Cooking

[pameladean]

At the beginning of this year I got tired of buying random vegetables and protein sources and hoping I could make them match up into dinners, so I started doing an abbreviated version of menu planning. I write the dinners I want to make down on a Post-It and then do the actual shopping. This week's Post-It says "Pad Thai (REMEMBER THE CABBAGE --

Comments

[pameladean]

I got the recipe from the out-of-print cookbook Ginger East to West, and that includes both the original with the pearl ash and the updated-for-modern-sensibilities recipe, which is the one you have a copy of.

I called it George Washington's Mother's Gingerbread, which is also in that cookbook, but I got confused about which one was which. I think the alleged George Washington one is a lot more complex.

P.

[pameladean]

I've adapted some of my recipes from the eighties, but they aren't as interesting as yours, for the most part.

My main problem with the gingerbread recipe is not having the pan ready and then worrying that the acid in the molasses will activate the baking soda too soon while I'm rushing around finding the 8x8 pan and greasing it. I've had one or two rather flat outcomes, but for the most part it has been okay, except in my head.

P.

[pameladean]

ALL THE PIES because Christmas, which is also Eric's birthday, so really, ALL THE PIES. I need to get started on those.

I am unenamoured of tapioca generally (WHY DO THEY PUT IT IN ALL LOCALLY AVAILABLE GOAT YOGHURT, WHY WHY WHY), but the insides sound lovely.

P.

[pameladean]

I think goats-milk yoghurt is indeed runnier than regular. I base this thought on my experiences with the Minnesota Dairy Goat and Fantasy Society, which used to attend and host parties at Minicon, with accompanying generous ladlings of yoghurt, goats-milk ice cream, cheeses, and other delicacies.

I personally would rather have runny yoghurt than have it thickened up with anything at all. But apparently this is not the majority opinion.

P.

[maiac]

I confess that these days, I do much of my "cooking" by browsing the already-cooked dishes in my grocery store, which has a splendid selection. It's nice to get just enough for 2 or 3 meals of foods that can't be made in small amounts. I start with the "We Made Too Much" half-price section, where I might find meals for less per portion than it would take to cook them.

[pameladean]

I am not sure we have anything like that hereabouts, but then, I haven't looked. Whatever works, is my motto.

Prepared foods as a rule have things I can't eat, generally unnecessary ones, though not always. That is, there is random whey in all sorts of things for no particular reason other than, I guess, the dairy industry wants to get rid of it.

P.

[maiac]

The only things I have to look out for are mushrooms and hot peppers. Alas, the cooks sometimes change the recipes, inexplicably and without notice, to include these things. Mushrooms in Chicken Cordon Bleu! Jalapeños in corned beef hash! Hot peppers in sweet-and-sour chicken!

Call me cynical, but I think the reason for the whey (and high-fructose corn syrup) in prepared foods is that it increases profit for the food manufacturer (by bulking out the food) and for the dairy and corn industries. Pfui, I say!

[pameladean]

That is just bizarre -- the hot peppers in the sweet and sour chicken is particularly weird to me. My mother has similar complaints about modern food. She loves potatoes in anything, but the last time we went to the nice coffee shop that grows its vegetables in back of its building and has lots of vegan options, I had to eat her potato soup because they had put Tabasco in it. Really a lot of Tabasco. It's okay to do that, but it's really not okay to then advertise it as creamy potato and chive soup. Calling it creamy when it has no cream is also dicey, but at least that warns one to check. It didn't say spicy or piquant or anything.

I am sure profit is well entangled in the adding of these ingredients to everything in sight. At least whey is probably harmless to people who aren't allergic to dairy, and it does increase protein content -- which is a matter of adding verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and non-nutritious narrative much of the time, admittedly. But HFCS is horrible all around.

P.

[clindau]

No anecdotes, but curried kidney beans with mustard greens sounds good (and it's fun to say aloud...). If I were to start a vegan-type diet, menu plans would be a lifesaver. Hard enough to figure out dinnertime some days without the added degree of difficulty that a specialized diet brings (ahem) to the table.

[pameladean]

Beans 'n' greens generally are fun to say and lovely to eat.

When I first started doing vegan cooking -- and that was all vegan, and for four people, while now I mostly just cook for myself and Raphael, and have a few more options -- I had very extensive menu plans. Then I got the hang of it and then I got sloppy. A lot of learning curves seem to end up there.

P.

[eub]

I'm interested to hear what actual vegetarians say, but my impression is vegetarian cooking used to be more of a genre than it is now. Overlapping with the ‘hippie-derived’ cooking genre, which also has declined.

I think cooking vegetarian used to be more of A Big Change, and cooks went vegetarian without a tradition and were open to trying new inventions of recipes because they were vegetarian. I can browse the cookbooks not looking for anything just because I have a soft spot for the vibe.

Or from another perspective, American Veggie invented some unnecessary things from too small a culinary foundation, when people could have drawn more directly from existing vegetarian traditions.

(I do cook from Moosewood and American Wholefoods, but I would feel too limited if I had to stay inside those.)

[inlaterdays]

No anecdotes here, but these all sound extremely yum. I like the annotations in ALL CAPS.

[pameladean]

I think I got that from LOLCATS, but I find it both fun to do and useful to my brain.

P.