Health Elixir

Sometimes, the airing of one's dirty laundry over various internet outlets really grates me. Especially when you know how one-sided it is. But then, what's a LiveJournal for, eh? I suppose I should simply "unfollow," though it seems it might not be as simple as all that if Goose is to be belived. And I think he is.

Anyway, in the spirit of curmudgeonliness (yes it is a word, I just made it up. I am like unto Shakespeare and Sarah Palin) I shall share another simple drink recipe. This one's good for the sickly, in honor of Miz O'holic as she attempts to ward off her boyfriend's nasty germs. (Yes, that's right! Alcohol for the ill! What's in a name, anyway?)

Basically, you put EmergenC in some Vodka. Ok, well, I also add a splash of cranberry juice, and I like to use the raspberry flavored E.C. because it's my favorite, and the cranberry covers the weird taste a bit. Also, it is fizzy!

That's it.

Much like the Blue Drink, this delight both creates and cures a hangover!

Blue Drink

Blue Drink + Pizza = Party Fuel




My new, ghetto-fabulous obsession is my Pride Weekend cocktail masterpiece, creatively dubbed "Blue Drink." The best part is, it is fabulously easy to make and if you buy the little kids' style blue fruit-flavored beverage, well then you get vitamins too! It's pretty much a hangover maker and cure in one fucking glass. And it's blue.

SO blue.

Anyway, all it consists of is Vodka (about a jigger, I'd wager), blue, and a splash of lemonade. The lemonade is what really brings it all together, not to mention giving the blue drink a nice cloudy appearance that makes it look a bit less like Kool-Aid and more like you are an adult and you are enjoying a glass of alcoholic Kool-Aid.

Yeah dudes. Blue drink. You know what I mean. Find that shit at RiteAid and buy a huge bottle for a dollar and go ahead and let your friends laugh and be disgusted that you bought a big bottle of blue-dyed sugar water, for when they taste the blue drink....the last laugh will most certainly be yours.

Please enjoy these photos of my lovely models, exhibiting their blue drink fashions. Beautiful people drink blue drink.






Caution: drinking blue drink has been known to cause melty backgrounds and blurred vision.

Whore's Pasta!

I didn't take any pictures of this culinary adventure, because, well, it just looks like pasta and red sauce. Also, it's so easy you don't need pictures. You can do it, I believe in you.

Pasta Puttanesca, or Whore's Pasta, is really just...red sauce with whatever you have lying around the house, plus some capers.

What I happened to have lying around was a jar of Trader Joe's tomato-basil marinara. Usually, I hate canned spaghetti sauce. It's just gross. I don't know why, but I bought this stuff anyway, hoping I could put my trust in TJ's good taste. Thankfully, I was mostly right...it was okay, but I decided I had better use it anyway, so I added shit to it.
Here is the shit I added to it:
Capers! Lots and lots of capers.
A few glugs of Charles Shaw's finest Cab Sav (thanks again, TJ's) - I am classy like that.
Carrots cut into little wheels (the only veggies I had in the kitch! Some green shit would work nice, too - be creative)
Vegan Sausages
Hella fresh herbs - yes, I am fancy. Oregano, Rosemary, and Fresh garlic.

Soooo, I just put all that crap in a sauce pan on medium and let it sorta cook down until it wasn't so wine-y and the frozen sausages had cooked and so had the carrots - probably about 20-25 minutes.
Meanwhile I was boiling pasta so that shit could all be ready at the same time.
Put sauce on pasta, impress friends.

OH yeah! I also made some super easy (vegan) garlic bread. Just took one of those take-and-bake $.99 baguettes from the gro, slice in half, and slather margarine on both sides.
Mince up some more garlic, but make sure you make it REALLY SMALL! And spread it on one side of the bread. Chop up some herbies if you like, I put more rosemary and oregano. Then, put the two halves of bread back together, wrap the loaf in tin foil, put it in the oven at around 400 for about 15 minutes, and viola! Home made garlic bread. You are fancy.

Tuber Stew!!!

WOW! I completely suck balls at blogging, obviously. So, I haven't been that sad in the last couple of months, it's just that work has been so busy that I haven't been blogging, but OH! Have I been cooking.

All winter we obsessed about making a big old root stew, and finally, we harnessed our soup-making powers and found two frozen beets in the back of the fridge (yes, the fridge - I have THAT kind of icebox, the kind that is warm in front and everything in back is frozen, so it's awesome) created a beautiful bring pink stew!!

So, currently obsessed with root vegetables, and what better time to enjoy them than NOW while they're actually in season!?!?!

Okay, this is retarded easy to make.
To begin, assemble your roots and chop those bitches. We used a golden and a red beet, a couple of sweet potatoes, and delightfully, a turnip! All coarsely chopped into nice, big soup chunks.
Then, take your big soup tureen and dump a can of diced/chopped/stewed/what ever is in the house TOMATOES, and dump them into your pot. Add an additional couple of cans of water, to have as much broth as you like - remember that the veggies are going to soak some of it up.
So, put your big pot of tomato water on the burner, and let it heat up to a good steamy medium-high. At this point, toss your beets and turnip in. After about five to ten minutes, toss the potatoes. I know it seems wrong but darn if the sweet pots don't cook a whole lot faster than the beets.
Beets are fucking hard as rocks.
Anyway.
After dumping in your tubers(!) you can start adding spices and shit to build your broth. I tossed in a liberal amounts of garlic powder, onion powder (I'm Klassy! And cheap!) basil, rosemary, salt, pepper, and lovely paprika and chili powder. (We like it spicy. You can be a pussy if you want though). This way we don't use bullion and our lovely vegan friends can enjoy dinner with us.
OH yeah. Then I also put in a can of garbanzo beans, because I found them in the cupboard, and was feeling a bit hummus'd out, if you know what I mean. Also, PROTEIN!

And after a nice long, hot, steamy bath of about half an hour (or as soon as your beets are cooked enough - they won't get as soft as the potatoes, they should have a bit of resistance to them). And viola!! Delicious, delicious, bright and beautiful root stew.
Eat it with toast! Delicious!

It's hard to cook when you're sad.

So, Hi friends. I got dumped juuuust a few days over a month ago, so that's why I never posted a single thing all through-out January. I was simply too depressed to eat, and too depressed to cook. I did, however, do a lot of drinking. I also learned a few things during my pathetic attempts to conjure up something edible on the stove through tears. Please, allow me to share some of them with you. But before that, let me share my new favourite song, which pretty much sums up exactly how I feel right now. Thank you, pop music.

When I met you, I was just a kid
Hadn't built up my defenses
So I gave my heart completely
Vaseline over the lenses

Memories don't go away
I remember every day

I never, ever stop wondering
Wondering if you still think of us
I don't need a photograph
Because you've never left my mind
No, you've never left my mind

I remember feeling like a ship
Whose captain was too drunk to steer
And you watched as I was sinking
Waving sadly from the pier

Memories don't go away
I remember every day

I never, ever stop wondering
Wondering if you still think of us
I don't need a photograph
Because you've never left my mind
No, you've never left my mind

It's such a burden to carry around
The vestiges of dead dreams
And I don't want to make a wake out of my life
I just have to let you go


Nice, right?

So, here's what we learned in the past few weeks: A 7-cup capacity Cuisinart does not have enough space for a double-batch of our favourite easy-ass cookies. (Did you know they can go in the Cuisinart? It's actually a Cuisinart recipe, and it's so easy to do when you don't have to mix anything by hand!) Anyway, on top of that, we also learned that the blades of the brand-new Cuisinart are VERY, verrrryyyyyy sharp. So sharp, in fact, that whilst you are stirring your over-flowing batch of cookie dough with your soft rubber spatula, you may accidentally cut off chunks from the spatula, and not knowing this, proceed to blend them right up into the cookies. So, I'm sorry if anyone dies of some kind of plastic toxicity or poops out a chunk of rubber. This is my fault.

So, but back to the Drinking. Yes. You knew we'd get here. We're even gonna do a little recipe.
Well, did you know that Everclear is now legal to sell in Washington? Yes kids, that's right! Now, we don't get any kind of 190-proof moonshine in these parts (a tragedy for sure) but you CAN buy 150-proof (75%) pure grain alcohol, aka Everclear. So, since it smells and tastes like a cocktail of rubbing alcohol and nailpolish remover, we don't want to drink it straight. Thus, we use the high-proof alcohol to mane an infusion!
Yes! Now, if you are a little bit classier than me or have a bit more skrilla to spare, you can always buy a nice quality high-proof vodka or some 151 rum, just so long as you have at least 75% alcohol - we need all the alcohol we can get to make our infusion just right.
What, exactly, are we infusing?
I'm really glad you asked.
We are going to recycle in a way all hippies would be proud of!
You remember all those pot-stems you've been saving, for no real reason, but you feel like there's just got to be a bit of meat left on those bones? Well, good think you saved them, because there is, and we're gonna make broth. Hell yeah. Gross analogy. Sorry.
So taking our little bundle of branches, and a generous donation of trim (you know - leaves and such, the non-smokable parts), we shoved them into the bottle of everclear and closed the lid.
Then, we let it sit. For two weeks.
When we finally did crack it open, the everclear had taken on a rich, dark green hue. Viola! We have Green Dragon :)
We poured it into shot glasses and took some throat-burning drams. The stuff tastes like pure "getting high," my taste-testers declared. It also gets you instantly drunk, and progressively stoned. So, awesome.
I recommend mixing yourself a shot with a little juice or flavored liquer, to cut the harshness...we are working on a Weed-tini, recipes to come!
Enjoy responsibly, kids.

YUMmus

Yeah! Alright, I know you know already what this is about from my terrible titular pun. Hummus, dudes.

Did you know that hummus is not only delicious, but also protein-licious? That's right, a nice snack of hummus on veggies and crackers/toasts is well-balanced enough to be a meal! Can't get enough of that plant-based protein...

Hummus at the store is exorbitantly priced, especially when you consider that a can of garbanzo beans goes for about a dollar, and it is pretty much the only ingredient you will have to buy to make hummus. And another thing! Why do the 'flavored' varieties at my local supermarket only ever come in ONE flavor? What if I want garlic AND roasted red peppers, huh? WHAT THEN?

WELL I WILL TELL YOU WHAT THEN.

You make your own goddamn hummus. Because it's easy as hell, because it's super-cheap, because it's better this way. Trust me.

ALSO, I might add, that this recipe requires a FOOD PROCESSOR. Yes, dear friends,I have finally acquired that kitchen gadget that surpasses all others: The Food Processor. In fact, I wanted one SO BADLY that Santa brought me TWO this year! I know! Well, I'm only keeping one, of course, but still....clearly SOMEONE's been reading this blog.

Anyway, now that I have my beloved shiny new Food Processor, (he is a Cuisinart, he is beautiful), I can make all kinds of delightful things, like hummus!


AND SO CAN YOU!


It's easy! You don't even have to cook it.
Simply dump a can or two of garbanzo beans (drained) into the food processor (depends on how much you want), add a few squeezes of lemon juice, and a couple dashes of olive oil (like, maybe 1 tablespoon per can). Then just process the shit out of it until it acquires the creamy smoothness of hummus. And there you have it. It is now hummus. Right? So easy. I'd also suggest tossing in some salt - but only a little, you don't want to overpower it - and maybe some spices. I used red pepper flakes, basil, garlic, and salt & pepper in mine.

Hell yeah! Deliciousness, ho! Now go impress your dinner guests.



just look at how much they love it.

Mold Wine?

Remember when I said that you can get super-cheap wine at Trader Joe's? Well, you knew that. And while Mr. Charles Shaw's private reserve might not be the most impressive of table wines, add a little sugar and spice, and it magically transforms into the most delicious of boozy treats with a gross-sounding name!

So, it's actually MULLED wine, but it's pronounced like Mold. Mulled just means spiced, so all you have to do is dump a bottle of cheap wine in a big pot, put it on medium or med-low (not too hot - you just want to simmer, NO bubbling at all) put in a few teaspoons of brown sugar (I like 3, you might like more or less) and a few pinches of mulling spices.* I recommend red wine, obvs. Then just simmer on the stove for about twenty minutes, and serve warm in mugs! Delightful!

*I awesomely found tinned Mulling Spices at the freakin' drugsto for only 99 cents on sale! Deals! But if you don't have tinned spices, just assemble some cinnamon sticks (2ish), some cardamom seeds, maybe some dried or fresh orange peel (make sure you wash it if it's fresh!!!), some cloves, and perhaps a vanilla bean even. Hell yeah!