Brian's Night: House de Mouse II: Or how none of us should do math

Our official menu tonight:



Jollof Rice A Rissotto-ish rice and beans from West Africa

Corn Pudding A spinach & corn pudding from East Africa
Honey Cake with a honey brittle center

Jollof Rice

Boma - Flavors of Africa

Animal Kingdom Lodge

Yield: 16 servings
Ingredients:
16 ounces Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans. wash off brine
16 ounces Kidney Beans, wash off brine
2 quarts Coconut Milk
2 quarts Water
2 pounds Onions, diced chunky
Canola Oil
2 ounces Ground Turmeric, toasted
2 ounces Ground Coriander, toasted
2 each Cinnamon Sticks
4 quarts White Rice/Jasmine/Basmati, washed
8 ounces Sugar
1 ounce Chopped Cilantro
To taste Salt and Pepper
Method of Preparation:
1. Prepare the chickpeas and/or Garbanzo beans according to the directions on the package. Set aside. 2. Heat oil and sauté onions. Add turmeric, coriander, and cinnamon

sticks.
3. Add rice, coconut milk, and water.
4. Add sugar, salt and pepper.
5. Continue stirring, and add more water as needed until rice is cooked.
6. Add in chickpeas/beans at the end. Cook long enough to heat the beans through. Serve.


The Disney recipe serves 16, which is even too much for Hungry Deb, so we cut it down to 4. Math isn't our strong suit (we're studiously ignoring the fact that Alex math's for a living.) How If we are supposed to use 1/4 of an ounce, how many teaspoons is that? My head hurts! I'm glad I get to sit here and snark and not have to cook!

Corn Pudding

Sweet Corn and Spinach Pudding
Boma, Animal Kingdom Lodge

Ingredients:
½ cup Onions (diced)
1 tablespoon Butter
½ teaspoon Thyme (fresh picked then chopped fine)
2 cups Fresh corn kernels cut from the cobb
½ gallon Milk
1 quart Half & Half
1 quart Water
1 pound Polenta (ROLAND, raw but par cooked)
¼ cup Yellow Corn Flour
2 tablespoons Salt
2 tablespoons Sugar
½ cup Parmesan Cheese
SPINACH (ADD AS DESIRED)


Method of Preparation:
Saute onions with butter in a heavy bottom pot. Add corn kernels and Saute a few minutes. Add milk, water, and half & half. Mix the polenta and corn flour together dry and set aside. Bring just to a boil and whisk in cheese, salt, pepper, sugar, then the polenta/corn flour mixture in a steady stream. Keep whisking to ensure a smooth mixture. Turn stove off and whip a little longer to keep smooth as it thickens. Taste to ensure flavors are balanced, and enjoy!!

Honey Cake

I don't seem to have the recipe, but honestly, the cake was just ok. The ends where it got nice and crisp were pretty good, but the rest of the cake was a little tough. The Honey/Tea Whipped Cream was just AWESOME. I would not have thought adding tea to a whip cream would be a good idea, but it was. I'm betting the left over whip cream was super duper A1 in Bri's morning coffee.

I'll try to get the recipe and update it later.










For those of you wondering what happened to our first excursion to deepest darkest Africa (well, Disney's version of Africa) the embarrassing answer is I'm still working on it. I'm a bad blogger and Bri deserves a better chronicle of his nights . Hopefully soon.



Alex and I arrived at Bri&Deb's bearing gifts. Diet Coke and a TV. Well, the DC was really for me, but why can't I have nice things? The TV was left in the lobby of my building and we grabbed it for them. Their TV had volume issues and this one worked so we snagged it. Should I mention that we almost got arrested putting it in the truck? I think I'll let you stew on that and wonder if it's dramatic license or not.

Things were a little tense tonight at times for a number of reasons. Deb was having a bad week with her juice fast, We were forced to alter pretty much every recipe and Deb & Bri believe that people make recipes to be followed. Alex and I were attempting "to be good" and not make total pigs of ourselves. The biggest reason was probably because we're all bad at math. [We're studiously ignoring the fact that mathification is a central part of Alex's job] Some of it was forgivable (how many tbls in an ounce, etc.), but really, we should be able to cut a recipe in half. We're all really smart people. Allegedly.

Quotable Quotes:

-- Should we make 4 servings or 8 of the the rice? [Thank little baby cheeses we had a appetizers that we only made 4] See below for why.
--Oh, hungry Deb, it's so good to see you again. [Believe it or not, Hungry Deb stayed through the entire evening.]
At least I didn't wash my hands over the soup.
-- Will the pudding curse come back to haunt us [It did not!]
-- you better not be taking a picture of my crotch.
-- I am, but only because it's near the honey brittle.

For those paying attention, Bri and Deb share custody of the Greendale Community College hoodie. Apparently it's Bri's week. And this is the cutest picture ever. Apparently Honey tea Whipped Cream brings out the schmoopie.














All in all, we had one really good thing (corn pudding), one perfectly fine thing (the cake) and one awful wretched terrifically evil thing (the Jollof rice). Combine that with some plot development in Farscape, and I'll count the night a qualified success. ~Jim

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Jollof Rice	Not Good. F	It was, believe it or not, a D. It was as pleasant as any other dish we've made with beans and chick peas. D	I didn't even finish it and that says enough - Hungry Deb	Like Rice Pudding with Kidney beans and Tumeric. How could you go wrong? Many, many ways and we found all of them.
Sweet Corn & Spinach Pudding	B- I thought that there were some flavor notes missing. I compare every corn pudding to the one in the Veganomicon. It was good though.	A It was a gamble but it paid off. I liked it, even with the spinach.	A- It was really good.	A it was nummy and Alex is far too harsh a grader.
Honey Cake	B- I thought the honey flavor was really good and the addition of the tea was unusual and enjoyable but it could have used some tartness.	B The honey whipped cream is something that I'll have to revisit, but the cake needs a little work	B If I met this at a party, I'd think, "hey this is a pretty good cake." A servicable cake	B I think the honey whipped cream was awesome. The cake needs a little work

Farscape: There was actual plot development. 'Nuff said.

Jim's Night: Passage to India

Our official menu tonight:

Indian Summer Stew
Palak Paneer (Paneer recipe is from Artisan Cheese Making at Home)
Jim's Curry Chocolate Cake

Hello!

Welcome back, dear reader(s). Deb here, on blogging (and sitting-on-my-ass) duty. Tonight we're testing out a menu that Jim put together and I'm super excited to hear that it is Indian food, because that is one of my favorites. Just to add some suspense to the evening, I'll tell ya that I've been on a juice diet again since our last Cooking Club, and I'm determined tonight to NOT eat everything in the house, as I did last week.... we'll see how that goes. While the guys are chopping vegetables, we have to catch up on movies. Jim LOVED 21 Jump St, which totally makes me want to see it. Alex says I will appreciate it because it is a comedy of non-stop dick jokes ( Brian recently revealed that my sense of humor runs that way). Bri also exposed that I hated the movie Bridesmaids, so I had to explain to the room full of horrified people that I cannot handle the social humiliation movies. I don't have the courage to get through the awkward scenes. I think I bailed when the main character went up to give her second toast. Remember that part? My tastes are far more stress-free than that-- I really want to see John Carter, for example-- "the biggest flop of the year," as Jim puts it. But my sci-fi lovin' friends loved it, and you got trust them more than reviewers, right? Right?

Appetizers
Our first course should really be called Cheating and comes courtesy of Brian who stopped at the Australian meat pie place down the street (KO). The miniature meat pies (for Bri and Jim) and veggie roll (for Alex) were tasty and I'm sure helped take their usual feral hunger down a notch. Me? I'm drinking a spinach kale juice and still feeling virtuous.

Main Course

While the guys are hard at work chopping onions, our guest star Sarah walks in with Rommy! It's nice to have her here for her witty conversation, but also, she's taking care of dessert for us. :) Sarah, Jim and Alex spent the day at Craft Boston on the Seaport which sounds like it was a great time. Sarah bought these cool earrings and a t-shirt.

Rommy, the big sweetie, has taken up his usual position Right In Our Way, so everyone is carefully stepping over him as we go on. Dogs always win in our kitchen.

We're going to make our own cheese tonight!

"What are these two things, cocoa powder and butter?" Sarah interrupts, confusing everyone in the room, since she had just been talking knowledgeably about the baking properties of gluten. I still don't know what she could have meant (I was too busy writing it down.). But that's how I find out we're having chocolate cake for dessert! My juice is getting less appetizing as the evening goes on...

Sarah is almost done with the cake and the guys have barely gotten started on anything...oh, they are waiting for the milk to heat up for the paneer. It's taking forever, it's 5 quarts of milk and they're supposed to heat it up slowly. Alex is waiting for the frozen butternut squash to simmer so he has time to explain to me the traditional Indian method of making a stew which consists of simmering a bunch of vegetables together and then in a separate pan, frying up the spices to add to the stew later at the end. On the left, you see the beginnings of the Palak that Jim is making: onions and tomatoes and spices. It smells delicious already.




 Dessert
This chocolate cake is advanced, yo. I just watched Sarah put ginger and coconut milk into it. I finally got a hold of the recipe- it's from... somewhere online, but it turns out that Jim has reworked the whole thing anyway. He is testing his entry into the Food Experiments, which is an actual food competition here in Boston. Jesus, I'm watching Alex POUR GARAM MASALA AND CAYENNE PEPPER INTO OUR CHOCOLATE CAKE BATTER right now. Wow. Does it get crazier than that? This cake is intense. In fact, after Sarah put the cake in the oven, I was surprised to see that there are 2 more pages of instructions to follow.

"

Meanwhile, Brian is impatiently waiting for the milk to curdle and it is not happening. We might just be eating Palak Without Paneer tonight....No! they added some more vinegar and lemon juice than the recipe called for and it is slowly coagulating. After getting to 195 degrees, Brian will let it ripen for 5 minutes and then carefully ladle the cheese into muslin to drain. It drains for 20 minutes and then we press it and, finally, cut it into blocks of paneer.


A discussion ensued about why we write this blog. My original intent was to to create a record of our cooking adventures just to help us remember what worked and what didn't work, but it turns out Brian, Alex and Jim want to write a cookbook and become rich and famous. [Brian here to correct a huge misrepresentation--I just want to become famous.  I'll settle for rich, though.]

The kitchen is starting to smell sooo good. I can feel my hunger levels rising...were-Deb is coming out...soon they'll see fangs...   Jim is finishing up the Palak and Sarah is making cream cheese frosting for the cake...apparently massamam curry paste is going into our frosting! I tasted it, it was hot. Not sexy hot, burn your tongue hot. Hot frosting!




Waiting...

This meal is taking forever. We forgot to put the lentils in early enough, so we're waiting for them to get cooked and the paneer needs to be pressed for a half an hour (after draining for 20 minutes). We actually had time to clean up the whole kitchen before we ate, which never happens on our Cooking Club nights.  OMG, so hungry....

Finally! Here's the way everything looked at the end...you have to imagine the cake fully frosted, because we forgot to get a final picture of the cake. Jim face here expresses how we all feel about this...

Reviews

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Palak Paneer	B It needed different seasoning. It wasn't salty enough, maybe, ?	A- Proud of how good it came out.	A Didn't exactly taste like Indian restaurant palak paneer, but it was quite tasty. It tastes like hippy co-op Palak Paneer.	B+ Tasty
Summer Stew	B+ The recipe is awesome. It was so flavorful...I think it was the mustard seeds, and other spices at the end.	B- I think we should leave out the lentils next time.	B+ This would be a good recipe to keep working on. I thought it was almost perfect. I didn't think the lentils were too crunchy.	B- Crunchy lentils suck
Dessert	B+ Maybe I'm easy [room erupts in laughter], but I thought it was good. Nice flavor. I value novelty really highly and this was very unexpected.	C Combination of flavors didn't work for me.	B I loved the curry accents. I think they could have been even stronger.	B It's got a lot of potential.The consistency of the icing could be improved.

Farscape, Season 2, Episode 7: Home on the Remains. 
Brian: OMG, the name of the main villain was a shout out to Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard.
Deb: It was flat out awful.
Alex: Ciana the ho.
Jim: Australians trying to do US southern accents, goes beyond funny to just plain sad.

Farscape: Season 2, Episode 8
So depressed from the complete crappy-ness of the earlier episode, we decided that we couldn't face the next one, which looked even worse. A planet of lawyers. Really? Sarah bolted, probably thinking the rest of us were crazy for putting ourselves through this misery every week. The rest of us began to argue about whether we should ditch the whole Farscape series. Brian and I have seen most of the series before and we promised it would get better. Deep inside, though, even we were worried. Does it get better? Or were our tastes just really that crappy all those years ago? I argued that we should skip all the episodes that look like boring filler, but it turns out that the episode where everyone switches bodies (which strikes the rest of us as an awful premise)  is one of Brian's favorites... Soooo, we'll have to figure this out next week. It's a time of deep reflection in the Deep Space Cooking Club.

Deb's Night: Healthy Enchiladas

"Would you call this...a bunch of spinach?"

The problem with Deb's cooking nights is that we have to follow the recipe.  So a bunch of spinach means...erm...well, it depends if you ask Hungry Deb or Full Deb.  This month's Deb is on a juice fast, though, so basically anything that requires chewing is the best food in the world.  And as a result, all the food is still trying to follow a healthy theme, and mostly comes from health food blogs.  The bad news is that it's health food.  The good news is that we have the recipes!  And the links to the original pages, too.

Colcannon Puffs

Ingredients

• 1½ pounds potatoes (you can peel if you want, but I didn’t)
• 6 ounces kale

• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons soymilk
• 2 tablespoons potato starch or corn starch

Instructions

1. Cut the potatoes into small cubes (about 1/2-inch), put them in a large pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are tender.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, remove the center stalk from the kale and slice the leaves into strips. When the potatoes are done, lift them out with a slotted spoon and place in a large mixing bowl. Put the kale into the potato water and cook for 6 minutes or until kale is tender. Remove kale with a slotted spoon to a food processor. Add 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid and pulse to chop fine.
3. Preheat oven to 425 F. Mash the potatoes and add the kale and all remaining ingredients. Stir well. Using a well-rounded tablespoon, form into balls about 1 inch across. Place them on an oiled baking sheet or, preferably, a baking sheet covered with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes. Carefully turn over and bake fore 20 minutes more, until lightly browned.

Here are the half-cooked colcannon
puffs before going back in the oven.

A colcannon puff, in case you're not Irish, or an Ireland-enthusiast, or a reader of the ridiculously buff firemen who read this recipe from fat free vegan, is a potato-kale ball that involves a lot of boiling.  And if that doesn't sound enticing...then you're just not hungry enough.  Hopefully the powdered goodness of nutritional yeast, onion powder and other seasonings will make it extra delicious.  Barring that, well, that's what health food is for.  Nourish your soul with healing energy and your body will...um...who cares about your body if your soul is nourished?

"How'd you get kale on your forehead?"

After lots of mashing and spicing, you get to roll them into balls, which is always delightful.  Hungry Deb made some gigantic balls, in that not-at-all-sexual-but-actually-just-really-very-hungry way.  Yeah.

And mysteriously enough, we managed to get the salt wrong (or was this an especially salty recipe?)  It might have been smart to taste before baking, especially since they were all vegan-y and didn't have anything that required cooking...

Served hot, the puffs should be crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

 

Enchiladas

Ingredients

• ½ large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• Some cumin and cinnamon
• 1 can diced tomatoes (or ½ box Pomi crushed tomatoes)
• 1 can black or pinto beans
• 1 can corn
• ½ bunch greens (spinach, collards, chard or kale)
• 8-10 lightly steamed corn tortillas

Instructions

1. Sauce: Preheat oven to 400. Line the bottom of a rectangular baking dish with parchment paper. In a skillet sauté the onion and bell pepper on medium-high with a little water for 5 minutes. Add spices and mix, followed by the diced tomatoes, beans and corn, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add in greens and cook for 2 more minutes, and turn off heat. Place 1 cup of sauce into a blender and blend until smooth; set aside.

2. Rolling enchiladas: Fill each steamed tortilla (so they won’t crack) with ½ cup of sauce and roll tortilla snugly, placing it seam side down in the baking dish. Continue until dish is full of rolled enchiladas, all placed closely together. Pour the blended sauce over the top, and bake uncovered for 20 minutes on the center rack. When done, let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

3. Guacamole topping: With a fork, mash the avocados with the lime juice, cumin and garlic powder. Mix in cilantro and tomatoes. Spoon mixture on top of enchiladas. Garnish with green onions and pumpkin seeds (optional). You can make this ahead of time if you like, so that the flavors mingle.

Recipe from StraightUpFood.

One of the dangers of making super healthy vegan enchiladas is that only super healthy vegans can be really, truly enthusiastic about them.  Thus, Jim and Brian made meat (meat?!?) to put in their enchiladas, and Jim brought cheese.


An interesting facet of this recipe was steaming the tortillas.  Normally, people steam them in that magic box at the burrito joint that you pump on and melt your slice of American cheese, but barring that, you actually have to do it on the stovetop!  It looks goofy, but it seems to have worked out alright.  Apparently, not steaming the tortillas results in them turning all crispy-sad in the oven.  Sounds right to me!

Steaming tortillas is almost as fun as eating them.  Right, Bri?

The most important part of the enchiladas was definitely the sauce, and I thankfully was figuring out how to blog this entry while that sauce happened, so it's a mysterious mystery from where I stand!  The sauce ended up getting cooked on the stovetop, but the beans got added before the blending of the sauce.  End result?  Kind of a hummos-y bean-y topping for the enchiladas, rather than a sauce-y topping with a bean-y filling.

Enchilada sauce - definitely
good with some extra hot sauce!

The guacamole that goes on top required ripe avocados, which the supermarket didn't have.  (Somehow, avocados aren't in season in Boston?  What?)  So we have vacuum sealed guac, and we're fancying it up with tomatoes and fresh cilantro.

It seems like maybe we should have ended up with a lot more sauce to smother the enchiladas - there was some exposed tortilla in there at the end.

The toasted pepitas on top of the
guacamole made for a delicious addition!

Chocolate Cherry Cake

Ingredients

• 20 frozen pitted cherries (about 1 cup)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon rum extract (optional)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup unbleached flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy yogurt
• 1/4 cup vanilla soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)
• boiling water

Instructions

1. Cut the frozen cherries in half (it’s easiest to do this while they’re frozen). Put them in a bowl and stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and rum extract, if using. Allow them to sit at room temperature until they’ve completely thawed and become juicy, 1-2 hours.
2. Oil or pan spray 4 7-ounce ramekins. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the brown sugar and 2 tablespoons cocoa powder and set aside.
3. Pour the juices off the cherries into a measuring cup. Press lightly on the cherries to get all of the juice (I had about 1/4 cup). Sprinkle the corn starch over the cherries and mix well. Divide the cherries equally among the 4 ramekins.
4. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa, and baking powder. Stir in the vanilla extract, soy yogurt, and soymilk. (Mixture will be very thick.) Drop by tablespoons over the cherries in the ramekins, dividing equally among them. Smooth to cover the cherries.
5.  Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture evenly over the batter, about 2 tablespoons per ramekin. Use a spoon to level the tops.
6.  Add boiling water to the cherry juice up to the 3/4 cup line. Pour or spoon it gently over the brown sugar in the ramekins, about 3 tablespoons per ramekin. Place the ramekins in the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until tops appear mostly dry (they should be streaked with darker, wetter looking areas) and sauce is bubbling around the edges. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.

"I've been waiting for this all week!" --Hungry Deb

What this translates to in real life is that Bri has to sort through the frozen mixed berries and isolated all of the cherries.  Mixed berry cake?  No.  Cherry cake!  Poor Hungry Deb then discovered that she was supposed to thaw those berries for several hours...so much for the recipe!  Into the microwave they go!

Afterwards, Deb had the fun job of squeezing juice out of the cherries, and then mixed the rest of the ingredients, including greek yogurt.  Unfortunately, Deb also...uh...had  no ramekins.  It's a little...experimental.  And the cake certainly has a lot of moving parts!  Pouring boiling cherry juice onto brown sugar on top of cocoa'd yogurt?  That's bold, yo.  Well, no matter how bad things get, there's always ice cream.

The cake texture was nice, but the whole
cherries inside has a kind of weird goo-like
property.  Did I mention ice cream?

Farscape

Deb: "Oh my God, so weepy."
Jim: "Pilot's entrails look suspiciously like cable covers."
Bri: "As flashback episodes go, it was pretty good."
Alex: "I watched maybe 40% of that episode."

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Colcannon Puffs	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy potato puffs...	They were...they were potato puffs.	Way too salty, but they have potential.	Even I thought they were salty.  They were Irish (read: bland)
Enchiladas	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy enchiladas...	The meat and cheese made those enchiladas!	Really good, but they didn't come together right, taste-wise.	They needed a lot more sauce!
Cake!	I think it has potential.  Maybe next time, we can make a cake WITH FAT.	I don't like the pieces of cherry either.  Buried under ice cream you can make pretend that it's not a very good sundae.	I don't like it.  I don't like the pieces of cherry.	Meh.

Alex's Night: Muffins! in! Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

Greetings, beautiful readers! It’s Brian, documenting this week after waking up at 6AM and working for nine hours at a high school jazz festival, so tonight is going to be.....special. (When did a memo go out to high school jazz bands that they should all dress like backup gangsters from 42nd Street? No more black shirts and skinny ties for me, no, not for a long time.)

Another sign of the apocalypse: Alex is following a recipe! For those of you not in the know, this is like Charlie Parker walking on stage, setting up a little stand and putting up some sheet music.

First up: a disagreement about the TV series “Numb3rs”, which Deb loves and Jim thinks is amazingly silly. As Jim just took his final and did amazingly well, Jim wins!

Next up: this week’s menu--DO YOU KNOW THE MUFFIN MAN? Do you know his ability to create an entire meal out of muffins?? The muffin man is as versatile as he is insane. He’s very versatile.

We are having:

MUSHROOM MUFFINS

involving eggs, mushrooms, grated cheddar. We substitute olive oil for butter.

Thyme butter, cream cheese, salt and pepper make a savory frosting!

PIZZA MUFFINS

involving parmesan and pecorino cheeses, vegan sausage substituted for olives(yesss), tomatoes,...it’s noted that with the substitution we have less salt than the original recipe, and compensate with a 1/2tsp.

UPDATE: In place of the “Italian seasonings” the recipe calls for, Alex substitutes ‘Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasonings’. As one does.

Update 2: There's a proposed topping for this muffin, roasted garlic/pepper jelly, remembered 4/5 of the way through the meal. Yay! We add the leftover pecorino cheese for added yumminess.

ONION MUFFINS, with Avocado/Brie Cream Cheese.

Already I can tell that we’re going to go into terra incognita here, because Alex’s recipe for the cream cheese reads, in full, “avocado, brie, lemon juice ?” There are a grand total of five question marks in this one recipe, which is always a good sign. A sign, anyhow. Cilantro butter is made as a side note. As opposed to a foot note, which you need stinky tofu for. (I’m sorry.) It turns out this was originally a recipe for Bell Pepper Muffins, only Jim despises bell peppers. We forge ahead!

SOUP: Jim’s CSA Share of Whatever Soup: parsnips, sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, leaks. There’s squash, too, which was obtained at the Market Basket, but 70-90% of this item is still local and spending a weekend morning in a Somerville parking lot waiting for a spot to open up earns a little slack. Salt and pepper with a little hot sauce to taste; with such a melange of roasted vegetables it doesn't need much herb help, goes the theory.

MUSIC: Mog on random shuffle, replaced during baking by Andrew Bird’s new album.

(Different bird)

Deb announces that she’s skeptical about the need for salt in food, generally, and is going to test this theory by no longer putting salt in ANYthing. (In her home cooking, not tonight). She and Alex verbally joust about nutrition a bit--Alex expresses dubiousness about anyone who begins sentences with “My favorite nutritionist says...”, which goes over about as well as you’d expect. Deb’s recent experiments with Juicing (vegetables, not steroids) have educated her about things like the inherent sweetness of cucumbers--you add them to juice to cut the bitterness of kale, apparently.  Jim has a counter-proposal involving Not Drinking Kale. Deb rejects this, yet notes 20 minutes later that if you have too much kale it can lead to Thyroid Issues. As someone with only one thyroid gland left in his body (long story) that seals the deal for me in a bigtime way.



We get the muffin tins out, and to our delight we realize we’re making mini-muffins!



True food fact: recently someone at Alex’s house washed their hands in broth he was making.



True food fact 2: recent attempts at sesame-soy muffins and cucumber-yogurt muffins were...well, the best thing that can be said about them is that they were recent, and they were muffin-shaped.



Because of the mini-ness of the muffins, we guesstimate the amount of time to bake them as 8 minutes. Alex notes that trying to put tiny amounts of batter in tiny little paper cups is one of the things he hates the most. We carefully avoid invoking Godwin's Law and just assume he hates Hitler more. Deb takes a turn with the batter and notes that it *is* painstaking work. (As opposed to hating Hitler, which is open to all sorts of approaches.)


The avocado/brie frosting is a challenge.  We're acting on the assumption that avocado shouldn't get too hot, but the brie needs to be melty, so finding a balance between the two is like finding a balance between a tie-dye t-shirt maker and a high school jazz band...ye gods I have to let go of this.

Deb Tires of chopping cilantro...this leads her to muse that she would be the worst sous chef in the world, as Variety and Stimulation are not exactly highlights of that job. It's pointed out that being constantly asked to taste something when you're on a juice fast would also be challenging for her.

The conversation turns to movies and watching them with your parents: Alex can watch ANYthing with them, even threesome movies...while we greet this news calmly, inside we're screaming at the mere thought of this. I'm still remembering the trauma from the holiday when we thought watching 'Love, Actually' with my parents was a good idea.

As Deb and Jim, our two artisans, begin the frosting process they unconsciously switch from calling them muffins to calling them cupcakes.

RESULTS AND THOUGHTS:
Jim's biggest takeaway from this is that four of us canNOT eat 94 mini-cupcakes.

Alex's biggest takeaway is that making delicious frosting is waaaaay easier than making delicious cake. Alex could eat ALL the frostings. A lot. Really a lot. He's really pleased with how well the avocado-brie came together.

Deb's biggest takeaway is that she came to this meal intending to stay true to her juice fast and only taste each of the items. Nine mini-muffins and a big bowl of soup later, she realizes how foolish this was.

Brian's biggest takeaway is that garlic/pepper jelly is versatile and yummy and should go on many, many things.

The finished product

Soup: A+ from Deb...she wants to make it a million times. A from Jim! The parsnips really gave it an earthy goodness, plus squash is very lovable. Alex gives it a B+...it's Fine. It's a roasted vegetable soup; the mix of veggies is good, but it's not epic. For myself, it felt like other soups we've done, but without the little kicks we've given soups in the past (and by kicks I guess I mean hot sauce and/or cheese). A good supporting character for the muffins.

Pizza Muffin: Deb's favorite. My favorite. Jim and Alex didn't even taste the sausage. Jim's definite winner was the pepper jelly! You lose the concept of a savory muffin with it a bit--the jelly turns the muffin sweet (which isn't a bad thing, mind you). Alex feels it has some goofy flavors that don't quite mesh together, grades it B. I give it an A+, wants to create a Muffin Van that will go around selling them.  I quietly note that a carnivorous version with bacon would be even better.  Muhuhahaha.

Mushroom Muffin: Deb's not a fan. Doesn't even remember the cake. Didn't like the frosting. Gives it a C. Jim felt the mushroom was superfluous--maybe if we had a stronger flavor of mushroom it'd be better? I enjoyed the frosting, vaguely remembered the cake.

Onion Muffin: Cake was a bit on the bland side, sez Deb. Frosting was delicious. Avocado is tricky since it will begin to oxidize if we leave the muffins out too long, so this isn't the best candidate for food carts or competitive muffin competitions. Jim enjoyed the little bit of onion. I thought, again, that the cake was just a carrier vehicle for the yummy frosting.  Would caramelizing the onions or in some other way boosting their flavor have made a difference? 



Tonight's Farscape episodes:
Taking the Stone (season 2, episode 3)
An exploration of Chiana's backstory, aka the producers saying to each other "guys, we've got to do something so the viewers like her character and stop thinking of her as annoying. So let's have her go off and try to join a commune of brainless death-hippies. The kids'll love it!" Ugh.

Crackers Don't Matter (season 2, episode 4)
I remembered this episode as being a lot better than it actually was.  The shakycam work actually made Jim feel motion-sick, bits seemed ludicrous or jarring, and we were all in food comas.  Bad combination.