Cooking Frenzy!

Tonight I've had another stupendous attack of The Cooking Frenzy. Total time: 3 hours of straight cooking and cleaning up!

It all started this morning when a co-worker friend Katie and I enjoyed a fabulous adventure at the Dekalb County Farmer's Market. Fortunately, I found incredible amounts of deliciousness, but unfortunately, I walked out $75 poorer. Worth it? Well, I think so.

So tonight the following was made, cooked, consumed:

• Pan Rustica with knock-off manchego (actually tastes more like queso blanco than manchego, haha)
• Lasagna a Different Way: a sautee mixture of spinach-creamed-corn cooked earlier in the week, mushrooms, onions, garlic, spinach, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper combined with a cheesy mixture of ricotta, sour cream, plain yogurt, oregano, salt, pepper, paprika, 2 eggs, cumin (will leave cumin out next time), lemon juice, and "sprinkled" with shredded poached chicken, all rolled up in really wide, long green lasagna noodles, each big log cut into three smaller logs, and then set up-right in a pan that has been pammed and olive oiled, and cooked at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes covered and 7 - 10 minutes uncovered. They look like delicious lasagna cinnamon rolls! Yummy ...
• Mushroom and Wine Sauce: sliced mushrooms leftover from the lasagna sauteed with diced onions, and garlic, add red wine and lemon juice, include the leftover chicken from the lasagna. Can't wait to have it on pasta! Actually, may even be tasty on its own!
• Chicken Stock ... Kinda: Salted water that the chicken was poached in, add sliced onions, two cloves smashed garlic, mushroom stems, simmer until the onions are translucent and the garlic cloves are falling apart.
• Focaccia with Olive Oil and Salt: Focaccia, grilled on the George Foreman, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with coarse sea salt.

Can't wait to actually taste the completed lasagna and chicken stock! Hopefully I'll get some photos up at some point! While cooking I also listened to some fabulous Splendid Table, wooed into a food stupor by Lynne Rosetta Casper. She's a goddess. Truly.

Yummy!

So this is what happens when you read ...

Currently Reading: 1421: The Year China Discovered America

Current Page: 202

Total Pages not includeing multiple appendices, footnotes, indexes, and other scholarly crap: 491 (Reaction: AACK.)

Impressions of book thus far: INCREDIBLE! I absolutely love this book! So interesting, so great! Thank goodness there are multiple illustrations, maps, and chunks of pages of glossy fun color photos/pictures scrattered throughout. I get lost reading this book, and I can't imagine these people actually going out and doing all of this! The only thing that bothers me so far is the author's repeated requests that readers go to his "website" for more information. Dude - your book is almost 500 pages long. Just go ahead and add whatever it is we're supposed to find on your damn website. Put in another couple appendices.

I'm totally shocked that all of these incredible achievments have been essentially wiped off the history books, even in China! All these cool facts about: Asiatic chickens in the Americas centuries before the Europeans limped their way over; rose-pink beads from Central America and gold rings with enormous emeralds found on atolls in the Pacific Ocean; the most beautiful, delicate, and incredible porcelein that magically depicted nature and other scenes when water was poured in from the Aztecs that surpassed by leaps and bounds the porcelein skills of the Chinese and was centuries ahead of the Europeans (who couldn't even accomplish the simplest porcelein production until the 18th century); mylodon's from Patagonia (souther Argentina) hanging out in Australia; the backwardness, barbarous, primitive, dirty, ignorant, and uncivilized Europeans; the incredible precautions the Chinese took to ensure their seamen were well fed with nutritious food and were relatively well cared for (ex. grew bean sprouts on food ships to prevent vitamin deficiencies, had trained otters in "aquariums" in the holds that would go out and round up fish into the nets, dogs kepts on ships both to keep down the vermin as well as to consume); and of course the fact that the vast majority of the land masses, waterways, and place names of the world are from European tongues, rarely the original people's tongues, and absolutely none of the Chinese tongues. Incredible. Europe is so damn selfish. And the Chinese madarins were so desperate to erase any and all memories of the extravagance of Emperor Zhu Di, the Song of Heaven that they destroyed everything they could get their hands on. What else hsa been destroyed over time that could have completely changed the course of knowledge, history, and the world? What are we destroying now that may prove crucial in the studies of some academian or simply curious student hundreds of years down the line? *Sigh*

Anyway, here are just some of the fun creatures and things that I've learned from the book so far:

Mylodon: 151: incredible ground sloth from Patagonia (southern Argentina) that stood at least 3 meters (approdimcately 8 - 9 feet) on its hind legs, lived in caves, absolutely incredible looking, I would certainly like to meet one if they weren't extinct





Warrah: 169: fabulous little creature that appeared to be a cross between a fox and a feral dog (probably left behind by one of the Chinese vessels), noted by Charles Darwin, but extinct by the 1860s
- More Info: http://www.messybeast.com/extinct/warrah.htm



Kerguelen Cabbage: 185: saved the Chinese seamen when their beansprouts rations were almost nil at the southern end of South America (found on the Kerguelen Island in the Shetland Islands in the Atlantic)




As a parting note, I'm not surprised that the Chinese highly prize (and love) this fabulous edible: the trepang (a.k.a. the sea cucumber). Enjoy these photos of the delictible little creature. Don't they make you want to rush out, buy one, and take a big bite?! Yum ... ?

Anyway, more to come later as I gleefully wander around this fabulous book!

Today: Lemon Curd!

Today is a lemon curd type of day. (Whatever that means ... it sounded better in my head haha) Heavy rain off and on, strange bursts of sunlight, and for some reason there's a concrete chisel being used somewhere just far enough not to be seen but certainly near enough to be perplexing and annoying. Strange neighborhood.

Julie Wolf, dear family friends from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago, makes us lemon curd every year for the holidays, but only this year did I attempt to make it. And damn it was good! So simple, but it does take some work and some time. Yay for biceps and triceps from stirring constantly!

In any case, I have elected to use Alton Brown's delicious lemon curd recipe. The only thing I would add would be a pinch of salt, but if you choose to leave that out because of the entire stick of butter that goes into it, who am I to judge. (But seriously ... after an entire stick of butter, what's one little pinch of salt?)

Here's the link!
Lemon Curd: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/lemon-curd-recipe/index.html

Some suggested uses for lemon curd are:
- Diabetic coma
- Clogged arteries

But once you get past those little negative-nancies of the culinary world, there are the following seductive uses of lemon curd:
- On toasted toast (sourdough, wheat/multigrain, french baguette), English muffins, croissants, weird healthy muffins, zucchini or banana or whatever-else you-make breads
- On sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies, bran cookies, pretty much any type of simple cookie (either on top or made into little sandwich cookies)
- In tarts
- In trifles
- On ice cream
... to name a few ...

As you can see, the possibilities go on and on! So whip yourself up a batch and see what you come up with!

Enjoy!

Nashville Flooding - Pets

When people are forced to leave their homes, they leave more than their family photos, their unfinished laundry, their entertainment systems, and the uneaten food in the freezer, they also leave their hearts: their pets. Due to a lack of space, temporary shelters not allowing animals for health and safety concerns, and not being able to locate a roaming cat, these invaluable members of the family are left behind. There is not way to convey to the unquestioning love in their eyes that you will be back as soon as you can, that you really do not want to leave them, and that you truly love them with all or your heart. And that inability to communicate is almost as devastating as leaving them behind in the first place.

In the recent Nashville, TN flooding, I am as concerned about the displaced animals as I am about their owners. Humans can fend for themselves, and so can their pets, but while humans have decades of life in which to find one another again, their animals may not even make it another year. Also, shelters and rescue centers have also be terribly affected by not only the rising waters but also the loss of power, the loss of potable water, the loss of staff members to care for them, and the loss of potential human families to come and adopt them.

Thankfully, there are many organizations stepping up, willing to help furry ones in need. Animal control is offering food and other supplies to pet owners. The Dyersburg ASPCA has sent workers to rescue domesticated and nondomesticated animals from the floods and devastation. Online news sources, blogs, and television news stations are also generously giving paper, internet, and air time to these furry hearts of many families.

More to come. But please, please, please keep the animals and their families in your thoughts and prayers.

Nashville, TN

Please keep Nashville, TN, her people, and her pets in your thoughts and prayers.

Here are some photos of some of the devastation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/tennessee-flooding-photos_n_561436.html#s88270

No Strings Attached - Joel Thompson

On of my good friends, Joel Thompson, is a member of No Strings Attached, the all-male A Capella group here at Emory University. He is an incredible musician, as he sings, plays piano, composes, arranges, and promotes music. It's fair to say that music is his life, and I can't imagine him without it.

This past weekend No Strings Attached had their end of the semester, Spring 2010 concert, and it was phenomenal. Hilarious with great music - what more could you ask for?! Many of the songs in their repertoire for the night were arrangements by Joel, my favorite of which was Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me," sung by another member of the group (to be verified later when I can track him down!). It made my heart melt and my soul yearn for even a minute chance to have even a fraction of a hundredth of a percentage of the experience and emotion conveyed in the song. It's a wonderful song, it was a great arrangement, and it was phenomenal soloist.


So without further ado, here is his big solo, the only solo he has agreed to in his years with NSA. He is singing Stevie Wonder's "You and I."

Enjoy!

Capoeira Day

Today, anyway, I'd like to present some Capoeira!

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial arts form that is inextricably linked to the history and culture of Brazil. Even with over 400 years of history, only recently has it truly has become a worldwide sensation. Mental and physical flexibility are required; though those two sound simple, when combined they present a formidable challenge. For more history and information, check out some of the links below!

Find of the day is ...

The Fabulous Group: D1 Autre Monde (D'Un Autre Monde)
Incredible Capoeira Video: http://mapage.noos.fr/d1autremonde/demo.html

They are truly out of this world. I greatly admire not only thier physical skills but also their passion for Capoeira and their unreal improvisation skills. As they twist and spin and truly take advantage of their bodies, they remind me so much of the grace, athleticism, and bonelessness of cats!

Here are some fun links:

Capoeira Science: http://capoeirascience.com/

Capoeirista: http://www.capoeirista.com/

Planet Capoeira Magazine: http://www.planetcapoeira.com/

I hope you enjoy these!

Sarah Duncan is a Music Video Star!

I LOVE this music video by Hot Water to the song Laduma. It is absolutely brilliant! The music is amazing and the lyrics and video are just wonderful and inspiring! ("Laduma" is what they call when they make a goal in soccer, and the man who's excitedly yelling in front of the television for his kid is commenting on the game.)

"Laduma" - Hot Water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4V9s9xQwTw


PLUS:

My wonderful friend Sarah Duncan is featured in it! She's laughing hysterically with her sister, her sister's boyfriend, and her family friend at 3:17! Please watch the whole thing, not just the part she's in!

I hope you become as addicted to this music video as I have!

Currently obssessed with ...

Shemar Moore and Hot & Spicy Barbecue Chips ... is there any way to combine the two in real life?

"I'm the fish with the carnivorous teeth!"

This is such an amazing video. Quality. I cannot describe to you how happy this video makes me feel everytime I watch it. Dibs on getting to be the Shark if this is ever recreated!

DJ Format feat. Jurassic 5 - WE KNOW SOMETHING