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!

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!

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.

Strawberry Banana Bites

Dramatic reenactment: every picture on the internet ever

A while back a sensation took the internet by storm. To be fair, it's not all that hard to take the internet by storm. Cats and babies do it on a regular basis. But this happened to catch my eye. People make fake ice cream by blending frozen bananas with other flavorings. According to vegan hipster adherents to the trend, it's totally incredible and it tastes exactly like ice cream, and isn't nature wonderful, and by the way if you're not vegan you're basically a war criminal but worse. According to literally everyone else, it's kind of cool. And it tastes...like bananas. If you're expecting ice cream, don't get your hopes up, but if you like bananas then go for it. You see, the thing is, I do like bananas. But since the ice cream thing is a flop anyway, I figured why not blend it up with something that actually tastes good with bananas? And also why bother blending it all up in to an ice cream shape if it doesn't taste like ice cream? Also, I may not have a blender.

Ingredients:

4 Bananas

1 lb. Strawberries

Some of the more mathematically gifted amongst you may have come to the realization that there's not a whole bunch going on in the ingredient department. That's because there doesn't need to be. Bananas are delicious. So are strawberries. They taste great together. End of story. Except I haven't told you how to make them yet, so more like beginning of story. End of the intro of the story? All I know for sure is that the story begins with bananas. As they ripen, bananas turn from green to yellow, and finally to brown. If you leave them too long, to black. If you leave them way too long, probably back to green again. This is important for us to know because bananas also get sweeter as they ripen, as the starch in them is broken down in to fructose. As you may recall, our recipe doesn't have much in the way of ingredients, so we want to make the ones we have count. This is all a long drawn out way of saying that you should make sure to use ripe, sweet bananas. There shouldn't be any green on them, and you should have some brown spots marring the yellow of your peel. Then wash your strawberries, lovingly chop off their green leafy heads, and throw them in a bowl with your bananas.

So what if I like it when my food tries to high five me?

Take your favorite implement of destruction, be it forks, your bare hands, or miscellaneous, and mash the crap out of your bowl of fruit. It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth, but you shouldn't have any major lumps anywhere. Think of it like jazz. If it's too rough, nobody will be able to appreciate the awesomeness. If it's too smooth it loses all of its character and becomes flat and uninteresting. Got it? Good, now let's never speak of this analogy again. Throw that nonsense in the freezer, and then take it out again after about 45 minutes. Mix it together again, breaking up any clumps and crystallization that may have formed. Then splorp it in to some ice cube trays, or the silicon molds you may have bought during your last adventure that you still aren't sick of. Freeze them until they're solid and then enjoy. They're delicious, fairly healthy, and technically frozen which makes them perfect for absurdly hot days. Speaking of which, it's supposed to be in the mid 90s in this weekend in Chicago. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you let me stay at your place this weekend, I'll totally bring you frozen fruit mush. Chicagoans need not apply. 

Kalamata salad

Life can be hard. It can just sort of wear you down until you feel trapped in an endless routine, demoralized and dissatisfied. I'm speaking about other people's lives, obviously, because I'm somehow on like my 4th vacation so far this year. And it's only May. It's been kind of a whirlwind of a year, and I'm still not entirely sure how/if I managed to afford it all. But here I am, sitting on a Mediterranean beach, playing guitar, and actively waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eventually this will all come to an end, reality will butt its stupid face into my business, and I'll end up cleaning chimneys or something to retroactively finance my life of raging excess and occasional Airbnb use. All I'll have left will be the memories, the recipes inspired by my travels, and probably cirrhosis of the liver. Good times.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Baby Spinach (the adult spinach leaf has a darker color and a rougher texture, making the infant Spinach the easier prey)
2 Tomatoes
1 smallish Red Onion
1.5 cups pitted Kalamata Olives
2 cloves Garlic
1/3 cup Lemon Juice
1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1.5 tsp Dijon Mustard
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper

The first thing you're going to have to do is come to terms with the fact that you're going to eat a salad. Sure, salad is essentially a pile of leaves and other detritus that was probably first eaten as some sort of prank, but it's also allegedly healthy. Eating it, instead of real food, can help you live a longer, healthier life. A long life...full of salad. Yay? Once you've come to terms with this grim reality, we can work on making our salad not suck. Peel your onion and then cut it into quarters. Then thinly sliced those quarters and disdainfully toss them into a bowl. Remove the white core from your tomatoes, then chop them (the tomatoes) in to chunks and add them in to your bowl of disdain. Make sure your Spinach is dry, then throw it in there too, along with your olives. You're pretty much done at this point. Say what you will about salad, but it's super easy to make.

Actual salad for humans

It's time to talk about dressing. Many people who want to eat more salad despite the fact that it's salad will try and disguise it with a ton of sugar and fat. While this is tasty, it kind of ruins the entire point of eating salad in the first place (health concerns and/or masochism), at which point you may as well just eat a burger or some ice cream, because it's got the same nutritional value and will taste much better. So we're going to get our deliciousness from less contradictory sources. Torture lemons until you've got your 1/3 cup of juice. Then combine it with your oil, mustard, salt, pepper, and a tsp of the juice your olives were sitting in. Then choppity chop your garlic into tiny bits and add it in to the party. If you let this dressing sit in the fridge for a day or two it'll get even better, but you can totally use it right away. Just mix the whole thing together, toss it on your salad as needed, and consume. Congratulations! You successfully outwitted nature, and ate something both healthy and tasty. Stupid nature.

Citrus Ginger Tea

I feel like this looks like one of those cheap
"disguise glasses" you'd get at joke shops.

People like tea. I mean, empires have clashed and wars have been waged over it. I don't see it myself. I mean, tea is pretty good, I'm just not prepared to die for it. Then again, I've never been a colonial American or a 17th century Portuguese sailor. Both of those things sound kind of horrible, so maybe tea was all they really had going for them. Fortunately, these days we all have pretty easy access to tea, and hardly anybody has to die at all. Which is one of the many reasons I never even contemplated the idea of making it myself until a demon plague which knows no end infested my body and caused me to start coughing with disconcerting frequency and never ever stop unless I can find someone else to transfer the curse to. The point is, with the level of tea consumption I've got going on, mitigating costs and maximizing flavor becomes more of a concern. The fact that it forces ginger, citrus, and other important internet health fads into my system is just a...bonus I guess?

Ingredients:

1 Orange
1 Lemon
1 Ginger (Ginger grows in weird misshapen clumps that easily break off into smaller clumps. People at grocery stores often take advantage of this. Just get a clump that's roughly the size of a travel shampoo bottle)
1 Star Anise Pod
Water
Honey

The first thing you may have noticed about this tea is that it lacks some of the main ingredients people associate with tea, such as tea. Personally, I don't actually consume caffeine because I'm what medical professionals refer to as "crazypants," so this doesn't have any tea leaves in it. But if you want to add some jolt to it, green tea should go pretty well with these flavors. So the first thing you're going to do is cut the peels off of your orange and lemon in large strips. Next, cut your ginger in slices, about a 1/4 of an inch thick. Now, if you want tea once, this is the vast majority of the work you need to do. If you want reasonably shelf-stable tea for the foreseeable future, there are a couple of extra steps. If you want to dry your citrus and ginger for later, throw them on a sheet pan and put them in a 200 degree oven for about an hour and a half. Feel free to double or triple the amount so that you've got more dried goodness in the end. Chop them up, throw them in a sealable jar, and break out your mix every time that your throat starts to feel a little rough, or you start coughing. So every couple minutes if you're me, assuming I haven't sacrificed a fatted calf on a hilltop to get rid of this curse yet.

No one has ever been able to adequately explain to me why
honey comes out of a plastic bear. But as you can see, I'm
having none of that nonsense.

Regardless of whether you're using your ginger and citrus fresh or dried, when it's time for you to make your tea you've got the option of wrapping everything in cheesecloth so that it stays together and is easy to take out, or just tossing it all in there and straining it out later. If you're using the dried stuff then toss in about a tablespoon of it. If you're using the fresh stuff, about 3 slices of ginger, and the peel from half of an orange and lemon. Either way you're adding in your anise, and tossing it into a pot with 2.5 cups of water in it. Bring that all to a boil, then cover it and reduce the heat down to low. Let it cook for about 5 minutes, then turn the heat off and let it steep for another 5. Now all that's left is for you to pour that nonsense in to a cup, add in honey and juice from your naked lemon to your liking, consume, and tax the crap out of it until somebody revolts.

Red Lentil Stew

"Yes!"

Some tragedies in life are inescapable. Illness. War. Being forced to listen to some idiot droning on about their political opinions at a party that you didn't even want to come to in the first place. This comes to mind because I've been mildly sick for a while now. And sure, I'm glad that I'm not deathly ill. But there's something awful about being just a little bit sick. Sick enough that you feel like crap and don't want to go do anything, but not sick enough that you feel justified in canceling plans or calling in sick. So you slog through your life, make something hot and delicious to make yourself feel better, and keep on praying for the sweet release of, I don't know, a snow day or maybe a land war in one of the less populous states like Montana. But those lazy Canadians never deliver, and you're left to force a smile and pretend like you don't hate everyone around you. So pretty much like normal.

Ingredients:

1.25 cups Red Lentils

1/4 cup of Water

1 standard-issue Onion

5 Tomatoes

1 Jalapeño Pepper

5 cloves Garlic

1/2 of a Lemon

1 TBSP Grated Ginger

1 TBSP Olive Oil

1 tsp Ground Cumin

1 tsp Smoked Paprika

1/2 tsp Turmeric

1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper 

5 Cardamom Pods

1 Cinnamon Stick

Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is wash your lentils. Like, a lot. More than you'd think you should have to. See, lentils are essentially just an uppity kind of split pea, and much like their split pea cousins, lentils have a love affair with dirt. They cling to dirt like their little lives depend on it, and it takes some effort to get them (the lentils) to just move on with their lives already. Once you've got that taken care of, choppity chop your onion up and then toss it in a pan along with your cinnamon, cardamom, your oil and a gentleman's pinch of salt over medium heat. Let that cook for a couple minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to color a bit. Now it's time to add in your ginger and your jalapeño which you've hypothetically diced by now and, depending on how spicy you like things, either removed the seeds and membranes from the inside of or not. Add in another pinch of salt, and let it cook for another 2 minutes or so, when the jalapeño begins to soften and the entire kitchen starts to smell kind of incredible. Mince your garlic and add it in to the party along with your cumin, paprika, turmeric, and cayenne. This is the point in the recipe where everything starts to smell so good that your neighbors come try and hunt down the source of the deliciousness to guilt you in to giving them some. If any of them make it to your home, just sneeze and cough on them until they go away, or until you begrudgingly develop enough respect for their sneeze resistance to agree and feed them. 

The turmeric in this thing stained the crap out of my hands.
I had turmeric stigmata for days.

 Dice up your tomatoes into little bits in anticipation of their joining the gang. But before you toss them in, now is a fairly good time to fish out your cinnamon stick and cardamom pods. You could leave them in there and they'd impart a little extra flavor to the dish, but they've really given up a fair amount of flavor already, and once everything is goopy and stew-like it'll be a lot harder to fish them out. Which essentially just means you run the risk of crunching down on some uncomfortable bites while you contemplate how this stew, the one thing that's supposed to make you feel better, has betrayed you. But really it was you who betrayed yourself. Anyhow, follow your heart. Regardless of what you choose, it's time to toss in your tomatoes along with your lentils, water, and a final pinch of salt. Bring your fledgling stew up to a boil before covering it and reducing the heat down to low. Let it cook down for about 25 minutes. Once the tomatoes lose their structural integrity and the lentils are cooked to your liking, you're pretty much good to go. Now it's time to eat, enjoy, feel better, wake up feeling like hot garbage spread on a cracker, and hope that you have some leftovers in the fridge. See you next week, assuming I haven't gone to Montana to start this thing on my own.

Shakshuka

From these humble beginnings, great stains will be made

Everybody loves breakfast for dinner. Sure, the only person that I interviewed about this was myself, but if the internet has taught me anything (and I'm fairly sure it hasn't) it's that it only matters that a study was done. Not who performed it, who funded it, or whether it was done competently. The point is that I want to eat french toast while I sit on my couch and watch Netflix. But I can't, because I'll get sugar and syrup on my couch, and then when I have company I'll need to make up some excuse about how a friend brought their kid over, and he wrecked my couch. It's too much effort. Fortunately, Shakshuka exists. It's got poached eggs, which gives it that breakfasty feeling, but it's super savory and delicious which makes it socially acceptable as a dinner. So when I have friends over who ask me about the stains on the couch, I won't have to make up a fictional child to cover for it.

Ingredients

6 Eggs
3 large Tomatoes
2 Red Peppers
1 Jalapeño Pepper
1 standard-issue Onion
4 cloves Garlic
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Olive Oil
Salt

Shakshuka is essentially eggs poached in a spicy tomato and red pepper sauce. The key is to let the peppers and tomatoes cook down until they kind of start disintegrating into each other. The first step is to dice up your onion and toss it in a pan with some oil and an average-sized human's pinch of salt over medium-low heat. Let it cook for about 2 minutes, and just when it starts getting a little bit of color toss in your diced peppers, red and jalapeño, along with another pinch of salt. Now it's time to dice up your tomatoes. It's worth mentioning that with a super sharp knife, dicing up tomatoes is easy. With whatever blunt object you're likely calling a knife these days, not so much. Tomatoes have a fairly thick skin, and soft goopy insides, kind of like people. So if you're pushing down with a dull knife, you've got a good chance of just crushing everything. Possible fixes for this are to sharpen your stupid knives, peel your tomatoes, or not worry too much about it because who cares when we're making a sauce with them anyway? Whatever you decide, dice up your tomatoes, and choppity chop up your garlic. You're adding in the garlic first, but once it's in the pan you'll be moving a little quicker, so it's best to have your tomatoes ready ahead of time.

That's one messy hot plate of deliciousness

Once your peppers start going soft, add in your garlic along with your cumin, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne. Stir that mess together and let the flavors get to know each other for about a minute before dumping in your tomatoes along with another pinch of salt. Tomatoes are a little more shy, so they'll need some time to come out of their shells and get to know everybody at the party. So bring your mix up to a boil before covering it and turning the heat down to low. Let that all cook down for 20-30 minutes, until everything starts to look saucy and delicious, and your tomatoes have really broken down. If they're weeping in a corner somewhere, you're probably ready. Don't worry, it's for their own good. Now, like dollar-store philosophers, it's time for us to contemplate eggs. Take a spoon and make small divots in the surface of your sauce. Crack an egg in to each depression and then, if you like things more delicious and flavorful, add a little bit of salt and black pepper on top of each egg. Cover your mixture again, and let it all cook for about 12 minutes, depending on how well done you like your eggs. Remember that they're sitting in a hot sauce, so turn it off when they're still a little underdone, because they'll keep cooking. If you take them off when they're actually ready, they may end up totally overcooked by the time you, I don't know, take pictures of them for your blog. You know, hypothetically. Then just grab a fork, spoon, flatbread or other implement of destruction and go to town on it. Enjoy!

Quinoa salad

Yes, this is typically how we experience healthy food. This
time will be different

Last week I decided to actually splurge and buy meat as a reward to myself for not dying or punching somebody during a period of insane overwork. Fortunately that overwork has been done with for almost a week, which I've spent celebrating my freedom. A week or so of celebration will take it out of you though, and you get to thinking that it might be a good idea to take it easy, release any hostages you may-or-may-not have taken, and put something healthy-ish in your body. Sure, quinoa may sound scary, and it may take an inordinate amount of effort to make it not taste like rain gutters, but if you put in that effort you can totally lord how healthy you're being over your friends and neighbors.

Ingredients:

1 Cup of Water
1 Cup of Quinoa
1 Yellow Pepper
1 Carrot
1/2 a Red Onion
1/4 Cup Dried Cranberries
4 tsp Olive Oil
1 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
1 TBSP Raspberry Preserves
1/8 tsp Black Pepper
Salt

The first thing you're going to need to do is wash off your quinoa. Leading food-science experts agree that this will appease the tiny demons living in your food and ensure that your quinoa is flavorful and fluffy. Then toss it in your water along with 1 tsp of olive oil, one average-sized human's pinch of salt, and your black pepper. Bring that whole mess up to a boil, then cover it and reduce the heat down to low for about 12 minutes, or until the liquid is all absorbed. And yes, this is exactly the same way I'd make white rice because, at the risk of asserting my moral superiority over you, I don't see quinoa's differences. I just treat it like everybody else. Anyhow, while your quinoa is cooking, it's time for you to get a-chopping. Chop up your pepper and red onion into reasonably bite-sized chunks, and go ahead and peel your carrot before you shred it to smithereens. Which of course means that it's time to re-introduce our favorite kitchen gadget that hasn't yet succeeded in killing us (Only maimings so far!), the box grater! Fortunately for those of us in favor of keeping our blood on our insides, I've managed to outsmart the grater this time. If you've got the financial capital, buy yourself two carrots instead of one. Then just shred half of each one, keeping your hands and delicious blood out of reach of the grater. And sure, this may cause an unfortunate amount of food waste, but that's the price of holding on to your blood. Also, you could just eat the extra carrot hunks.

I can feel my mouth watering and my liver healing itself
just by looking at that.

Take a bowl and mix together the rest of your oil, your vinegar, and your raspberry preserves, along with another average pinch of salt. Then get ready for some mildly unsettling noises, because it's time to splorp everything together into one large bowl. So combine your veg, dried cranberries, dressing, and quinoa, and stir until the whole deal looks homogenous. You can technically consume this immediately (Well, I mean technically you could have eaten it without cooking the quinoa. It wouldn't have been a good idea, but you still could have done it), but it will taste even better if you let it sit covered in the fridge for an hour. In any event, it'll taste delicious, be slightly healthier than the diet of pizza and whiskey you may have been living on lately, and will maybe keep you alive for a week or so longer so you can enjoy more pizza and whiskey. Hypothetically. Happy quinoa!

Mulled Wine

Any work of fiction that has castles and horses
counts as medieval Europe. That's the law.

Well, it's official. There's snow on the ground in Chicago. I know that's not much of a shocker. It's kind of like saying that water is wet, or that a Oscar winning movie is disappointing, but it's still pretty momentous for me. I spent six years living in LA, where they think that snow is a myth believed only by credulous savages who haven't even done a juice cleanse this month. Seeing snowfall again has been calming, good for my soul, and cold. Like, really cold. Literally freezing. So now it's time to come up with ways to warm myself up and pretend like I'm somewhere else, anywhere else, where I don't have to shovel anything and my face doesn't hurt from being outside. Medieval Europe sounds about right. Nothing says "comfort and tranquility" like a drink popularized when people regularly died from getting run over by a horse.

Ingredients:

1 bottle Red Wine (I used a cabernet sauvignon that has a fair amount of sweetness in it, but follow your alcoholic heart and/or liver! If you're using something aggressively dry though, add in a tablespoon of honey to the rest of the ingredients)
12 Cloves
6 Cardamom Pods
4 Cinnamon Sticks
1/2 an Orange
Ginger

So mulled wine, as far as I can tell, was developed by the Romans back when they were conquering all the parts of the world that they were aware of. They liked wine, and brought it with them to the north because what sober person is going to go to war in the snow while wearing sandals? It seems like every European country has their own fiercely exclusive version of mulled wine, most of which are almost exactly the same. This is an amalgamation of what seemed best from all of those versions. So the first thing to do is open your bottle of wine and carelessly dump it in a pot. Then peel some ginger and slice off 2 1/2 inch thick wedges. If you like things more or less gingery I won't stop you from messing with this amount, just remember that this is about a balance of flavors, and that you've ruined it all and made an inferior version for yourself. Next slice the peel off of your orange half. Try to get as little of the white pith in with your peel as possible, because it (the pith) is bitter, and who needs that in their life? Toss your peel into the wine along with your ginger. Now for the rest of your ingredients you've got some options. You can just throw them in, but then you'll have to deal with the annoyance of straining them out later. Another way to go is to toss them in a spice bag or some cheesecloth, tie it off, and then just toss the resulting spice sack in your wine. Either way, crank your heat all the way up to a gentleman's...low.

Seriously, if I didn't have work I'd just sit home and sip
this all day. I considered calling in sick.

So here's the thing about alcohol. It evaporates pretty easily, which is exactly what it's going to do if you heat up your mulled wine too much. But you need the heat to extract flavor our of your spices and whatnot. It's a fine balancing act that's kind of a pain for a couple minutes, but totally worth it in the end. Let your wine stew for about 20 minutes, being careful not to let it boil. If you've got to take it off of the fire for a couple minutes here and there to achieve that, then so be it. Sure, you probably have other things you could be doing, but let's be honest: you weren't going to use that time productively anyway, and it's totally worth 20 minutes of your time to make a warm, delicious, alcoholic drink that kind of effervesces on your tongue with a crazy and awesome balance of spices. After that it's pretty simple. Pour it in to a cup, with optional garnishes like a cinnamon stick or a twist of orange peel, and then sip it slowly while brooding in your castle and contemplating the state of your fiefdom. Enjoy, and tune in next week when we continue Drinkcember with even more beverage goodness!

Cinnamon Schnapps

Trained actor depicted. Don't actually buy
store-bought schnapps

Well, it's official. The weather is finally starting to get colder. As of today that is, because it was 60 stupid degrees in Chicago yesterday. In December. And don't get me wrong, 60 degrees feels nice. But one of the main reasons I left LA, aside from getting away from the unnecessary levels of cilantro on everything and the overpowering stench of palm trees, was to maybe see snow again at some point in my life. You know, in person and not just added into a movie with CGI. So far that plan hasn't really worked out. Last year's winter in Chicago was pretty tame, and the only real snowfall came when I was out of town (because apparently I wronged the god of irony), but I've got high hopes for this year. Of course I've also been enduring an endless stream of possibly well-meaning acquaintances and doom-sayers taunting me about how this will be my first real winter in years, and how I'm obviously going to freeze to death because I'm no longer acclimated to the cold. Fortunately some delicious cinnamon schnapps really helps me make it through the long nights of dealing with those idiots.

Ingredients:

1 bottle Vodka

at least 10 Cinnamon Sticks

Water

Sugar

The first thing you're gonna need to do is buy some vodka. Now some of you may have discerned my personal feelings on things like vodka in general, but we're flavoring this sucker. I wasn't about to waste some good whisky on this, and anyway we need alcohol without any strong flavor of its own. So now we need to actually choose which vodka to buy, and there are a dauntingly high number of vodka brands at astonishingly different price points. From what I've been able to gather, Vodka is the main export of pretty much every eastern european nation, which explains a lot really. Again, we're flavoring this, so don't go crazy expensive with it. Just avoid any obvious garbage brands with names like "Alex's Upscale and Legitimate Vodka Product." You should be paying roughly 12-18 dollars for a bottle, so let that be your guide. Once you've picked out your vodka, pour out a shot of it and either consume it or throw it down the drain to try and get your drain-goblins good and drunk. Either way, fill up that empty space in your bottle with about 7 cinnamon sticks. Close the bottle back up and let it sit for a week, shaking it up every day or two. 

Seriously, which of these would you rather drink? I rest my
case. Regular vodka is for suckers. 

Now you've got cinnamon vodka, which is already better than regular vodka in pretty much every perceivable way, but we're not quite done yet. Take equal amounts of sugar and water and bring them to a boil along with some cinnamon sticks. About 3 sticks should do it for every cup of sugar you've got going. Let that sucker boil for about 5 minutes, and then let it cool completely. Now it's time to emulate our favorite mad scientists, and just mix together the various liquids we have lying around the house. Mix together a solution of about 2/3 cinnamon vodka and 1/3 cinnamon sugar syrup. The result is going to be super cinnamon-y, a little sweet, and a whole lot of deliciously awesome. Bring it to parties, drink it with friends on cold nights, or use it as a libation during your saturnalia celebration. Or all of the above. Happy alcoholism!

Whole Wheat French Bread

Artist's depiction: The French Revolution

The French have given us a great many things over the years. Canning, the guillotine, cartoon skunks that borderline sexually assault cats. The list goes on and on. But as much as we in our modern society enjoy of all of these French wonders (like eating snails, and defending the eating of snails), none of them are quite as iconic and delicious as french bread. Which makes sense. What's not to love? It's a stick of delicious crusty bread that you can choose to eat immediately, save for later, or brandish as a weapon. That's pretty much the American dream right there. Which makes this the second time that the French have helped facilitate it, and this time Benjamin Franklin didn't even need to get syphilis.

Ingredients:

3 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1.25 cups Warm Water (Most internet sources say your warm water should be about 110 degrees. That's great if you want to set up a candy thermometer in a pot of water and cook it while meticulously watching it to make sure you reach your ideal temperature. Or you could use hot water from the faucet, which on average is between 105 and 115 degrees. Your call)
1 TBSP Honey
1/4 oz. Active Dry Yeast (That's one packet. Or about 2.25 teaspoons for the packetless among you)
Salt
Oil
Corn Meal
More flour. All the flour.
An optional Egg White

So, at this point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that this is indeed a whole wheat recipe. *Gasp. I know. Sure, the name of the post could have warned you about this and saved you some shock, but let's not get bogged down on who should have read what and when. The fact is that while modern french bread is probably rooted in Napoleon's regulation of the baking industry, the reason that he did that was to prevent the dissatisfaction the lower classes previously had about being not being allowed white flour. Also I have a giant bag of whole wheat flour I need to use up. So shut it. Anyway, stir together your yeast, water, and honey, and let them sit together for about 10 minutes. When you come back to check on them, they should be kind of frothy. It's actually pretty cool to watch this happen, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have better things to do for 10 minutes than watch a bunch of yeast belching. Most (Seemingly all) online recipes use the exact same phrase for the next part. "In a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment..." Yeah, we're not doing that. You know what they had before stand mixers? Hands. That's what. You know what they had before "dough hook attachments?" Big wooden spoons that they also used to hit slackers with. It was a magical time. Once you're done fantasizing about all of the people you'd hit with a wooden spoon if it was socially acceptable, stir two big pinches of salt into your gassy yeast, followed by your 3 cups of flour. Stir the crap out of it until it forms into a dough that doesn't cling to the sides of your bowl. If you need to, add more flour to achieve this.

Best served as far away from people eating snails as possible

Now you need to knead your dough (That sentence was even more ridiculous before revisions). Flour some flat surface in your home that you don't mind getting covered in flour, and plop your dough ball down on it. Press it down, stretch it, and fold it in half. Repeat, adding more flour as necessary, for about 8 minutes, or until your hand starts to hurt and your brain goes numb. Throw it in a greased up bowl and store it in a warm place so the dough can rise. Give it at least an hour for this, then punch it down so that it doesn't get snooty from all of the gas it created (a lot of the issues that people have with the French comes from them having not been properly punched down) and form it into a log. Throw some corn meal down on a baking pan and plop your dough log onto it. If you want to get fancy, take a sharp knife and slice the top of it diagonally 3 or four times (evenly spaced out). Let it sit for about 10 more minutes to puff up a little bit more before throwing it in the oven. If you want to get even fancier, brush some egg white over the top of the dough. In any case, after your 10 minutes, throw that sucker in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes. If you want to get your bread extra crusty, throw a couple ice cubes in the oven right before you close it. They say that when french bread is done it should sound hollow. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that if you grab bread out of a 375 degree oven to see how it "sounds," you'll probably burn your hands and/or ears. Happy baking!

Stuffing Muffins

It doesn't matter if you know the muffin man. It matters
that he knows himself.

Thanksgiving times are upon us, which means that it's time to break out the most treasured of all holiday traditions: lying to each other about how good the food is. Because let's be honest here. A lot of classic Thanksgiving food is somewhere between unimpressive and super gross. You've got marshmallows melted on to overcooked yams, green bean casserole that pretty much comes out of a can, and usually some stuffing that amounts to dried out crusty bits of bread loosely held together by a mass of onions and disappointment. Which is a shame, because it really isn't that hard to make some delicious stuffing. And I should know, because I made some this morning. The whole process took about 45 minutes from start to finish, and at no point did I feel like my mouth had turned into a desert fortress from which escape is impossible, which isn't always the case with stuffing. Making it into individual muffins is a fun twist that makes everything self-contained and helps ensure that everybody actually gets some. Also it'll help you deceive your friends and family into thinking that you're creative and whimsical.

Ingredients:

Approx. 8 Cups of Bread (You've got some decent leeway here. Use something hearty, but really whatever bread makes you happy. Tear it into chunks, throw 8 cups of them in there, and be merry)
2 Eggs 
4 Crimini Mushrooms
3 ribs Celery
1 standard-issue Onion
1.5 TBSP chopped Parsley
2 tsp rubbed Sage
1 tsp dried Thyme
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Salt 
Oil
Water

The first thing you're gonna need to do is learn to ignore people. Because undoubtedly there are already people constructing angrily worded letters about how stuffing is only "real" if it's stuffed into a turkey, and that otherwise you should call it "dressing." It's easy to get angry or annoyed with these people, but remember that they serve an important role in the evolution of our species. Without having obviously terrible people to be a focus for our communal rage and disgust, those feelings would fester and eventually turn into something negative, like dysentery or a world war. Once you've blocked out the voices, it's time to grab your bread. A lot of stuffing recipes start off by having you toast the bread to dry it out. We're not doing that. We're doing the opposite of that. Moisten your bread with a little bit of water until it starts sticking together just a little bit, and set it aside. You don't want it to be soaked and gloppy, so be careful with it.

Just look at those things. I can practically hear a drunk uncle
ruining a pleasant family moment already.

Now dice your onion and sauté it over medium heat along with an average sized human's pinch of salt. Let it cook down for about a minute. You can use that minute to chop up your celery, because now it's time to add it in with the onions and cook them for another 2-3 minutes. Then choppity chop up your mushrooms and add them in along with your thyme, black pepper, and another pinch of salt. It should take about 2 minutes for some of the moisture to cook out of the mushrooms and for the whole thing to start smelling crazy good. Take your vegetable mixture and stir it into your bread along with your parsley, eggs, and one final pinch of salt. Buy or steal a standard muffin pan and grease up the cups before filling them with your bread and vegetable mixture. Pack it in there and try to overstuff them a little bit if you can (you can). Throw those suckers into a 375 degree oven and let them cook for 15-20 minutes, until they start to get a little crispy on top and your entire home smells like condensed holiday awesomeness. Then take them out of the oven, take them out of the pan, and serve them. Or make them ahead of time in which case wait until your actual meal, heat them up, and then serve them. Bonus points if you don't make up an obnoxious cutesy name for them like "stuffins." Happy holidays!

Vegetable Stew

Actual stew may or may not disco

Stew evokes strong emotions. Curling up on the couch with a blanket and a good movie. Cold winter nights with warm family gatherings. Hunting people and animals for sport in the woods in Maryland during the winter of '07. You know, hallmark stuff. The point is, that as the life cycle of our planet continues and everything around us dies, nothing beats a good stew to warm our hearts and bellies. And since the cold can make us lethargic which makes it harder to chase after animals, why not make it out of vegetables? I can count on one hand the number of times that a vegetable outran me when I was sober.

Ingredients:

6 Red Potatoes
4 ribs of Celery
3 Carrots
2 Chipotle Peppers
1 Onion
1 Sweet Potato
8 oz. Crimini Mushrooms
28 oz. Marinara
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1 cup chopped Malanga Root (This is a big, dense, starchy root vegetable. It looks weird, but it's got a nice earthy flavor, and is available in most produce stores so stop complaining)
1 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Salt 
Oil

The first thing you're gonna need to do is channel the spirit of primitive people who tried to stave off the dark and cold of winter by preparing hearty stews in their shabby huts. So, pretty much you last February. Channel the spirit of you. Now that you've got the proper zen going on, chop up your onions, carrots, and celery, and get them sautéing in a pot with some oil and a standard human's pinch of salt. This is a stew, so you're going to want decent sized chunks of everything you're dumping in the pot so that they don't just fall apart. Vegetables, like people, hold up better when there's more of them there, pulling together and building community centers and whatnot. Let that mess cook down for about 4 minutes before adding in your mushrooms along with your chipotles and another pinch of salt. Let it cook for another couple minutes before you peel and chop your sweet potato and malanga and toss them in along with your cumin and black pepper. Your potatoes you can either peel or not depending on your preference, but if you're gonna have the peels stick around you should probably wash them at some point. The same is true for the rest of your vegetables. And, you know, everything else in life.

Actual nice bowl and countertop courtesy of cooking at
other people's houses.

Add in your potatoes along with your marinara and vegetable stock and bring that whole mess to a boil. Then reduce it to low heat, cover it, and let it sit for around an hour and a half while you busy yourself with wintery tasks like mowing the lawn probably, because winter was super mild last year. Then again, weather has taken out a large chunk of this and other countries lately, so you never know. After about a hour and a half of cooking, the malanga will pretty much have disintegrated which will thicken your stew. But if you were looking forward to specific chunks of malanga to eat, because who doesn't look forward to things they've probably never heard of, maybe take it off the heat a little earlier. Either way, you've got a hearty stew to take you through the dreary winter months and into the dreary summer months. Enjoy!

Apple Parsnip Soup

The apples clutch their purses a little tighter when walking
through parsnip-town. Racist apples. 

If the rain, wind, and gloom outside for the past couple days are any indication, it might not be summer any more. Then again, I live in Chicago, so this is about the third time that I've thought that since August. But this time is different. This time there's also "pumpkin spiced" garbage all throughout every store, and the spiderwebs that I carelessly walk into outside are starting to feel store-bought. So I'm fairly certain that Winter is coming to kill us all, but first we get to ease into it by always being slightly too hot or too cold, and being forced to clean up after dying trees. So it's time to grab all of the root vegetables we can, make some delicious soup, and start waiting for May.

Ingredients:

6 Parsnips
4 Granny Smith Apples
2 Onions
5 Cups Vegetable Stock
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/2 tsp Coriander
Salt
Oil

So there are a lot of different kinds of apples out there, and they all have misleading names. Red delicious apples, for instance, while very red on the outside, are actually garbage on the inside. Granny Smith apples are kind of weird and tart. I didn't know the Smith matriarch myself, but if I had to guess I'd say she probably was super sweet and straight laced, in the sort of apologetically racist way that movies depict protagonists in the 40s and 50s. But I digress. The first thing you're gonna need to do is chop up your onions and sauté them in some oil (In a pot of some kind, for preference) with a standard-issue-human's pinch of salt. Let them cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally as an excuse to go smell delicious cooking onions. Then add in your parsnips, which you've prudently taken this time to peel and chop. Once you realize you forgot to do this and you haphazardly do it as fast as possible, add in another pinch of salt and let that whole mess cook down for another 5 minutes.

Apple slices added in futile attempt to distract from the
beige-ness of delicious soup.

Now it's time to peel your apples. Why not earlier? Because apples hate the air, and while I'm not usually one to kowtow to whining vegetation, hate-filled apples turn brown and gross. And sure, you could just squeeze lemon juice in their whiny faces and they'd get over it, but then this soup would taste like lemons which wasn't the idea. So we coddle the apples until the last moment, when we strike. Kind of like an evil witch. Once your apples have seen your true nature we don't have a lot of time, so quickly chop the flesh off their cores, and then toss them in the pot along with the rest of your ingredients. Bring that sucker to a boil and then simmer it for 45 minutes. Blend it until it's smooth, and enjoy. It tastes savory, peppery, mildly sweet, and a little tart, which is perfect for pretending the world isn't dying outside. Some of you may be thinking about the colors of parsnips and peeled apples and wondering "is this another aggressively beige soup that you're making?" And to them I say: see you next week!

Apple Pomegranate Crumble

One of these things is not like the other, one of
these things is 90% seeds.

So the new year is upon us. Not the fun new year at the end of December that starts full of excessive alcohol consumption and excitement, and ends in hilarious tragedy or boredom. The Jewish new year, which is pretty much a time for merriment, introspective self-evalutation, and eating delicious foods until we can't lift our arms to eat any more, at which point a trained staff of hired help will continue to stuff food down our throats until we (or they) pass out. Also, there's a more recent tradition to eat some specific foods for the symbolism, such as pomegranates for a multitude of blessings, or apples and honey for a sweet year. There are like 100 more of these. I won't bore you or me by listing them. Especially since I've already taken this "Jewish Traditions 101" class to its intended conclusion, which was saying the words "apple" and "pomegranate."

Ingredients:

4 Granny Smith Apples
3 Honey Crisp Apples
3/4 Cup Flour
3/4 Cup Oatmeal
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
6 TBSP Butter
1.5 TBSP Grenadine (Real grenadine. Made out of pomegranates. If you can't make or find it, use Pomegranate Molasses)
1 TBSP Cinnamon
The juice from 1/2 a Lemon (How you convince the lemon to give you its juice is between the two of you, however bribery is the preferred method.)

The first thing you're gonna need to do is skin your apples. This may seem like adding insult to injury after having climbed up into their ancestral homes and kidnapped them by the bushel. But it actually serves the very real purpose of being a warning to the other fruits that you're not to be trifled with. Also something about the skins not softening when the flesh does and creating a tough dish to eat, but that sounds like heathen nonsense to me. Now here's the thing. The second that the flesh of an apple hits the air, it starts to turn into disgusting brown goop. The entire process takes about 3 minutes, so it's time to work fast. As you peel each apple, take a knife and cut it off of the core. Then thinly slice it and toss it in a bowl with a splash of your lemon juice. The lemon juice helps keep the apple from falling completely apart. Sort of like an apple version of a security blanket, a savings account, or functional alcoholism. Repeat until you're out of apples, and then add in your grenadine, cinnamon, and any lemon juice you've got leftover. Stir that sucker up and throw it into a 9x13 pan preferably, but really just any oven-safe containment vessel you have that can hold it. Now the time has come to deal with the crumbly part of this crumble.

Looking at this, all I can think of is that I really need to get
me some of those servants to stuff food down my
throat that I made up in paragraph 1.

Whisk together your flour, oatmeal, and brown sugar. Then chop up your butter (Or butter substitutes, for those intolerant folk who can't abide by dairy) into little bits and add it in. Now it's time to "cut in" the butter, which essentially means to squish it thoroughly into the flour mixture until it incorporates into little crumbs of deliciousness. I've been advised by obvious lunatics to use something called a "pasty cutter" for this task, but I've found that my hands work better and faster. For those of you who don't have access to my hands, use your best judgement. Take your crumbly crumbs and sprinkle them on top of your apple mixture. Then toss that sucker into a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes, once it gets golden and awesome looking. Then just sit there and let it taunt you while you wait for your guests to arrive. Make sure to ask them to bring dessert, because there's no way this thing is lasting until then.

Vegan Chili

Say hello to my sister. This is all her fault. Unless it turns out
great, in which case this is all my fault.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Then again, they also say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, which is ludicrous because the relative value of a bird doesn't change just because it's in a bush. I mean, sure, maybe if it was in some super hard-to-reach bush on top of a mountain, but that was never specified. And there are pretty much bushes everywhere. But I digress. The point is that I had a great need, and thus needed to invent. Specifically, my sister is in town, and she doesn't eat a lot of the basic foods that make up deliciousness and joy. And sure, she claims that while she's here she'll eat whatever you give her and won't be picky, but she says it with the same look in her eyes that the animals have in those over the top ASPCA commercials with the ridiculous Sarah Mclachlan music. So I needed to make something without red meat, processed sugar, flour, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting. And somehow I needed to make it taste good. And by coincidence, lately it's been kind of chilly in Chicago. And so, just like every major marketing campaign ever, inspiration was born from a stupid pun.

Ingredients:

2 standard issue Onions
3 ribs of Celery
3 largish Carrots
1 lb. Crimini Mushrooms
5 cloves Garlic
32 oz. can of Diced Tomatoes
15 oz. Black Beans (Personally, I used canned beans because I didn't have the time to deal with dried beans and their endless drama this week. But if you do, soak your beans for 6-8 hours, then replace the water and boil them for another 45 minutes in salted water. Same thing you do with communists.)
15 oz. Kidney Beans (Ditto)
1 Green Pepper
1 Poblano Pepper
1 Jalapeño Pepper
6 oz. Tomato Paste
2 cups Vegetable Stock (That you totally had left if you made my empanadas from last week. And it turns out that I made the empanadas that I made last week, so that worked out for me.)
1.5 TBSP Cumin
1.5 TBSP Dried Oregano
2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 Bay Leaves
Olive Oil
Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is prepare yourself. Not in an overly dramatic, "prepare yourself for destruction" sort of way, although that couldn't hurt either. But there are a fair number of ingredients here, and it doesn't hurt to get them ready in advance so that you don't have to worry about preparing your next ingredient in time before the fire burns everything (especially your pride and insurance premiums) to a crisp. So, if you've got the wherewithal, spend some time now cleaning and dicing your vegetables and rinsing your beans. For the rest of you who thrive on the constant thrill of possibly burning your dinner and/or neighborhood, feel free to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the rest of us to finish prepping. Alright, now coat a pan with oil, and sauté your diced onions and celery over medium-high heat along with a standard pinch of salt. Cook it until the onions start to get some color before adding in your mushrooms and another pinch of salt. When you sauté mushrooms, they release a whole bunch of liquid, shrink, and start smelling kind of nutty and awesome. When this happens, add in your assorted peppers and garlic. Cook for another minute or so before adding in your tomato paste, cumin, oregano, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne.

Pro-tip: For the best results put your reddish chili in a red
bowl, and then photograph it under orangish light.

Pretty much all forms of canned tomatoes that I've encountered suffer from the same problem that diet coke does. Namely, they taste like cans. But cooking them down with the rest of your ingredients helps soften that metallic taste a lot (I haven't checked to see if this also works for diet coke, but I feel like it probably does). So cook your vegetable-tomato sludge down for a couple minutes before adding in your diced tomatoes and another pinch of salt. Let it keep cooking for another minute or two, at which point your entire home should smell delicious [or possibly smoky and ashy, depending on how successful you were at chopping as you go. I didn't burn my house down (this time)]. Throw that whole mess into a slow cooker/crock pot along with your carrots, vegetable stock, beans, and bay leaves. Cook it on the high setting for 2 hours, and then on the low setting for another 2-4 hours. Then remove your bay leaves and eat it. Like, all of it. Because this sucker isn't just "good for being gluten free," or "good for being vegan," both of which are code phrases for "bad, but maybe it could have been worse." It's just good for being food.