular one was a tomato and coconut milk based seafood chowder. I used shrimp and fake crap (pollock), given the price of real crab. This had a very pleasant flavor and beautiful color, the latter happening even with me opting against the donde and going with canola oil. I also only used one can of coconut milk instead of two because I only had three cans in the house and needed the other two for the last recipe in this list. As a bonus, as listed it made a lot of leftovers even after we each had two heaping bowls. This will definitely get made again.
The second contribution from the January/February 2021 Eating Well was a variant of the southern "eat New Year's Day for good luck" black-eyed peas dish. This particular variant was Chipotle Black-Eyed Peas & Collards with Crispy Shallots. M is a big fan of both beans and greens, so when recipes like that come through I usually try them. In this particular case, I didn't feel the crispy shallots added that much, and M felt that it was good but needed some kind of meat in it. There's a reason the traditional version has ham bones in it. We may try it again with sausages or some such thing.
The March 2021 Eating Well issue also gave me two recipe ideas. One was not dissimilar from the black-eyed peas and collards, and as a bonus featured the Instant Pot. It was the Smoky Chicken Stew with Kale & Pinto Beans. This was actually really good, and not just because it had meat in it! The spice combo of garlic, cumin and chipotle chile powder really popped and tasted, yes, smoky. This will definitely get added to the recipe arsenal.
The last Eating Well recipe was a version of one of my favorite Italian restaurant dishes, Chicken Piccata. Since M doesn't like Italian restaurants very often, I was happy to try this one at home. but I think they made it healthier than the restaurants usually do, and it was missing something. I'm not quite sure what, and M enjoyed it. I may experiment with this, or maybe I'll just try a different recipe.
The last recipe requires some introduction. My friends Dan (formerly pianodan) and Leigh (formerly drdingbat) have for many years been attempting to make a meal for each country. Even better, said they're working through the list in alphabetical order and documenting the results. For me, it's like a vicarious international supper club, so I read those posts every time they go up. The pandemic actually has let them do them weekly by removing all their other weekend activities, so there's some tiny amount of upside. Anyway, they recently covered the Dominican Republic, and one of the recipes they sourced was a fabulous Dominican Arepa. It's essentially corn bread, if corn bread decided it should be a lot more fattening and delicious. I saw their post about it and knew I had to try it. The results were fantastic, and I strongly recommend it. We'll certainly be making it again.
Anyway, Dan and Leigh found the recipe on this site. I list it below just in case of link rot.
Dominican Arepa (Cornmeal and Coconut Cake)
Simple by Clara
1 tablespoon of butter for buttering baking pan
3 tablespoons of butter
2 cups of cornmeal - I had some super finely ground masarepa corn meal left from the comparatively unsuccessful Arepas with Spicy Black Beans I made late in 2019, and it worked great. I may try it with regular corn meal in the future, but I suspect I'll buy more masarepa just for this recipe.
3 1/2 cups of whole milk - I used skim because I had skim on hand, it came out fine.
2 1/2 cups of coconut milk - The 2 cans mentioned above.
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of raisins
4 cinnamon sticks - I was out of these, so I used ground cinnamon, about 1 tsp.
1 1/2 cup of brown sugar
1. Preheat over to 350. Butter a 2 1/2 quart baking pan. I used my smaller enameled dutch oven (the La Creuset), which worked great.
2. Mix butter, cornmeal, milk, coconut milk, salt, raisins, cinnamon, and sugar in bowl.
3. Stir the batter with a spatula and pour into a large cooking pot and heat on the stove over medium heat, stirring constantly to avoid sticking.
4. When it breaks the boil, lower the heat and continue stirring until it thickens enough that if you scoop up a spoonful and you flip the spoon upside down it does not fall. Remove the cinnamon sticks if using.
I wasn't familiar with the term break the boil, so I took that to mean "just starts to boil." It worked, so I was right enough.
5. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes. It should be golden brown on top. Let it cool down to room temperature before removing from the pan. I actually let it sit overnight.
6. Pop out of the pan upside down on to a plate. Serve with hot chocolate.
The slices are thick and heavy. We had two thick pieces to conclude our zoom brunch last Sunday, and many smaller pieces over the next several days. It is delicious.
And this is how we used all three cans of coconut milk in our pantry on one Saturday night. And it would have been four cans if we'd had four on hand, but the Dominican Arepa was a last second addition to my brunch menu so I didn't. That's certainly my record for "cans of coconut milk used in one day."
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 56 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 18
Due to the pandemic, it's been more than one year since I ate in a restaurant, which is certainly the all-time record by a gigantic margin. The last time was in the diner at work on March 12, 2020, which isn't even that exciting of a restaurant. If you prefer something outside of work, M and I ate at Georgetown with Carol & John prior to the orchestra concert on March 7, 2020. That was also the last concert I went to in 2020, but there's a problem.
If you look at my updated stat block atop the post, you'll see that my "streak of not eating in a restaurant" is only at 361 days, or 13 more than last time. While time has been somewhat fluid for the past year, I'm reasonably confident that there were still 365 days. This illustrates a major problem with the historical journal, one that any software developer should immediately understand. In addition to the known problems with memory, manual systems are unreliable and break frequently. In this case, the manual system in question was me adding days to a running total, which as of March 13 should have been 366. That means I was off by 5 days since this total started after Leap Day 2020. Ouch.
With that, remember that just because it's written down it's not correct. Heck, even if it's written down multiple times by different people it may not be correct. When you throw in the shifting systems of calendar and the disagreements and misinterpretations of a sparsely documented written record for most of human history, it's sort of a wonder that we know when any historical event occurred. I guess the moral of the story is that you should only trust events that are specifically tied to astronomical events that can be looked up via mathematics. Even that assumes they didn't lie about the event being on the day of said astronomical event, or write about it long after the fact, so a fairer statement may be that history is not about precision.
In any event, I have zero interest in going back through a year of posts and finding my math errors. That means the stat block will be corrected to this:
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 366 days and counting.
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 56 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 18
In happier news, I made five new recipes in this time increment. OR DID I? Nah, just kidding, I write them all down on a post-it note as I'm making them, and I'm confident I can count to five.
The January/February 2021 Eating Well had two contributions this time. The first was Moqueca, which was the first of several recipes from a feature on Latin American soups that I hope to make. This particular one was a tomato and coconut milk based seafood chowder. I used shrimp and fake crap (pollock), given the price of real crab. This had a very pleasant flavor and beautiful color, the latter happening even with me opting against the donde and going with canola oil. I also only used one can of coconut milk instead of two because I only had three cans in the house and needed the other two for the last recipe in this list. As a bonus, as listed it made a lot of leftovers even after we each had two heaping bowls. This will definitely get made again.
The second contribution from the January/February 2021 Eating Well was a variant of the southern "eat New Year's Day for good luck" black-eyed peas dish. This particular variant was Chipotle Black-Eyed Peas & Collards with Crispy Shallots. M is a big fan of both beans and greens, so when recipes like that come through I usually try them. In this particular case, I didn't feel the crispy shallots added that much, and M felt that it was good but needed some kind of meat in it. There's a reason the traditional version has ham bones in it. We may try it again with sausages or some such thing.
The March 2021 Eating Well issue also gave me two recipe ideas. One was not dissimilar from the black-eyed peas and collards, and as a bonus featured the Instant Pot. It was the Smoky Chicken Stew with Kale & Pinto Beans. This was actually really good, and not just because it had meat in it! The spice combo of garlic, cumin and chipotle chile powder really popped and tasted, yes, smoky. This will definitely get added to the recipe arsenal.
The last Eating Well recipe was a version of one of my favorite Italian restaurant dishes, Chicken Piccata. Since M doesn't like Italian restaurants very often, I was happy to try this one at home. but I think they made it healthier than the restaurants usually do, and it was missing something. I'm not quite sure what, and M enjoyed it. I may experiment with this, or maybe I'll just try a different recipe.
The last recipe requires some introduction. My friends Dan (formerly pianodan) and Leigh (formerly drdingbat) have for many years been attempting to make a meal for each country. Even better, said they're working through the list in alphabetical order and documenting the results. For me, it's like a vicarious international supper club, so I read those posts every time they go up. The pandemic actually has let them do them weekly by removing all their other weekend activities, so there's some tiny amount of upside. Anyway, they recently covered the Dominican Republic, and one of the recipes they sourced was a fabulous Dominican Arepa. It's essentially corn bread, if corn bread decided it should be a lot more fattening and delicious. I saw their post about it and knew I had to try it. The results were fantastic, and I strongly recommend it. We'll certainly be making it again.
Anyway, Dan and Leigh found the recipe on this site. I list it below just in case of link rot.
Dominican Arepa (Cornmeal and Coconut Cake)
Simple by Clara
1 tablespoon of butter for buttering baking pan
3 tablespoons of butter
2 cups of cornmeal - I had some super finely ground masarepa corn meal left from the comparatively unsuccessful Arepas with Spicy Black Beans I made late in 2019, and it worked great. I may try it with regular corn meal in the future, but I suspect I'll buy more masarepa just for this recipe.
3 1/2 cups of whole milk - I used skim because I had skim on hand, it came out fine.
2 1/2 cups of coconut milk - The 2 cans mentioned above.
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of raisins
4 cinnamon sticks - I was out of these, so I used ground cinnamon, about 1 tsp.
1 1/2 cup of brown sugar
1. Preheat over to 350. Butter a 2 1/2 quart baking pan. I used my smaller enameled dutch oven (the La Creuset), which worked great.
2. Mix butter, cornmeal, milk, coconut milk, salt, raisins, cinnamon, and sugar in bowl.
3. Stir the batter with a spatula and pour into a large cooking pot and heat on the stove over medium heat, stirring constantly to avoid sticking.
4. When it breaks the boil, lower the heat and continue stirring until it thickens enough that if you scoop up a spoonful and you flip the spoon upside down it does not fall. Remove the cinnamon sticks if using.
I wasn't familiar with the term break the boil, so I took that to mean "just starts to boil." It worked, so I was right enough.
5. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes. It should be golden brown on top. Let it cool down to room temperature before removing from the pan. I actually let it sit overnight.
6. Pop out of the pan upside down on to a plate. Serve with hot chocolate.
The slices are thick and heavy. We had two thick pieces to conclude our zoom brunch last Sunday, and many smaller pieces over the next several days. It is delicious.
And this is how we used all three cans of coconut milk in our pantry on one Saturday night. And it would have been four cans if we'd had four on hand, but the Dominican Arepa was a last second addition to my brunch menu so I didn't. That's certainly my record for "cans of coconut milk used in one day."