New cookware...

...and a recipe to christen it!  On the way home from our anniversary trip to Sisters (and Bend!) we spotted some really nice cookware on the cheap and my fabulous husband decided to buy it for me.

Given the choice, I went with the larger pot.  This thing is huge.  It's got to be up there with the largest pot Le Creuset makes.  So what to do with such a massive Dutch oven?

 Hungarian Goulash.  Bet you didn't expect that.

Inspired by travel documentaries of Hungary, I decided to make something I have never attempted before.  In fact, I've never actually had it before.  I researched "authentic" recipes, but having found so many varieties of  Magyar Gulyas I had to make my own recipe.  Really, according to the internet, Goulash needs beef, potatoes and paprika only to make it authentic.  The rest is up to you.

New knife, too.

Here it is:

Serves 4-5:

1lb stew beef (like round steak, cut up.)
Beef stock
1 medium onion, chopped finely
1 large potato, cubed
2 large carrots, cut up
fresh parsley, about 1/2 cup
salt
pepper
all the world's paprika*

*Note:  I have no idea what kind of paprika I used.  Honestly, there are sweet varieties and hot varieties but mine just says "paprika".  I'm guessing it's not the hot kind because it's not spicy at all, so I used some cayenne for bite.  I plan on finding out more about these things, and updating my recipe accordingly.

Sautee the onion in butter or oil until soft but not brown.  Add about...3 tablespoons of paprika.  Add the beef to brown it.

Once your beef is brown, add the stock, some of the parsley, salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer this for at least an hour, but if you can manage two hours your beef should be really tender.  Then add the potatoes and carrots (and the rest of the parsley) and cook for about 30 minutes.  Check the taste to see if you need to add anything.  The broth should be brownish-red and kind of awkwardly thick with paprika.

It's really good.  I was also urged not to serve it with any kind of noodles since the potatoes are going to carb you up enough.

Hanging Around...

So since we're getting moved in, I started a bunch of new houseplants which will probably, inevitably, die.  I always start new plants when I move, then forget about them.  But we're not thinking of that.  These are the plants that will last!  Yes!

I have plenty of pots, but what I need are hanging pots. Why? Because cats love to munch on some houseplants. In fact, that's what did in my last house plant.  Furball chomped it down to stems.  Bad kitty!

The key to having both pets and plants is first to find plants that your cats won't die from eating.  Common spider plants are an easy place to start.  Second, you must find a spot to put your plants where your cats can't get to them.  Because spider plants are tasty.  Very, very tasty.  Ask Furball.

Plastic hanging planters are tacky.  Metal ones and nice ones are too expensive.  In fact, the plastic ones are too expensive, too, while still being tacky.  What to do?  Make your own, dummy.  There are a bunch of tutorials online.  Here and here.  I'm fairly excited about that "double" hanging planter, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

 All are fairly easy, and don't limit yourself to a particular kind of string(for indoor planters, anyway).  Anything strong enough to hold your plants which can also hold a knot is going to work.  These can also be customized for any size pot or basket.  I prefer not to make my look all funky with lots of knots, but that is a fairly easy option to add if you've ever made jewelry with hemp or leather cord.

I bought some colorful plastic pots from the store and used ordinary twine for mine.  These are going up into the attic room with all the nice skylights when they have rooted.  Thanks to Sue at work for the spider plant babies!

ASPCA list of plants that are Toxic and Non-toxic to pets.  It's not comprehensive, but it should give you a good idea.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Pie. I'm not out of season, YOU'RE out of season.

Usually, strawberry-rhubarb pie would be something to eat early in the summer.  If you grow rhubarb, you know it's best to pick it before the end of July.  However, I inherited a MASSIVE rhubarb plant from the last inhabitant of this place and it needed trimmed back.  Badly.  So while we were pulling the large green stalks off of the plant, I saved a few of the smaller, pinker ones in the center to make a pie with.

Now, I think rhubarb pie is gross.  And I think strawberry pie is gross.  Somehow, when you mix the two together, they become some sort of delicious magical treat.  The tartness of the rhubarb mixes with the sweetness of the strawberries and they balance one another out.  Next time I will probably go ahead and add the tapioca like most recipes suggest.  Corn starch and flour don't work like they do for apple pie, because the berries and rhubarb become extremely liquid.  Fortunately for me, most of the liquid spilled out into the pie pan where slices had been removed and left the actual pie, keeping it from turning into a soggy mess.

Pies- now with better lighting!

I used all the rhubarb and strawberries I had (a whole pound of strawberries!) and I think it still could have used more filling, but it was pretty tasty.

 *****

In other news our move to Sellwood has gone mostly very well.  A friend helped us with big furniture, but we have done most of it ourselves without any help.  Both of us have lost enough weight carrying things up the steps here to afford eating pie for breakfast.  We are not quite done yet but we will be probably by the end of the week.

A strange phenomenon has occurred, though.  Balloon and Furball no longer fight.  They are more like partners in crime, now.  They are both allowed to go outside (collars on, during daylight) and they seem a thousand times happier for it, though they act like snotty teenagers and pretend not to know us when they are outside.  All calls and temptations with food or treats fall on deaf ears until they are good and ready.

There are lots of other neighborhood cats, too.  Word traveled fast in the cat community, and once I gave treats to one, more came to say hi!  The neighbors have a tiny grey cat named Priscilla.  She might weigh 5 pounds and I think she's an adult.  Another cat without a name tag (Just a Multco registration tag) came to say hi.  I couldn't believe it; he was a beautiful cross-eyed Balinese!  Furball doesn't like the Balinese...colorpoint envy?  Zach said other cats had come during the day while I was at work, so I think there will be more.

For now here's a picture of our dining room, still not totally unpacked.  (Enlarge the picture, we totally have a framed photo of Ms T and her husband from our wedding.)

Today. I cooked. My face off.

Misery loves company cooking.  Lots of things have me down lately.  Bad attitudes.  Bad appraisals.  Boredom.  Illness.  If all my stuff wasn't boxed up, I would normally clean every inch of my apartment.  Since that would be pointless, today I cooked.  Everything.  Mostly foods I like.  And I didn't take pictures, because these are comfort foods.  They ain't pretty.  And my camera has sand it in from that time I took it to the river, so I'm getting a little help from creative commons photos nabbed from wikipedia.  Here goes.

First up were some pickled beet eggs.  This time I used fresh beets instead of canned, and the results are pending.  I can't imagine much of a difference, except I suspect the fresh beets will be more flavorful.  Why do people skydive or run marathons or choose natural child birth?  Just to say they did it?  I suspect this will be the case with my pickled beets.  I used five out of the six eggs I had. ***Update:  These are the best pickled beet eggs I have ever had.  I added a cinnamon stick and it was definitely worth it.

How my mousse would look if I took a picture.   With weird leaves and sticks.   From Wikimedia.

One egg was used in my recipe for Chocolate Mousse.  Right out of the same cookbook I've been using, Quick Foods.  It came out kind of heavy, so I'm not sure what I would do next time (whipping the cream before adding it?).  The recipe was kind of strange in that the ingredients called for coffee liqueur, but nowhere in the instructions did it mention when to add it.  No worries folks, it made its way in there.  Tasting more like ganache, I could only eat half a serving.  It's delicious but has that "I'm frickin' terrible for you" heavy chocolate flavor.

One thing I did here, and it was totally for convenience, was to spoon the mousse into the smallest gladware containers you can buy, which is a 4 oz size, and topped with a little homemade whipped cream.  It's perfect because each container has a lid to keep it fresh.  Not terribly classy, but it might just be if you are the only one bringing a french dessert in your lunchbox at work.

Along the lines of pickled items, I used a can of salmon I had to make an easy pickled salmon + onions.  I remember liking it a lot as a kid, and my grandma gave me instructions on how to make it once.  All the recipes I looked up called for fresh salmon (duh) but I'm not about to use that until I've tried it once Grandma's way.  The salmon in the can was kind of yucky to me (pre-pickling), but Mr. Furball didn't mind the extra bits.

baby salmon are as adorable as their parents are delicious. Around
here, you can visit a salmon hatchery to see them jumping "upstream" into water jets.

I also made salmon dip. This is good because my eye doctor told me to eat lots of oily fish for my eyes. Cream cheese-based dips are easy if you have a food processor.  This recipe also came from my book, but dips like this are common and involve the following:

• Some kind of fish.  Smoked Trout, Smoked Salmon, maybe crab?  I'm pretty serious about oily fish, so I might try herring someday.  Maybe a combo?  I found that salmon comes in 4, 8 and 12 oz packages.  4 oz is really enough.
• Cheese.  I used cream cheese.  Try Neufchatel, it's got less fat.  I was going to but I couldn't make a solid decision at the store.  1 box of 8 oz is enough.  (get the box rather than the tub so you can slice it and use it in your food processor)
• Seasonings.  People like dill with Salmon.  Lemon Pepper is also a good choice with fish. Do what you love.
• I added plain yogurt.  It's tangy and made of awesome.   This made my dip thinner and more spreadable. 
• Capers.  In case you used smoked salmon.  They are like eating sad, pickled flowers.  Well, that is literally what they are.  Don't put them in, they are more of a topping.

Process these.  If you are awesome, serve it in a bread bowl.

Side note:  The Pacific Northwest and Alaska are famous for having lots of salmon in general.  Think that would make smoked salmon cheap here?  No it does not.  Still the most expensive item on my list, save perhaps the jumbo bottle of Kahlua I bought to make the mousse. 

How do I feel now?  It doesn't matter, I have dishes to do.

Fishy Goodness. (warning: educational)

Fall Favorites, recipes and a new scarf.

Fall begins early in the Pacific Northwest, and may actually last two or more months.  Where I grew up in the Northeast, fall is a quick week-and-a-half-long event right between the hot, humid of summer and the (i n c r e d i b l y) cold and dry winter.  Basically only the third week in October is spared.

But here in Oregon, Fall is a long, slow affair with some sunny days, trending towards mainly rainy ones.  Leaves may turn and slip off the trees slowly.  Sweater weather lasts a long, long time.  Soup is a perfect meal.

I found this book at work, recently. Quick Food (which is shockingly published by Readers' Digest) contains over 300 recipes that you can make in half an hour. Most recipes produce about 4 servings, perfect for two people (with leftovers) or a modern-sized family of 1-2 children.  Since I work in the library, I've come across lots of different recipe books so far, but with so many fast recipes to choose from, this book is a winner.  I've already made two soups from it, it's great!

The first soup I made was the potato leek soup.  So good, and only a few (very affordable) ingredients.  My husband and I had seconds, its fabulous and really does only take 30 minutes.

Tonight I'm making the Thai Sweet Potato soup.  Currently, its still on the stove.

Update:  Sweet Potato soup was good.  Good enough to make me eat the leftovers, which I hate to do.  I might use this recipe and substitute pumpkin chunks for the sweet potato for a good fall Thai soup.  Its much easier than the easy pumpkin soup I've been making for years now, which is already extremely easy.  But cooking with sweet potatoes is easy in its own way, much less cleaning and cutting than when using pumpkin.  I suspect this will still work though!

The book has everything from starters, meat, poultry, vegetable dishes, soups and desserts.  Many of the soups can easily be made vegetarian or vegan simply by swapping chicken broth for vegetable broth.  Its perfect for nearly no-mess, neat-little-package kind of cooking.  Beginning to end (and probably cleaned up) in an hour.

Since soups don't photograph very well, here's something prettier that I've made lately:

Palmiers are easy to make, made with frozen puff pastry and sugar, they are nearly foolproof.  Good instructions can be found here:  Palmiers.

Hot off the needles:  Shizuku Scarf.  Easy, nearly meditative knitting produces a triangular-shaped scarf with fun dangly fringe.  Balloon loves it, naturally.

 Perfect for fall and made with my favorite yarn:  Noro Kureyon.  The pattern is free, make it yourself!  Suitable for advanced beginners.

I finally found a video (of another cat) doing something similar to what Balloon does.  We call it her "scoot" but for the most part, it seems to be called "sideways cat" or "sideways crawl".  I've never seen another cat do this, but Furball actually did it one time himself, so it must be catchy.

 Balloon's is more hilarious and less locomotive than this cat's movement.  She only uses her front paws to dig into the carpet and move, about an inch at a time.  At this point she stops, and rolls around for a second, then continues scooting.  I can't get a good video though, because she's pretty self-conscious and if we move or she thinks we're looking at her, she promptly stops and runs away.  I've heard cats do this when they become overly excited or playful.

p.s.: Holy pregnant dog...



does YOUR cat scoot?

September 11 is just around the corner.  I don't normally like to get political, but I find this video very interesting.  Watch it if you have time.  The world isn't perfect, and my comfort zone tends to be very small, but I love thinking that everyone in the world just wants the same thing:  to live their lives according to their beliefs and in peace.  Many Muslims I have met have been excellent human beings, and understanding other countries, peoples and views is essential to peace and democracy.  Do I challege some of their findings?  Yes, but I also find them excellent.  We can all benefit from better understanding of the human race.

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