Simple Chicken Stir Fry

Artist's rendition: me scavenging for food after refusing to
leave the house for a week

The dreaded Holiday Season has almost passed us by. You can see the signs of it everywhere. In the songs being played on the radio. In the fact that strangers on the street are giving up their smiles and kind words for the more traditional scowls and refusal to make eye contact. And of course in the increasingly unhinged advertisements bombarding us, begging us to take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime deals from Target-mart & Beyond-Buy. Deals so insane that they're seriously considering slapping whoever printed them. With savings so unbelievable they'll make you completely forget about last week's unbeatable once-in-a-lifetime deals. It's truly a magical season. It's a perfect time to take stock of the year and assess the ways in which your various loved ones and major appliances have let you down. And to not leave the house because the stores are clogged with shoppers who have been lured in by advertisers' promises of savings and the return of their loved ones. So you'll have to make the most of what you've got around the house when it comes to sustenance. And nothing makes the most of random kitchen leavings like a stir-fry.


Ingredients:

3 Boneless Chicken Breasts
10 oz. Mushrooms (I used cremini, as that's what I had lying around. Whatever mushrooms you have will be fine, provided that you bought them, and didn't inadvertently grow them yourself.)
2 Carrots
2 Bell Peppers
1 standard-issue Onion
1 bunch Green Onions
1 can Baby Corn (It's funny how those animal rights activists who complain about veal never take issue with baby corn. I guess they're just hypocrites)
2 tsp grated Ginger
2 cloves Garlic
2 tsp Soy Sauce
2 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar
juice from 1/2 a Lime (As always, if you don't have half a lime lying around, find a whole lime, cut it in half, and maybe start wearing a helmet)
2 tsp Sriracha
2 cups Brown Rice
3 cups Water
Salt
Oil for sauteing 

Yes, I know, this recipe has somewhat of a longer ingredient list that what you may be used to cooking. Even more so once you realize that bread isn't really an ingredient of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich per se. But trust me, it's much easier to make than it looks. And what else are you gonna do? Go outside? I thought so. Now that you've come to grips with your fate, it's time to get started. Your rice is going to take a bit to cook, so get that started first. That way you can do everything else while you're waiting for rice to happen. Throw it in a pot along with your water and a pinch of salt, and bring it to a boil. Cover the pot and bring it down to medium heat for 20 minutes, or until all of the water is absorbed, and the rice is fluffy and delicious instead of sad and crunchy. Got it? Good. Now go choppity chop chop your  mushrooms, carrots, bell peppers, baby corn, regular onion, green onions, and chicken. You want each of these to be about bite size, and to be the same size as each other, like Tom Cruise's stunt doubles. Take a pan (I used a wok, because I'm apparently that cool. If you have one and know how to use it effectively, go nuts. Otherwise, any large saute pan should work fine), heat up some oil over medium-high heat, and then toss in your carrots and regular onion along with a gentleman's pinch of salt. Cook that down for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding in your green peppers, mushrooms, and another pinch of salt. Let that mess cook down for another 2 minutes before adding in your garlic, ginger, and baby corn.

Not pictured: me comatose on the couch 20
minutes after eating this

Now it's time to test your skill and mettle. After about a minute of cooking, it's time to cook your chicken. If you have the will of the warrior, you can push your cooked vegetables up against the side of your pan, leaving exposed metal at the bottom to cook your chicken. Otherwise, you can take your vegetables out before adding your chicken in. You know, like a failure. No matter what horrible truths you discover about yourself, cook your pieces of chicken for about 3-5 minutes (depending on how large your cut your chicken pieces because I'm not legally recognized as psychic in the 48 contiguous United States), stirring occasionally, before adding your cooked vegetables back in to the mix along with your green onions, soy sauce, vinegar, and sriracha. Let the whole thing cook down for another couple of minutes while the flavors all blend together into deliciousness. Turn off the heat, and then stir in your lime juice. Then it's time to load up your plate with rice, smother it in your chicken and vegetable goodness, and enjoy a flavor so good that you might entirely forget the grim truth that you'll have to leave your house some day. You know, when you run out of peanut butter.

Changua

It's funny because it's true

Every now and again you stumble across a recipe that seems so simple and easy that it seems like it's legitimately suspicious. For instance, if a Tasty™ video starts off with them flattening a slice of white bread, I'm pretty sure it's going to end up with me going on a cross-country road trip to find the person who stole my identity. That said, sometimes delicious food is just simple. This is especially true of old cultural recipes passed down over generations. Most cultures have had some good times and some bad, and if a recipe has lasted throughout both, there's a decent chance that it's going to taste good, and that it's something you could reasonably whip up while on the run from various dangers like neighboring tribes, wild beasts, or slowly dying of dysentery. Notable exceptions are pretty much any traditional British or Australian foods, as these were developed as pranks for unsuspecting tourists.


Ingredients:

2 cups Milk
1.5 cups Water
4 Eggs (Chicken eggs for preference. You know, the things we all think of when somebody says "Eggs." Though I guess you could really use whatever bird eggs you have handy in a pinch. So if you're a creepy bird enthusiast you might have some options)
3 Green Onions
1/2 cup Cilantro
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Salt

Changua is a traditional Columbian soup that's allegedly been passed down generation to generation amongst the native peoples of the Andes for...pretty much ever. It's typically eaten for breakfast, often on weekends, and is thought to be a pretty decent hangover cure, so it's easy to see why it has remained popular. The fact that it takes like 5 minutes to make and is super tasty doesn't hurt either. That said, the first thing you're going to do here is casually glorp together your milk and water in a pot along with your black pepper and a big pinch of salt. The kind of pinch that a professional athlete or circus performer might have. Add it in with your milk and water and crank up the heat. While you're waiting for that to boil, chop up your green onions and your cilantro. This should take you about a minute, which means you only have about 150 minutes left to go for your pot to boil. Or you can just get busy. Scientific research has shown that being too busy to deal with it can cause your food to heat up almost immediately. Once you've got your pot boiling, it's time to drop in your eggs like little paratroopers plummeting to their untimely egg deaths. So crack each egg into a bowl or cup and then gently pour it in to the boiling liquid. Don't rush or drop them from too high or else you'll end up with scrambled eggs inside of your soup. And probably some burns around your face and hands.

Here we see the noble egg, playing dead to try and evade
the deadly predators native to its environment.

Once all of your eggs are cooking in the liquid, cover the pot. Let them continue to poach for 4-5 minutes, depending on how well-done you like your eggs. Use this time to prep your bowls. That sounds intense. Divide up your chopped onions and cilantro evenly between 4 bowls. That's all you actually need to do. Prep accomplished. Once your eggs are cooked to your liking, turn off the heat under your pot. Using a spoon, strainer, or your bare hands and grit that defy concerns like utensils, hygiene, and second degree burns, put one egg in the bottom of each of your bowls. Then top them off with your milky soup and enjoy! Traditionally, this soup is served with bread, or sometimes topped with more cilantro. You can totally do that if you'd like. Personally, I like some heat, so I added in a bit of sriracha straight in my broth. That's part of the fun of traditional recipes. They've been passed down for forever, and different people have totally developed their own versions over the centuries/millennia. As long as the core of the recipe is right and the food tastes good, there's not really a wrong way to do it. Unless you have dysentery. Then there's totally a wrong way to do it. Enjoy!

Cream of Mushroom Soup

A noble soup embiggens
the smallest man

So you managed to survive the many perils of Black Friday. The changing weather, the crazed drivers, the advertisers ripping families out of the back seats of cars and forcibly marching them into department stores. You've bested them all. All that's left is for you to enjoy the late Autumn weather, have some sort of festive holiday drink, and celebrate life. Unless you live in Chicago where, despite over a century of searching, nobody has been able to find the user manual and change the weather setting off of "random." We have snow on the ground, ice everywhere, and by the weekend it's supposed to be 50 and stormy. So going outside isn't the best idea right now. You're better off huddling for warmth in your home and waiting out the rest of the Holiday Season™ in the comfort of your home or survival bunker. In the even that you're forced to leave your home and venture out into the Elements® it's important to remember that you have delicious soup to warm you up at home. So either get to work on your vivid hallucinations, or make some soup.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Cremini Mushrooms
1 standard-issue Onion
5 cups Milk (Preferably milk from a cow of some kind)
2 cloves Garlic
1 TBSP Butter
1 TBSP Olive Oil
2 TSBP Flour
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Rubbed Sage
1/4 tsp Ground Cumin
Salt

Cream of mushroom soup has the distinguished honor of being one of the most readily available things you can grab in a can at any supermarket's soup aisle. If you've ever eaten those soups, you know they taste like gelatinous salt. And I'm not knocking gelatinous salt. At the very least, it would be an excellent name for a debut album in the 90s. But we're striving for something better with this recipe, so the first thing you'll need to do is forget everything you know about cream of mushroom soup. Other than the name, and the fact that you're about to make some. Those are important tidbits to hold on to. But forget everything else. Once your amnesia is complete, dice your onion. Saute it in your butter and oil over medium heat along with a standard-sized human's pinch of salt. Let your onions cook down, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes, during which you'll be cleaning and slicing your mushrooms. It doesn't really matter how big or small you cut your mushrooms as long as you're consistent, so it's down to what your preference is. But keep in mind that this is a soup, so ideally everything should be able to fit easily into a spoon.

Welcome to flavor country. US passport line to the left.

Once your onions are soft and golden, toss your mushrooms into the party along with your black pepper, sage, cumin, and another standard-sized human's pinch of salt. Let that whole mushroom butter onion nonsense cook together for about 4 minutes, or when the mushrooms get soft and the whole room starts to smell like deliciousness. Mix in your flour and wait for everything to get kind of gross and sludgy. You know, like you after Thanksgiving dinner. Now it's time to slowly add in your milk, stirring all the while so that all of your flour mix incorporates, and you don't end up with any sad lumps left in there. Heat that whole thing up and keep it stirring to get it to thicken, but be careful not to boil it. Then salt it to your taste, and guzzle it down while  you watch other suckers dealing with the snow, wind, hail, rain, and then snow again.

Spicy Honeyed Sweet Potatoes

How does Thanksgiving sneak up on us? With clever disguises

It's Thanksgiving time again. And that means it's time to shove some delicious food into our mouths. As much as we can as fast as we can in the hopes that it appeases the angry ghosts of our ancestors who probably lived and died in some beet-heavy country like Serbia and never dreamed of being able to come to a land of limitless opportunity and eating a giant stupid chicken that drowns in the rain. But not everything is turkey and gravy. For every flower there are weeds, there only to sow dissent and destruction. On Thanksgiving, this is the sweet potatoes which, for reasons nobody can adequately explain and is probably some sort of ancient curse inflicted upon colonizing Europeans, tradition demands get covered with marshmallows and baked. Kids love this idea, because kids are stupid. They hear marshmallows, and they stop listening. You could offer kids marshmallows covered in chalk and they'd ask for more. But sweet potatoes have potential. They've got a good flavor that pairs well with a lot of things, and they can make a great addition to your meal. Assuming you don't cover them with marshmallows.

Ingredients:

3 largish Sweet Potatoes
1/2 cup Walnuts
3 TBSP Honey
1.5 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cumin
1 largish human's pinch of Salt

The first thing you're going to need to do is stop freaking out. People treat Thanksgiving like it's some crazy marathon of cooking that they need a full month to prepare for. It's one day with family and a large meal. This is a weekly occurrence for tons of Americans who descend from Italians, Greeks, Jews, and tons of others. Any culture with a food and family tradition. We all laugh at the rest of you every year, because it's really not that big of a deal. Just take a breath, make your food, set your table, and don't be afraid to remind any drunk or abrasive relatives that they're completely expendable. Once your tears have dried, start pre-heating your oven to 375 degrees. Spread your walnuts evenly on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for 5 minutes while it's heating. Keep an eye on them, because nut are jerks and they like going from "not cooked at all" to "charcoal" in about 3 seconds while your back is turned. Don't give them the satisfaction. Once your nuts are toasted it's time to peel your sweet potatoes. Technically you could leave the skin on them. They're not harmful to eat and they have fiber. Then again, the same thing could be said of cardboard, so use your own judgement.

I'm not saying these are delicious enough to make up for
centuries of oppression, but they definitely don't hurt.

Cut your sweet potatoes in half lengthwise, and then cut them in to "half moon" shaped chunks, each about 1/4 inch wide. The goal is to get them all the same size so that they cook at the same rate. Some pieces probably won't conform, but that's okay. It's not like your guests are going to be judging you silently while they eat and talking about all of your failures in the car on the ride home. Once you're done cutting, throw your sweet potatoes in a bowl along with your salt, black pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, oil, and 2 TBSP of your honey. Mix that nonsense together and then spread it flat on a baking sheet in one layer. If it doesn't find, use two baking sheets. If it still doesn't fit, you may need to re-evaluate what you've been calling a "baking sheet." In any case, throw toss your sheets of sweet potatoes into your oven and let them cook for about 20-25 minutes. Once they're soft enough to easily stick a fork through, take them out of the oven and throw them in a bowl along with your walnuts and your last TBSP of honey. Stir that together, and then serve it to your ungrateful friends and family. It's a little spicy, a little sweet, and a whole lot of delicious, and will totally distract from the fact that a bottle of wine disappeared and the kids' table is starting to look a little too festive. Happy Thanksgiving!

Chicken Dog Redemption

Prices subject to change

Some foods just suck. It's best that you learn this fact now and accept it, instead of living a lifetime of foolish optimism only to have your heart broken on the regular by white chocolate. And let's be honest: few things strike as much fear into the hearts of a family than the words "chicken dogs." There's something just kind of...off about them. They're doing their absolute best to convince you that they're totally hot dogs, but all it takes is one bite to remind you that they definitely aren't. Maybe it's something in the texture. They're also crazy cheap. I'm pretty sure that in some of the more sausage-heavy states in the union, it's illegal to charge somebody for chicken dogs. Ending up with chicken dogs is price enough. Which got me thinking that if there were some way to actually make these jellied chicken tubes tasty, it could be an absolute game changer. Fortunately for all of us, I apparently have the kind of free time necessary to make that absurd pipe-dream a reality.

Ingredients:

1 pkg Chicken Dogs
1 32 oz. can Crushed Tomatoes
1 standard issue Onion
1 Bell Pepper
2 cloves Garlic
3 cups Water
1.5 cups Green Lentils
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp Cardamom 
1 average-sized human's pinch of Saffron
Salt
Oil
Cilantro

This dish has layers, both literally and figuratively, but don't let that freak you out. There are pretty much three distinct parts: the lentils, the sauce, and the chicken dogs. It sounds overwhelming, but I cooked it in like 25 minutes, and I didn't even have this recipe to guide me. Also, I had to walk to the store to buy ingredients. In the cold. Uphill, both ways. So step one is to just slow your roll and calm yourself down using whatever combination of breathing, meditation, and opiates you like. Now It's time to make some lentils, and since lentils are pretty much just an uppity kind of split pea, that means we're gonna spend some time washing them. So rinse your lentils and pull out any weird things that may be in there like small stones or tiny tiny bears. Then throw them (the lentils) in a pot along with your water, saffron, and possibly a pinch of salt. Some people say that adding salt in to your lentils too early will make them mushy, and you should add salt in after they cook. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that it's a very small amount of extra work that I have no interest in. Follow your heart. Bring your pot of possibly doomed lentils to a boil, then cover them and cook on low for about 15-20 minutes.

It's been pointed out that a red plate wasn't the best aesthetic
choice, but I'm not made of plates, dag nabbit.

Chop your onion into chunks and, using a deep pan, saute those chunks in oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat. Let them cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, before adding in your chopped bell pepper along with your cumin, black pepper, cayenne, cardamom, oregano, and another pinch of salt. Stir that nonsense together and cook it down for another couple minutes before adding in your garlic, which you've totally minced by now. You can tell you're on the right track if your entire kitchen smells amazing at this point. Let your garlic join in the fun and mingle for about a minute before dousing everything with your crushed tomatoes. Now that your vegetable party has become a pool party, stir it together to get everyone mingling, and keep it on medium heat for about 5 minutes. During this time, take some oil and get it nice and hot in a pan. Then, carefully because the gods of grease fires and third degree burns owe you a smiting, add in your chicken dogs. Let them crisp up for about a minute and a half on each side. They'll bubble up a little bit. This is normal. Well, it's not normal, but it's normal for weird chicken pseudo-sausages. Now it's time to just stack everything together. Lay some lentils down on a plate, slather them with some of your sauce, and then top the whole thing with your crispy chicken dogs. Chop up a little cilantro, throw it on top, and call it a day. Or night, or whatever. I'm not judging.

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Beef Stew

Part headless horseman, part robot apocalypse. Somehow cute

So, Halloween has finally come and gone, which means that it's time for the time honored tradition of buying the discounted garbage pumpkins that grocery stores weren't able to sell to jack-o-lantern obsessed college students and soccer moms. It also means coming to the grim realization that you are the current owner of an estimated 53.7 pounds of pumpkins, and you need to figure out something to do with both of them. Fortunately, pumpkin is kind of super versatile. In this crazy world of pumpkin spiced everything that we live in, we usually only focus on the sweet uses for pumpkin. But pumpkin can go savory, and even spicy. The only limit is your imagination, and the very real possibility of losing all of your friends when you give them a "pumpkin spice latte'" with jalapenos in it.

Ingredients:

1 Pie Pumpkin (the type of pumpkin you use isn't actually of much concern to me. But average pumpkins are about twice the size of pie pumpkins, which are essentially Pomeranian pumpkins, so keep that in mind when deciding how much of your stolen jack-o-lantern you're using)

1 lb. Beef Shank

3 cups Chicken Stock

1 standard-issue Onion

3 ribs Celery

1 Parsnip

1 Chipotle Pepper

2 cloves Garlic

2 Bay Leaves

1/4 tsp Black Pepper

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Salt

The first thing you're going to have to do is to have survived Halloween. Which, if sensationalist fear-mongering news stories are any indication, is no easy feat. You've got satanic cults, razor blades in your candy, neighborhood teens attacking your home and family to try and pry Smarties from your cold dead hands. It's a mess. Fortunately, like everything else you see on TV or read on the internet, that's pretty much a pile of lies (And yes, I'm aware that you read this on the internet. You sniffed out the hidden paradox. Congratulations! Have a pumpkin. They're lying around pretty much everywhere these days). Now that we've established that you're either still alive or too stubborn to let a pesky thing like dying keep you from making this stew, choppity chop up your chipotle pepper, onion and garlic. Rinse off your celery and chop it into chunks before adding it into the party. Then, using whatever vegetable torture device you have handy, remove the skin from your parsnip and pumpkin. Not so smiley now, are they? The parsnip holds its shape pretty well, so you can cut it as big or small as you want to really. The pumpkin, however, doesn't have that kind of structural integrity, so to make sure there's any visible pumpkin left in your stew when it's cooked, cut that thing into large chunks.

Bowl number 1 of the 3 eaten that night. By me.

Now it's time for the "just dump everything together in a slow cooker and walk the crap away from it" portion of the evening. So do that. Toss all of your chopped everything into your slow cooker along with your beef shank, chicken stock, bay leaves, pepper, cinnamon, and a healthy pinch of salt. If you're one of those ghosts we mentioned earlier, use 1.75 unhealthy pinches of salt. Set that sucker to low and find something to do for the next 10 hours or so, because that's how long we're going to let it cook. I recommend sleeping, or taking advantage of the fact that other people are sleeping to go into their homes and move everything two inches to the left. Whatever it is that you people do. Your patience will be rewarded with a delicious, hearty, slightly spicy stew with beef that's fall-apart tender. You can totally top it off with the roasted pumpkin seeds we made last week to double down on your pumpkin deliciousness if you choose. Regardless, this stew is the perfect thing to warm you up to brave the chilly rainy weather and go look at all of the Christmas ads outside. 

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Who doesn't love a nice gourd lobotomy?

It's the end of October, which means that it's that time of year again. That time of year when we have feasts and celebrations, sprinkle the blood of an animal sacrifice on our doorway, and light some bonfires to ensure good luck and keep our cattle alive through the winter. Or at least that's how we did it back in the middle ages in various Celtic countries. Nowadays we celebrate Samhain mostly by freaking out about somebody slipping a razor blade surreptitiously into our kids' M&Ms, and by dressing up as a sexy meerkat. Oh, and pumpkins. We carve human-ish faces into pumpkins, kind of like some sort of grotesque gourd serial killer, and then leave the mutilated pumpkins outside of our houses as a warning to the other vegetables. Which means we're left with the classic serial killer dilemma: what to do with the goopy insides that we methodically removed from our victims.

Ingredients:

1 Pie Pumpkin (A pie pumpkin is a pumpkin typically used for pie making. We've genetically bred them to have characteristics that make them ideal. If sentient gourds from outer space ever visit the Earth, this is what will spark intergalactic war)
1/4 tsp Chili Powder
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
A largish human's pinch of Salt

 The first thing you're going to need to do is dismember an innocent pumpkin. But I've been pretty open about that up to this point and you've made it this far, so I'm going to assume that you're OK with that. So let your pumpkin say goodbye to its loved ones, eat a final meal, and then chop its head off like your name is Robespierre. Or the guy who killed Robespierre. Either way. The point is, pull out all of those gross pumpkin innards. This is where we encounter our first problem. Namely, the fact that pumpkin innards like being innards, and have little-to-no interest in making the leap towards being outards. So, using some unholy combination of kitchen implements, your hands, and more gumption than you can shake a stick at, just do your best. Remember, they say that nobody's perfect. Which just goes to show that there really isn't any excuse for coming in second place. Take your pumpkin guts (Or maybe pumpkin brains? I never really thought about it before) and separate the seeds from the other nonsense. Rinse your seeds off and then get ready for the trouble you're going to have with the rest of the ingredients.

Perfect for snacking while you watch TV, read
a book, or lie to friends about reading books

Haphazardly throw the rest of the ingredients on top of your seeds and mix them together. Not everything has to be a challenge. Spread your seasoned seeds down on a baking sheet. It's important to keep them as close to a single layer as possible. If your pumpkin is abnormally fertile or you're just doubling the recipe, use multiple baking sheets rather than clumping your seeds all together. Bake them in a 300 degree oven for about 30 minutes, making sure to wangjangle them around every ten minutes or so to get even crispiness and no burning. And there you have it! Delicious spiced pumpkin seeds! You also have an entire hollow pumpkin which you can mutilate to your heart's content and leave around neighborhood. Or you can cook it. But more on that next week. Happy cultural appropriation holiday!

Mycenaean Greek Salad

Greece: birthplace of western culture, philosophy, and the
alarm clock, apparently? Life is weird.

Greek salad is interesting. To start with, it's nothing at all like Caesar salad, which just feels kind of wrong. Sure, the Roman and Greek empires were distinct entities, but they share enough commonality that most people blur their culture and deities into each other anyway. But apparently the Romans got super stingy with the salad ingredients. No wonder Caesar got stabbed. Anyhow, authentic Greek salad is noteworthy in that it contains no lettuce, large chunks of cucumber and feta cheese, and usually just some simple olive oil. This isn't authentic Greek salad. Partially because I don't like raw tomatoes enough to base a dish around them, partially because I already had lettuce, and partially because I like a balance of spiciness in my food. So, long story short, this a faux Greek salad. It's got most of the hallmarks of legit Greekness, but it's slightly off, and not really what comes to mind when we envision Greece. Which is why I'm calling it Mycenaean Greek Salad. You're welcome history nerds.

Ingredients:

1 head Romaine Lettuce

1 Cucumber

1 medium sized Tomato

1/2 a Red Onion

6 oz. Feta Cheese

1/2 lb. Kalamata Olives

3 Stuffed Grape Leaves

6 Pickled Hot Peppers (pepperoncini, banana peppers, pickled jalapeno. Whatever floats your capsaicin boat)

1/4 cup Olive Oil

2 TBSP Red Wine Vinegar

2 TBSP Lemon Juice

1 tsp Dried Oregano

1 TBSP Capers

1 clove Garlic

Salt

Yes, that's a lot of ingredients for your food. But fake Greek salads don't make themselves, so step one is to pick yourself up off of the ground, stop hyperventilating, and remember that this is a salad recipe and you don't have to actually cook anything. Step two is chop everything. Start by chopping your lettuce, tomato, and cucumber into large chunks and tossing them in to a bowl. Then finely dice your onion and toss it in there along with your capers. You're already like 50% done with the effort involved in this recipe, so maybe take a second or two now to reflect on how overwhelmed you let an ingredient list make you and maybe sign up for some yoga classes or something. Choppity chop chop your garlic into tiny bits, and then throw it in a bowl with your oil, vinegar, lemon juice, oregano, and an average sized-human's pinch of salt. Stir that nonsense together until it forms a homogeneous gloop. 

Yadda yadda history pun

Pour your dressing (or gloop, if you're being scientific) on top of your lettuce mixture and stir that all together. How much of your dressing? Some people like more dressing. Some like less. I'm not here to teach you deep personal truths about yourself, so you'll need to figure this one out on your own. Once you're done, crumble your feta on top of the salad and toss your olives on top. Then slice your grape leaves in half and, using the soul of an artist, alternate back and forth between grape leaves and hot peppers on top of your salad in a big circle around the edges. All the great artists made circles out of grape leaves. I promise. So you probably should too, unless you don't want to stand out and have your greatness recognized. You know, like a Phoenician (you're welcome again history nerds). And that's all there is to it! And who cares that some food snobs will undoubtedly point out that this isn't an authentic Greek salad? You've got delicious salad. What do they have? Probably typhoid.

Apple Fennel Turkey Meatballs

Tastes just like grandma's famous Potato Pumpkin Pie.
There's a reason we don't visit her. 

People are talking about pumpkin spice lattes again, so it must be fall. And that means that it's time for my annual tradition of not caring about pumpkin spice lattes. I just don't get the fascination, both by the supporters and by the haters. I mean, I agree that throwing a fistful of ground cloves at absolutely everything to call it "pumpkin spice" is stupid, but why do people get so emotionally invested in it? At this time, when our country is more absurd and divided than ever by idiots shouting over each other, we can't have food dividing us further. Fortunately, some things are so delicious that they can bridge the divide. Turkey meatballs, with fennel, apple, and other goodness in them is a good start. You can sit down with your neighbor, eat delicious food, and come to realize that all of your problems aren't so problematic after all. And besides, shouldn't you band together and work for your mutual betterment, and the eventual destruction of those ambiguously evil jerks from two blocks over?

Ingredients:

3 lb. Ground Turkey
2 Eggs
2 Fennel Bulbs
1 Apple (There are so many different kinds of apples these days. I don't begrudge that. I love apples and I love variety, so as far as I'm concerned it's the best time to be alive, no matter what those cranberry farmers on the Ocean Spray commercials have to say about it. So what kind of apple do you use? There aren't really any wrong answers, but if you can I'd go for something mildly sweet and a little tart)
1 largish Onion
1 clove Garlic
1 jar Marina Sauce (Most jars of marinara you buy at any supermarket are about the same size. Roughly 25 oz. which is what you're going for here. If you have weird atypically sized sauce, figure it out. Have fun with your math, sucker!)
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Salt
Oil

The first thing you're going to need to do is clean all of the random detritus leftover from summer out of your kitchen and out of your life. We're talking sand, flower tiaras, songs about "feeling it" and "tonight." It's all got to go. You're cooking delicious hearty food to keep you warm at night. Roll up your flannel sleeves, put on a song about the days getting shorter or about not being young anymore, and get to work choppity chop chopping your onion and fennel. Heat up some oil in a sauté pan and toss them in there along with an average sized human's pinch of salt. Cook that nonsense, stirring occasionally, for about 7 minutes, until everything starts to get kind of golden brown, soft, and smells delicious, Chop your garlic into itty bits and toss it in that party for about a minute, and then turn the heat off.

It tastes as good as it looks. Unlike that wax fruit debacle

Mix together your turkey, eggs, and black pepper in a bowl. Grate your apple, drain at least half of the juice that comes out of it, and then toss it in to your jive turkey mixture. Then add in half of the contents of your fennel and onion pan, and splorp that nonsense together until it's all homogenous, and it starts to make some truly awful sucking noises. Grease up some baking sheets, and then start rolling out balls of your turkey goop, each about the size of a ping pong ball. Getting them all close to the same size is a good thing, because then they'll all cook evenly over the same period of time. Toss them in a 425 degree oven and bake those goop balls for about 15 minutes, or until they start to get a little bit charred, and they're cooked through. Throw your marina sauce in to your onion and fennel pan, and bring that up to a simmer. Salt and pepper it to taste, and then throw in your cooked balls of turkey deliciousness. Get everything coated and, if you've got the time, let the flavors get to know each other for 5 minutes or so. Then eat it. Then thank me. Then shut up about how much you love/hate the summer ending, or dumb food trends, or any politician. Nobody cares. Eat some turkey meatballs.

Mozzarella Sticks

The best way I've found to get giant unmarked slabs of cheese
is to steal 'em from work. So go shanghai yourself some dairy

Cheese. To some it's a source of nutrition, to others pure flavor. And some people just like taunting milk-producing animals by eating dairy products right in front of their faces. And, as the internet taught us in the early 2000s that there's only so much milk you can drink before bad things happen to you and anyone in your immediate vicinity, cheese is the ideal cow-taunting foodstuff. The one thing I know for sure is that cheese is delicious, versatile, and actively in my fridge at this very moment. And everything is better fried, so mozzarella sticks were pretty much destined to happen. Don't fight destiny. You'll piss off a deity and then the Greeks will have to build a giant wooden horse. It'll be a mess, and it's not worth the hassle.

Ingredients:

Mozzarella Cheese
Seasoned Breadcrumbs
Eggs
Flour
Smoked Paprika
Salt
Oil (something with a neutral flavor and a high smoke point, like peanut oil. Any oil recommended for frying should be good though)

The first thing you may notice upon close inspection is the there are no amounts of anything. Welcome to the wonderful world of winging it. Because we're talking mozzarella sticks here. This is something you should be making until you run out of everything, not until the arbitrary amount of food to complete a recipe is reached. You need flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs to coat the cheese, paprika and salt to season those coverings, and oil to fry it in. You should have about a teaspoon each of salt and paprika for every cup of flour. Beyond that, I have the utmost faith you'll persevere, and fully indemnify against legal action in the event that you set yourself or your loved ones on fire.

Sriracha added for deliciousness purposes

On to the construction. Cut your cheese into rectangular prisms. I like a size of about a half inch by a half inch by 4 inches, but as long as your hunks of cheese are all roughly the same as each other, follow your heart. Mix together your flour, paprika, and salt, and then coat your cheese prisms in it. Mercilessly beat your eggs, then dunk your floury cheese into them, then into your breadcrumbs, then back to your eggs, and back one more time to your breadcrumbs. Confused? You shouldn't be. It's flour, eggs, breadcrumbs, eggs, breadcrumbs. Then lay out your crumby cheese on a baking sheet and freeze it for at least 2 hours. Once they're solidly frozen, heat up your oil over medium heat and get to frying. About one minute on each side should do it, but you can also go by how delicious they look, smell, and taste. Either way. Then just top them with the marinara, hot sauce, or nothing of your choice and eat them until your loved ones think you have a serious problem. You know, the ones you haven't set on fire yet. Enjoy!

Lettuce Wraps

Not pictured: the 20+ boxes behind me

Food has a magical quality. A good home-cooked meal can help make you feel at home even when you're on some godforsaken rock somewhere waiting for your connecting flight to some garbage place like New Jersey. That's why it's a little disappointing that my kitchen at my new apartment isn't quite functional. You see, there was a mix up where the gas company actually wanted to read the meters, but the meters were hidden from passing meter bandits behind a locked door to which I don't have a key. Who could have guessed, right? At least those pesky meter marauders won't catch me with my metaphorical pants down. Or eating any food cooked in my kitchen. But times of hardship show us what we're really made of. Innovation, determination, and several other importation "ations" can let you have the comfort of a delicious home-cooked meal despite not having the ability to technically cook. Oh, and for those of you interested, it turns out I'm mostly made of oxygen and reruns of 90s sitcoms.

Ingredients:

1 Rotisserie Chicken (Yes, grocery store chicken is totally a thing. In dire circumstances it can be super useful, and if you take the time to doctor it up a bit it can be tasty and versatile as well. But if you're not careful you'll end up regularly eating grocery store chicken. And that's exactly what my hardy forebears left their turnip infested homeland to avoid)

1/3 cup Coconut Milk

3 TBSP Natural Peanut Butter (In general, you're looking for peanut butter with little-to-no added sugars. If you can't find it or don't want it, just leave out the honey. Oh, retroactive spoiler alert. There'll be honey)

1 tsp grated Ginger

1 tsp grated Garlic

1 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar

1/2 tsp Soy Sauce

1/2 tsp Honey

Lettuce (You're looking for any lettuce with leaves that are big and pliable enough to use as a food receptacle. I like a little bitterness and crunch, so I used radicchio and some bibb lettuce. You use what you like)

Green Onions

Since we're not, technically speaking, cooking anything here, the first step is to get a bowl. We're mixing a bunch of crap together, and you can't mix nonsense without some kind of bowl. Winston Churchill said that. So take your British bowl of freedom and unceremoniously dump in your peanut butter, coconut milk, ginger, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, and honey. Pretty much everything except for the chicken, green onions, and lettuce. Stir all of that together until it forms a kind of beige homogenous goop. Set your bowl of beige aside for the moment and get cracking on your chicken. You're going to want to take the meat and get to shredding. If it's hot, you can totally do this with two forks, using an awkward jerking motion like you're a T-Rex trying to bust out some sweet dance moves. If your forks are lost somewhere in a sea of boxes that is your life right now, you can totally do this by hand. Maybe make sure to buy some soap and paper towels first, because if you don't know where your forks are, who knows what else is lost in the cardboard abyss?

Adding insult to the injury of my not-quite kitchen is how
much better this kitchen is than my last one. 

Pretty much all that's left is the assembly. Take your vaguely cup-shaped leaf of lettuce and fill it up with your shredded chicken. You want to stuff as much in there as you can without risking it all falling out when you try to pick it up and eat it. Then liberally splorp on your peanut goop. Use a little bit more than you think you should. The top may look like it's got a bunch of sauce, but if you're anything like me then your pile of chicken runs deep. Also it's where most of the flavor is coming from, and why settle for less flavor? Finally, thinly slice some green onions and sprinkle them on top. All that's left is to settle on to your couch in front of your TV and eat while you pretend like you're totally going to unpack something during the commercial break. See you next week! You know, assuming I can find my computer.

Roasted Elotes

We use corn for so many crazy things in America that it's
even starting to weird out the other vegetables

Corn is everywhere, especially in the midwest. Some of you sticklers for language might be thinking "there's no such thing as gradient levels of 'everywhere,'"and you'd think that would be the case. But you're wrong. Go to any grocery store. Look at ingredients. Corn is everywhere. Then go to the midwest and drive for 30 miles in literally any direction. I rest my case. Fortunately, corn is also absurdly delicious, and is kind of synonymous with Summer, which it technically is in case the absurd heat and gaggles of unruly children roaming the streets wasn't enough of a clue for you. The point is, we're being invaded by delicious corn, and it's our duty as patriotic Americans to eat the heck out of it to thin out its numbers so that we don't get completely overrun and end up slaves to our corn overlords, working in a butter mine in Montana.

Ingredients:

4 Ears Corn
4 oz. Cotija Cheese (If you can't find Cotija, you can replace it with Feta, but it won't be quite the same)
1/4 cup Mayo
1/4 cup Sour Cream
2 Limes
2 cloves Garlic
1 tsp Chile Powder
1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp Kosher Salt

I've managed to make some pretty easy food here once or twice. Once I just mashed up a couple of fruits and froze their goop. This isn't the easiest recipe I've ever made, but it may be the easiest recipe I've ever made that actually requires any cooking. So first thing's first, heat your oven to 400 degrees and toss your corn in, husks and all. You don't even need any bourgeoise luxuries like a pan. Just throw them straight on your oven racks and leave them there for 45 minutes. Which is awesome because, firstly, there's no dishes to clean up, and secondly you now have 45 minutes to prep everything else. 40 minutes later, after you suddenly realize that you completely forgot about your corn because you got sucked in to whatever reality TV show you're addicted to this week, run to your kitchen with a nervous energy that really has no place near sharp knives. Take a sharp knife and chop the bejeezus out of your garlic. You really want to get it fine. Otherwise you're going to end up biting into a giant chunk of uncooked garlic later, which will end up being bad for you and everyone who has to talk to you for the rest of the day.

I wouldn't recommend letting these sit around for too long if
you're not eating 'em right away. This has yet to be a problem.

Combine your mayo, garlic, sour cream, cheese, and the juice from your limes together (oh yeah, you've got to juice your limes. So go retroactively have done that). In a separate container combine your chile powder, paprika cayenne, and salt. You're pretty much good to go. Like I said, easy. Once your corn is cooked all the way through take it out of the oven and pull the husks off of it. If you have delicate, sensitive, effeminate hands that can't handle second degree burns, use a towel for this. Either way, leave the husk at the bottom of the corn so that you can use it as a handle, and take your delicious snack on the go. This allows you the fun of eating your hot food outside in the Summer heat. You know, where the sun is blazing down on you in its endless struggle to murder you. Anyhow, immediately slather your cream mixture on to the hot corn, and then sprinkle it with your spice mixture. I'm a fan of citrus, so I squirt on a little extra lime juice at the end, but that part's optional. And that's it! You've got a snack that's delicious, filling, and a service to your country. You're technically a veteran now.

Pickles 2: The Ginger-ing

All you vegetables are just pickles to me

Pickles are awesome. This is an undeniable fact. Some of you might remember that I have strong feelings about pickles, because I've actually totally made them before on this very blog. To be honest, that might be my favorite post that I've made, and not just because of the multiple links to the exact same video clip from the Little Rascals. I'd say it's like 50/50 delicious easy pickles and Little Rascals. The point is, last week when I was supposed to be sitting home alone writing a blog post in a pile of sadness caused by not traveling, I totally was in south Florida instead. It was incredible despite, technically, being in Florida (The gator wrestling capital of the world). And while I was there I ate at a restaurant that served me the best damn pickles I've ever had in my life. I seriously considered asking for the recipe. And by "seriously considered," I mean "I totally did, but they shot me down." You know, like when a guy at work seriously considered asking out Candace from accounting. The point is, they wouldn't give me the recipe. And I only know one solution to that sort of rejection.

Ingredients:

1 English Cucumber (While the nationality of your produce isn't really my business, in general English cucumbers don't have big seeds, and are longer and narrower. All of which are good things since we're going to be cutting everything in to bite-sized slices. So just this once, god save the queen)
2 standard-issue Carrots
1 Red Onion
3 cloves Garlic
1 standard-issue hunk of Ginger
1.5 cups Water
1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
3 TBSP Salt
1.5 TBSP Honey
2 tsp Black Peppercorns
1/2 tsp Saffron threads
1 Star Anise pod
1 Lime

Now, I just want to be clear. I started experimenting with weird pickle flavors because of the pickles at this restaurant, but I didn't re-create them. Much like Jack Black said, this is just a tribute. A tribute which happened to turn out tasty and super easy to make, which worked out as a nice bonus. That said, the first thing you're going to have to do is make your brine. So throw your water, vinegar, peppercorns, honey, salt, and star anise in a pot and set them to boil. Yes, boiling vinegar will make your whole kitchen smell like vinegar. Yes, it'll be worth it for the food. Plus, you neighbors will stop complaining about you never inviting them over for meals. While this is going down it's time to deal with your vegetables. Peel and roughly chop your ginger and garlic and throw them in to some container with a lid. Peel your carrot and slice it into thin rings. Similarly, slice your cucumber into thin rings, and then peel your onion and slice it in to...not rings. Cut your onion in half and then just slice it relatively thinly. The exactitude of each knife cut isn't important. These are pickles. They'll turn out ok even if they look a little weird, just like children. Just make them bite-sized and as uniform as you can, and then throw them in your container along with your saffron. Slice your lime, add it in to the party, and you're like 99% done with this recipe.

Delicious on tacos. Or burgers. Or cardboard.

Once your brine boils, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or so. Then dump it all over your jar of vegetables. Let the whole mess get down to room temperature before throwing a lid on it and dumping it in to your fridge. Now here's the deal. Since you cut everything thinly, these pickles will take shape pretty quickly. After about 4 hours they should already taste pretty pickley and delicious. That said, the longer they sit, the more intense flavors will get packed in to them. They should last for a couple of weeks in the fridge. Or, more accurately, if they were in your fridge for a couple of weeks they'd still be good to eat. There's no way they're actually going to last in your fridge for more than a couple of days though. They're just so tasty. Also, pickles are super refreshing on a hot day. Which is all that Florida knows how to do, I think. The locals there start wearing heavy coats and boots when it drops below 80. I'm pretty sure it would take me all day to explain to them the concept of what snow even is. Anyhow, happy pickling!

Cheddar Spaghetti Squash Casserole

"Sometimes life hands you an unreasonable amount of cheese. It is up to each of us as occasionally upright members of the human race to determine how we'll react. Will we let sloth and time turn that cheese to mold while it sits unused in the refrigerator, or will we take bold action? Create something great from nothing, and leave a legacy for the future?"

Rare portrait of Washington kicking the British apart.

When George Washington said these words, they were met with applause by an enthusiastic young nation, tired of war and eager for a prosperous tomorrow. They were also met with some confusion, since the refrigerator wouldn't be invented for another 50 years or so. Which only makes it more inspiring. And it's just as relevant today as it was then. It speaks to our will, determination, and perseverance. When you've got an apartment full of discount cheese from the back of a van and misshapen produce sent to you by the internet, what are you to do? This. This is what you're to do.


Ingredients:

2 reasonably sized Spaghetti Squash 
3 Cups Broccoli Florets (If you want you can totally use fresh broccoli, cutting the florets off and then steaming them before using them in this recipe. But for an application like this, I'm totally cool with using frozen broccoli from a bag that you let defrost. Follow your heart)
3 Cups Cheddar Cheese Sauce (The best way to get cheese sauce is to steal it from work, like I did. If you get caught by security, I've mentioned the method behind making it here. And also here)
1.5 TBSP Pickled Jalapeños 
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Chili Powder
Salt
Olive Oil

The first thing you're going to have to do is deal with your spaghetti squash. If you haven't used this ingredient before, don't worry. It's pretty cool, and also pretty easy to work with, which is cool in and of itself. So it's cool squared (Math puns!) but we still have to prep it a little bit. Cut each of your squash in half with a cold and pitiless stare. Then, with grim efficiency, scoop all of their seeds and guts out in to the trash. Rub the dismembered squash corpses down with your garlic powder, black pepper, chili powder, olive oil, and a large human's pinch of salt. Throw that nonsense in a 375 degree oven for about an hour. While you're cooking your squash, it's time to deal with your cheese sauce. Heat it up over medium heat. Roughly chop your jalapeños, and throw them in to the party so that their flavor can really get in there. Taste it and add salt if needed. That seemed like an hour's worth of work, right? If you have time left over, feel free to use it solving international crises, fighting crime, or sitting motionlessly on your couch while staring at a rectangle on your wall. Whatever floats your boat.

Florescent lighting notwithstanding, that's some
Grade-A deliciousness right there.  

Once your squash is cooked and out of the oven, take two forks and get ready to go to gourd town. As the name might have indicated to some of you, spaghetti squash has this weird thing where it breaks up into strands with roughly the same shape as spaghetti noodles. So shred the crap out of it until you have a big pile of vegetable based pasta substitute. Discard the peel (It knows what it did) and throw your squash strands into a bowl along with your broccoli and your sauce. Splorp that all together until it looks relatively uniform and it makes unpleasant squishing noises. Spread your cheesy gourd goop evenly into a baking dish and throw it a 400 degree oven for about 1/2 an hour. Your telltale signs that it's done are the cheese bubbling and turning a darker color, the edges getting crispy and browned, and it smelling up your entire apartment with deliciousness at 2 in the morning. Then pull it out of the oven, try to resist immediately digging in to the burning hot cheesy goodness, fail, treat your burns in order of severity, and repeat!

Crock Pot Pastrami

You may as well call this pastrami Suleiman the Magnificent.
Because of its distinctive onion hat. Historical puns!

There's something to be said for food so easy to make that a blindfolded dog with some pretty severe physical handicaps stands a chance of getting it right. Aside from the obvious benefit of cheap canine labor, sometimes you just don't have the energy to make anything real. And so you end up eating take out, or ramen, or take out ramen. But not the actual delicious Japanese dish of noodles, meat, broth, and whatnot. Takeout top ramen from a plastic pouch. Because I'm sure hipsters have invented that restaurant by now. The point is, we make bad decisions when we're tired and hungry. Fortunately, with a small bit of planning you can turn reasonably few ingredients into absurdly delicious food. Also, I've been making a bunch of healthy food lately, so it kind of feels good to just make a giant slab of red meat.

Ingredients:

1 Whole Pastrami (Any reasonable deli or butcher counter should be able to get you this. Mine is about 2.5 pounds. It's literally just the entire slab of meat that they'd slice pastrami from if you ordered it like a normal person)

2 Carrots

2 Zucchini 

1 Standard Issue Onion 

2 Cloves Garlic

2 tsp Olive Oil

1 TBSP Water

1 Standard Issue Human's pinch of Black Pepper

Salt

So, the first thing you'll notice about this recipe is that it's barely a recipe at all. Remember, the idea is to make something easy and delicious. So we're taking an already cooked piece of delicious smoked meat, and gently heating it to render out all of the fat and make it absurdly tasty. We're also throwing vegetables on the bottom to soak up all of that smoky, peppery goodness as it cooks out of the pastrami. Kind of like a turducken, if you don't think about the fact that it's in no way like a turducken. Anyway, the first step on your path to glory is to cut your zucchini and carrot into chunks. Personally, I prefer cutting them into rings. They're large enough to not just turn in to mush, but small enough to easily grab with a fork. But ultimately the star here is the meat, so the way you cut the vegetables that are here to play backup to said meat really isn't that important, no matter what their IMDB pages say. Dice up your onion and garlic, and toss all of that veg in the bottom of a crock pot (And no, i don't care what brand of slow cooker you use. But crock pot has become the generic term. If I needed a kleenex, I wouldn't ask you for a generic facial tissue of your choice, so just shut it). Add in your oil, water, and black pepper, and get ready for the existential dread you'll feel about salt.

Breakfast of champions. Maybe not the champions who
win awards, but certainly the ones who win at life.

So here's the deal. Good pastrami is already pretty salty. You're still going to need to add in a little bit to season the vegetables, but how much kind of depends on your starting point. You can estimate based on your previous pastrami experiences, assuming you've had any, you can just slice off a piece of pastrami and taste it to get a feel for its saltiness, or you can wildly speculate based on nothing. No matter which of these methods you choose, you've got about a 50/50 chance of getting it right, but at least you'll feel better knowing that you tried. Kind of. Anyhow, salt your vegetables, and stir that nonsense up. Then toss your pastrami haphazardly on top of that mess, preferably with the fatty side facing down, and let it cook on low for about 6 hours. You'll know it's ready when you literally get woken up by the deliciousness wafting down the hall and realize that you fell asleep while you were supposed to be cooking food for your blog. Then shred that meat up with any forks, bare hands, bear hands, or other implements of culinary destruction you have lying around, and enjoy! Don't let the fact that it's 90 degrees outside stop you.

Savory Sweet Potatoes

Cayenne is shy, but was socially obligated to be in the picture

Happy 4th of July! It's a special time of year when we Americans prepare burnt offerings for Uncle Sam in hopes that he wakes from his enchanted slumber and smites our enemies. And like any good holiday, it's got a pretty heavy food component to it. The traditional fare is usually grilled meats, like burgers, hot dogs, chicken, which are awesome, but it's side dishes that really make it in to a festive event. Think about it this way: if you were on the run from zombies, or ninjas, or gluten or whatever, and you had to stop briefly to make food, you'd totally char some meat over a trash can fire. But you probably wouldn't make cole slaw, potato salad, and succotash. Or sweet potatoes, which brings us to today (roll credits).

Ingredients:

4 Sweet Potatoes

1.5 TBSP Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Chili Powder
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Salt
Black Pepper

The first thing you're going to need to do is get over your hangups. There's often a stereotype of men doing the grilling of meat, and of being weirdly territorial over their grills. Other men are forced to sit in huddled groups talking about classically manly things (killing spiders, Babe Ruth, and Monty Python), while women are relegated to the kitchen to prepare vegetables and talk about traditionally female things (eating salads, dealing with Time Warner Cable, and multi-tasking). Personally, I doubt that this is an actual phenomenon that ever happens outside of television ads and sitcoms. Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of people stupid enough to insist based on some weird gender-based pride that they have to do a specific job. I just don't know anybody willing to play along, especially when that means eating subpar food on a rare day off in the summer, just to satisfy some idiot's need to feel important and special. Anyway, the point is peel your sweet potatoes, and cut them in to long thin wedges, roughly shaped like french fries. Congratulations, you've done like 90% of the work for this recipe.

Delicious, healthy-ish, and orange. Living the dream.

Take all of your spices and mix them together into a giant spice concoction. Or blend. Or whatever. Dump that nonsense into a bowl along with your sweet potato wedges and your oil. Mix until everything's coated, and then spread your sweet potatoes out on to a couple of baking sheets, keeping them in one layer as much as is possible. Throw that into a 400 degree oven for 35 minutes, and you're pretty much done. All that's left is to eat your delicious sweet potatoes along with your traditional meal of beer, charred meats, pickles, and beer. And to watch a fireworks display, in which we fire explosive devices into the sky, symbolizing the American dream to eventually wage war on the clouds and bring their sky-treasure back as tribute. Happy 4th of July!

Honey Mustard Parsnips and Carrots

A rare image of wild parsnips running amok

Parsnips are interesting things. If you're not aware, they're the albino-carrot looking things that you walk past without buying at the grocery store. Which seems crazy, because parsnips have a kind of nutty, peppery flavor that's completely delicious. The thing is though, it makes sense that you'd overlook them. They're kind of like the root vegetable equivalent of chameleons. Or maybe ninjas. They just seem to blend in perfectly with whatever you cook them with. Also, they may have played a role in assassinating several feudal lords of ancient Japan. And sure, that last thing I said probably isn't true, but we don't know for sure. Uncertainty is a powerful tool, for man and root vegetable alike. Anyhow, the point is that parsnips aren't carrots. Despite this, they do taste good with carrots. Which just goes to prove the old adage: if two things look similar, you should probably put them together and eat them.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Carrots

1 lb. Parsnips

1 TBSP Honey

2 TBSP Dijon Mustard

3 TBSP Olive Oil

Salt 

Black Pepper

The first thing you're going to need to do is get over the fact that we're cooking root vegetables in late June. Sometimes life throws you curveballs. Sometimes those lifeballs come in the form of a semi-regular box of misshapen produce that you're paying to have delivered to your apartment, and in the weird produce choices that said box has been stocked with this week. You can sit and cry about it, like the family of an assassinated Japanese feudal lord, or you can make something great out of your random box of assorted nonsense. So grab your vegetables, peel them, and get to chopping. Now carrots and parsnips tend to be skinny at one end and fat at the other. Skinny chunks of food cook faster than large chunks of food, and since we want all of our food to finish cooking at the same time we're going to have to deal with that. I like to cut them in half to make them easier to work with, a principle which I apply to many of my culinary and business dealings. Then I halve the skinny ends, and I quarter the fat ends. Once you've finished your root vegetable trigonometry, toss them into a bowl along with a smallish pinch of pepper, a large pinch of salt, and 2 TBSP of your olive oil. Throw that mess on to a baking tray, doing your best to keep it in a single layer, and then toss it in to a 400 degree oven for 1/2 an hour. 

This here is why the rice kingdoms fell

Halfway through this process, make sure to take everything back out of the oven, stir it all around, and ineffectually poke at the vegetables with a fork while contemplating whether they'll finish cooking in time. After contemplatively staring at your parsnips for about 2 and a half minutes, throw it all back in the oven for the rest of the cook time. Stir together your honey, mustard, and the rest of your oil until they form a homogenous goop. After your half hour of cooking is up, pour that goop all over your vegetables, stir that nonsense together, and throw it back in the oven for another 15 minutes. You'll know it's done when you start to get some color on the vegetables, everything around your oven begins to smell fantastic, and when 15 minutes have passed. And that's it! Or, well mostly it. Take your vegetables out of the oven. And that's it! Serve them as a snack, a side dish, or a warning to the shinobi tribes operating in the shadows of your local produce store.