Funny pretentious bento lady story

Today I'm hitting up Trader Joe's, one because I need things but also because I need a weekend cheer-up on this glorious, Spring Break Friday  (I have no work until next Friday and this free weekend is a treat).  Anyway, I stumbled across a photo of this new bento box thing they have in TJ's frozen section.  It's pretty.  It looks like this-

(not my photo), and it's probably tasty.  However, it's like seven dollars, and for that I could just make something much more awesome with much, much more volume.  It's cute though! 
     But it reminded me- a few weeks ago I was at the store with my fast food king, non health-loving, ever-begrudging boyfriend, and I picked one of these boxes up.  I looked at it, sort of laughed off the price and jokingly said to him something like "ahh, if only."  Just then, a woman from elsewhere in the isle looks over, BEE-LINES to that particular box, picks it up, and as she walks away, she turns and throws me this unmistakable, SMUG-ass "must be lonely at the bottom" smirk.  I kid you not, it was unreal.  And absolutely hilarious.  I could barely stifle my snorts.

     So yeah, just thought I'd share.  Tonight? TJ'S AND HARRY POTTER! ferthewin.

Dorky dilemmas, tofu firsts and the rice that had potential.

     What with the rain, school work and job-related stresses among other things, the past few days have been less than enthralling, to say the least.  Let me just vent a little, just a bit.  Distant Worlds, the elaborate concert world-tour featuring music from the Final Fantasy series is a magical, MAGICAL thing, and it's seriously been a life dream of mine to see it.  Well, it's coming to the Meyerhoff Symphony hall here in Baltimore, which is a VERY big deal.  Only problem is that it just HAS to be July 30th, which is the Saturday of Otakon.  If you know me, you know that this is both the best and worst thing that could possibly happen. 
     It's good because it ties perfectly into 'kon, ESPECIALLY if I bust out the Aerith Gainsborough cosplay again (yes, I am that type of loser).  But Saturday night is one of the best parts of the entire convention.  Yes, I would probably only miss about five hours of the weekend if I attended Distant Worlds (the Meyerhoff is only about a mile away from the convention center), but that could potentially be a very important few hours.  I really don't think I can pass up this opportunity, though.  I'm pretty sure I can make it work.  It would be TORTURE knowing that show was going on so close with me not at it, especially under the nerdy circumstances.  Hmm..

     So, there's my nerdy problem.  Back to food.  Let me first just share with you a few of my favorite things, and some of the things helping to keep me sane these days:

Trader Joe's jasmine green tea in my favorite giant mug (which just so happens to depict the logo of my favorite roller coaster in the world).  On my favorite bed-side table..thing.  Oh, and some Alba Botanica moisturizer in the background. There you have it.

     Anyway, a few nights ago I went ahead and put together some more impromptu dahl.  It was pretty good, and it looked like this:

Aaaand a rather unclear depiction of what went into it (the cilantro was mostly for a little bit of color variation, as it obviously added no flavor whatsoever.

And some toasted almonds, crushed up with some mint, sesame seeds and black peppercorns-

Despite using the coconut milk, the dahl actually came out somewhat drier than when I've skipped it.  Weird. 

     I can't remember what day this was, but this sandwich was friggin' good.  I tried, for the first time, both smoked tofu (SoyBoy) and Food for Life Ezekiel 4:9 bread, which comes frozen and is rather pricey, probably the reason I haven't yet tried it.  I got the sesame variety, and it's really tasty.  I might have to start grabbing this stuff more often.  Anyway, in between two toasted pieces of the yummy bread went some of the tofu (grilled), avocado, fresh dill and some goddess dressing, which I skimped on so much that it was more or less undetectable.  I've been craving the sandwich ever since. 

The tofu is hiding somewhat, but yeah. 

     And I guess that brings us to yesterday.  There's a recipe in my "I Heart Trader Joe's" cookbook for Mushroom Hazelnut Rice that I'd wanted to try since I got it for Christmas.  There's no photo in the book, but I had this imagine in my head of this fluffy, not-too-wet, bright bowl of rice with beautiful bits of earthy mushrooms and hazelnuts, all brightened up with lemon zest.  These, you see, are the ingredients.  It sounded and looked irresistible in my hungry imagination. 
     Well, I finally got to Wegmans (where I could buy a small amount of hazelnuts and white rice just for this recipe without breaking the bank, because, ya know, those things are so expensive, right?), and thus got around to trying out this dreamy recipe. 
     My first mistake might have been cooking the white rice (I always cook with brown, but chose white for the bright color) in mushroom broth, which I'd never used before. (

), and while its taste was earthy and nice, it gave the bright, long-grain rice a sort of sad and grayish color.  Boo.  My next mistake may or may night have been using the rice cooker, which I suspect made it a bit too gummy and not at all fluffy.  I was sad.  And then I didn't have an entire lemon to zest (or, rather, I didn't wanna steal the zest from and ruin a whole new lemon when I already had a perfectly good...half), so the flavor wasn't quite bright enough.  In the end, I think the mushrooms and hazelnuts, all nicely sauteed, would have been a little more satisfying without the tasty yet depressing-looking rice.  Next time, I'll use a less dark, cloudy broth and cook the rice differently, probably.

I had the finished product with some grilled white eggplant (also a first for me).  Interestingly, last night might have actually been the first time I've EVER put so much lemon juice on something that I didn't even want to eat it, but to be fair to my lemon-juice-obsession, I don't think the eggplant had much potential with or without it.  The highlight of the meal, though, was definitely the awesome little salad I made with some a summery-tasting tomato, avocado, dill, garlic and some sheeps' milk feta I found for cheapz at Whole Foods.  Almost an oxymoron, I know.  It was delicious, though.

     So, that's that.  Until next time!  I don't mind comments, by the way : )

My babaghanouj instincts

     Now that I've got a working computer, it means that I don't have to wait a million hours for the family Dell to upload photos.  This means that I can actually INCLUDE them, yay! Sooo let's get started.

     When I've made babaghanouj in the past, I've always just sorta eyeballed.  Of course, I used recipes as a guide, but I never quite followed them exactly.  And, ya know, it's almost always turned out good, in my opinion.  Tonight, though, as an experiment, I decided to actually follow a recipe from one of my books, and to be honest it wound up tasting like a waste of a small, perfectly good eggplant.  Looked good, though:

Pretty good, anyway.  To be fair, I didn't use a blender or food processor on this.  I thought, for whatever reason, that mashing it by hand might be...interesting?  I also roasted the eggplant like this:

(like the recipe told me), as opposed to cubing it up like I usually do.  This made for a mixture that was a bit too wet for my liking.  Also, I used mint, which isn't something I usually add.  Actually, I usually add very little in terms of seasoning, not even garlic.  For this batch, I did some grindin' (not part of the recipe, but hey, I couldn't resist).  Mint, black pepper and sesame seeds-

     But, yeah, overall I think I'm gonna stick to eyeballing and taste-testing.

     Even though I didn't really like it, I wasn't gonna waste the stuff.  So I put it on a piece of toasted quinoa bread from Trader Joe's, and added it to my hodge-podge dinner of vegetable samosas (also TJ's) and some random veggies I was trying to use up.  For dessert? Apples and bananas that I topped with an impromptu mixture of plain Greek yogurt, cinnamon and Nutella :D

Sounds weird, I know, but it was actually really nice and rich and the Nutella cut down on the sharpness of the yogurt just enough. I LOVE Nutella.  I wish I could find a vegan version, but I might just have to find a way to make one : )  And oh, I almost forgot, the whole time I was cooking this stuff, I was snacking diligently on some awesome, lemony kale chips (I recently tried these for the first time, and have made several batches since). Why oh why must I add copious amounts of lemon juice to everything? Yum.

New laptop! :D

     Sony Vaio.  Long story short, Asus gave up trying to fix the first one, Geek Squad worked hard to screw me over, and in the end a store credit for the price paid for the Asus got me this brand new beauty instead of Best Buy's insurance policy getting me something of lesser quality from an EXTREMELY limited list of choices (in other words, two choices).  It was actually very, very complicated and I was about a half inch away from blowing a gasket in my soul right there in the store. 
    
     Basic point is this: this blog should be much, much improved from here on out, considering the fact that it will be approximately 29873918731 times easier to upload photos and stuff. Yay! 

Dahl win.

     So, one of my goals for this year was to experiment with dahl.  If by chance you don't know what dahl is, it's a popular Indian dish made of mashed lentils, spices, and other good stuff.  My Grandmom used to make really good split pea soup, and my mom makes really good split pea soup, but those things are unrelated.  Sort of.
     Actually, no.  It's this really good split pea soup that has always made me think that I probably, in fact, like split lentils.  I've never really worked with them, myself. But I've come across so many recipes for dahl in the past, and it's always looked really good to me, if only a couple of the usual ingredients were...you know, not there.  I've got a good recipe for dahl with tomatoes, but I don't really  like cooked tomatoes. I also am not a huge fan of onions, or some of the spices recipes usually suggest.  So I figured I'd make up my own dahl.
    
     I wasn't aware that red split lentils cook EXTREMELY quickly, right into a nice, thick mush.  And I mean this in the nicest of ways, I assure you.  I actually cooked the peas in my rice cooker with some garlic.  Into the lovely orange mush I threw in cayenne, cumin (which I'm not a giant fan of, but thought it'd be appropriate), powdered ginger (not something I use often at all), sesame seeds, powdered cardamom and lots of lime juice.  I planned to add some coconut milk, but had forgotten to leave just a little in the can when I made my (also a goal) coconut rice pudding, and I didn't feel like opening a whole new can. 
     Long story short, this stuff was awesome.  Like..really good.  Even my boyfriend, who doesn't have the most cultural of palettes to say the least, went into the kitchen to grab his own bowl.  And, no surprise here, a smallish serving it was really nicely filling. Great success!

     The coconut rice pudding, on the other hand, not so much.  It wasn't bad by any means, but I sort of used brown basmati rice instead of jasmine short-grain, which made it a little too...toothsome. I hate that word, by the way.  I DID, however, throw in a jasmine tea bag while it was simmering, to fill the jasmine-y void in my psyche!

One of those days. But worse. Yay, tea.

     I'm having a really bad, crappy day.  One of those super-contemplative, "I really need to make some big changes but for now I just wanna mope and sniffle" days.  Things are less than ideal work-wise, I'm stressing about school in a big way, and on top of everything else, I got the biggest laptop cock-tease today. 
     It's the second time I've had to have the computer shipped away to Asus.  I finally got the call today, after weeks, that it was ready to pick up from the GeekSquad people.  Ten minutes after confirming by phone that the computer would ACTUALLY work (they replaced the motherboard this time), the boy calls me back to say that actually, no, I won't be getting it back yet.  They've found more problems, something about drivers and the mousepad.  Sooo...it's getting shipped away. AGAIN. Expedited, he said, but it will still probably be over a week.  If this happens one more time, I had better be receiving a new computer. 

     For now, I'm just trying to calm my nerves.  Tonight is free, and so it tomorrow, but I can't shake this stressyness.  My boyfriend being sweet to me, this YamaMotoYama Jasmine Tea, and some free time to get creative with these vegetables in the fridge are my only saving graces right now.  And perhaps Teen Mom 2. 
    
     On the subject of these veggies, maybe one of you can help me-
     I've got this eggplant, see, and I like roasting eggplant, a lot.  But I can never seem to get that perfect, browned, mushy consistency that I find at, say, Bertucci's.  Granted, I don't have a brick oven.  I've tried all sorts of ways.  Tried in foil, not in foil, grilled first, salted, not salted, lots of oil, not lots...you get the point.  I'm stumped. 

Ow- french onion soup and my eyes

     So it turns out, I think, that my eyes are even more sensitive than those of a normal human being when it comes to cutting up onions.  They do not, DO NOT like it.  Tonight I'm trying out a french onion soup recipe from one of my brilliant British vegetarian cookbooks, and this is a big deal, because I don't think I've ever actually made soup before.  I'm excited.  The onions are cookin' up right now, and I hope this shit's delicious!
     I think I might also try out a recipe tonight for this "creamy omelette" in a different BBVCB (my new abbreviation), because it's super-easy and has protein, and all that good stuff.  The thing is, I don't really like eggs.  I mean...at all.  I've more or less avoided them my entire life.  But lately I've been trying to forge a friendship with them for the sake of limited time in the morning, and my body's levels of protein and iron. We'll see.
     So, the coconut?  It was basically wasted on a fail-recipe. Let's just leave it at that.  And also, I think I was wrong, yet AGAIN, about my mystery root vegetable.  Boo.


     UPDATE: 4/1/11- Before I forget, the soup turned out pretty well.  I forgot to mention that I don't really even like onions, but the flavors came together nicely.  I threw in some croutons I made with Trader Joe's Quinoa Bread (try it!).  The omelette...not so much.  I think I'm just gonna stick to my occasional egg-for-iron routine, for now.