soups and stews: the official beginning of fall

Hello again! As usual, much has happened in the world of FBTS since you last heard from us. Most important for this blog, Noah went back to New York in search of greener employment pastures (there's not too much around here in terms of full-time work), so we are cooking and eating separately. But we're still doing a lot of cooking and eating, of course! Here is what's going on over on my side of things.

To start with, I love cookbooks. Noah isn't so much of a fan, he prefers to make things off-the-cuff, but while I enjoy doing that too, for the most part I love picking through cookbooks and getting new inspiration. There will be days when large portions of my day are spent rummaging around in cookbooks and food blogs looking for new and delicious things to do! Those are the best kinds of days. :-) My cookbook library is steadily growing, with plenty of standbys as well as new and quirky additions (I recently picked up two childrens' cookbooks from Goodwill--I don't have any kids, but childrens' cookbooks appealed strongly to the five-year-old inside me).

A little while after I moved into the house where I live with three other young people (who also love food, so we're getting along great), I was flipping through a cookbook called Ethnic Cuisine, which Noah gave to me as a Christmas present a couple years back. All the recipes look great-in fact, as I flip through it now I find several more I want to tackle soon-but when I looked through it a few weeks ago I didn't even get past the first couple pages, because the first two recipes in the book looked so good. Here are my takes on a couple of her soup recipes. Check out the actual book for the real versions, because mine were sometimes altered significantly based on what I had lying around.

Turmeric Yogurt Soup (adapted from Ethnic Cuisine, by Lorraine Turner):
1/3 cup all-purpose flour (she suggests gram flour, but I didn't have any. You miss some of the deeper taste by using AP, but it's definitely doable)
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups plain yogurt
2 tbsp. vegetable oil (you can also use peanut oil, or, even better, ghee)
3 cups water

I didn't really garnish it with anything, she suggests oil, cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, and whole fresh red chilies.

1. Mix the flour, turmeric, chili powder, and salt together, then beat in the yogurt with a whisk (or fork) until there are no more lumps.
2. Heat the oil (or melt the ghee) in a heavy-bottom pan over medium-high heat. Mix in the yogurt mixture and then the water, whisking constantly. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat way down and simmer for about 8 minutes (keep whisking it fairly frequently; I didn't hover over it whisking it and it still turned out fine), until the soup thickens slightly. Taste and season!

I was worried originally that my soup wasn't thick enough (it didn't look nearly as thick as the soup in the picture, but it thickens up after a little while, and significantly more in the fridge. I didn't garnish it at all, and ate it with bread to mop it all up. The tangy yogurt made for a very unique soup that was different from anything I'd ever had before (especially since I hadn't eaten much plain yogurt before this year; I'm switching over to organic plain yogurt with fruit instead of store-bought yogurt because I want fewer additives in my food).

Tunisian Garlic and Chickpea Soup (adapted from Ethnic Cuisine, by Lorraine Turner):
8 tbsp. olive oil (or appx.; I didn't measure)
12 garlic cloves, very finely chopped (I only used 8 because I ran out of garlic)
3 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight (I think I only used 2 cups because I ran out of chickpeas--clearly I was unprepared for this soup)
2 1/2 quarts water
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander (both of those are her measures, again I just put in "some" of each)
1 or 2 carrots, very finely chopped (smaller measures are what I had on hand)
1 or 2 onions, very finely chopped
4 or 6 celery stalks, very finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon (it doesn't say it's optional but it totally is; I skipped it)
4 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro, plus extra sprigs to garnish (I forgot to add it, so I used it solely as a garnish)
salt and pepper

1.Heat half the oil in a large, heavy-bottom pan over low heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes. Add the chickpeas (drain them first), water, cumin, and ground coriander. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until tender (she says 2 1/2 hours, but it's really based on your stove. I'm pretty sure mine was done in a little over an hour, though I did use fewer than the stated ingredients).
2. While that's cooking, heat the rest of the oil in a separate pan. Add the carrots, onions, and celery, then cover and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.
3. Stir the vegetables into the pan of chickpeas. Transfer about half the soup to a food processor (or blender) and process until smooth. (This step shouldn't be skipped! It gives the soup a cool variation in texture.) Mix the puree back in with the rest of the soup, and add in the lemon juice little by little, tasting all the way, if you used it. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with cilantro!

This soup was a total winner in my book! It was hearty and filling, and even with reducing the ingredients it made enough soup to last me for days. I will definitely be making it again as we go into fall and winter.

The last recipe I wanted to share with you is actually a link to a recipe. While Noah's food niche tends to lean toward the Asian food side of cooking, I have always been interested in traditional Latin American recipes. It's hard to find these written down in many places, but I did find a gorgeous Ecuadorian food blog called Laylita's Recipes, and I want to cook practically everything she writes about! The blog appears to be defunct, because she hasn't updated in a long time, but paging through the back entries of the blog has given me a lot of great ideas. I hope to try lots of her recipes in the coming weeks! This week, I was going to make a large quantity of her menestra de porotos, or bean stew, to eat by myself; in an unexpected turn of events, though, Noah surprised me with a visit this week, so we got to try the recipe out together. :-) I loved it! It was a good, filling stew that is sure to turn into a staple winter meal for me. I served it with the fried egg on top, and avocado slices on the side--over rice, of course. Since then I've been eating the leftovers over pasta, and tonight for dinner I'm probably going to bake a couple potatoes and spoon more bean stew over those! Check out the link and try it for yourselves!

That's all for now! Until next time!

A perfect breakfast for a rainy day

Instead of waking up to my alarm this morning, I woke up to a nice big thunderstorm! While I love thunderstorms, my favorite way to experience them is when I have a nice long day off to stay in and watch the rain...which was not the case today. Like every weekday, I accompany Noah into town when he goes to work, hang out at the college library for a few hours, go to my own job, and then hang out at the public library for a while until Noah picks me up (such is the life of a couple with only one car, and I haven't fully learned to ride my new bike yet, so I can't get around that way, unfortunately). I didn't feel like having breakfast at home this morning because I was a bit slow and didn't want to rush through breakfast, so I decided to eat in Westminster.

My favorite place to eat breakfast in Westminster (possibly my favorite place to eat in general, except for this place), is the Heinz Bakery. I've been there 3 times so far, usually just to pick up a cinnamon doughnut for a snack. I have a serious love for cinnamon doughnuts, and Heinz makes a great one. Today, I decided to get one of their breakfast sandwiches as well. I got a bacon and egg sandwich, and paid extra to have tomato on it as well. It was delicious--the sunflower bread I chose to have it on was extremely tasty, different from your regular white or wheat options but not too jarring. The bacon and egg were nicely cooked, and I was glad I got tomato on it because it complemented everything really well. This place is clearly where most people in town go to meet and talk and have breakfast, and the people running the place seemed to know almost everyone, as well as what they usually got. The staff was warm and friendly, and the place has a nice atmosphere--sparsely decorated, but the emphasis is on good food and good people. I foresee many more breakfasts at Heinz in the years that I live here. :-D

PS-Did I mention that the whole sandwich (with tomato as an extra), cinnamon doughnut, and glass of water came out to $4.25 total? That might be the best part. :-)

Heinz Bakery
42 West Main Street,
Westminster, MD 21157-4816

things I didn't know about garlic

Garlic, I'm sure most of us will agree, is a pretty awesome food. Not only is it delicious, but it has some pretty spectacular health benefits, so much so that it can be used medicinally as well as being eaten. Like regular medicines, though, it can have side effects, which still occur when you're just eating it as part of a delicious meal, particularly when you eat it raw.

Such was the case with the seemingly innocuous pasta salad that Noah and I made a few days ago. It was your standard pasta salad, with farfalle and fresh tomatoes and fresh, raw garlic. Not aware of the potential side effects of eating raw garlic, I was completely unsuspecting. I ate for a little while, munching through some raw garlic, and then all of a sudden I was hit with an instantaneous wave of nausea. Like, "wow, I'm going to throw up in approximately 30 seconds"-type nausea. So I waited (near the bathroom, just in case) and after a couple minutes it just disappeared. This confused me, but Noah was coming down with a cold at that point, and my body acts pretty weird when it's getting sick, so I thought maybe I was getting it too. Also I remember being pretty ravenous when I was eating, so I thought it was possible that I had eaten too fast.

Then, a few minutes ago, we settled down to have some leftovers for dinner, and I immediately decided to finish the pasta salad. I didn't think I would have any problems, but soon after I started eating it, boom--unhappy tummies. Since I had the sense to stop eating right when I noticed it, it just went away a few seconds later, which is when I decided to search "garlic nausea" on Google. Turns out feeling nauseous after eating raw garlic is totally something that happens! I never knew. At least it's not garlic in general--I don't know if I could get by without using garlic in my cooking. ;-)

Have you guys ever had problems with eating garlic? Do you know of any other foods that have "side effects"?

Pride goeth before a fall

Everyone has to fail in the kitchen sometimes. Even the most experienced cooks and bakers, and especially the novice ones, should expect to make a lot of mistakes and have results that end up pretty much inedible. I am an extremely novice cook, so I should have expected that my first try at a pie dough would not go over so well. But I'd been thinking about making Celery and Onion Pies, from a baking book we got at Goodwill, for days. I'd spent much more time imagining the perfect result that was going to come out of the oven than I spent actually making sure I knew how to make pie dough. I entered the kitchen this morning with a feeling I can only describe as "hubris". And at first things went really well. The filling, which was a super-easy mixture of celery, onion, garlic, salt, and a little milk and flour, went spectacularly. I had remembered to put my dough ingredients in the fridge so they would be nice and cold when I made the dough. I sifted the flour and salt, rubbed the butter in with my fingers, and mixed it until it looked approximately like dough is supposed to when the butter is mixed in. Then the recipe didn't call for nearly enough water to make a dough, so I had to put some more water in, and a little more flour to balance it out. I slapped it onto one of our counters to roll it out, and here's where I ran into problems.

At the same time as my dough got progressively warmer because our kitchen does not circulate air at all, I used too much flour to roll out the dough. The addition of the water made the dough just slightly sticky, so to ease it in rolling out I added a little bit of flour. I started rolling out the dough, but after just a little while the steadily warming dough started to tear and get too thin. I added more flour. I rolled it out. Every now and then, more flour found its way onto the counter and the dough. By the time I'd managed to roll out a sufficient quantity of dough, everything was probably pretty heavily floured. Did I mention that I used an empty bottle of Arrogant Bastard ale in lieu of a rolling pin? Because I totally did.

Then it was time for Mistake #2. I neglected to check to see if the muffin tin I was going to use to bake these pies in was actually the right size for the job. Turns out it was way too big. In the pretty pictures that accompany the recipe in the cookbook, the pies come up to the top of the pan, but mine only made it about halfway. Next time I make this I'll definitely just make bigger and fewer pies. Determined not to accept complete and total failure, I managed to slap the pies together and throw them in the oven.

The recipe calls for 15-20 minutes in the oven, but after that time they just weren't looking right. I left them in for a little while longer, and then called my mom, who was currently helping my sister pack up her stuff for her imminent move. "Mom," I said, "I have these pies in the oven that turned out really badly, and here's my question: I know what the pies are supposed to look like when you do them right, but how do I know whether I should leave these in the oven for longer or whether they're as done as they're going to get?" I described them to her (as "the dough looks about like it did when I rolled it out, except drier", and she counseled me to admit defeat and take them out.

Talking to my sister on the phone later, I told her I was disappointed that the pies hadn't turned out well, but that I'd had a lot of fun making them. I love getting messy (I'm secretly a five-year-old), and this allowed me to get flour all over myself and the kitchen, including the countertops, sink, floor, table, dishes, and refrigerator door handle. Plus, since the filling actually did turn out to be delicious, I was just going to scrape it out and use it over pasta or rice as a delicious snack.

"Well," she told me, "I think you can call that a win."

Caribbean Kitchen; or, A Good Way to Beat Rush Hour

A couple days ago, Noah and I were driving home after picking up our CSA share when we ran into some big traffic problems. An accident had closed off Route 140, pretty much the only way into Westminster from the Baltimore area, and everywhere else was severely clogged with rush-hour traffic. After driving on Route 26 for a little while, we decided we'd had enough and we would stop at the first interesting-looking restaurant we could find on Route 26. Soon enough, when we spotted a small yellow building called Caribbean Kitchen, were immediately intrigued.

Caribbean Kitchen is exactly the kind of restaurant I like to visit. It's small, friendly, unassuming, and the prices are as reasonable as the food is delicious. We shared an excellent jerk chicken meal, which came with the chicken and sides of rice and peas, plantains, and cabbage. The cabbage wasn't all that exciting, but it complemented everything else well. And I love plantains, so this was very exciting for me! The chicken was pretty spicy, but not as spicy as the person who took our order made it sound (maybe people in the area don't have as much of a tolerance for heat as we do?). It did come with a sauce on the side which had a nice kick, though.

As we left, the person at the front asked how we liked our meal and mentioned that she was surprised we had enjoyed the spicy chicken. "Oh, it wasn't that spicy", we demurred. "Really?", she said. "Well, next time you come, I'll make it real spicy for you." I can't wait!

Caribbean Kitchen
8139 Liberty Road,
Windsor Mill, MD 21244-3043
(410) 496-6222

PS-Today we're experiencing another good kind of food--the down-home church dinner! There's a Methodist church next door to our apartment that's serving an all-you-can-eat dinner tonight. How can we not check it out?

Happy 4th of July!

FBTS wishes you a very happy 4th of July. :-) I love a good holiday as much as the next person, but the 4th of July is my least favorite holiday. Mainly because of the fireworks--I dislike loud noises, and things with a negative environmental impact. But, like most people, we did eat traditional 4th of July food: burgers, with a delicious improvised pasta salad on the side. Yum. :-D

summer food

Well, summer is officially here in Maryland, as evidenced by the crushing heat and humidity that makes me want to do nothing but sit in bed reading with the fans on and watch Food Network. Neither Noah nor I are particularly summer people, and the fact that neither of us wants to move, combined with my near-constant state of dehydration (I become extremely easily dehydrated, so summer is very difficult for me) makes us highly unmotivated to step into the kitchen and cook. It's a shame, because we're getting a lovely share from our CSA, and we're visiting local produce markets as often as possible, so we have plenty to cook with.

As we were sitting around yesterday moaning about the fact that we (as usual) didn't feel like cooking dinner, it occurred to me: the CrockPot. My parents were given a CrockPot as a gift recently from one of my dad's parishoners (he's a minister), and since my family already has one they gave it to us. It was definitely a lifesaver--we just cut up some veggies, and a few hours of blissfully not being in the kitchen later, we had a delicious stew. Bonus points: it was filling (most summer foods that we feel like preparing end up being things like salads, and since both Noah and I have crazy high metabolisms we need to eat more than that), and it made the whole apartment smell delicous with very little work. :-)


In other food-related news, Noah and I have started a little herb garden on our living room window. We've been interested in growing our own food since before we were a couple (possibly sparked by reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle together on a long train trip while in Italy a few years back), and a good way to dip your toes into growing your own food is with herbs. We have a parsley plant that was given to us by our CSA, and at the farmer's market we purchased a sage plant and a basil plant. We definitely love them. :-D

we (the people, not the blog) have moved!

We the writers of FBTS have just moved into the most adorable apartment that has ever existed. Ever. It's in here:



More updates once we finish unpacking and are moved in enough to make interesting food!

Happy Pi Day from FBTS! We didn't have any pie, unfortunately, but we hope you did.

Catch-up!

Want to know what FBTS has been up to while my camera was down? Take a look:


We made dumplings!


Noah was gone for about 2 weeks this winter to visit Israel and Turkey, so I was by myself. During the last week I made myself these delicious marinated veggie sandwiches!

Uhh...making broccoli! (And taking badly-lit photos of it!)


Making brownies! (Taking pictures while the batter is being mixed is the prettiest part.)


Making...something with meat! (Probably chili...)

Also making lots of hummus, baking large quantities of homemade bread, experimenting with homemade bagels, becoming addicted to some Vietnamese restaurants, and being happy.

Currently half of us (the Florence half) have given up meat for Lent, so we make a lot of stir-frys around here. And sometimes we compromise by making meat sauce and vegetarian sauce, and then something like rice or pasta to put it on. Lent is going pretty well; unlike last year (when I craved every meat item in sight) I'm really only craving bacon. It helps that I eat mostly vegetarian anyway, so I don't miss much when I go vegetarian. Except barbecue, but Noah and I have a system in place: if Noah goes for barbecue when it's Lent, I get to share in the joy by having him bring me back a side (because there are lots of sides that don't include meat).

Also, half of us (the Florence half, again) got accepted to grad school, so FBTS will be an East Coast blog in a couple months!