Baby Zucchini Frittata

I had to go to the mall today to return something. Yuck. I hate the mall. I was dreading it. But it had to be done.

Errand accomplished, walking out of the hated place, I passed by a Vista Farms stand, and saw the most adorable baby zucchini with the flowers still attached. "These would make a wonderful frittata," I thought. So I bought a large handful for $1.50.

Once home, I cooked up some bacon and then crumbled it, shredded some Panquehue cheese, minced a clove of garlic, and chopped up a green onion. Saute the garlic and halved squashy-babies in butter, add 5 beaten eggs, salt and pepper, most of the cheese, the bacon, and the green onion. Top with the remaining cheese, and bake until the eggs are set. Toast some bread while the frittata is baking. Oh, and be careful when you're slicing up the frittata - remember, you just took that skillet out of the oven, and the handle is hot. (In other words, don't be a dummy like me.)

I guess the mall isn't such a bad place after all.

Random Quotes from the WIP Household, Part IV

"Let the drunken bastard eat his cannoli." (This one didn't actually happen in our household, but was spoken by the drunken bastard himself, and couldn't be omitted for that reason.)

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Stop not wearing pants.

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That's stucking foopid.

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Hubby to Me: What's wrong with you? Why do you always have a disgusted look on your face?
Youngest: Well, she has seen you naked.

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"You smell like a French whore."
"I am a French whore."

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[reading from some webpage] "The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun."
"Does that mean Hitler didn't have a weenie?"

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Non-Food Post - Books Read in 2009

Yes, this is a food blog. So why is my first post a non-food post? Umm...no reason, except that 2009 is over, and therefore, this is the first post that I have ready.

So, here's the list of books I read in 2009. 22 more than in 2008, but 2008 had some brutal ones, like A Linguistic History of English and The Origins and Development of the English Language. 2009 was more fluffy. Looking over the list, the most brain-intensive was probably Guns, Germs and Steel (highly recommended). And if you're looking for something to totally screw with your head, completely piss you off, or possibly both, try House of Leaves.

The Valkyries – Paulo Coelho
A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin
A Clash of Kings – George R. R. Martin
A Storm of Swords – George R. R. Martin
A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin
Genghis: Birth of an Empire – Conn Iggulden
The Gnostic Mystery – Randy Davila
First Rider’s Call – Kristen Britain
Dragon Champion – E. E. Knight
Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales – Henrik Sandbeck Harksen, ed.
Coraline – Neil Gaimon
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Alexander Cipher – Will Adams
Something Borrowed – Emily Giffin
Spiders of Allah – James Hider
Garlic and Sapphires – Ruth Reichl
Something from the Nightside – Simon Green
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt
Come On In! – Charles Bukowski
The Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson
Tales of Ordinary Madness – Charles Bukowski
Baking Cakes in Kigali – Gaile Parkin
The Way of the Wolf – E. E. Knight
Something Blue – Emily Giffin
The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
Draegon Taymerz – A. Steve Zimm
The United States of Arugula – David Kamp
Black Widow – Patrick Quentin
The Sexual Life of Catherine M. – Catherine Millet
Postmortem – Patricia Cornwell
C is for Corpse – Sue Grafton
ghostgirl – Tonya Hurley
ghostgirl: Homecoming – Tonya Hurley
Walking in on Mum and Dad: Adventures in Embarrassment – Brian King
A Knight of the Word – Terry Brooks
Night World No. 1 – L. J. Smith
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant – Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist
K is for Killer – Sue Grafton
Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
From the Borderlands – Elizabeth E. and Thomas F. Monteleone, eds.
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Sons of the Oak – David Farland
Stephen King – Under the Dome
Mia King – Table Manners
L is for Lawless – Sue Grafton
N is for Noose – Sue Grafton
Best Food Writing 2004 – Holly Hughes, ed.
Angel Fire East – Terry Brooks
Heat – Bill Buford
Dragon Avenger – E. E. Knight

I hope you all had a pleasant New Year, and I wish you the best for 2010.

Clam Chowder

Hubby made clam chowder tonight. In the excitement of someone else cooking, I forgot to take a picture (sorry). Oh, and if you're looking for that abomination with tomatoes in it, you're not going to find it here.

Here's what he did:

Peel and dice 2 large Russet potatoes, along with some onion and celery. Saute everything for a while in a soup pot in some canola oil (I would've used olive), then dump it into a holding vessel. Make a roux with butter and flour in the soup pot (maybe 6T each, I wasn't really watching), then add 2 bottles of strained clam juice and about 1 quart of non-fat milk. Bring to a simmer very slowly, stirring constantly.

When it's simmering gently, add in 3 cans of rinsed chopped clams (liquid saved to add later if you want). Simmer for about 30 minutes, until it's thickened nicely and the potatoes are cooked to the point of almost falling apart. Salt and pepper to taste. We like a lot of pepper.

If it's too thin, add a little more roux. If it's too thick, add some of the reserved clam liquid.

Serve, topped with oyster crackers and crumbled bacon (my contribution - you didn't think I could stay out of the kitchen, did you?).

Non-Food Post - Let There Be Light!

OK, this may indirectly be food-related. Because now that there's light in my kitchen, I may actually be able to take better pictures. Or not.

The lights in my kitchen had been buzzing for quite some time. At first I thought it was the bulbs, since two of them would flicker or not come on at all. So I borrowed a couple bulbs from work to check. Well, guess what? I've probably got the only kitchen in town with 6 foot fluorescent bulbs, instead of 4 foot. So off to Home Depot to buy 6 footers. Apparently 6 foot bulbs are pretty rare, because they had about 10 boxes each of 4 and 8 foot bulbs, and one lonely box of 6 foot ones. Got my bulbs home, got the stupid plastic grates out (what a pain!), new bulbs in, and....still buzzed.

OK, so it was probably the ballast. Bulbs out. Metal cover off (poor fingers). Bulbs in. Switch on. Buzz. Coming from the ballast. Yup. OK, get a new ballast. Easy, right? Nope. This one's 30 years old. Find an equivalent. Not so easy. Find an equivalent of an equivalent and pray it works.

So the "equivalent" shows up, and I'm immediately worried. It's shorter. That's going to be a problem. And the current rating on the new one says 0.91A, the old one says 1.45A. Hmm...And what's this? The new one has 2 blue wires. The old one only has one. Oh well, what's the worst that could happen?

So, armed with wire nuts, wire cutters, pliers, a drill, a screwdriver, and a couple screws, I got to work. Cut the old wires, stripped them back 1/4". Red to red, blue to blue (well, one of them, anyway).

Black to...crap. Can't reach. Black and white weren't long enough to test the new ballast without removing the old one from the fixture and putting up the new one. I grabbed the pliers and removed the screw holding the old ballast to the fixture. Slipped the new one into the metal tabs, marked the points where I had to drill, drilled a couple primer holes through the fixture and into the ceiling, slid the new ballast in, screwed in the screws.

Black to black, white to white.

Bulbs in. The moment of truth...

Woot!

Hubby came home and said "you're in charge of all electrical stuff from now on."

Great.

Split Pea Soup, Revisited

Every time I cook a ham, I make split pea soup. Which means I make it about twice a year, once after Easter, and once after Thanksgiving and/or Christmas (or both, if I'm lucky!).

With the crappy rainy weather we've been having, yesterday was the perfect day for pulling Thanksgiving's ham bone out of the freezer. Split pea soup couldn't be simpler. You can saute your veggies if you want, but you don't have to. Don't have a carrot? Leave it out. Let it get too thick? Add some water. Not a lot of meat leftover on the bone? Chop up a ham steak, or some kielbasa like I did this time. Easy peas-y. (Sorry)

My "secret" is to add about 1/4 to 1/2 of a teaspoon of curry powder to the soup. Not enough to really taste it, but just enough to give the soup a little something. I also add a little thyme. But shh, don't tell my husband, or he won't eat it.

I have a problem photographing split pea soup in its finished state. So here it is mid-simmer. Pretty colors, huh? It's amazing what a few new light bulbs in your kitchen will do.

Split Pea Soup, version 12/12/09

1 leftover ham bone
1 carrot, diced fine
1 stalk celery, diced fine
1/2 onion, diced fine
1 clove garlic, diced fine
1/2 t curry powder
1/4 t thyme
black pepper
1 bag of split peas, rinsed
1/2 link kielbasa sausage, chopped into small pieces
a handful of parsley, chopped
a handful of celery leaves, chopped

Place the ham bone in a large pot and barely cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer slightly aggressively for about 30 minutes, skimming any nastiness. Remove the bone, let it sit until it's cool enough to handle, then remove any meat and chop into little pieces. Return the bone to the pot and continue to boil while you prepare the vegetables.

Saute the veggies in a little olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the curry powder and thyme and a lot of black pepper. Scrape the veggies into the pot of water, and add the peas. Bring back to a boil, cover mostly, and simmer gently until the peas are about half-cooked. At this point, add the chopped up ham and sausage, and the parsley and celery leaves, and continue to simmer until the peas are completely cooked and have fallen apart, and your soup is the proper split pea soup consistency.

Taste, add more black pepper if you want (I did), and salt if necessary (it wasn't because of the sausage). Serve with crusty bread or oyster crackers. Or those large gumball-shaped hard crackers you can break a crown on, I think they're called wine crackers - love them in soup.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I finally made Vietnamese Spring Rolls, or Goi Cuon!

I used Youki brand rice paper wrappers, and since this was my first experience with rice paper, I have no idea if that's a good brand or not.  All the recipes I read online said soak the wrappers in water for 2-5 seconds. I did that, and said, "Huh, it doesn't seem soft enough." (As if I had any idea what I was doing.) So I soaked it longer. The wrapper then proceeded to tear, stick, and be otherwise ornery. So then I tried 5 seconds.  Worked like a charm after that, just like making a burrito.

I stuffed them with shrimp, green leaf lettuce (not iceberg!), bean sprouts, carrots, cucumber, green onion, cilantro and mint. I also threw in some cooked Mai Fun rice sticks because I couldn't find bean threads. I would've loved some roast pork, but no deli around here has it, and I wasn't about to roast some pork on a Tuesday night after working my ass off all day. More herbs would've been nice, like basil (but my plant died, I'm the only person in the world who can kill basil), or Vietnamese coriander (good luck finding that in a 30 mile radius!).

For a dipping sauce, I made hoisin peanut dipping sauce, courtesy of Todd and Diane from White on Rice Couple.

And who would've thought of this but a 14-year old obsessed with pasta, but leftover Mai Fun is pretty good with garlic, butter and parmesan.