Angela, Head Chef

Now THAT’S a Meatball

Cheesy title aside, these did turn out fabulously. I recently moved in with my friend Angela who doesn’t really have much cooking experience. Meatballs are a good starting place, I felt, so these were her babies. Don’t they look great? She did the meat mixture entirely by herself. They are melt-in-your-mouth good (it doesn’t hurt that they were Idaho beef courtesy of my sister and brother-in-law.) I recommend that you eat these on a bed of pasta- possibly some homemade mac and cheese- fontina, cheddar and parm is a good combo- or even your traditional spaghetti marinara with a little mozzarella. As usual, these are sal-neg. Hope you enjoy!

· 2lbs beef, or meatball mixture

· 1cup breadcrumbs (as usual, I used dad’s bread)

· 1/2cup parmesan cheese

· 1 egg

· 1tbsp parsley fresh or dried covered in oil

· 2tsp soy sauce

· 2tsp salt

Heat oven to 300 degrees- grease two sheet pans with oil. Mix everything in order until nicely combined. One to one and a half inch balls are best. This should make about 50. Cook for 30-40 minutes turning halfway through. Cut one in half to make sure they’re done. These can be frozen for up to six weeks.

Today was the day of round, brown balls. I woke up this morning thinking two things; “I’m hungry,” and “I think I can make chocolate fritters.” Since my curiosity could solve both problems I got out of bed and started heating some oil. Here’s my recipe!

· 1 cup flour

· ¾ cup sugar

· 1/3 cup cocoa powder

· 1tsp salt

· 1tsp baking soda

· 2tsp lemon juice

· 1 ½ cups milk or half and half

· Oil for frying

· Sugar for dusting (confectioners or granulated)

Heat the oil to 350 degrees in a deep pan, four quarts is a good size; it should be about an inch and a half deep. While the oil is heating mix all of the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Combine juice and milk until it looks kind of weird and curdly. Make a well in the middle of your dry ingredients and start adding the milk mixture. Stir until well combined. Scoop the batter into oil with a one tbsp. cookie scoop. Four or five at a time is good- don’t crowd them cook about a minute on each side until browned. Drain on a paper towel quickly and then dust with the sugar. If you want, hold them in a 250 degree oven until all of them are ready. Enjoy!!

Mystery Ingredient

What is this? You ask. This is delicious. Not to be like "I'm awesome" or whatever but I'm starting to get pretty good at low-sal recipes. Tonight I just cooked up some pasta with onions, garlic, peas, chicken and...*hesitates* banana juice. OK! YES! I understand what I just said. And before you freak out and stop reading my blog let me explain...

I love good flavor development in a dish, it just takes everything to another level. Before the "discovery of sensitivity" I'd just dump a can-o-chicken broth on there. Mmm. Good flavors. Just deglaze your pan with a little broth and voila! Pasta sauce. But now anything canned is right out and since I haven't really had time to make my own broth or stock, what was I to do? Banana juice (or really, puree- I buy the brand Looza which also sells a fantastic pear juice) is what I drink with breakfast these mornings- lots of potassium to start the day out right. So I was looking at it like "Well, I used the pear juice, why not the banana?" And thus began the banana sauce. Here it is.

Chicken Brine

2 chicken breasts in a 1/2 inch dice

1tsp salt

4cups warm water

Pasta!

1/2-3/4 lb of whatever you want (I used fettucini)

2tsp salt

Saucy Sauce

2/3cup BANANA JUICE!

1/3cup canola or sunflower oil

1/8cup soy sauce

2 tsp lemon juice

1 (generous) tbsp canola oil

1 medium onion, sliced in 1/4 in slices

1 clove garlic

1 cup peas (fresh or frozen, doesn't matter)

1. Brine yo chicken. 30 minutes max, 10 minutes at least.
2. Turn on a 4qt pot of water, enough to boil your pasta in add the salt.
3. Mix the first four ingredients of the sauce and set aside, don't worry if it doesn't emulsify no one cares.
4. Heat the tbsp of oil in an 8 or 10 inch skillet over medium heat, when it starts to shimmer drop in the onions. Sizzly goodness. Mmm.
5. When they start to look translucent drop in the garlic. Saute! You smell that? Good. Don't be burnin' no garlic now.
6. Is your pasta water boiling?? Add your pasta to it!!
7. Drain the chicken and add it to the skillet. Lower the heat a tiiiiny bit so you don't over cook the chicken.
8. When it starts to look white add the peas! PEAS!! A VEGETABLE I CAN HAVE!!
9. When it gets a nice sizzle again pour in the saucy mixture from earlier and turn the heat back up to medium so you get a nice simmer going on it.
10. Let it reduce about a third of the way down the pan, it will be fairly thick to begin with so we don't want to go too far.
11. Reserve half a cup of the pasta water just in case.
12. Drain your pasta (but don't rinse!) and put it back the pan.
13. Pour your lovely sauce over the pasta and mixymixymixy...
14. Serve immediately! With some kind of ...something. I didn't have a side dish but I suppose you could have some sort of garlic bread or something like that. More carbs. /shrug. I'll just eat more of the pasta.

So there you go. Try it if you want. I'm dubious that you do unless you are sal-sensitive like me but have at it. You can try walking in my shoes for a day or something inspiring like that. "Eat, Pray, Love" is now. "Eat, pray that you never become sal-sensitive so that you can still eat." Whatever, I'm over it. Buon appetito.

YUM.

So, as for writing my own low-sal recipes, well sometimes that takes a little more brain power and energy than I have. Since most of the just plain baking ingredients are low or sal-free stuff like these brownies* are easy to find and make.(There's no other way to describe them than, YUM.) I've probably made more chocolatey, ooey, gooey baked goods since finding out about my salicylate intolerance than I did my entire previous life combined. I make brownies or chocolate cake at least once a week. This might seems sad to you: "That poor girl obviously has a problem." But when the only sweet things you can have are chocolate and homemade caramels you come to me and tell me you're not doing the same thing. But try those brownies, seriously, so good.

*If you're going to use nuts be sure to use pecans, not walnuts!

Salicylate Cooking?

So, about two months ago I found out that I have an intolerance to a group of chemicals called salicylates. It was a lucky catch by my mom who follows dashoff's blog and had researched the issue when Diane's son was having issues with his digestion (poor little guy*). My mom noticed that I was having a lot of symptoms associated with salicylate sensitivity and, because I was ready to try anything at that point, I jumped into the low-sal diet. The difference was night and day. After struggling for almost two years with phantom pains, headaches, cold-like symptoms and what we suspected was an ulcer, my symptoms disappeared in two weeks. I am overjoyed to be able to share this with you, but there have been challenges and one of the biggest ones is finding recipes that I can use. Being a culinary student and an epicurean I was getting tired of eating quesadillas and stalks of celery. So tonight I ventured to make a recipe of my own and it turned out...well, fabulously. So, first in a long series of what is new cooking to me I present- French Onion and Beef "Stew" with Homemade Garlic Croutons! (I know, that's a working title people, excessively long but eminently descriptive.) This recipe works really well if you prep everything beforehand, all that mise en place and whatnot.

F.O.B."S".H.G.C.

Croutons

1/2 loaf of sturdy white bread- I used my dad's -cubed in 1/2 in pieces

1 large clove of garlic finely minced

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp sunflower or canola oil

Stew

2 Medium onions sliced lengthwise in 1/4 in pieces

1lb beef (round steak is great) cubed in 1/2 inch pieces

1/8 cup sunflower or canola oil

3/4 cup pear juice divided

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp corn starch

1/4 lb of mozzarella cheese coarsely grated

• Pre-heat your oven to 400F. Toss all the ingredients for the croutons together, spread them out on a sheet pan and put them in the oven to toast.
• In a deep pan (4 or 5 quart is good, preferably NOT nonstick) heat your oil at medium high to start making the stew. Once the oil is just starting to smoke gently add the beef, making sure it has plenty of room to brown. (If you need to, do this in two batches.) Brown it on all sides making sure you get plenty of that yummy brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. When, fully cooked remove the beef and set aside.
• At this point add the first half of the pear juice to deglaze the pan, scrape it all off the bottom, that yummy flavor is the base of your stew. Once the pear juice/brown bits are simmering add your onions. Cover and cook until the onions and pear juice carmelize into a yummy mess-0-flavor.
• Check on your croutons, hopefully they're not burned? Sweet, flip 'em on over and stick 'em back in.
• Now, back to the stew, add the rest of your liquids (pear juice, soy sauce and lemon juice) stir it up! Gently remove two tablespoons of the liquid and in a small bowl mix it with the corn starch, set that aside.
• Simmer the onion/liquids mixture until it is almost all reduced.
• Take your croutons out! They're done!
• Add the corn starch slurry to the onion mixture and when that's all mixed in, add the beef back in. Mixy mixy. Good. Ok, now in bowls it goes like this: croutons, stew, cheese.
• Hand the bowls around and watch every one go, "This is low in salicylates? Amazing!" Just kidding. They won't do that. They don't even know what salicylates are.

So yay, number one recipe done! Hopefully number two will be coming soon.

*Diane is seriously my hero. She has had to deal with wayyy more than I have. You should really link over and read her story.

The Post About Nothing.

When I think about writing here, I never know what to say. If something funny comes to me, I'll write it but other than that- because I have no training or real ability- I'm at a loss. Other people's writing seems to just flow out of them like an unstoppable stream, they've really got things to say, whereas I might feel things acutely but have no idea how to convert them into language. As for actually thinking things through to say, well, I'm very bad at that. I just blurt out what I feel when it comes to my mouth as words. That's weird, right? The same is true here with my fingers. And even still I find that I can get to the end of a paragraph without having said anything. It must be some sort of quirk. I hate that I talk but don't say anything. (Maybe I should just give myself over to melodrama now. :-P) Ironic that I've now written ten sentences about how I have nothing to say. Well, anyway, thanks for listening to nothing.

Ode to the Spirit

Whither away spirit?
Dost thou leave in contempt?
Dost thou love me still?
But aye, the mere asking
Reveals mine mortal sickness
The death of truths when
I bid them enter

Fie and death spoken so earnest and gentle
My mind and soul at war
Yet shall I never know which be
The traitorous villain or the king.

The plight of men is thus;
The struggle betwixt sin and truth
Shows an ugly face
so much that in the struggle
one cannot see which is right.

It is you, Spirit, who reveals
the true champion
which mind defy or soul condemn
shall be my spouse all days
I bid thee, enter and bring me life.

A Deeper Sadness, a Greater Joy.

Sadness is something that I've never really examined in my life. I've always been ashamed of it -as if only I were a stronger person I wouldn't feel sad, which is completely ridiculous, but that's how I (sort of unconsciously) have always felt. As I actually started to examine sadness in myself I realized that 1. I had been wrong. and 2. I had been wrong because denying sadness is denying part of what it means to be human. Excessive sadness is never good, obviously it indicates depression. But to never allow yourself to recognize sadness isn't healthy either, and incidentally another way to depression. At least in what I have found, denying sadness is lying to yourself, which leads to other lies to the people around you. These lies weren't me explicitly telling someone something that was false. It was more me intending to deceive those around me by acting as though I wasn't sad. I know a lot of people handle sadness better than I am right now, I still have to find the balance of sharing the burden of my sadness and bearing what I need to bear myself.

Since examining myself and my sadness I have not actually experienced more sadness per se, but more of a deeper sadness. What I have experienced, not shockingly, kind of helps explain why I was reluctant to examine this part of my life in the first place. When I get sad, I get really, really sad. For a long time I just thought this was my own weakness. Now I know it's actually a gift. There are always two parts to my sadness; my sadness over the event(s) that have occurred, and my sadness over the knowledge that people were not originally intended to be sad, that I can see God had intended better things for us. Now, I'm not saying I've achieved beatific vision and I know God's mind therefore I weep in deep sadness as some of the saints have done, but I do feel like this was a gift given to me- probably for a lot of purposes that I don't even know about/ realize. In fact I can only think of one thing that is a benefit, but it is by no means a small thing.
I feel like this deep sadness enables me to more fully appreciate the things that are ordered by God here on earth. I might be deeply sad over a family crisis but when I go to mass and see how God has ordered things so perfectly for our benefit I cannot help feeling an even greater joy than my sadness is deep. This may be wrong, but I can't help hoping and praying that my sadness deepens even more so that I can have a fuller joy.
I'm a simple sort of person, I'm not dazzlingly intelligent or witty, but I know when God gives you a gift you should have the courage to recognize it so that it can benefit you and others in the way He wanted it to. Having been one of the people who didn't recognize her gift for years, I can tell you without doubt that the benefits are worth it.