Meatballs

Sorry to say the air is still looking thick.

 So other than my usual treks to the grocery store, gym, and bus stop to pick up the kid, I have not been outside.
But I did get myself together this week to make meatballs for the freezer (I'm starting to stock up for Chinese New Year when everything will be closed, and the streets deserted).  I can't believe I have not shared the freezer meatballs before this.  If you've got about an hour (every time I make them the time gets shorter and shorter) or an extra pair of hands, these are great to have in the freezer for last minute meals.
I have spared you the shots of the pre-balled meat, it just looks gross.  I usually mix the ingredients together in a huge bowl and then make meatballs using a 1/2 tablespoon measuring spoon (or a tablespoon) I make them tiny because they cook faster but you can make them as large as you want.  Then lay them on a cookie sheet, you can pack them pretty close in, so long as they are not touching. (btw- you will want to make sure that your cookie sheet fits into your freezer).

Then put the meatballs in your freezer for about an hour.  After they are frozen through, you can pop them off the cookie sheet and put them in plastic bags (to give your freezer more space).  I have also baked them before freezing so that you have pre-cooked meatballs frozen and ready to eat, use the same method for freezing.

When you are ready to use them, you can just count out as many as you want and throw them into your sauce.  I have heard you can bake them too, but I have never done that from a frozen meatball.
I also use this same method to freeze cookie dough.  Then you can have fresh baked cookies whenever you want and you don't have to eat 2 dozen.

If you get a chance please say a little prayer for our Honeydog today, she is leaving the safety of my parents' house to travel to China (by herself!!!) to be with us.  This is her first time traveling under the new United rules as cargo without anyone going with her.

Mulling.....

No I'm not thinking extra deep thoughts.  I've been mulling beverages.... wassail and wine baby!

 I LOVE mulled beverages!  LOVE!  When I was growing up my mom used to make us Wassail every winter and I thought it was the most amazing beverage on earth.

However recently, inspired by all the mulled wine they drink in a Song of Ice and Fire (George RR Martin), I mulled some wine for a dinner party as an aperitif. Of course, before I served it I had to try it (to, you know, make sure I wasn't poisoning anyone) and well it's been love ever since.

First of all it's comforting, if Wassail warms you like a hug on a cold winter's day, then Mulled wine is like being wrapped in your favorite warm snuggly blanket.  Secondly, it's an awesome way to use up that horrid my least favorite Chinese wine.  Also, both Wassail and Mulled wine seem to cut through the pollution induced congestion, I think it's the citrus.

Most important of all, it's yummy!  I meant to have a picture of the finished product in a cup, but well... what had happened was....

Writer's block and Tofu shreds?

Sorry about the radio silence, I kept opening up the screen to blog, but nothing would happen.  For the past week I've been trying to get something out, but I had to give it up as lost.  Maybe this week will be better.
A little while ago DH got these from one of his co-workers

I think they are tofu shreds, (shredded tofu?) but I can't find a tutorial on how to cook them ANYWHERE!  I've tried boiling them, and they were too crunchy... too crunchy... too crunchy... soggy soppy mess, so this time I tried soaking them in water for 3 hours.

The result was slightly better this time, after I soaked them they were still slightly crunchy, so I braised them in a little sesame oil, soy sauce, and sugar and added some chopped vegetables that I had lightly sauteed.  It wasn't too bad, I still think they felt a little soggy and limp.  I really don't know what to do with them to make them more edible so I think I'm going to give the rest away.  *sigh* sometimes you just have to admit defeat.

Barley love

I have recently discovered Barley.  This happened by accident, since at the time I discovered it I was trying to find an alternate tea to drink in the evenings because our apartment was so cold and drafty (we have spread out some area rugs and found a way to heat the apartment, so now it's a cozy place to be instead of a frigid ice box).  I know Japanese and Korean people drink Buckwheat and Barley teas and that they are caffeine free.  I bought a little Buckwheat and a little Barley thinking I would mix them with some spices and possibly flowers and become my own tea mix master.  I actually came up with a pretty good spiced tea mix, but that's a tale for another time.
Anyway, in case you don't know raw barley looks like this:

And after cooking them; 1 cup barley to 3 cups water, bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes, they look like this:

Then you can mix them into a recipe like Barley Caponata and you get:

And so far everyone likes Barley, Babes, DH, me.  It has a little more flavor and texture than rice, and the barley grains are larger than rice too, so it's almost like a small round pasta on your plate.  I think I made something with Barley in it 2 weeks ago, but I've already used three or four different Barley recipes.  Also as far as I can tell a Barley casserole freezes well (you know how I love my freezer).  I haven't had as much success with the buckwheat.

East-West Fusion

I have recently discovered that I *love* tofu skins!  Love!  I was confused about it at first, since I'm ambivalent at best about tofu.  BUT it turns out that tofu skins are not actually tofu at all, but the (and this is going to sound somewhat gross) film that forms on soy milk when it is heated (like the skin on milk) it's taken off and dried--or something. 

I discovered at the market here I can buy fresh tofu skins to cook at home!  The problem being that I don't really know how to make the restaurant version, and I'm not sure I'd want to if I could (just too greasy for every day eating).  So I embarked upon a way to cook them using tastes that I'm more familiar with. I started by braising them in a little chicken broth. Mostly to heat them up and add a little flavor. 

Then I roasted a few veggies. 

I added the veggies, and some tomato sauce to the tofu skins....

It's sort of like a pasta dish, the tofu skins have a similar texture to al dente pasta, maybe a little chewier.  We are probably eating WAY too many tofu skins by doing this but it's a filling way for us to do a vegetarian dinner without a whole lot of fuss.  (you can apparently make your own tofu skins, but I'm not there..... yet)

Zucchini Zucchini

So I know I haven't posted any pictures from our vegetable deliveries, I've been a little busy preparing to move, but also our deliveries have been pretty standard.  Regular old cabbage (the kind you would see at Kroger's) tiny potatoes, and zucchini, a couple of greens here and there but all things I've seen before.  BUT I thought I'd stop in and post about what I did with some of the vegetables, after all I got cabbage three weeks in a row (I don't like cooked cabbage THAT much) and at some point we had 4 giant Zucchinis in our fridge. 

With the cabbage I discovered that I can actually make coleslaw.  I thought it was something really difficult and hard to make (I've had a lot of really bad coleslaw) but actually it's pretty simple.  I just used the standard Southern Living cookbook's barbecue slaw (I really love that cookbook).  It's not the best coleslaw in the world but it's much better than any coleslaw I've had in a long time... AND what's even better it only used ingredients that I had in my cupboard and need to get rid of (less than a month left at post!), I even took it to one of those potluck events that the consulate community is so fond of. 

The zucchini was tougher.  I roasted it, grilled it, stir fried it--but still I was getting a lukewarm reception from the discerning duo.  Finally, over everyone's objections I went searching for a zucchini bread recipe (strangely enough none of my cookbooks have that recipe, I thought it was an American staple).  When the Smitten Kitchen turned up in my search results I went no further (her food is AMAZING!) So I made her zucchini bread, and she did not disappoint.  The muffins (because why make a big huge loaf when you can have muffins?) I made using her recipe were great, flavorful moist, delicious. 

Unfortunately, I STILL have zucchini.  I think next will be zucchini pancakes for dinner. 

Two meals of fava beans

So I did get myself together to make a fava bean puree.  It was good, but boy are fava beans a lot of work!  To be able to eat them you have to shell them twice! 

 Luckily Babes proved able to handle this part of the task and we had a lot of *fun* shelling beans and watching a movie!

Then they need to be blanched.

 and peeled again (Babes was adept at this too)

Then they are ready to be simmered with oil, garlic, and herbs

Next comes the smashing (or in my case blending--I love my stick blender!)

FINALLY we can eat!

I served my Fava puree on some oatmeal sourdough that I pulled out of the freezer, some boiled potatoes tossed with butter, stir fried greens (the purple ones) and a little feta cheese.  I actually really liked the puree with the feta and next time I might puree them together. 
The very next day I used the second half of the batch of fava beans (prepared up to the second shelling so I didn't have to go through all that AGAIN) in a pasta stir fry.  I basically sauteed the fava beans with red bell peppers, garlic, a few greens, and cherry tomatoes and tossed it over angel hair pasta.  YUM!   And we did two vegetarian meals in a row, how about that?

2 weeks of veggies

So I forgot to post pictures of our veggies last week, and I already have this weeks veggies.  I was sick last week so we still have more than half of our veggies from last week to eat up.  I foresee a couple of vegetarian meals in our future.  Which is good because that means I don't have to order meat until next week. 

 

Last week we got, yup you guessed it, more greens.

  

These were interesting, mild in flavor, very tiny and pretty good stir fried with the grass.  

  

I had no idea what these were, they look like oversized peas, but when you open them
 

 They are fuzzy inside and look a little like lima beans.  It turns out they are fava beans.  I'm pretty excited to cook them, they are supposed to be great spring beans to eat.  

  

This week there were still greens, but less of them.   Look at that purple green!  

 And some more fava beans and potatoes.  I think maybe tonight I'll try them pureed, I don't think Babes will eat it, but I've been wrong before. 

Greens, Potatoes, and grits

So this week we did not get 5 lbs of greens.  We got 4 lbs of greens and 1 lb of tiny potatoes.  Which is a plus I guess.  Do you remember the grass from last year?  Well we got it again.  It actually stir fries nicely.  Maybe the are some type of chive?  They do have a very very faint onion or garlic taste to them.  The weeds from last week did not stir fry up so nicely, they tasted like weeds.  *sigh*  I also just tossed out some of the really stinky greens.  I don't know what they are, but they smell bad raw and when cooked they smell and taste worse. 

 The stinky greens are the heart shaped ones in the middle.

I know I've been MIA lately, in case you were wondering what I've been up to, I've been trying to use up our food stores in the run up to our pack out (beginning of July?).  We have a plethora of grits so I've been trying to come up with clever ways to use them up.  I have made grits pudding, grits pancakes, and used a ton of grits instead of rice or potatoes, but still.....  I have not taken any pictures though because well grits pudding was REALLY gross looking (although it tasted good-like a grainy bread pudding), and grits pancakes just look like pancakes.  I am going to try making leftover grits muffins but I think I want to make them savory instead of sweet.

5 lbs of greens

Have you ever wondered what 5 pounds of greens looks like?  Well, I didn't either, but I found out yesterday.  Our weekly delivery of organic produce consisted of 5 lbs of leafy things.

Most of them I've seen before, some I like, some I REALLY don't like, but we did have a new addition yesterday.  They looked like weeds. 

I mean I swear I've seen them in the back yard, and they smelled like weeds, when I chopped them it smelled like I was cutting dandelion leaves, or grass or something.  What did they taste like?  Well, exactly like what I thought cooked grass would taste like.  Now the question is, how do I cook up and disguise 5 lbs of greens so that DH and babes stop complaining about cooked weeds?

Making Chocolate Chips-or how to cover your kitchen in chocolate

In what I think might be my last kitchen experiment until after we move (it might not be I still have a couple of months after all) I decided to make chocolate chips.  Why, you might ask, would I make chocolate chips?  Well, it's like this.... When we came here I debate bringing chocolate chips, I like them and use them all the time, but, as you may know, chocolate doesn't transport well.  We moved in the summer, we did our consumables shipment in the summer, I didn't want a big lump of chocolate where I used to have chips.  So I've been making due.  When the urge for chocolate chip cookies gets too strong I buy the gourmet chocolate drops that dove makes spending an absurd amount of money for them.  Then this past Thanksgiving, when I was buying my turkey at the fish market (yes you read that right) I bought a GIANT 2kg bar of chocolate thinking "WOW what can I do with this?" Well, as it turns out, this bar of chocolate sat in my freezer for months and finally yesterday I said "I'm making chocolate chips!"  I said this thinking it would only take an hour or so.  But I was WRONG! 
I started off yesterday, with my GIANT bar of chocolate, my screwdriver, and hammer, a bowl to melt the chocolate in, my icing bag, and an aluminum foil covered cookie sheet. And a little help from semi sweetie

The screwdriver and hammer were there to cut the chocolate, I've already broken a knife on a stick of butter, I wasn't about to try one of my knives on the GIANT bar of chocolate. 

The trick is to get the chocolate melted so that it's sludge like.  Not drizzly, but more like slightly runny icing.  The problem is that chocolate only stays at that stage for oh about 30 seconds, before that you've got runny chocolate everywhere, and after that you've got something that is like squishing poop out of a bag (sorry for the graphic nature of that comment, but I've changed diapers, and I have a labrador... this is the best thing I could think of).  I also found that my fancy schmancy Wilton icing bag didn't work at all!  After getting chocolate everywhere and nowhere I finally gave up and snipped a tiny corner off a plastic bag which worked 100 times better.  And while they don't look like Nestle's chips I did manage to get some chocolate onto the cookie sheet into a chip-like shape. 

Having done it, I don't know if I would do it again.  I managed to coat most of the counter, most of myself, most of the fridge/freezer, and most of the microwave in chocolate.  It took forever, although a lot of that was the learning curve... But if you'd like to try it; Melt your chocolate only slightly, like I said you want a slightly runny icing consistency.  Take one spoonful and put it into a bag with a small corner cut off, and squeeze tiny drops of the chocolate onto a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil.  If your chocolate is too runny pop it in the fridge for a little while, too stiff?  Place your plastic bag in a little hot water and let the chocolate soften a little.  Once the chips have hardened pop them off the foil and put them in a plastic bag (this part is the easiest part). 

what is this?

I finally got back in touch with our organic vegetable farmer and we're back to the "What on earth is this?" weekly exercise.  Actually that's not true, for the most part I've been getting a ton of various types of cabbage (I can't say we don't eat enough green leafy vegetables, If I never see another Qin Cai after we leave here it will be too soon) and root vegetables.  The past two weeks have seen a bumper crop of carrots and radishes.  Tell me internets what do you do with a pound of radishes?  Especially since DH and Babes aren't too fond of them.  I might have some pickling in my future....
Anyway, we've also received these things, which kind of look like broccoli, kind of look like cabbage, and kind of look like Brussels sprouts.

Not knowing what to do with them, and since they look too fat to stir fry (I stir fry just about everything I get in that green bag) I roasted them.

Roasting works well for Brussels sprouts, but not for whatever this was... or maybe I roasted them too long.  I'm going to try steaming next, and also the Google image search to see if I can't figure out what they are.

I don't know what to cook

 Before we joined the foreign service I was a pre-made girl.  If it came in a box, a can, or a bag, I knew how to use it and expand on it.  About the only thing I consistently made from scratch was cake.  But then we joined the foreign service.  Our first post was Beijing, and it was delicious and cheap to eat out, and eat out we did (and we both gained a bunch of weight)!  Then we went to Baku.  The first year I didn't cook a thing.  The markets were crazy, the food odd, everything was in Russian-- oh and I was pregnant.  By the end of the second year I had started to cook some things, but I was still having trouble coming up with things for us to eat.  After all, I couldn't go to the store and buy a can of soup, or a box of tacos... what's a girl to do?  By the time we moved to Taiwan, I realized that the world simply did not supply their grocery stores the way America does, and for better or for worse I was going to have to make some changes in the way that I thought about cooking. 
So I began simply.  Instead of dwelling on what wasn't there, I started to look at what WAS there and I tried to figure out what I could make from that.  I discovered that with a little flour, sugar, and vegetables there are TONS of things that you can make yourself.  Now, despite the fact that we live in China and nothing looks familiar we eat Western style almost every night. When we go out we eat Chinese because Chinese food in Chengdu is good, Western food...not so much.  This is true in most places outside of the major cosmopolitan areas, you are not going to get quality __ food unless you are in that country.  In all other cases it will be expensive and tasteless.  So cook what you can at home, and eat the local foods out, this way you get the best of both worlds. 
I guess my point is, that if you are a foreign service spouse, or officer, you have to be brave, and daring even on the culinary front.  There are very few things that you can buy, be it in a can, a box, or a package, that you cannot make, and often times make better, at home with a few simple ingredients.  And when you start to think it's impossible remember that your grandmother (or maybe your great grandmother) used to do all this AND she didn't have a microwave or a refrigerator.

Good bye Thanksgiving... Hello Christmas!

So I survived the Thanksgiving Extravaganza!  Even though I kept waking up in a panic the whole week before I managed to pull it off and no one got sick (my measure of a successful meal)!  And despite a mishap with the macaroni and cheese (I pulled it out of the fridge to put it in the oven and it was still frozen!) the lunch was on the table and ready to eat at 12:30 as planned.  There were even times in the morning when I was standing around thinking that I should do something, but everything was done (except of course for the frozen mac n cheese).  To make a meal like this involves LOTS of planning.  I started a month before, I picked out recipes, looked around to make sure that I would be able to find all the ingredients for everything I wanted to make, then I made a menu.  The menu went up on the fridge and beside each item I had a make ahead schedule.  Then for the day of the event I had an oven schedule, also posted on the fridge so that everything was cooked and things that needed to be hot were hot, and everything was cooked (except the mac n cheese, which ended up in the microwave and then stuffed in the oven at the last second).  I ended up with twice as much food as needed; a whole extra turkey, an uneaten cake, and a gazillion leftovers!
 This is what a Thanksgiving meal for 20 people looks like before it's cooked. 

From Blogger Pictures

And here are some pictures of the spread.  Thanks to a friend of mine who actually has an eye for photography!  

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

 And the end of Thanksgiving means the beginning of the Christmas season so this past weekend Babes and I decorated the tree to the first playing of Xmas music this year!  I used to have fairly strict rules on when Christmas started and when I would start decorating for it, but since I've been overseas I've realized that it's important for me to decorate because otherwise, in many places, you won't see Christmas.  Oh sure, you'll see some trees and lights, but it's nothing like the holiday spirit that you get in the US.  So every year after Thanksgiving I put away the fall color and bust out Christmas. 

From Blogger Pictures