How To Turn Steamed Vegetables From Valedictorian Into Sad Dropout

This weekend, I made a totally awesome vegan chili, which I promptly dumped sour cream on because the dairy doesn't count if you chant “HORNS UP FOR VEGANISM” ten times and pledge to adopt an autistic goat.

I took pictures, I devoured, I attempted to blog about it. I felt like I had forgotten how to tie my shoes – total case of writer's block. And now that chili recipe is in exile for the next week along with my food soul. I'll explain.


After my husband's accident and surgery, me trying to cut my finger off, and some miserably hot weather, I have not been inclined to do a whole lot of cooking. Something about pain and surgery – whether I'm the patient or the caretaker – seems to dig Junk Food Tierney out from the purgatory to whence she is typically banished. After my shoulder surgery, I ate almost nothing but Easy Mac and beef jerky. I had a Golden Ticket – I was INJURED and in PAIN and I couldn't even shave my armpits and if that is not an excuse to eat my way through the Sad Person aisle at my local convenience store, then I don't know what is.


Anyways, while taking care of my husband after his shoulder surgery, we fell into the same pattern. I should have been cooking vegetables and quinoa and filling our house with intoxicating, healing aromas and maybe burning some sage or something but I am a weak human being of low culinary caliber during times of stress – so I resumed my long-abandoned love affair with Lean Pockets (they're LEAN! Like celery, your body actually incinerates its own FAT when you eat them – the more you know), pickles, sugar-free popsicles and self-loathing. We knew it was time to turn our backs on the dark side when I walked into Super Torta (our local amazing Mexican joint and purveyor of godly burritos) and the guy behind the counter says, “Same, si?” Si, amigo. *sigh* Si.


So after my final meal of vegan-not-vegan-but-basically-vegan chili, I decided to just eat vegetables, fruit and some nuts for at least 7 days, mostly raw or gently cooked. On Sunday, I hit up our Woodstock Farmer's Market and got some greens, green beans, peaches, berries, etc. My breakfast and lunch looked like this, and I grazed on it throughout the day at work:

For dinner, I steamed asparagus and had a handful of nuts. Day one was a BREEZE, I felt so healthy and just, you know, CLEAN (you know?), and I'm pretty sure I lost like 9 pounds and also my pee can now be distilled into pre-natal vitamins, because I am So Full of vitamins.


Well that hippie-dippie bullshit died real quick on day two (today). See, whenever I do any sort of diet improvement or cleanse or anything like that, I crave one thing more than any other – a giant tray of boneless Buffalo wings and a pony keg of blue cheese dressing. So when that horrible craving hits, I try to improvise. This Buffalo chicken kale salad with yogurt-based blue cheese dressing that I made a couple months ago was so good I wanted to ask it to prom:

Tonight, my plan was to steam broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. But I needed my fix in one way or another, and I figure Frank's Red Hot is really just vinegar and peppers so, TOTALLY raw... So I dipped my steamed vegetables in hot sauce. Sans blue cheese (quelle horreur), and I created a barrier with carrots to contain the hot sauce. Because I am an adult, and I know that letting your food touch gives you the cooties.  This is probably the least impressive picture of food I will ever post.

It was actually delicious. But I noticed something – a good dip in the hot sauce on say, a bit of broccoli, was overwhelming to my palate. I found myself barely dabbing them in it. If I had wings or fries or tots in front of me, I'd be DOUSING them in Buffalo sauce, and that never struck me as overwhelming. Then I thought about some of my favorite recipes and how they are similar in their simplicity – something fresh, cooked with thoughtful ingredients and a proper technique. When you cook nutritionally void stuff like fried chicken wings and tater tots, slathering it in sauces and dressings makes it palatable. How backwards is that? Instead of enjoying what our local farms can provide – raw and uncooked in most cases – we eat frozen crap and douse it in more crap to choke it down. (I don't mean that, frozen crap. I love you. You're secretly my favorite aisle in the grocery store, especially after mini-corndogs were born)


So this week I will start reminding myself that good cooking starts from the ground up. Learning to appreciate ingredients in their purest form is a good start.


Don't get me wrong though... I will never swear off Lean Pockets, and it will be a cold day in Hell when I don't attack a particularly shitty day with an entire bag of pizza rolls and drink wine through a straw. We all deserve to, and NEED to, indulge ourselves sometimes. This has been a messy blog post... I'm going to sign off and lick the Frank's Red Hot off my keyboard. I'll wash it down with some cucumber water to atone for my shame.

Duality and Balance - Let's Talk About Pickles

Duality and balance... these are things that I've always been perceptive of, as a Gemini (the Twins). Sometimes it really seems to be at the forefront of my life events, and lately has been one of those times.


A year ago today, I was living in a tiny downtown studio. Today, I live in a 3 bedroom house with a sprawling garden and 7 chickens. Two years ago almost to the day, I had been in a motorcycle accident and had to have shoulder surgery. On Friday, my husband had been in a motorcycle accident and had to have shoulder surgery. Same injury, his was his left shoulder, mine was my right. He is left-handed, I am right-handed. Spooky, right? Not really duality, but balance. Strangely enough, my husband is a Libra (the Scale). There's your daily hippidippiness quotient! Shifting gears now and putting away my tarot cards and crystals.


I can't really think of a smooth transition so I'm just going to get all blunt with it. We're going to talk about pickles now.


I love pickles. I love everything vinegary or briny – so that being said, I'm very disappointed that at some point in my life I had some sort of life-altering negative experience with olives, because while I should LOVE them, they make me dry heave. Weird.


Anyways, back to pickles. I've always loved the really garlicky, sharp, dilly, gently spicy pickles. Luckily, my mother-in-law is a master of pickling (I think jarring and canning aptitude is genetically predisposed if you're Eastern European), and a few years ago she started teaching me how. I've made several good batches over the years and am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I can eat an entire Mason jar in a single day and I keep the juice and add it to everything – soups, vinaigrettes, eggs, BLOODY MARYS, I can't get enough pickles.


When we made our pickles traditionally, we would go to one of several local farmers and buy some huge bags of pickling cucumbers – about the length of your index finger but nice and fat. Don't slice them unless you're trying to fill some awkward gaps in your Mason jar – the whole ones maintain such an amazing crispiness without the insides getting too soggy, as they would if they were pickled in slices. See, pickling the traditional way involves pouring boiling pickling liquid into jars filled with cucumbers, sealing the jars, and letting them rest for at least a couple months.


A good pickle is so good. And I love them enough that I firmly take the stance that pickles on sandwiches is absolutely blasphemy. Some may disagree, some may be deleting my number from their phone in disgust – but hear me out. The beautiful thing about pickling is that, if properly done, it allows to preserve the crispness of a fresh cucumber, while infusing it with flavor and adding a completely nuanced texture. It's perfection. When you slap it on a sandwich, you make the bread soggy, it's overwhelmed by whatever mayo/mustard/etc is on there, and is serves as a layer of slip-and-slide between the other ingredients that make the sandwich fall apart. I weep – I truly do – for every slice of awesome pickle that died covered in mustard, slipped off a sandwich and fallen to the plate, and thrown out with the last crumbs, never to be enjoyed at all. Give me a minute... I just got the feels.


I felt there was proper balance between the ease of purchasing my pickling cukes from a local farmer rather than growing them myself (not possible in a downtown studio), and the amount of effort and length of time it takes to make great pickles. Once I had an enormous garden, I decided to double-up – what if I could grow my own pickling cukes from seed, THEN pickle them! No need for balance when you kick ass that hard. So I planted a zillion pickling cuke plants – literally dozens of which were destroyed by my cat – and a few more that just didn't take off. I do have several Burpee cucumber plants that took off like crazy – but they are larger and could never be pickled whole.

 I had envisioned a vast bounty – all ripe at precisely the same time, of course – of pickling cukes, and so far instead I have a vast bounty of big-ass not-pickling sized cucumbers which are delicious and beautiful, but more bountiful than I can eat as they ripen. I don't want to slice them and pickle them in the traditional way, which results in mushy pickles in my opinion. I decided to explore quick pickling.


The recipe is simple: 1 cup rice wine vinegar, ¾ cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1 tbspn salt. Boil. Add thinly sliced large cucumber, cover, put in the fridge. Wait a couple hours until it's cooled. My hand quivered as I dumped that much sugar into the pickling liquid, and a nervous tick took over reaching for my garlic and spices. But I was determined to give this a shot. The exact opposite pickle experience than I'm used to – long time preparing the actual cucumber, short time pickling it.

Jesus tap dancing Christ, those pickles were amazing. I say “were” because I ate them all. A completely different texture and flavor than I'm used to, but so delicious. I can affirmatively say that these would be great on a good Cuban sandwich, layered between the pork, or perhaps even on a bahn mi in addition to the pickled daikon. They're just thin enough that they would melt into the sandwich and provide a vinegary and sweet bite, without causing the aformentioned pickle slip-and-slide or bread sogginess. Next weekend – making a bahn mi and a Cuban with a quick-pickled cukes from my garden. I will report back.


My favored spicy, sharp, not-sweet pickles depend on effort and time for myself in preparing them, but no time in acquiring the cukes themselves. I depend on months and months of the care and attention of a farmer somewhere, and I hand a few bucks to them and then the pressure is on me. After some care and patience, in a few months – I'll have delicious pickles.


Then I flipped it. I spent months and months caring for cucumbers from seed, and once they became ripe, I decided to do it quick, easy and dirty to pickle them. The result was so different than what I thought was the only pickle I'd ever love – but equally delicious.

Being receptive to the duality and balance of the universe is pretty neat – and I think it's everywhere if you look. As I've been caring for my recovering husband, we've experienced balance – he's now experiencing an injury that I once did, and in caring for him I know how much he is hurting, and how it feels, and where it hurts, and how the perfect pillow arrangement for maximum comfort looks. He now is understanding everything I went through, and gaining a new empathy for my continued pain. Clearly not a situation to strive towards, but interesting. Scales.


Then on to duality.  I've been adjusting to spending more time attending to my garden and chickens and fresh produce, and less time buying food grown tirelessly by others, from the store, then spending hours and hours on slow-cooking dishes. I've shifted my focus this summer to growing delicious food myself from start-to-finish and then not messing with it so much. Raw, sliced vegetables, salads, quick vegan zucchini soup, and now – quick pickles. Twins.


I think after awhile of tackling challenging recipes, I'm going to keep it simple for the summer now that I have the opportunity to enjoy a simple, easy meal and enjoy all the work I put into growing the ingredients over the last few months. Going back to balance – things just might be getting crazy for me here in the coming months, so tonight I enjoy the simplicity of walking outside, grabbing a handful of lettuce and eating it with my first ripe tomato. More news to follow. In the meantime, here are our chickens enjoying their first watermelon.

Loss and Egg McMuffins

You might have noticed I haven't posted recently – or perhaps you didn't and I'm flattering myself. It's been a crazy few weeks, and my usual therapist (my cookbook) gathered dust.


First, my grandmother Ruthie passed away – and while not unexpected it was hard to swallow as she was a true gem and taught me much of what I know about being a take-no-bullshit Lady, and her sense of style and design forever altered the course of my life and I will miss her forever. Work was tumultuous, my husband was in a motorcycle accident and badly injured his shoulder which will require surgery next week, I got other news that I'll keep to myself (no I'm not pregnant nor do I want to be, I hate that I have to say that so often). My head has been spinning, and while cooking usually calms me, recently it's felt like a burden. I just want to burrito myself into my fuzziest blanket and sleep all the time. I've been having migraines and just really feeling like shit.


This weekend was looking up – I finally had some vegetables to harvest from my garden!! Rejoice after months of coddling seedlings and threatening murder upon my cats who love to take dirt baths in my plots. Of course because I'm always striving for homeostasis, this exciting news necessarily required something shitty to counteract it.


First, I cut my finger badly while walking back from my garden after grabbing some mature cucumbers and zucchinis. I don't know what it is about fingers but they bleed like faucets which I know because my fancy German knives are trying to win me a Darwin Award. This is my third bad cut this year.


Second, and this one hurts more than my finger, Hornswaggle disappeared. We had built her an outdoor enclosure and drilled on a lip around the perimeter to ensure she couldn't climb out. One of our cats had taken a liking to sitting on that lip, and wore it down to the point it was basically an escape ramp for my tortoise. I spent hours, literally, combing our enormous yard and walking the neighborhood. Under the deck, under every bush, in every corner, I searched obsessively. After spending the last 8 years trying to escape to Mars, she was gone. She is gone. My heart is broken.

Pets give us affection and love and make us feel useful when we feed them, but they also provide continuity to our lives. Hornswaggle was the single thread that has followed me through every bump and turn and change over almost the last decade. Her sole mission in life was to not be contained – no matter how vast and luxurious her enclosure was. I have to respect her for that, but I will miss her forever. My little homie, the only source of consistency through almost my entire adulthood. You might laugh because she's “just a turtle”, but she was MY turtle. I miss her.


So after a tumultuous few weeks, I really wanted to cook something to distract myself. I wanted comfort food. I wanted the one thing I crave when I'm sick, mad, happy, hungover, injured, mourning, or having a religious experience.


I wanted a goddamn Egg McMuffin.


I toasted the English muffins in a cast iron pan with butter, then crisped the Canadian bacon in the same butter. I cooked the egg in a perfect little egg pan that I impulsively bought during an Amazon spree which I still do not regret. After adding a slice of Kraft American cheese, it all came together..

I could have gone to a fine French cafe and ordered a croissant, or Eggs Benedict, or a beautifully constructed omelet. That trashy, cheap Tinkerbell of my soul however, insisted on an Egg McMuffin. And I needed to make it myself.a


Loss is a difficult thing. Something that was always there all of a sudden, just... isn't. I think during those times we turn to the things that ARE still there. Our creature comforts. They provide the continuity that we lose when we lose those we love.


So tonight, I went through an obscene amount of effort to make something I could have bought for a dollar. It was not the time to take the easy route. I made myself an Egg McMuffin, and I cried. Just got really ugly with it and mowed through that McMuffin like it was my last meal. And it felt really good. I felt better.

Sometimes life sucks. Seek out those things that make you wiggle in your seat, even if they're sinful or high-calorie or verboten. Sometimes you just need to cry over an Egg McMuffin. And that's okay.

Taco Tuesday with Zillion Dollar Fish

It's Taco Tuesday.


In my youth of yesteryear – you know, like three months ago – on this weekly holiday we typically would hole up at Area 52 which is a dive bar near our house that serves $1 tacos that are so delicious yet somehow also make you hate yourself and your life choices. But when you wash them down with a $2.75 well cocktail, it evens itself out. Since I've been trying to cook relatively healthy every day, and I had a hankering for halibut, I decided I'd make some healthy fish tacos and circumvent our usual Tuesday routine.


I walk past Portland Fish Market every day on my way home, and today I stopped in. I asked for enough halibut to serve two people, and the friendly fish monger – side note, is that not the best job title EVER? I want to be a monger, of any variety – grabbed two small fillets, weighed them and proceeded to ring me up.


TWENTY FIVE EFFING DOLLARS!


I'll let that sink in. $25. For two small pieces of halibut.


First of all, you shifty fish monger, halibut is a bottom-feeder and really is like the mole of the fish world. YES it is delicious, but how do you sleep at night? Do you roofie yourself, or perhaps drink enough to forget that you make a living charging people 4x the hourly minimum wage for two slabs of fish?


Here's where the story takes a predictable turn (if you know me). I smiled and handed him my money with no objection whatsoever, because I didn't want to cause a stir. If you ever want to swindle someone out of money with whatever cockamamie scheme you can hatch, come knock on my door because I am too nice to object.


Next stop was the grocery store for guacamole ingredients, cabbage and cotija cheese. If you've never had cotija cheese, do yourself a favor and buy a wheel... and then eat the whole thing without utensils of any sort. Whether you set out to do that or not, that is what will happen.


I no longer buy tortillas because one night I was craving tacos and had consumed a few adult beverages and logged onto Amazon and ordered pastured lard, 8 pounds of masa, a tortilla press, and one of those tortilla warmer things you get when you order fajitas. I thought I'd be a certified Grown Up when I turned 30 but those dreams have been shattered. I am an impulsive fat kid with a paycheck.


Anyways, homemade tortillas are absolutely delicious and easy. How many of these do you want to shove in your face?

On to the fish. I followed the recipe from my food bible, The Food Lab, for breaded fish and got it cooking after finishing up my tortillas and tucking them into bed in their fancy little warmer (I GOT FREE SHIPPING). I threw together a quick guacamole with a chopped onion, tomatoes, lime juice and 3 avocados. One thing I appreciate so much about Latin cuisine is that it is so delicious in its simplicity – the tortillas take like five seconds to pull together if you're blind and lazy, and guacamole really just requires a fork, a knife and enough upper body strength to brush your hair.


Considering it cost me more than I would typically spend on a dress, leggings, and a pair of sandals at H&M, the fish was lucky that it came out phenomenal otherwise I would have thrown it against my wall which seems to be a pretty undignified way to end ones earthly presence. Finally, it was time to assemble.

Homemade tortillas. Crisp leaf of Boston lettuce. Homemade guacamole. Crispy breaded halibut. Shredded cabbage. Cotija cheese.


It was delicious. It's very satisfying to see all these simple elements come together – it sounds cliché, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The sharp crunch of the onion, the creaminess of the guacamole, the chewiness of the tortillas, the crispness of the fish all topped off with a mild but pungent cheese – it was godly. It clearly cost more than the $1 taco down the road – and I did miss the sideshow of weathered day-drinkers trying to karaoke – but worth every penny.

I highly recommend getting drunk and ordering tortilla-making supplies on Amazon, and creating your own Taco Tuesday. Next week I think I'll make a taco with mango salsa because that sounds fancy and weird. The world is your oyster – go forth and Taco!*


*Note to self: Oyster tacos might be a thing

Bonus: Halfway through, with extra guac.

Braise Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

Have you ever had one of those weeks – the kind where even the Buddha himself personally waking you up in the morning wouldn't inspire you to not pull a pillow over your head and hit the snooze and punch EVERY SINGLE BIRD that was chirping in their cute stupid face (seriously, shut up birds)? The kind of week during which you'd be walking through molasses to reach the Holy Grail even if it was full of Nutella and rainbow dreams and sunshine?


Last week I had one of those weeks. The rut I found myself in was mighty, and it was wide. Every day, I had great aspirations to cook stews and roasts and all those lovely things – evidenced by the now vacuum-sealed 9 pounds of meat in my freezer (IT WAS ON SALE, DON'T JUDGE ME). And yet, every night... I just wanted to braise vegetables from the recipes in The Food Lab (my food bible). I could not be inspired to do anything more than brown, add butter, close a lid, and open it. In the meantime, I would hang out with my chickens, who remind me that even if you have a shitty day, chill out and check yo'self – they are little feathered dinosaur creatures and they shit their little poultry-pants in pure glee when I hand them a bunch of weeds. I mean really, how bad can my problems be? They prance around me like I'm about to douse them with holy water when I walk into their coop with weeds that I'd otherwise toss in my yard debris bin.  I hear most children are not so appreciative - hey, prospective parents, consider hens!


Anyways, on to the week of braising. I started with asparagus. Side note – I am one of those freaks of nature that cannot smell a change in the odor of my pee after eating them, so I get super paranoid going to the bathroom in public after eating them. After this particular batch, I walked down a floor to pee in a bathroom I knew to be less populated by people who I know and would certainly knock me down a few pegs if they smelled my asparagus pee. I don't know what asparagus pee smells like, and maybe it is horrifying. The suspense of not knowing will plague my life until my dying day.


Anyways – I didn't know what to expect, as I've never braised vegetables before. After browning, I added a healthy dose of grass-fed butter and some homemade chicken broth, tossed on a lid – and that was it. When the broth and butter had simmered down into nothing, it was ready. The asparagus was coated with this perfect lacquer, and it was absolutely delicious.

Okay, so that was like.. one foot up on my way out of the rut. But I wasn't quite there, so the next night I decided to replicated that recipe with carrots. Okay – go find every cookbook and recipe you have regarding cooking vegetables, and set them aflame. They are utterly useless. Braised vegetables are like that girl in high school who wasn't only the prom queen and valedictorian, volunteered at Humane Society and hand-fed bunnies, but was so nice that the only reason you hated her was because you couldn't hate her.  (SCREW YOU, JULIA)*

Day 2, carrots.  Oh my God.



Braising is the buttery popcorn version of vegetables, except minus the guilt because VEGETABLES. My husband and I did not use a fork on Day 1 or Day 2 of my braising week. Fingers are the utensils that god intended for braised vegetables.


Day 3 I decided to braise some green beans, and this time I mixed it up a bit. While I'd usually use butter as the emulsifying fat, I slow-cooked some slab bacon, drained it, and used the leftover bacon fat instead. Also added some red wine vinegar, and holy crap. It looked like mushy drain leftovers... but it was the best yet of the braised vegetables. Served it with a Portuguese sausage because, come on... why not.

Braising is a beautiful thing. Fresh organic greens, healthy fats, low cooked until perfection. After my epic-level rut of a week, it was like Xanax braising every night. Well, braising in combination with my chickens, who continue to be my 7 little therapists. I mean, they only care about me when I'm feeding them and they smell like shit... but same goes for human babies and people love them right?


I found myself in a rut. In accordance, I only cooked using the same technique every day but with different vegetables. Even just mixing it up that much got my wheels spinning, like finally catching traction when you're stuck in the mud. Tiny little deviations – they go a long way when you're trying to crawl back to the surface.


Happy braising y'all.

*Julia doesn't exist.  I was fortunately enough to go to high school with some classy-ass ladies, whom I don't resent (because I can braise better than them)

Being Both Flawed and Tasty: A Lesson in Life and Ugly Food

Have I bitched enough yet about how hot it is? I don't know if it's my verified Northern/Western European heritage (no seriously I had DNA testing done), but this heat just saps me of any and all energy. I could not even stop by Safeway on my bus ride home for cooking supplies, lest I faint. So I decided I'm cooking whatever the hell is marginally edible in my fridge and hoping for the best and then calling Al Gore and screaming, “FIX IT!!”


I had three eggs left from my mother-in-law's hens, which are culinary GOLD. Must include those. Some salad greens, some mozzarella, three-day old cherry tomatoes and an avocado. I can work with that.


Then this happened, which was neat.

Now I have two eggs left. I do not prefer to cook eggs under such circumstances as I am known to throw them out when I try to cook them and they suck. Not because I'm like a horrible, vindictive person who is prone to fits of rage (I'M NOT, SHUT UP), but to do them the favor of not living their brief life marred by disappointment and mediocrity. Now the pressure is on, because I have been failing on eggs so hard lately it's like I'm a junior high kid who thinks it's cool to skip class.


My husband prefers hard-boiled, and I prefer soft. So I whipped him up this awesome salad then got to feeding myself. That hard-boiled egg was on point.

I should also mention that today, I got a package from Crate & Barrel from my parents that was full of AWESOME NEW PLATES(!!!!!!!!) because maybe they're proud that their daughter cooks stuff and puts it on the internet and they are encouraging good behavior because otherwise I would totally be snorting nefarious things off of a toilet bowl at Hidden East Tavern. Or maybe just because they're awesome. They are fancy and colorful (both the plates and arguably my parents) and I must do them justice.


I roasted the tomatoes not out of any sort of culinary inspiration but because they were starting to go soft, and my chickens won't eat them. Roasted tomatoes might be my new favorite thing – they become so sweet and acidic at the same time, and they're awesome even though they're ugly and wrinkly which gives me hope for my future. I am turning 31 in a couple weeks, so the pruning process has begun.


Now for my soft-boiled egg. That slutty mistress. I followed the recipe from my food bible, The Food Lab, and have had a hell of a time nailing down the cooking time. I've been told I prefer six-minute eggs, but for me and our stove, it takes seven and a half. Many eggs have perished in this determination.


WOW HOW AWESOME. After just straight up dropping an egg on the floor, I stood in a kitchen that was already hot as balls over a hot stove, and my egg had cracked. Did I mention I am totally an egg misogynist and hate the ones that are ugly even though they probably taste fine or possibly delicious? I only did this for the picture. I do sort of enjoy the fact that it looks like Batman.

It actually tasted perfect. And the roasted tomatoes, avocado and cold mozzarella drizzled with a bit of olive oil and some sea salt was really a tasty combination. Lesson learned – you can be old or wrinkly or ugly or any combination of the three, and still be tasty.

Fat Kid Day

It was a stupidly hot weekend.

Dodging under random and ever-shifting spaces of shade, I accomplished a lot in the yard, and spent ample time kicking it with our awesome chickens – but I still needed to clean my bathroom and do my laundry and scrub the floors and solve world hunger, of which I did absolutely fuck-nothing because I was too busy drinking beer (FOR SURVIVAL) and sticking my face under cold running water while my cats tried not to die.  After a hot and draining couple of days, I was tired.  I dragged my sorry ass to work on Monday and just felt like I was lagging all day.  I hadn’t cooked a new recipe from The Food Lab or blogged the previous day as per my mission, and felt pretty poopy about it.

So, I got home Monday night determined to check off a couple of recipes from my (LONG) list, and I was so sick of salads and healthy things because hot weather makes me want to mainline White Castle burgers.

 I decided to make smashed potatoes with a from-scratch herb mayonnaise so I could eat all the oil in my pantry and also some starch, just for good measure.  Basically cholesterol therapy.

I drove to Safeway and they didn't have the right kind of potatoes because everything has to be a goddamn tragedy.  So I got yellow potatoes instead of new potatoes which is like eating rehydrated peanut butter when you wanted Nutella.  And then it makes you make outrageous comparisons that have no foundation in reality.

I made it home, also with a bottle of Cocoban which is the best cheap red wine on this planet.  I needed it because it counteracts personal and situational failure (at least during consumption) and I'll take what I can get.

The mayonnaise was a miracle.  We buy it from the store for our whole lives because it's one of those things that is a fridge essential but no one ever thinks to make themselves.  I always thought it was like churning butter - why in the name of fanciful Moses would I go through ALL THAT EFFORT when I could just buy it?  News flash - mayo involves dumping things into a mug and running an immersion blender.  If you're cross-eyed and lack basic motor skills, you can make mayo that is delicious.  Even add some garlic and call it aioli if you're fancy.

I boiled the potatoes until soft and smashed them with a pan, then fried in oil.  Do you know that feeling that you get when you walk into McDonald's that's equal parts "holy shit fried stuff" and "I make poor life decisions"?  Smelled like that.

I've been trying to cook healthy, and I deviated.  But I think there's something inherently healthy in indulgence.  I walk past Dairy Queen every goddamn day and never treat myself - instead I learned how to make mayo and fried potatoes like a really industrious fat kid.  It tasted like heaven and improved my mood as much as it damaged my waistline.

I'll eat a salad next time.

It is HOT, y'all.


Portland reached the high-90s this weekend, which means of course that everyone either floated the Sandy, drank PBRs from a cooler, and/or died. I drank some PBRs, avoided death, and ended up spending last night at my former roommate and good friend's house, which thankfully has central air. Have you experienced central air? It is a religious experience – if you were selling God alongside a central air system on a 100 degree day, I would be evangelical.


We cooked a delicious dinner in the first-world bliss of a cold house on a hot day. I'm reminded of a quote from King of the Hill, when the family went to Phoenix and Peggy said, “This city should not exist – it is a monument to man's arrogance.” Preach, Peggy. I can only survive these temperatures with ceiling fans and a bottle of Monopolowa vodka in my freezer, and friends with AC units. TRY ME, HOT WEATHER. I HAVE CIRCULATING AIR AND COLD BOOZE AND AWESOME FRIENDS.


This morning, my mother-in-law came over with an edamame plant (!!!!!!!!!) and fresh eggs from her hens, and promptly started weeding and feeding our chickens and just generally being a hummingbird of productivity, while I tried to trudge through my hangover (my friend pours stiff drinks, and the heat makes me verklempt). As she moved on to other ventures, her energy inspired me enough to weed all of our plots, water all of our plants, and feed our chickens some more weeds, all the while impressively not dying of heat stroke.


As I walked back into the kitchen after sweating my balls off in the heat and feeling like I would immediately perish until I stuck my head into the freezer, I saw my cookbook, The Food Lab, sitting precariously on my counter. My mission is to cook my way through it, and yesterday, I failed. I needed to cook something today. How convenient that I have a dozen fresh eggs from the most pampered hens in the Portland metro area? I decided to tackle creamy scrambled eggs – with goat cheese and roasted tomatoes, and a chicken sausage too because why not go beast-mode, protein-style.


6 eggs, 2 egg yolks, ¾ tablespoon of salt and I whisked it until it was frothy. After letting it sit for about 30 minutes, it turned from golden to ORANGE. Like Donald Trump before and after a tanning session. I added in 2 tablespoons of butter that I had chopped into little chunks and kept chilled, then threw it in a pan over medium-low heat and stirred it constantly. Eventually, the eggs started to curdle as the butter melted and then they eventually came together into a beautiful, custardy lump. How is that for making food sound edible?

I turned off the heat and added a couple tablespoons of heavy cream. After adorning the plate with tomatoes that I roasted then broiled, a bit of thyme, and some goat cheese – breakfast was served.


Oh Jesus. That lump of eggs was so good I wanted to break the plate over my head in a show of victory. The eggs were the perfect texture, the roasted acidity and sweetness of the tomatoes and the sharp, tangy goat cheese (which melted into the hot eggs) came together just perfectly. My husband literally licked his plate, and I served him the ugly plate that I didn't take pictures of.


I definitely heated up our barely-tolerable house by having the stove on for a half hour, and I would say it was worth it – but it wasn't. Our house is literally uninhabitable after two days of this heat and my stupid cooking venture. So, I am writing this from the Hidden East Tavern which has ample AC and cheap beer. I walked in and was tempted to take off my bra and lay down on the floor while the bartendress threw ice cubes at me. I settled for a PBR – and an ice water, which I will probably drink eventually but am mostly rubbing on my face like a feral human.


Stay safe out there, folks. And try those eggs, because holy shit they were good enough that I turned my house into the purgatory between earth and Hell and am now writing at a trashy bar on a Sunday afternoon just so I can exist without melting.

Hairy Legs and Sausages

Roll up your knickers and splash those pits with ice water kids, because it is a HOT ONE today – and it is supposed to be around 100 all weekend. Here in Portland, we like to characterize such a weather event as if it were apocalyptic and certain to ensure imminent death of old people, puppies, and those with weak dispositions. Even on Weather.Gov, there was a special alert urging people to check on their neighbors and wear sunscreen. Good advice, to be sure – but seriously, it's like 25 degrees hotter in Arizona and I'm pretty sure they aren't relegating themselves to their “it's so hot it's burning my fee-fees” fallout shelters.


With that being said, we Pacific Northwesterners are well-versed in being total wieners about any heat level that is:


A. Below 50 but not snowing
B. Above 80 but not a Saturday
C. Both raining AND windy
D. Raining on a day you did up your hair all nice


So it's not a surprise that we're all freaking out about the hot weekend. I'm right there with you, PNW brethren. Tonight, I ain't cooking a gad-damned thing. I bought vegetables and a few sausages along with a loaf of local bread and we are drinking cold cocktails and grilling some encased meat and watching our chickens. To facilitate such a lovely evening, I stopped by Otto's Sausage Market near our house for some primo logs of pork. It was then that I had a internal crisis.


If you've never been to Otto's, it is an awesome place with tons of great meats and mustards and Europoean beers (THE BEST BEERS, AND YES I'M SAYING THAT TO YOUR FACE, PORTLAND). They also have a small deli where they will make you a sandwich that you can sit and enjoy, in an area adjacent to the cash register. Today, I grabbed me some cajun chicken sausage and some Denmark something-or-other that I was told by the “we close in 30 minutes why do you have to ask me questions” meat-slinger, tastes exactly like Swedish meatballs. IKEA, get in my mouth – I'm sold. A couple Pilsner Urquells and some local bread sealed the deal, and I got in line.


Before I allow this to continue, I'd like to make something clear. I was raised by a recovering hippie, who was raised by a legit card-carrying hippie, and I'm kind of a hippie. If I had been born 20 years earlier, I probably would have hopped on a VW bus and just seen where it would take me, man, probably to San Francisco. That being said, I've been observing a trend – maybe not even that, maybe it's just Portland being Portland – that straight up sends me into 1950s housewife mode. And I saw it for the THIRD TIME in one day waiting in line at Otto's. Let me remind you again, I am a hippie pro-woman feminite lover of all genders and sexual orientations and life decisions. But oh my GOD, LADIES – shave your goddamn legs.


Okay, look, it's summer and that's super awesome and stuff but the one thing I hate about this season is I HAVE TO SHAVE MY LEGS LIKE ALL THE TIME. When I'm wearing leggings all winter, I can generally get away with less because I put a ring on it and my husband legally has to deal with a couple days worth of stubble, but in the summer when I'm wearing dresses and skirts every day – just, no. Shaving every day is a reality which I despise. But I deal with it. And there are an increasing number of women in Portland who have not shaved their legs since the dawning of the age of Aquarius. And one of them was sitting in the Otto's deli in an adorable sundress and cute shoes and a fun, summery up-do – with legs that looked like a Mediterranean pirate used Rogaine as lotion for the entirety of his pillaging journey.


I am all for women's liberation. Hell, as a card-carrying woman I climbed the corporate ladder farther than many of my male counterparts and I drink and cuss and ain't feel like having no children so I ain't gonna and all that stuff. THE 21ST CENTURY IS AWESOME because I can do those things and not be an outcast. But, that little tiny slice of Betty Draper housewife inside of me just screams internally when I see hairy lady legs on parade. This runs completely counter to everything I've told myself I believe about female independence and it makes me question if one of my parents actually gave me some bad, lady-hating DNA.


Then I really started thinking – if I showed up to work in a dress, as I do almost daily, with legs I hadn't shaved since the coming of spring, PEOPLE WOULD TALK. People would stare. I have every right to not shave my legs if I don't want to – but I would be a pariah if I didn't. I think perhaps I am super jealous of the increasing number of chicks who are just like, “nah, I'd rather not.”


So tonight, I'm the anti-housewife. Instead of cooking like I have been every night, I'm letting my husband grill big-ass manly meat-sausages while I whine about women who don't shave their legs. WHAT HAVE I BECOME. You know what, I need a bit of a vodka with a beer back just to prove I'm not Betty Draper (although I'm pretty sure she would knock that back so that's perhaps not the best example).


What is feminine, and who gets to decide what it is? Am I feminine because I love to cook, and is a woman who doesn't somehow less feminine? I am a woman because I shave my legs, and a woman who chooses not to somehow less of a woman? Why do we judge each other so much?


You know, this heat is really getting to me. I think tomorrow I'll shave my legs, strap on my apron and forget I ever questioned why I do either of those things.

I'm Stupid and So Are My Eggs

So after a long day of work – doing worky things, as I am wont to do – I was sitting on my bus heading home and thinking about what I might cook tonight for dinner. That devolved into surfing Serious Eats which devolved into Instagram which devolved into Redditting which then left me a sad, media-saturated shell of the woman that I once was when I first stepped onto the bus. Then, just to really rub it in, some average looking Joe sits next to me and – I swear to Flying Spaghetti Monster – starts timing himself on his phone while he solves a Rubiks Cube. Using ONE HAND. Repeatedly. I of course watch (I guess some people would say “stare” but I don't like those people) and observe his fastest time – TWENTY-FIVE SECONDS one-handedly solving a Rubiks Cube!! Like it ain't no thang! On the 19 Trimet bus while rubbing shoulders with people who shower biweekly and apparently gargle filth and cigarettes for breakfast! And also decent, respectable people such as yours truly but clearly I am not of the caliber of human that I once thought I was. I am the type of person that would peel off the colored stickers on the Rubiks cube and rearrange them because work smarter not harder, right? All I wanted to do was sit on the bus, think about food, stare at my phone, and feel superior to people who are smellier than me when THAT crazy smart asshole decided to sit next to me. What a JERK.


Ugh. By the time I got home, I felt like instead of cooking dinner I should binge Sudoku on Expert level and sip brandy from a snifter. Instead I poured my new favorite summer cocktail – 2 parts berry cider, one part red wine – and decided to cook a couple different recipes and techniques from my food bible, The Food Lab, BECAUSE I CAN DO SMART STUFF TOO, GUY ON THE BUS WHO THINKS HE'S SMARTERER THAN ME. Steamed asparagus, walnut vinaigrette, and poached eggs it is. And my husband absolutely had to make meat, so he bought a steak and kept my drink full like the dutiful man he is.


You know how I've occasionally mentioned or possibly outright bragged about how I could poach an egg in my sleep? Well Jesus tap-dancing Christ I don't know what kind of demon eggs I bought, but they WOULD NOT POACH properly. Every damn one, the whites just sort of spindled around in the water and outright refused to cradle up around their little yolk friends like I've so easily been able to convince them to do before. I threw two down the drain that were probably edible but so ugly they offended me, before I finally knocked out a couple good ones. That Rubik's cube guy – he really threw off my freaking Qi today. Poaching pro-tip – do NOT just drop your egg in the water after straining out the excess whites – gently tip it in like the delicate little flower it is. My last one came out PERFECT.


At this point my husband and I are both on the brink of starvation and I haven't even started steaming the asparagus yet because of my obsessive perfectionism over my stupid eggs that are stupid because if they were SMART like Rubiks cube guy, they would cinch up into a perfect little package like good little eggs. I finally decide fine, my eggs are going to be ugly, and I get the asparagus steaming while I prepare a walnut vinaigrette. Into my immersion mixing mug goes minced shallot, a tablespoon each of honey, dijon, and hot water, and three tablespoons of white wine vinegar. In a separate bowl, I combined olive oil and canola oil which I would then blend in slowly, emulsifying into a yummy thick dressing, and add the toasted walnuts.


Oh, shit. I forgot to toast the walnuts. WILL ANYTHING GO RIGHT IN MY LIFE.


As I toss back drink #2 as a healthy distraction from my utter failure as a human being, the asparagus perfected itself and I stared longingly at the one egg I poached that looked beautiful while resenting the others like red-headed stepchildren. Finally, time to plate.


Okay, y'all, that dressing with the crisp steamed asparagus and the runny poached yolk was absolutely DIVINE even for all of my bitching. The fatty, nutty crunch of the walnuts was an awesome contrast to the crisp, fresh crunch of the asparagus, and the dressing and yolk commingled beautifully and coated the spears in a tangy, delicious lacquer. Incredibly tasty, and I would make that dressing again a million times.


So I can't solve a Rubiks cube with one hand in 25 seconds, but I can make a mean asparagus dish with walnut vinaigrette and ugly, stupid eggs.

I Made a Salad to Cool Down As a Substitute for More Deodorant

So, yesterday I deviated from my food bible, The Food Lab, from which I intend to cook every recipe and technique – such is the purpose of this blog. I deviated because it was hot outside and I had an intense craving for Thai beef salad (it was yummy, No Ragrets). The heat did not subside today. Tonight, I came home to 7 chickens who were hiding in the shade under their coop, 2 cats who were sprawled out on the coolest concrete on our back porch as if they had melted like mozzarella cheese, a tortoise who as per usual did not give a fuck, and a garden full of not-so-perky looking vegetables of the “oops I tanned for too long” variety. Tonight was a night for another salad.


After flipping through The Food Lab, the recipe for Roasted Beet salad with goat cheese, eggs, pomegranate and almond vinaigrette caught my eye. I've always enjoyed cooking dishes with many elements, as it keeps my idle hands and anxious brain occupied – however, these dishes are usually long-cooked over a hot stove. This was perfectly feasible when I lived in an apartment with AC, but our current house feels approximately like some Man Upstairs is trying to turn us into jerky.


Salad it is. I did have to turn on the oven – to roast the beets, and hard-boil the eggs. Unfortunately, I could not find pomegranate seeds within a 10 mile radius so I settled on diced fresh cherries, which I added a bit of minced mint to. When the roasted beets came out of the oven, I let them rest for 30 minutes and headed out to the backyard with my husband to watch our new Reality TV – our 7 chickens.


I had taken the greens from the beets, chopped them up and sprinkled them in the chicken coop. They went absolutely balls-out nutty over them – flapping all over the place trying to properly position themselves for premium beet-green-eating positions. Even in the heat, they were so ridiculously excited for fresh greens that they pranced out from their shady, cool enclosure to eat them up like savages. If only we mere humans could be so inspired by fresh greens, amiright?


While I “cooked”, our cat Fender climbed to the top of a very large tree in our backyard while chasing crows. Jan sprayed him down with a hose, and I started to assemble what would soon be a pretty amazing salad.


I toasted some almonds then ran them through my food processor, adding them to a tablespoon each of honey and white wine vinegar. 5 tablespoons of olive oil would soon join the mix to create SUCH a yummy dressing that I went all George Costanza on it and double-dipped my finger in it a few times because I am unapologetically disgusting. Diced the roasted beets, drained some sliced white onion under warm water, and turned my attention to the hard-boiled eggs.

Hard-boiled eggs have always grossed me out, but Kenji's technique has me sold. They are perfection. Have you ever eaten a sandwich, or a bite of pasta, or a crisp bagel with cream cheese, or anything really, and said “MMM....” pause, another bite, “MMMMMMMM!!” Yep, that's it. After tossing some ice cubes in boiling water and peeling those little beauties, I assembled my salad.

As the sun began to set, the cats un-melted themselves; the chickens resigned themselves to their cliques in various corners of the coop, and my beautifully sprouting vegetables drank up all the water I just spewed on them. And my husband and I sat down to a delicious salad. We took a lesson from our chickens, and got enthused about vegetables even in the heat of the first day of June. This dish was absolutely beautiful. The crunch of the almond, the kick of the goat cheese, the almost creamy texture of the beets along with the crunch of the lettuce, raw onion and the egginess of the egg (for lack of a better word) – it was total perfection. On a hot summer night, I could not have asked for anything more.


There might have been some cider involved, just saying. But that never hurt anyone on a hot day.

Thai Beef Salad, AKA I Get Heat Stroke and Forget to Follow Rules

What an eventful long weekend.


I accidentally bought 3 more little chickens from the feed store – on two separate occasions, just to ensure you of my complete lack of self-control – to add to our existing 4, bringing the grand total of our multiclucktural brood to 7. I'm pretty excited because we spend a solid chunk of our expendable income on eggs. We each eat at least two a day – I have thus far perfected hard- and soft-boiled, and can definitely poach my way around an egg or two as well. As of this weekend, I learned how to cook them sunny-side up! How beautiful is this??

The combination of the crispy egg whites and perfect creamy yolk was a revelation. You can cook eggs a zillion different ways, but they all tend to be soft in one fashion or another. Crispy was absolute perfection.


Anyways – while my 7 chickens got to know each other and their new outdoor pen, I weeded our three huge plots, planted a few dozen vegetables, and almost cut my thumb off with my Wusthof knife. Luckily this time I didn't entirely cut through my nail, like I did LAST time I pulled off such a stunt. Today, I had an aspiration to check off another recipe from The Food Lab. I was thinking chicken with a pan sauce, and then Portland did that thing where it's schizophrenic. After a week of unseasonably chilly weather, today was absolutely hot as balls. My house was an oven when I got home, and I ended up sitting in my garage amongst the smell of gasoline and coolant because it was the coolest room in the house, flipping through my cookbook.


The thought of cooking over a hot stove, for once, had absolutely no appeal. I wanted something light and refreshing, so I deviated from my cookbook journey and decided to make Thai beef salad. With lemongrass, mint, and cilantro with a citrusy lime dressing and grilled steak, it really is the perfect salad for a hot day.


I've been obsessed with this dish for several years, as a Thai restaurant two blocks from my office serves up a divine rendition. I made it once a few months ago, and liked it even better than the one I regularly spent $12 on. Perhaps the heat had made me batty, but I decided to kind of wing it from memory rather than follow a recipe.


I started by marinating a slab of beef in lime juice, yuzu, fish sauce, scallions, and aminos. You know what's awesome when you have a deep, fresh cut on your finger from your fancy-pants German knife? Tossing beef in all of those things and forgetting to keep your sliced-open finger out of the mix. AGONY.


The dressing was made with minced garlic, a diced tiny little red pepper which is apparently a “fresca” pepper(?), two juiced limes, about a tablespoon of fish sauce, and a couple tablespoons of minced lemongrass – which is arguably one of the most refreshing flavors EVER. Tossed in a bit of sugar and a smidge of the Korean red pepper flakes I use in my kimchi – which is a recipe for another day – it smelled too spicy and not quite refreshing enough, so I grated about half a cucumber into it. Like magic, it added just enough crisp moisture to bring down the spice. Dressing done – on to the meat.

I took it out of the fridge and became distracted by the fact that I have 7 adorable chickens running around my backyard. After thoroughly torturing them with my presence and insistence upon holding them as means to show my deep ocean of affection and to “socialize them”, they were horrified and I was covered in chicken shit. Perhaps parenthood isn't for me, but after a thorough cleaning I was back in the kitchen where I apparently belong, with meat that is no longer of the living variety.


At this point, I am vaguely pretending to know what I'm doing, and failing. I tossed about 2 pounds of London broil into the cast iron pan before I realized that I have no idea why, and that people follow recipes for a good reason. The outside of the meat is browning beautifully, but the cut is so thick that I'm already foreseeing a raw center. I turned down the heat and started cooking the meat on all sides while I crank up the heat in the oven to 450 to engage Plan B.


Oh! That's cool. The outside of my meat is perfectly browned and it's clocking in at an internal temperature of less that 90 degrees, which means it's probably still technically alive according to Texas state law. Why do I ever do things without a plan? That was the ENTIRE focus of this blog – to follow recipes. I have already failed, on entry #3.


The steak went into the oven (I turned it down to 350, then back up to 400 because I'm spastic when I don't know what to do), and I did the cooking version of a Hail Mary which means I poured a fat-ass glass of wine and started forcing myself to feel hopeful by constantly sniffing my quite delicious-smelling dressing which may or may not be adorned by $12 worth of beef.


Finally, the steak appeared to be edible. After resting and slicing, I tossed it with minced lemongrass, shallot, and toasted rice. I quickly tossed some greens with minced cilantro and mint, a bit of the dressing that had been my sanity through the “I can't randomly just cook beef however” debacle, and topped with the rest of the dressing. I mean, look at that beef. Perfection.

While I don't entirely recommend building without blueprints, sometimes it's exciting – in the same way that having to pee with no restroom in sight is exciting (I'm talking from a female standpoint here folks – that ain't easy). Desperation may inspire, but sometimes you just pee your pants and live with the shame of not being able to figure your shit out.


Fortunately, today, I figured my shit out. I went off-recipe and pulled it together, and it was DELICIOUS. Every bit of the refreshing meal I was hoping for. Please, go off-recipe every now and then. You might pee your pants a couple times, but you also might cook a delicious meal that you enjoy in the sanctuary of your finally-cooled-down yard, with a glass of wine, watching your chickens be chickens. It was a good evening.

Why Am I Doing This?

I suppose I should have kicked off this blog with an explanation, but that white chicken chili was the shit and I really wanted to post it, so... here you go. Better late than never.


The last couple years have been interesting to say the least. To kick it off, in 2014 my now-husband and I had separated after four years together which was devastating but thankfully brief. Then right as things were getting better, we were in a serious motorcycle accident that demolished my shoulder, required surgery, and a 2-month long absence from work. I couldn't move very well on my own and I was in a sling the whole time, so I survived on a diet of Easy Mac and Hot Pockets in the room my (now-)husband was renting which was conveniently right across the street from the hospital which I frequented in my state of disrepair. Right around the time I was feeling more or less recovered, we got married at the courthouse and shortly after, moved back in together - into an awesome studio in downtown Portland.


The new chapter begins.


I'm a hummingbird when it comes to hobbies – I get super-hyper-jazzed and throw myself headfirst into them – paper art, knitting, reupholstery, the list goes on. Then I move on to the next when I get bored which is astonishingly quickly. At the beginning of this new chapter, I was freshly due for a new hobby. I had been eating nothing but microwaved garbage for months and I felt crappy. How convenient that our studio was located directly above a Safeway. Cooking it is.


There is a website that I've followed obsessively for the last few years, Serious Eats. In particular, they have one contributor who is now a managing editor, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who writes passionately about not only food and cooking, but the science behind it. His writing and recipes are very fascinating and he finally published a cookbook last year, The Food Lab. My loving husband Jan had pre-ordered it for me and all 900+ pages arrived and changed my life. So there I was - with an amazing cookbook, a kitchen surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking downtown Portland, and an elevator ride away from a grocery store. I would soon live in my kitchen.


I started working my way through the cookbook. First, I perfected all the elements of my absolute favorite dish on the planet Earth – Eggs Benedict. After like two dozen eggs that died sad deaths, I could poach like a mo-fo, and still can. I could probably poach a perfect egg while drunk and half-asleep, so I suppose the deaths of all of those eggs were not entirely in vain. Then I tackled Hollandaise sauce, which I had only ever previously prepared from a cheap packet of dust from the store. When I combined the two for the first time on top of toasted and buttered English muffins and grilled ham, it was better than any Benny I'd ever ordered from a restaurant. And I realized - after eating every bite - that I was not only satiated, but I felt... accomplished. For $10 worth of ingredients, I made two servings of restaurant-quality Eggs Benedict which would typically cost three times that much. Holy shit, I can do this. I can cook.


I find cooking to be incredibly therapeutic. During a time of transition in my life, standing in a kitchen full of amazing smells – THAT I TOTALLY MADE HAPPEN, YO – and then eating a delicious dish of food that I prepared is unexplainable. Everything involved in cooking helped heal me better than any surgery ever could – quietly mincing vegetables, searing meat, stirring eggs into cohesive perfection, bringing it all together... there's so much more to it than that, but every step of the way brings my anxiety down and my happiness up. It's like magic.


I now overlook a burgeoning garden and coop full of 6 happy hens while I cook in my kitchen, as opposed to the beautiful Portland downtown skyline I enjoyed last year. I tend to prefer the former, in all honesty – knowing that all of the plants I'm babysitting will one day end up on my plate is pretty satisfying.


So I suppose I will finally get to the point – why I'm doing this. Much like Julie & Julia – one of my favorite movies – I am going to cook every recipe and technique in The Food Lab. As a hobby hummingbird, I need something to keep me focused. That cookbook is just the thing.


I hope you'll join me on this journey as I make my way through 900 pages of cooking. We all need something or someone to keep us centered, because sometimes life feels like you're stuck in a centrifuge. I've found the one thing that centers me amidst all the chaos, much like a poached egg when it finally settles into a cohesive package at the bottom of the pan after flying around like a lunatic in the boiling water.


Let's do this. Bon appetit.

White Chicken Chili With An Awkwardly Large Tortilla Chip

A year ago today, we lived in a studio apartment in the middle of downtown Portland. It was awesome save for the fact that we paid the equivalent of two mortgages to live there, and we eventually ended up renting an amazing house owned by a good friend, for more space and less money. This house is great, and/but it has an offensively huge yard – a yard that obligates you to do garden-y things to it. After several weekends of tilling, weeding, mowing, etc, I planted a cubic shit-ton of seeds and starters and kicked my feet up in smug satisfaction, awaiting a bountiful crop from which I would jar and pickle and fuck some shit up with salads. Unfortunately, there is little difference between Weeds and Not Weeds – so I was hesitant to pull the bad stuff out of the ground, lest it be a beautiful head of Vivian lettuce. The result was a quite spectacular weed garden, with edible vegetables sprinkled throughout.


After some solid foot-dragging, I finally agreed that we should cut our losses, and weed out everywhere there wasn't a successful plant growing. We had about a dozen tomato plants, a dozen cucumber plants, onions, cabbage, spinach and kale, which were all doing well. My mother-in-law came over with a witchcraft weeding tool that changed my life forever, and we tore shit up. Did I mention we also moved our six chickens into their outdoor coop for the first time? So we're now responsible for the lives of both salad ingredients and feathered dinosaurs.


After an entire day gardening, my hands were ripped to shit and I had tons of cuts that were full of dirt and I would have gone for a manicure if it were not for my phobia of the judgment of nail technicians (I have a delicate soul). So I went back out to the garden, where I found entire bushels worth of cilantro, which I've never planted before so apparently came to my yard via osmosis. That's it, kids! I'm making white chicken chili.


2 poblanos, 4 Anaheims, 2 jalepenos, some onion and garlic under the broiler got the kitchen smelling delicious. I went out to my Weed Garden and pulled up a ton of cilantro while my peppers charred and made our house smell like a tacqueria. After the peppers charred, I placed them in a bowl of chicken broth to rest, after which I would peel and seed them in the broth, because I am not a smart woman and have little care for my personal well-being.


Peeling and seeding PEPPERS in a bowl full of PEPPER JUICE with hands that are splintered from two days of yard work is arguably the dumbest fucking thing you could ever do. Have you ever felt your heartbeat, through a cut on your ring finger, for two hours? Because I have, and that shit sucks. But I soldiered through and tossed some chicken breasts in my pepper puree to simmer, along with a quart of chicken broth, cumin, and ground coriander.


At this point, my husband is starving to death because I measure cooking times in intervals of “pretty soon” and “almost done”, both of which roughly translate to “watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then I'll feed you”. After applying ointment to my horrifically demolished hands, it finally all came together. A half pound of Jack cheese never hurt anyone, so into the pot it went – along with a tablespoon of jalepeno pickling liquid. A couple cups of the beans went into the blender, then added back in, to cream it up without adding cream. It was delicious, not to toot my own horn. But beep-beep. After topping with some fresh cilantro and a freshly fried tortilla chip, I inhaled it.


Hopefully my new garden grows, and my chickens lay me boatloads of eggs. In the meantime, despite all of my missteps and fuck ups, I ate a delicious bowl of white chicken chili tonight. I'll give it a thumbs up when my hand stops throbbing from pepper poisoning.


Cheers y'all!