Nominis Expers

A couple of Mother’s Day cards I made last week.

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:55:33 -0700

A couple of Mother’s Day cards I made last week.

Mexican Chocolate Black Bean Brownies

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:30:31 -0700

They’re also vegan! These delicious brownies are not as sweet as “real” brownies, but they are a helluva lot more healthy. They taste like the sweet tender lovechild of a brownie and a red bean paste. So in short, DELICIOUS. Low carb, low fat, high in fiber and nutrients, these are practically guilt-free!

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups cooked black beans (or one 15 oz can)
2 1/2 Tbsp ground flax
6 Tbsp water
3 Tbsp canola oil
3/4 cups cocoa powder
1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp ground Mexican cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
dash cayenne pepper

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Lightly grease a 12-slot standard size muffin pan

Mix your flax and water together and let sit few minutes. It will become kind of snotty looking; this acts as your egg for this recipe.

Puree the black beans and oil to make a frosting-like paste, add 1-2 Tbsp water if needed. Make sure it’s nice and smooth, otherwise you may get a grainy texture or even rogue beans.

Mix the black bean paste together with the flax “eggs” and all remaining ingredients. At this point it’ll look like real brownie batter, so resist the urge to dunk your face in it.

Distribute the mixture evenly into all your muffin wells and bake 20-25 minutes, or until the tops of the brownies look dry and the sides start separating from the tin.

Let cool 30 minutes. Don’t skip this step! Warm brownies are awesome, but if you don’t let these sit they WILL fall apart. Personally I like to cover them and stick them in the fridge; when they come out they’ll be all dense and even more yummy!

purinshavedice: “Fat for an Asian:” The Pressure to be Naturally Perfect...

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:21:08 -0700

purinshavedice:

“Fat for an Asian:” The Pressure to be Naturally Perfect

imstephanieng:

I try not to talk about it, though, because the moment I do, someone always says, “Shut up, you’re Asian. You have genetics on your side.”

Very good read

I don’t typically reblog things (I think this will have been the first reblog here, actually) but this article sparked a great many of thoughts and reactions that I have the urge to post in commiseration. This is going to get long and ranty, so I apologize for the cerebro-barf.

Disclaimer: I am certainly not qualified to comment with any authority on this subject outside of personal anecdotes, so I will not be able to back any of my statements with real evidence. I only ask that you consider my point of view, and I welcome any comments or insights you might like to share.

Like the author of the article, I am a female of Asian descent who fits comfortably into the American standard of “thinness” or, at least, fitness. Unlike her however I have never been to China or any other Asian countries, having been born in America, never travelled out of the country, only been outside of my state a handful of times, and rarely aside from some special occasion do I even venture outside of my community. My point is, I don’t have any information to work off of in terms of native Asian culture. What I can speak on is the misguided notion — and sometimes contempt — others sometimes carry that being Asian automatically means your “default setting” is petite, doe-like daintiness. Spoiler alert: that’s fucking stupid. Being Asian does not automatically guarantee that a chick will be ballerina-thin any more than being black guarantees that she will be bootylicious or being Latin guarantees that she will have hips that don’t quit. That sort of non-thinking holds all women of a certain ethnotype (shit, is that a word?) to a single “archetypal” standard that, quite frankly, is kind of racist.

More on that in a second though, because arguably the most rampant perpetuators of the “petite Asian girl” stereotype aren’t non-Asians, it’s these girls’ own families. I remember when I was a teenager my maternal grandmother asked me how much I weigh. At the time I was somewhere around 110 lbs, which is well within the healthy BMI range for someone my height. My grandmother responded to this statement with a mortified gasp and an exclamation of, “Do you want to be FAT like your cousin??” Okay, let’s pause. This is like one of those “Spot 7 things wrong with this picture” games you get on the back of those kiddie placemats at Denny’s. First, that question came completely out of the blue, apropos of nothing. As the article pointed out, weight in many Asian families is an open topic, so I guess it wasn’t that weird. Still, from what I remember there was absolutely nothing going on that would have made that an appropriate question in other company. Two, trying to explain that your weight is perfectly acceptable for your height according to well-researched scientific guidelines means jack shit to a hysterical old lady who is convinced her granddaughter is on the bacon train to Blubbersville. In her mind you’re already a behemoth. Even being just a little bit chunky (which, again, was not the case according to SCIENCE) had already sent me hurtling down a slippery slope all slick with pizza grease to a fate worse than death: fatness. Which brings me to C, my cousin. I won’t mince words, she is technically overweight, and has been pretty much her whole life. The problem here is that her weight is, in our family, often her chief defining characteristic. She has always been teased about it and ridiculed for it by members of the family. I have never once heard any of the older family members (grandparents, aunts and uncles) refer to her as pretty despite the fact that she is actually a very lovely lady; to them, her weight is the only thing worth seeing.

And it goes further than just the overt criticisms of weight and size. I love my sister to death, but FSM in heaven do I hate shopping for clothes with her. An important thing to note here is that we are half sisters by our common mother. We’re both “full Asian” but she’s one kind, and I’m another (wow, that sounds really stupid). Also, I’m like 5 inches shorter than her. Anyway, it seems like any time we go clothes shopping together something always happens that leads her to make some half-joking remark about our disparate sizes (usually having to do with pants, which really only reinforces my assertion that they be universally banned). By the way, she’s also quite slim and well within healthy BMI range. I don’t know if it’s because she’s internalized all the body image issues that get bandied around our family or because she feels her body type doesn’t fit into some other preconceived notion of what it’s supposed to look like or what (which, despite my griping, I do empathize with — it’s the reason I chose to embrace the “strong athletic” look, because my body type doesn’t fit into the “wispy delicate” profile), but I consider it a good shopping trip if we manage to make it through with only two or three instances of “Ugh, you’re lucky you got your dad’s skinny genes” or something to that effect. Because genetics is the only possible explanation for my size, OBVIOUSLY.

I get this from other quarters too. One of my best friends from childhood, who despite not being Asian manages to also have a slew of unhealthy body image issues (that’s a joke, please don’t think I don’t know pretty much all women have these issues), also lodges those sorts of complaints with me. Any time we talk about fitness, or food, or fashion, or pretty much anything that has even the slightest most remote connection to the shape and size of one’s body she laments that she “can’t be a skinny Asian girl” who can eat and do whatever she wants and still be thin like me, apparently. She and my sister aren’t the only people who have made such remarks to me, but they’re the most prominent. And you know what? And this might be just a personal issue, but I actually feel bad about it. Not only do I feel bad that these people I care about don’t see their own beauty and accept themselves, but I actually feel bad that I’m “the skinny one”. Which, by the way, is bullshit. REALTALK MOMENT. To all you ladies and gents out there, no matter what your size, shape, ethnicity, whatever, you should never, EVER feel like you need to apologize for being who you are or looking the way you do. Don’t throw technicalities at me like dress codes and social conventions, you know what I mean. If you’re trim, don’t feel like you’re the villain because other people covet what you have. If you’re not, don’t feel like you’re inadequate because other people want you to conform to their standards. ALWAYS be proud of who you are. Even if you’re not at whatever goals you may have set for yourself, the pursuit itself is commendable and you deserve to feel good about yourself. Don’t apologize for who you are. /endhypocrisy

Where was I going with that? Oh yeah. The so-called birthright of every Asian girl to be skinny. Ever since high school I’ve been highly averse to being referred to as “The A-word”. A large part of it comes from the fact that people would often use it to trivialize my efforts. (There are other major reasons, but that’s a whole different can of worms.) “Oh, of course you can do such and such, you’re Asian,” and “Well duh, that’s easy for you ‘cause you’re Asian,” and, as the article mentioned, “You’re so thin because you’re Asian!” Right. The reason I have this or the other set of skills is because thousands of years ago my ancestors set up shop on this one magical continent that bestows upon its inhabitants certain traits based purely on the fact that they were born there. Even accounting for cultural evolution and social Darwinism that’s stupid as Hell. Asians don’t have native hand-to-hand affinity or MND bonuses or whatever, we’re people, HUMAN PEOPLE, not fucking MMO character creation races. But nevermind the hours and years of hard work, sacrifice and dedication spent on honing my skills; I can throw a punch because I’m Asian. Piss on the innumerable sleepless days and nights spent on painstaking research and study; I got good grades because I’m Asian. Fuck all the meticulous meal preparation and exercise programs planned weeks or months in advance; I’m thin because I’m Asian. None of the blood sweat and tears from literally working my ass off to maintain myself mentally and physically matter, because apparently that was all just handed to me on a porcelain platter.

TL;DR
If you’re part of an Asian family, don’t perpetuate harmful body image stereotypes by forcing them onto the girls (or boys) of your kin. Love them and support them for who they are and how they look, because they get enough of that shit from the outside. Ditto for if you only happen to know someone who might be privy to those circumstances.
Do not, for fuck’s sake, attribute any skill, trait, or ability that a person might have to his or her race. I shouldn’t have to tell people not to be goddamn racists, but apparently I’m wrong.
Above all, thank you to the people who do actually recognize these issues and make the effort to help, even with just the little gestures.

I don’t know if anyone actually read this or if I’m just screaming to the ethers, but please feel free to comment if you have anything to say at all, even if it’s about how wrong you think I am!

Orange Cardamom Cupcakes

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:54:00 -0800

A couple weeks ago I had the delight of trying out a lovely little gelato place I’d never been to before. One of the flavors they had was cardamom custard, which I instantly fell in love with. Since then I’ve been sort of craving cardamom custard, so I decided to try and make some myself! I ended up using it as a filling for an orange cupcake, which was a stroke of mad genius, as it turns out. You want in on this? Off course you do.

So my “custard” actually turned out more of a pudding consistency, but it was still quite lovely! This is a vegan recipe (for both the filling and the cake) so it isn’t as rich and velvety as a traditional recipe would be. It is, however, quite light and tender, and all reports have it as ludicrously yummtacular (to use the technical term).

Cardamom Custard (you’ll want to make this first)

Ingredients:

2 cups plain almond milk, divided
3 Tbsp corn starch
2 1/2 Tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Whisk together 1 cup of the almond milk, the cornstarch, sugar, and cardamom in a bowl. Make sure it is smooth with no lumps.

Add the mix and the remaining ingredients to a small saucepan, and heat over medium to medium high heat, stirring frequently. When it starts steaming and bubbling, reduce the heat to low.

Keep stirring your concoction occasionally until it thickens to a pudding-like consistency. When it’s about the right thickness, take it off the heat and let it cool until it stops steaming. Transfer it to a bowl, cover it, and stick it in the fridge for at least an hour (it should continue to thicken until it’s a proper pudding texture).

Orange Cupcakes

(Shh, this isn’t my recipe, it’s from the lovely cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World!)

Ingredients

1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 plain almond milk
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp orange zest

Instructions:

Okay… before we start, a not about the orange juice. Freshly squeezed is, I guess, the best to use, but really? You don’t have to. Sure, since you’re using the zest you might as well, but… Personally, I hate squeezing orange juice. maybe it’s because my family was lost to a horrible orange-squeezing accident (they weren’t), or because I have a debilitating condition which renders me catatonic whenever I attempt to squeeze o-j (I don’t), or because every time I make the attempt I wind up knocking over the juice receptacle and having to do double the work (that part’s true, actually), but if you prefer using the bottled stuff, I won’t tell anyone.

Okay, but really. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line a 12-well muffin pan with some cute cupcake wrappers. Yes, they must be cute, otherwise this recipe won’t work at all.

In a large bowl, combine the oil, sugar, milk, juice, vanilla, and 1 Tbsp of your flour, mixing well until combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together the rest of the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add this to the wet ingredients in three batches, mixing well and making sure everything’s smooth. Fold in the orange zest.

Fill your liners, about 1/4 cup of batter into each. Bake for ~20 minutes.

Assemble!

After your cupcakes are cool and your pudding has set, put that shit together! If you don’t have a fancy cupcake corer, use a sharp knife to cut a little well out of each cupcake. Gently scrape a little more of the insides out with the tip of your knife. Try to preserve the top you cut out.

Fill the well with pudding using a small spoon. Cut off the excess from the top you just removed, and place it back on your cupcake. Now, these taste awesome as is, but if you wanna get really fancy you can top it with your favorite whipped topping and some sliced almonds for a nice crunch.

Went to see John Dies at the End over the weekend, came home and...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:37:04 -0800

Went to see John Dies at the End over the weekend, came home and made this shirt. If you’re a fan of the book, or even if you just like horror and/or comedy, you should watch it!

Lembas

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:55:00 -0800

To celebrate the opening of The Hobbit in theaters, I offer you a recipe for, that’s right, lembas! What? It would be more appropriate for the movie to have a recipe for something that’s actually in the book? Did you just mutter something about Beorn’s honey cakes?? Yeah well, it’s a scientific fact that lembas is better than all of that. Gimli says so.

Anyway, as far as I know there is no official recipe for lembas. Thus, I had to take quite a few… liberties in figuring this out. Now, what we know for sure about lembas is actually pretty sparse. It is described as “Very thin cakes, made of a meal that was baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream,” and are apparently quite crispy. One whole cake is “enough…for a long day’s march” and “more strengthening than any food made by men.” Gimli praises it as “better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings.” (See? I told you) They are wrapped in the leaves of the mallorn tree, and will “keep sweet for many days, if they are unbroken” and left in their wrappings. I assume it’s about the texture of crackers or crunchy cookies, as it’s described as having crumbled or being broken into crumbs on several occasions.

So… what does that mean for us? Well, instead of going for the same look as the lembas in the movies, I made cookies! I took a basic vegan recipe for shortbread cookies and modified it to my ends (warning, mine is not vegan). Because lembas is meant to be very nutritious, I used oat flour and almond meal in addition to all-purpose flour. I also added lemon zest and lemon extract to give a bit of fragrance and brightness, sort of to evoke the golden ambiance of the mallorn trees in Lothlorien. It’s certainly not authentic by any stretch of the imagination, but I hope you find it to your liking. Consider it an… adaptation by a hobbit lass, having plundered the journals of one who met a member of the Quendi diaspora residing near the Shire and attempting to replicate by description the wondrous way-bread of the Elves. Or…something.

Ingredients

1 c (2 sticks) margarine, slightly softened but not warm
2/3 c sugar
1 c all purpose flour
2/3 c oat flour (make your own by whirring rolled oats in a food processor)
1/3 c almond meal (make your own by grinding almonds or in a food processor)
1/3 c cornstarch
zest of 1 lemon (about 2 mounded tsp)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
3-5 Tbsp honey

Directions

In a large bowl, beat the margarine and sugar together with a hand or standing mixer until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.*
Add the zest and extracts, beat just to incorporate.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, oat flour, almond meal, and cornstarch. Add half this mixture to the margarine, folding it in with a spatula until just sticky enough to not fly everywhere when beaten with the mixer. Beat until just incorporated.
Fold in the rest of the flour mixture with the spatula, being careful not to overmix.
Split your dough half and roll each part into logs about 2” in diameter. Wrap these with plastic wrap and put them into the freezer for at least 1 hour until firm.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Cut your chilled dough into 1/4” thick slices and place on a nonstick cookie sheet a couple inches apart.
Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly golden and the edges are slightly browned.
While the cookies are still hot, drizzle honey over them.

These “lembas” cookies are crisp and sweet, and kind of sunny. They probably won’t keep you on your feet for days on end, but they’re damn tasty. This recipe makes roughly 30-36 cookies.

*So, when I was creaming my margarine and sugar together, I realized I had let my margarine get too warm and it was on the verge of separating. Don’t let your margarine (or butter, if you’re using it instead) sit out too long when letting it soften! It should be soft but not greasy. Mine started looking oily and liquidy when I was on step 1, so I stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes. That seemed to help immensely, and my cookies came out just like my other shortbreads do.

HEY HEY HEY. They’re supposed to be wrapped, right? Since mallorn leaves are sadly unavailable to us, I chose instead to use banana leaves. If using frozen leaves, let them thaw (which only takes about 30 minutes) and then rinse under hot water. Wipe off any residue with a damp towel, being sure to go in the same direction as the ribs so as not to tear the leaves. Blot them dry and cut them into shape (I used the template from Entropy House for mine). Wrap ‘em up and take them on your journeys!

Made an Iron Man birthday card for a friend. I was recently...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:32:17 -0800

Made an Iron Man birthday card for a friend. I was recently informed there are other Avengers? Like… why?

Cranberry Curd

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:30:00 -0800

That’s right, cranberry curd. Now don’t get me wrong, I loves me some lemon curd, but sometimes you want something different, you know? Something a little less biting, maybe, or something more season-appropriate. Lemon curd is for the spring and summer. Autumn, though, you’ve got the sugar high to come down from on the way out of Halloween, and then Thanksgiving is like right there. How do you make the transition? Cranberry curd, fools.

Ingredients

2 cups fresh cranberries
1/2 cup water
6 Tbsp butter (3/4 of a stick)
1 cup sugar
2 whole large eggs
2 large egg yolks

Instructions

Put the cranberries and water into a small pot and cover.

Heat over medium until the cranberries pop and the liquid bubbles. Don’t be alarmed when you hear them exploding in there like tiny victims of spontaneous combustion.

Reserve the liquid and push the rest of the mush through a strainer, making sure to get as much of the pulp scraped off the bottom as you can. Basically, you want everything but the skins and whatever seeds are in there. If your setup doesn’t look like the scene of psychopath’s most recent bizarre murder, you’re doing it wrong.

Set that aside to cool.

Meanwhile, beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until combined.

Then slowly beat in the eggs and yolks.

If it’s cool, add the cranberry stuff and mix it up. If it’s looking all weird and kinda curdled, don’t panic, it’s supposed to.

Chuck that into a saucepan (heavy-based if you have one) and cook on low until it looks smooth. Stir frequently at least.

Turn the heat to medium and stir CONSTANTLY for 15 minutes until it thickens. If you blow on the back of your spoon it should make little waves. Or if you’re ~*fancy*~ it should read 170 F on a thermometer. Whatever you do don’t let that shit boil.

Take it off the heat and transfer it to a bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap to prevent a skin forming and let it cool. The stuff will thicken more as it sits.

Cranberry curd is super good on toast, shortbread, little cakes or tarts, or just straight off the spoon (don’t do that, have some dignity). Keep it covered tightly in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for 2 months.

Kymareon and I made lemon flavored Snitch cake pops. If the real...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:41:00 -0800

Kymareon and I made lemon flavored Snitch cake pops. If the real thing tastes as good as ours I can see why young Mr. Potter caught that first one in his mouth.

Cooking With Pumpkins: Something Something Movie Reference

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 02:38:00 -0700

The end is nigh! For the final installment of Cooking With Pumpkins I saved a delicious Halloween treat: Mini pumpkin cupcakes.

Ingredients

1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup plain nonfat yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda

Instructions

Line your mini muffin pan(s) and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. This recipe makes 36+ mini cupcakes so prepare accordingly. Also, I like to save a little electricity by waiting to turn on the oven until just before I start filling the pan, but preheat according to what works best for you.

In a medium bowl, mix together the pumpkin, sugar, applesauce, yogurt, and vanilla.

Sift in the flour, cinnamon, and baking soda. Mix with a fork, not an electric mixer.

Put about 1 Tbsp of batter into your cups. If you’re doing regular sized cupcakes, fill the liners about 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 10 minutes. (17 minutes for regular cupcakes)

(Picture completely unnecessary, but my oven is kinda creepy and it’s Halloween so I thought I’d toss this in here.)

Allow cupcakes to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

~~Optional~~

For a bit of added yum, melt some semisweet chocolate chips and top those suckers.

These cupcakes are super moist, low fat, and oh-so-tasty. They have a slightly different flavor from most pumpkin cakes on account of the applesauce but they taste very… harvesty? They’re a great autumn dessert, and that’s all you need to know.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I ate too many sweets today and… I need to go lie down. Oooog…

Cooking With Pumpkins: Rise of the Pumpkins

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:58:00 -0700

A delicious and nourishing favorite beloved of everyone from Knight Commanders to Sky Spirits, pumpkin soup is one of the best things to warm you up on a chilly autumn day. Even cold, the flavor of the soup is astounding and can keep you strong and healthy! Okay, enough quoting Zelda flavor text (PUN NOT INTENDED). Let’s get on to the recipe.

Ingredients

1 sugar pumpkin, about 3 lbs
1 can vegetable broth
2 leeks, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt
olive oil
butter or butter substitute
black pepper

Preparation

Cut open and clean out your pumpkin. Cut into large chunks and cut the skin off those chunks. Cut those large chunks into small chunks, no more than 1/2”.

Clean your leeks. So… I had to look up about leeks and how to use them. Contrary to what I thought, you don’t use the green leafy part, you use the stalk! So cut off the green stuff and the roots.

Then cut the stalk in half lengthwise and rinse it well. They get a lot of dirt in there, apparently, so be thorough.

Yep. Two whole pictures dedicated to cleaning leeks. I was… really astonished by the whole ordeal.

Cooking

Set a pan on medium to medium high heat with about a tablespoon of olive oil and just a dab of butter. Cook the pumpkin in the pan until browned, being sure to coat it in the oil in the pan. Do this in multiple batches if you have to. Be warned: the smell is so good you will want to break things.

Set the pumpkin aside.

Lower the heat on your pan to medium and put in a little bit more oil. Toss in the sliced leeks and garlic and cook until tender. Really take the fight outta those things. Show ‘em who’s boss.

Throw in the ginger, cumin, and coriander and cook for another 1-2 minutes. The smell should now be driving you to commit minor acts of vandalism.

Chuck all that goodness and the pumpkin into a pot with a can of vegetable broth, plus a can of water. Now, most cooks will say to use broth where you could use water, but I find that makes my soups kind of salty and you can’t taste the fresh ingredients as well. So I prefer half broth, half water.

Anyway, bring it to a boil and then simmer for about 30 minutes, at least until the pumpkin gets soft. You’ll know it’s ready when the smell drives you to start punching babies.

Cast thine soup into a milling goblet and… crap, I don’t know how to run with that. Blend that ish and then put it back into the pot. Again, do this in multiple batches if you need to. Keep the heat on low and stir in the yogurt. Let it all melt together for a couple minutes.

If the smell hasn’t caused you to go into a berserker rage and murder the inhabitants of a nearby village, serve with a dash of freshly cracked pepper and a crusty heel of bread.

Cooking With Pumpkins: Kabochalypse

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:10:00 -0700

First of all: shut up, that’s not a pun, it’s a portmanteau. Classy-like.

Anyway, what’s one of the best, most perfect foods in the world? No, I mean besides ice cream sandwiches. Good guess though. That’s right: curry. Now pumpkin tastes good in any and every kind of curry, but today we’re looking at a nice Thai curry.

Ingredients

2 1/2 lbs kabocha
3/4 cup dried chickpeas
1 1/2 cups cubed eggplant
2 yams*
1 1/2 cups longbeans, cut into 2” pieces
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced thin
1 can coconut milk
1-2 Tbsp red curry paste
zest and juice of 1 lime**
4 sprigs Thai basil
1-2 chili peppers***
soy sauce to taste

*I used 1 ruby yam and 1 purple yam.

**Real Thai curry uses kaffir lime leaves, but I wasn’t able to get my mitts on any. If you have better luck, use about 4 leaves instead of the zest and juice.

***The amount you use will depend on what kind of peppers you get and how spicy you want your curry to be. The curry paste I was using was slightly spicy already, and I was using Thai chilis, so a little went a long way. You can use milder peppers or even sweet peppers to substitute.

Preparation

Chickpeas

(If you want, you can use a can of chickpeas instead. I prefer the dried chickpeas because they’re cheaper and have less sodium, but they do require more preparation)

Soak your chickpeas in water overnight. Make sure the water line is double the height of the chickpea line, as those suckers are gonna blow up to about twice their size.

After the chickpeas are soaked, put them in a pot with some more water and bring them to a boil. After they start boiling bring the heat down to medium and let them cook 40-60 minutes, or until they’re as tender as you like.

Left is dried chickpeas, right is cooked chickpeas.

Eggplant

To remove some of the bitterness from the eggplant, cube them and place them in salted water for about 20 minutes. Then rinse and pat them dry.

Chili Peppers

Take out the seeds and cut into slivers.

Everything Else

Peel, clean, and chop into slightly-larger-than-bite-size pieces. They will partially dissolve and help thicken the curry.

Procedure

Put the curry paste and half the coconut milk in a pot over medium heat and stir to get everything mixed together. Keep it on the heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the bottom from burning. Don’t be lazy and skip this step! It wakes up the spices in the curry and helps it meld with the flavor of the coconut milk.

Put in the rest of the coconut milk, a can of water, the kabocha, and the yams. Stir it up to coat everything with the delicious sauce. You can add a little more water if you need it to help cook the veggies. Don’t worry, it’ll get pretty thick. Cover and cook for 10-12 minutes. When the kabocha and yams are tender, throw in the chickpeas, eggplant, and beans.

Cook all that noise for another 5 minutes or so, or until the sauce is starting to look thick and creamy. At this point you want to taste the sauce and see how salty/spicy you want to make it. Every curry paste is slightly different, so make sure you taste! How much soy sauce and chili you add will depend on what the sauce tastes like now.

Add your mushrooms, chili, lime, and basil. Stir it up and let it cook for a few more minutes to thicken. Serve over rice, and by “serve” I mean “prepare for entry into your curry-hole.” This stuff makes great leftovers too, because all the flavors soak into everything and it thickens even more from the starchy stuff dissolving.

It doesn’t look good in the picture, but I will say it tasted AMAZING.

T-shirt Renovations: Bleach Drawing

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 14:11:00 -0700

The mighty t-shirt: staple of modern fashion, versatile and comfortable. I’d wager most everyone has at least a handful of plain tees in their wardrobe. That’s great! I count myself amongst that number. But sometimes you open your closet and see just that plain, boring old t-shirt and something inside you snaps; that fucker isn’t fulfilling its potential! You are creative and unique (and probably a little unhinged) and dammit all, your clothes will reflect that about you so help you God! So let’s jazz it up with something you’ve probably got lurking under the sink right now: bleach!

Materials

Plain t-shirt
bleach
small paintbrush
cardboard

Directions

Well, this whole thing is pretty simple and straightforward. Set your cardboard inside your shirt so the bleach doesn’t bleed through. Unless you want that to happen, in which case I guess just set it under your shirt.

Dip your brush in the bleach and start drawing! I used a small model-painting brush. You will need to load your brush every couple of inches that you draw.

Pretty soon, your design will start to appear as if by ~~magic~~ science!

The longer you let the bleach sit, the more intense the effect will be.

What I did was set out a basic frame of large shapes, then filled those in with freehanded patterns.

After you’re done, be sure to thoroughly rinse your tools and your t-shirt. Don’t throw that shirt in the wash without rinsing it!

Voila! You now have a creative, unique t-shirt that years from now authorities will use to construct a psychological profile of you to use as “Exhibit A” in your thoughtcrime hearings.

Cooking With Pumpkins: Attack of the Pumpkins

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:03:00 -0700

We’re in the thick of it now, brohams. This installment of the Great Pumpkin Chronicles is a recipe for yummy pumpkin peanut butter oatmeal bites, otherwise known as PPBO bites (a most unfortunate acronym). These are great for breakfast, on the go, or just whenever you feel like a healthy snack. They’re super easy to make and are actually really fun to sculpt into whatever shape you desire. Plus, it’s super versatile; you can add pretty much anything you want to it and adjust stuff to taste.

Ingredients

1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 - 1/2 cup peanut butter
2 cups old fashioned oats
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1-2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger

Preparation

Reduce the pumpkin to about half a cup by putting it in a pot on medium-high for 20-30 minutes to remove the moisture. It should be kind of dark and stick to itself more than sit nicely on the bottom of your pot. Let it cool completely.

Left side is pumpkin straight out of the can, right side is the reduced pumpkin.

Throw that shit together!

No special procedure. Just dump it all in a bowl and mix it up! If you don’t trust me (which is probably prudent) then start with just half of everything and all the flax seeds, and add whatever you think is lacking. After everything’s all mixed up you can play Michelangelo and sculpt a masterwork in PPBO.

Or, y’know, frou frou little hearts. If you are a poosie.

Cooking With Pumpkins: The Return of the Pumpkin

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:38:00 -0700

This time around I thought I’d do one of my favorites to make: pumpkin pasta! Well, actually I usually make it with butternut squash because they’re cheaper for most of the year, but it works just as well or better with pumpkin. Aside from the yumminess, I love this recipe because it’s super cheap and super easy. Out of respect for you, I’ll avoid the obvious joke about your mom.

Ingredients

2 1/2 lb worth of pumpkin (I used kabocha this time around; you can actually use pretty much any winter squash)
Olive oil
1 medium-small onion
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1-2 cups water
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
1 bunch fresh spinach OR 1 package frozen spinach, thawed
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1 lb of spaghetti

Preparation

Okay, so for this recipe you can actually take a few shortcuts and still have it come out really well. If you’re strapped for time or don’t have an oven or whatever, you can just cook the pumpkin in the microwave. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Microwaving veggies actually does give them a good taste, and I actually prefer it to boiling them. You get a purer taste of the vegetable, it tends to be less soggy and weirdly textured, and microwaving can help vegetables retain their nutrients. Harvard said so. Well, about that last point anyway.

Back to the actual cooking, if you want to do it in a microwave just cut the pumpkin up into eighths or whatever will fit into your microwave safe dish, put about a half inch of water in the bottom, and microwave on high for 5-10 minutes. You should be able to stab their flesh with little effort. That is definitely a sentence that needs context.

If you want that roasted flavor, cut the pumpkin into 1-2” wedges and very lightly rub them with olive oil. Put them on a baking sheet and pop ‘em in the oven at 350 degrees F for 30-40 minutes. Again, they should be soft enough to easily puncture with a fork.

Again, this step can be done beforehand. If you roasted more squash than what is called for in this recipe, it’s a really tasty snack on its own so just cram ‘em in your pie hole. Or you can mash it up and freeze it.

Cooking

Chop up your onion and cook it in a pan with a drizzle of olive oil over medium-high heat until it just starts turning brown. Don’t toss the pan in the sink just yet, you’ll need it later. Uh, spoilers I guess.

Put that into a blender along with the pumpkin (be sure to remove the skin), Parmesan, nutmeg, and about a cup of water. Will it blend? If it doesn’t, add more water. The texture should be thicker than a stew, but thinner than a paste. You know… like a sauce or something. While you’re struggling with your blender put a pot of water on the stove for your pasta and wait for it to start boiling.

Put the sauce into a pot and add the yogurt, keeping the heat to low. Stir it up all nice and make sure you put a lid on it because it will basically become a bubbling tar pit after it’s been on the heat for a couple minutes. It won’t pull you into itself in a senseless act of petty spite, but you still don’t want that shit splattering into your eye. Anyway, a couple bubbles are fine, just don’t let it boil.

While that’s sitting, cook down your spinach in the pan you used for the onions. Once it’s cooked down toss it in with the sauce. If you’re using frozen spinach you can just toss it straight in.

Give the pan a quick wipe and put the pine nuts in, just lightly toasting them. By this point your pasta water is probably boiling, so drop the spaghetti in. The pasta will just do its thing, should be about 10 minutes for it to cook. You gotta keep an eye on the pine nuts though. Keep them moving around in the pan so they don’t burn. Take them off the heat when they first start looking kind of golden.

Drain your pasta and serve that shit!

Jewelry: Finders Keepers

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 02:53:33 -0700

Made this a couple days ago. With the exception of the split rings and the ribbon end everything I used was either a found object or a recycled component of a different piece of jewelry.

I love art and crafts made from found or recycled objects for a few reasons. For one, it’s a great way to give use to things that would otherwise be considered trash; that transformative process is just really cool to me. Second, it’s fun to make in the way that a puzzle is to complete; I like taking pieces that I have and trying to figure out how they’ll go together. And of course, found or recycled objects often have a story to them, so there’s that added sentimental value. (As a bonus for me, I love that sort of “wasteland chic” look and what better way to accomplish that than with found/recycled materials?)

Cooking With Pumpkins: Pumpkin Harder

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 16:32:00 -0700

The next chapter in my adventures in cooking with pumpkins is a sweet treat! (No, it’s not pumpkin pie. Why? Fuck you, that’s why! Everyone knows the Libby’s classic pumpkin pie recipe is the best. Jesus.

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at baking pumpkin cookies!

Now these aren’t quite the same fluffy cakey texture as most pumpkin cookies. They’re a bit denser and have a really mild sweetness. But from the reception they got I’d say they were a hit! I adapted my recipe from the one found in Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, so there are no eggs or dairy products. However, if you wanted to you could substitute butter for the margarine.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup oat flour (make your own by whirring rolled oats in a food processor)
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4-1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 t salt (omit if using salted butter/margarine)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or butter replacement
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla

Preparation

Okay, so there’s a bit of prep work to be done. You want to take the moisture out of the canned pumpkin by heating it in a pan/pot over medium heat for about 40 minutes. You’re aiming to have 1/2 a cup of pumpkin for this recipe. If it hasn’t reduced that much after 40 minutes don’t worry, you have to let it cool completely anyway and a lot of the moisture will evaporate while it sits.

The left side is what the pumpkin looks like straight out of the can. The right side is what it looks like after it’s been reduced. It’s dryer and should be slightly darker, through that’s hard to tell from this picture.

Procedure

Let’s get to baking! Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift the flour, oat flour, cornstarch, spices, salt, and baking powder together and mix it with a whisk

In a separate bowl mix the sugar and “butter” with an electric hand mixer to form a grainy paste.

Add the pumpkin and vanilla to the sugar paste and beat on medium until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients, blending until just combined. My mixer had some trouble with this part, so you might just want to use your hands. It’s pretty thick and should look like this:

Form the dough into balls just a little smaller than walnut-sized and flatten them slightly. Place them on your baking sheets about an inch and a half apart and bake for ~12 minutes.

After they come out they’ll look like this:

Let them cool for about 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire cooling rack. Then wait for the sun to come out and snap a decent picture of them.

The one on the top is turned over so you can see what the underside looked like. Not to serve any didactic purpose, but because it’s an exhibitionist.

Practical Latin Geekery

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:14:00 -0700

So I was kind of (totally) a huge Latin geek back in high school, and off and on since then I’ve been trying to reteach myself the language. I’m not nearly as proficient as I used to be, but every now and then pop culture will see fit to inject a bit of Latin into dark and mysterious places, and I get the chance to show off a bit. Usually when a movie or book or something bombards its audience with a scrap of Latin one of my friends will turn to me expectantly, and if the fates are in my favor that day I’ll be able to rattle off a rough translation. Some examples include:

Silent Hill 3 “Tu fui, ego eris” - “I was you, you will be me” (after some digging I found that this has been poetically translated to “As you are, so was I; as I am, so shall you be”)

Adventure Time Priscus and Verus (two of the ghost gladiators’ names) mean “venerable” and “true” respectively.

Black Butler “Potentia Regere” (on the Phantomhive crest) - “The power to rule” (I’m a bit iffy on this. It literally translate to “power” “to rule” but I’m foggy on whether that’s actually proper Latin grammar)

Cabin in the Woods “Dolor supervivo caro. Dolor sublimus caro. Dolor ignio animus.” - “[word soup]” Well, okay, the movie translates it as “Pain outlives the flesh. Pain raises the flesh. Pain ignites the spirit.” However, to translate it back into proper Latin, it would go “Dolor carnem superest. Dolor carnem tollit. Dolor animum accendit.”

I love this kind of thing, so if anyone has a scrap of pop culture Latin you’d like translated (or if you have something you’d like to translate into Latin) just ask (Quaere) me and I’ll do my best!

nota bene: If you yourself are a Latin student looking for translations, go here instead, and cram your head so full of knowledge your brain will become a Roman singularity, fold in on itself and manifest as a dictionary on the 482nd plane. Seriously, Perseus Project rules.

Cooking With Pumpkins: The Saga Begins

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:48:00 -0700

It’s finally October, which means a few things. Firstly, the advent of my favorite haunted harvest holiday (let’s go United Nations Day!). Second, it is super officially autumn, the best season second only to fall. And third, pumpkin season is upon us!

I will make no secret of the fact that pumpkin is one of my absolute favorite ingredients. Oddly enough though, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I even learned that you don’t cook your jack-o-lantern. Yeah, I’m not exactly the brightest bulb in the bunch. Anyway, I decided that for this month, I’d try a bunch of new recipes featuring the prodigious pulchritudinous pumpkin!

First up is a vegetarian version of a Filipino dish called pinakbet.

The Disclaimer

Now I don’t know much at all about traditional Filipino cooking, but I’ve eaten it enough that I know pretty much how it should taste. The few things I know about pinakbet (almost entirely from searching for recipes online) are that it doesn’t always have pumpkin and probably never has pumpkin greens, starts off with delicious pork juices as a base, and has shrimp paste in it. Since I wanted to do a vegetarian version, obviously the pork and shrimp were out. And, as stated before, I love pumpkin so that was definitely in. And pumpkin greens are awesome (there’s just something so whimsical about eating those swirly vines) so I thought what the hell.

The Ingredients

1 kalabasa pumpkin
1 bittermelon
10 okra
white vinegar
2 T olive oil
6-10 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
1 T ginger (use fresh if you can, but I only had ground on hand)
3 tomatoes
1-2 c water
1-2 sheets salted seaweed
1/2 bunch long beans
1/3 bunch pumpkin greens
low sodium soy sauce to taste

The Preparation

Not gonna lie, there’s a ton of time sunk into just the preparation. The good news is, a lot of it can be done plenty of time beforehand. Here are the biggest things to get out of the way early:

Kalabasa

Cut the kalabasa in half and scoop out the innards. Then cut it into bite-sized chunks, cut the skin off said chunks, and boil them until they’re just shy of done.

Okra

Rinse the okra and chop the caps off, taking care not to cut the pod itself. Let the okra soak in vinegar for 30 minutes. This helps make it less slimy. I guess you can skip this step if you’re into that kind of thing.

Bittermelon

Cut the bittermelon in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds and foamy stuff. Thinly slice the hulls and soak them in salted water. This greatly reduces the bitterness so it’s closer to the level of zucchini skin than the inside of a vitamin.

The Cooking

In a big pot or wok or something heat your oil on medium. Chop the ginger and garlic real small-like, and chop the onion in the fashion onion is typically chopped. Saute it all until the onion is translucentish.

Roughly chop the tomato, toss it into the pan and cook for 3 minutes. It doesn’t matter how the chunks look, it’ll disintegrate by the end of this.

Crush the dried seaweed and add it along with the water. Bring it to a boil and let it do its thing a couple minutes.

While that’s happening, cut the long beans into 2-inch bits and the okra into 1/2-inch bits. Throw those in along with the squash. Let it cook 3-5 minutes.

Take the leaves and tender stalks from the pumpkin greens (make sure they’re rinsed!) and throw them in. Oh, the bittermelon too. Cook a few more minutes until everything’s the texture you like. Add soy sauce to taste (unless your seaweed is super salty, this is where most of the brothy flavor will come from).

Enjoy over rice.

The Verdict

Okay, so it doesn’t taste totally like pinakbet, really. I thought the seaweed would help insert a little of that oceany taste, but it’s not enough. If I had a choice to make it again without restrictions, I’d probably use the shrimp paste. However, as a vegetarian dish it is very yummy, super nutritious, and quite filling. Plus, it does get better after powerful time magicks have been allowed to do their work on it.

Bottom line, I like the dish quite a lot. Just don’t expect it to taste authentic!

Know what day it is?

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:45:00 -0700

Happy Avengers Day! To celebrate the release of the movie for home-viewing in your choice of shiny disc format, a quickie birthday card I whipped up last minute featuring the best Avenger: BATMAN (ohGodI’mkiddingpleasedon’thurtme)