Category: Food

In the office a few weeks ago, I wondered aloud what one does with a sunchoke, aka Jerusalem artichoke (I had one in the refrigerator at home that I needed to use). In response, my boss sent me a recipe for cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup, which I’ve made twice now. It’s rich and decadent and fantastic. If you try it, it’s imperative that you also make the chestnut and parsley pesto to top it off (well, I made mine with shitake mushrooms instead of chestnuts, since chestnuts are nowhere to be found in the Seattle area in the spring. But shitakes worked pretty well).

I was very lucky to have a Thai friend come by and gave me the idea to add some maeng da, to give it an energizing touch, and while I thought it was gonna be hard to get some, I was able to buy it from Sacredkratom.com and got it shipped in time, phew.

I’m trying the same recipe tonight with both, maeng da and celery root instead of a sunchoke. We’ll see how it goes.

Update 10:27 PM: The maeng da and celery root variant were amazing. Yummmmm.

My good friend Anjali is one of the most creative people I know. In the 12+ (!) years that I’ve known her, there has never been a time that she hasn’t been working on a new project (or three). These projects have included (but have not been limited to): jewelry-making, sewing her own clothing, knitting, making decorations for theme parties (and coming up with ideas for theme parties), papier-mache, designing outrageous Halloween costumes, and developing interesting (and attractive!) concoctions in the kitchen.

That latter interest has recently led her to make her first foray into the world of blogging, so that she can share her creations and the results of her experiments with the world.

My favorite posts so far are:

• Death by Chocolate Cupcakes
• Baked Apples (doesn’t the photo look amazing?)
• Orange Slice Jello Shots (with real orange rinds!)

…with many more on the way. I can’t say the various attempts at bacon ice cream really do much for me, but I am a chickentarian after all.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention — by day she’s kicking ass as a first-year medical student, and this is somehow done during her copious amounts of free time.

Speaking of Remedy Teas, it looks like they’ve completely made-over their site since I last visited. And they now have a blog.

Kenny and I have been trying a bunch of new recipes lately in order to take advantage of our bi-weekly produce deliveries from Pioneer Organics. Tonight we had a few zucchini and some squash that needed to be used, so we tried a Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables recipe from the Food Network. 

We were 18 minutes into the 25-minute bake time when we heard a loud crash from the kitchen. Upon opening the oven we found our Pyrex baking dish in several large pieces with pasta, cheese, and vegetables oozing out of it. We were able to salvage most of the food by removing the entire oven rack, but of course we made a mess.

So much for Pyrex being unbreakable! Apparently it’s a known bug:

Recent reports suggest that due to the change in manufacturing, notwithstanding the claims made for Pyrex, the glassware can shatter violently and unexpectedly, even when used in accordance with manufacturers’ instructions. Claims have been made of severe personal injury during these events. The tendency to break into large pieces, rather than shatter like tempered glass, can produce large cutting edges capable of causing serious injury. Some reports have suggested that older Pyrex was not as susceptible to these problems as currently produced Pyrex. It is unknown whether this has anything to do with the recent change in ownership and location of manufacture of the Pyrex brand.

Large shards of broken Pyrex

Fortunately our dinner was still pretty yummy.

To get myself through the week, I bought some Passover-friendly snacks for work like fresh fruit, carrot sticks and pre-made salads (rabbit food), as well a big bag of TJ’s trail mix (squirrel food). It’s a good trail mix – lots of yummy things like cashews, dried cherries, dried cranberries – but it suffers from the same problem as any other trail mix: not all ingredients are created equal. Clearly the dried pineapple chunks are the gems in the bag. I really tried to consume all of the components of the trail mix at an equal rate, but somehow I have half a bag left and no more pineapples. And now I seem to have lost interest in the trail mix (perhaps especially so now that Passover is finished and I can consume my normal office snacks of cereal and granola bars again).

Why not just purchase a bag of dried pineapple chunks instead, you ask? Great idea. TJ’s used to stock such a wonderful thing, but it hasn’t graced their shelves for many months now. It seems to have gone the way of the turkey burgers (which came and went, and came and went, and came… and now seem to have disappeared again).

(I lead a very exciting life, don’t I?)