Hellapants

Copyrights, yo.

[hellapants]

Ah, marketing language. What this means is, "This garment is super thin and has huge weird gaping armholes that will show the band of your bra and/or copious sideboob. "

Tim Gunn’d it, though.

[hellapants]

Tried making a wild mushroom polenta pie, which was maybe a little ambitious, since I'd never made polenta before.  I've cut up the stuff that comes in a tube and baked it into fries before, but that's about it.  I may or may not have done this wrong. I'm still not sure.

[hellapants]

[hellapants]

Linguine w/ Peppers & Mushrooms and Raw Kale Hemp Seed Pesto

I need to come up with snappier names. 

Lingreene?  No. No, forget i said that.

Anyway, this was last night's dinner and it was a big hit.  It was a bit spicier than i expected, but I dug it.

16 oz. Linguine

1 yellow bell pepper, sliced

1 green bell pepper, sliced

1 jalapeno, seeded and sliced, guts reserved

6 or so garlic cloves, divided

4 Tbsp. grapeseed oil, divided

12 oz. white mushrooms, sliced

1 bunch kale, washed and torn

3/4 cup hemp seeds

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. white pepper

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp. Earth Balance

nooch to top

Boil the pasta as you do.

Make the pesto:  Put the kale, the innards of the jalapeno, 2 cloves of garlic, 3T of the oil, the hemp seeds, lemon juice, salt, and pepper into the food processor and blend.

Saute the mushrooms and remaining garlic (pressed) in the remaining oil. Add Earth Balance and jalapeno slices.  Add bell peppers. When veggies are done to your liking, toss with pasta and pesto. 

Top with nooch and coarse ground black pepper.  Dig in.

[hellapants]

This year's Ugly Christmas Sweater.

[hellapants]

The strata of restaurant workers are complicated and overlapping. As with most things there are hierarchies. Management, of course, is the elite, operating at a remove. And the wait staff is superior to anyone in the kitchen. Within each group there are subgroups. Among the waiters and waitresses, a cliquish bunch by nature, there are unspoken divisions: the eager careerists, often thin and obsequious; the resigned, who, after years of eliminating other choices one by one through bad decisions or, worse, indecision, have nothing else to do; and the largest group, impudent and transitory, the college students. Piedmont Community College provides Grub's with a yearly crop of workers. Most have a mocking disdain for the job. The Minotaur often thinks, I don't want to be like any of them. But in his own clunky half-baked way the Minotaur also thinks, If it weren't for my thick tongue, the bovine speech, if it weren't for my vision, oblique as it is, I could be one of them."

--Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

[hellapants]

My work's corporate overlords are trying to institute a new dress code.  This is not going over well in an office that's been pretty much whatever for years. So, today, naturally, I'm wearing a see-through lace dress.

[hellapants]

Fartichoke Soup

The last CSA box of the season and the last new weird food item: sunchokes, a.k.a. Jerusalem artichokes, a.k.a., apparently, fartichokes.  It's not just a clever name.

Ingredients:

~1lb sunchokes,

1 leek, chopped

1 yellow potato

1 red potato

1 shallot

6-8 cloves of garlic

1 dessicated chili pepper, mostly seeded and diced

2 shots olive oil

4 1/2 cups water

1 hefty spoonful of Better Than Bouillon No Chicken base

2 bay leaves

salt

pepper

Do:

Heat oil in a large pot over high-ish heat. Add chopped sunchokes, potatoes, leek, and shallot.  Sprinkle with salt and saute about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and chili pepper and cook a few more minutes. Add water and soup base; add bay leaves. Bring to a boil and reduce heat; simmer 20-30 minutes until potatoes and sunchokes are soft.  Blend. Sprinkle with salt and Pepper.

Look around and consider who might be in the room while you're digesting.  Enjoy?

[hellapants]

Growing our own mushrooms. Look at 'em go!

[hellapants]

Am I being followed by a bunch of bots now? What's happening here all of the sudden?  All of a sudden.  I still think "all of the sudden" sounds right.

[hellapants]

Kohlrabi Slaw Fishless Tacos

1 pkg Gardein Fishless Filets

chili powder

Tortillas

2 green kohlrabis, shredded

2 julienne'd carrots

1 red jalapeno, seeded and diced

1 green jalapeno, seeded and diced

1/2 bunch green onions, diced

2 cloves garlic

handful of fresh cilantro

1/2 shot olive oil

1/2 shot lime juice

1/2 tsp agave nectar

salt and pepper

vegan sour cream (I had some homemade tofu stuff leftover)

red onion

For the fish:

Sprinkle with chili powder. Then just do what the package says.

For the slaw:

Put most of the handful of cilantro and the garlic in the food processor. I started out chopping the kohlrabi by hand, but then just threw it in the processor, too. Combine that with the carrots, jalapenos, green onions, oil, lime juice, and agave. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and stir.

For the assembly:

Slice up the fish. Put the fish and some slaw in a tortilla. Top with some sour cream and sliced red onion and fresh cilantro.  Boom. Done.

Pretty easy and kind of just thrown together out of things we had left in the fridge/freezer after going on a mini-vacation and not getting to do our weekly meal planning and shopping, but oh so satisfying.

[hellapants]

Mixed Veg Fettucine w/ Saffron Flax Cream Sauce

1 bunch asparagus

3 small leeks (or spring onions, if it's, you know, spring)

a dozen or so crimini mushrooms

12 oz. fettucine

2/3 cup flax milk

1/3 cup vegan butter

1 big pinch of saffron

salt

1/2 tsp. white pepper

sprinkle dried tarragon

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Heat the flax milk and butter in a small saucepan over medium until it just starts to simmer. Remove from heat, add saffron, and set aside.

Trim the ends of the asparagus and cut the stalks in 1 - 1 1/2 inch bits. Wash and slice the mushrooms; same with the leeks.

Set up a large pot of salted water to boil. (You hear that shit about how Olive Garden doesn't salt their pasta water? Don't be Olive Garden.) Cook the pasta.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet. You should know by now that I don't really measure this stuff. Add the leeks and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until soft. Add a little more oil (another tablespoon-ish?) and the mushrooms; cook until soft. Add the asparagus and a little more salt and pepper. Cook just a couple minutes. Add the saffron cream sauce and stir; cook just another minute more.

Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce.  Sprinkle with tarragon.

"Tarragon? That's tarra-ble!" No. It's awesome.

[hellapants]

Vegan green (and some yellow and some purple) bean casserole.

We got green beans/rainbow beans in our CSA box almost as many weeks in a row as beets and had several bags in the fridge; I do not love green beans once they're at all mature. (I WILL GLADLY DEVOUR ALL OF THE BABIES.)  One of the bags was brown and slimy and the others had to get used, somehow, so: everyone's favorite Thanksgiving staple BUT BETTER. (Also: i never had any sort of green bean casserole--the Campbell's soup variety or not--at Thanksgiving or otherwise--until I was well into my twenties.  I had a very deprived childhood.)

You know it's pretty much impossible--as far as i know--to find vegan cream of mushroom soup? Who cares. Cream of mushroom soup is gross and this recipe worked out great. (Adapted significantly from an Alton Brown recipe, because I made it vegan, left out a shit-ton of salt,  was in a hurry and didn't bother trying to make my own onions, etc.)

Ingredients: 

1 lb. or so French cut* green beans, fresh or frozen, or a combination

~8 oz. crimini mushrooms, diced

~4 oz. shiitake mushrooms, diced

1/2 tsp. white pepper

salt to taste

3 cloves garlic, pressed

3 Tbsp. flour

1 cup water

2 tsp. Better Than Bouillon vegetable base

3/4 cup So Delicious Original Coconut Milk Beverage

1 package Fresh Gourmet Crispy Onions

2-3 Tbsp. Earth Balance

1/4 cup or so bread crumbs

Actions:

Painstakingly slice the beans, if using fresh.

Blanch the beans for 1-2 minutes.  Drain, rinse in cold water, and set aside.

Melt the Earth Balance in a skillet over medium-high.  Saute the mushrooms until soft, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Add garlic and cook another minute or two.  Add the flour and stir to coat.

(Maybe throw in a diced pepper of some sort, if you also have a bunch of those hanging around from the CSA and your partner is really keen on the idea.)

Add the water and bouillon and stir. Simmer for a minute or two.  Add the coconut milk.  Bring to a simmer and lower the temperature.  Simmer 5-10 minutes, until mixture thickens sufficiently.

Stir in the beans and half of the onions. Transfer to a casserole dish. Top with remaining onions and bread crumbs.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

*The "French cut" part is imperative. It's kind of a pain, if you're starting with whole fresh beans, but I don't care.  It is the only way to do it.  (Okay, you CAN cut them otherwise, just like you CAN used CANNED vegetables, but c'mon. Don't be gross.)

[hellapants]

Pea shoots, part 1:  Mixed mushroom and pea shoot chow mein

We got pea shoots in our CSA box last week and were of course like whaaaaaat? What do we do with these?  I munched on the tops of a few like a bunny.  The ends—the last three quarters of the shoots—turned out to be tough to munch, like the ends of asparagus; we’ll deal with those later.

I didn’t want to eat them as a big salad, and I’ll use any excuse to saute up a bunch of mushrooms and eat pasta, so: this happened.  Despite the odd unchewable shoot, the mister ate a huge helping, then went back for seconds, then asked to have all the leftovers as his next day’s lunch.  So, i guess it was a winner.

Ingredients:

A good plateful of pea shoots (i didn’t measure or weigh or anything)

probably a whole bulb of garlic, pressed

1-2 tsp. peanut oil + 1 shot (used later)

8 oz. udon noodles

1/2 shot hot chili sesame oil + a little more (later)

1 bunch green onions, sliced

about 1 cup sliced shiitake mushrooms

about 1 cup sliced chanterelle mushrooms

12-16 crimini mushrooms, sliced

1/2 block firm tofu, cubed

1 shot sake (one for the recipe, one for the cook…)

2 shots tamari

1/4 tsp. powdered ginger

1/2 tsp. Chinese five spice powder

about 1/3 cup raw unsalted cashew pieces

Actions:

Heat the first teaspoon or two of oil in a wok or your closest approximation. Gently stir fry the pea shoots and about three cloves of garlic until the leaves just start to wilt.  Remove and set aside.

Get some water boiling and cook your noodles.

Add the rest of the peanut oil to your wok-pan and add the sesame oil. Stir fry the mushrooms, more garlic, and the tofu for about 3 minutes.  Add the ginger, five spice, and green onions and stir fry a couple minutes more. 

If your noodles are done by now, drain them and toss with a little hot chili sesame oil.

Add them to the wok-pan.  Add the sake and tamari and sizzle a bit until enough liquid evaporates.  Add back the pea shoots.

Sprinkle with the cashews.

There you go.

[shadowofafeeling]

1. If he doesn’t answer, don’t keep sending texts. If he wanted to talk to you, he would’ve responded. 2. People will make time for you when they care about you. If he says he’s too busy or constantly cancels his plans, he doesn’t care. People fight for you when they care. 3. Don’t let him touch you on the first date. If he tries, he’s not there for the same reasons you are. 4. You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite book. 5. If he can stomach more than ten straight shots without feeling a thing, he drinks too much. 6. Ask the uncomfortable things. When was the last time he was so high he couldn’t speak? What does he regret the most? Does he drink to remember or to forget? 7. Don’t send pictures unless you want to. If he has to talk you into it, don’t do it. If you hesitate, don’t do it. If you do take a picture, don’t include your face. Keep yourself safe. 8. If you can’t laugh when you’re having sex with him, maybe you aren’t sleeping with the right person. Sex isn’t about tricks and tips and routines. 9. If he hurts you, cut him out. He’s gone, he isn’t coming back, and you don’t need to prolong the pain. 10. Don’t be afraid to open up again. I promise not everyone will love you with a knife behind their back.

Boy advice from someone who made the same mistakes too often (via guiseofgentlewords)

Except don't malign fucking on the first date, because then you're maligning a lot of people's relationships, including mine with my soon-to-be husband. How about just, "Don't let him touch you if you don't want him to touch you?"

[hellapants]

Things my fiance says: While eating the hardcore vegan enchiladas we made last night: "I was just thinking if there was a porno remake of The Usual Suspects with Kevin Spicy."

[hellapants]

Had this Five Spice Blackened Broccoli at Plum Bistro in Seattle last night. Capers, peppercorns—those guys know what they’re doing.

(You know who doesn’t know what’s up? Why does my phone not think that Bistro is a word, but it does know, like, Tupperware?)