Conner's Blog

I decided this week that I’m going to retry my garden experiment. It sort of failed last year, but I blame that on a couple things. One, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I did no research, I just thought I could pop some seeds into a jar and suddenly have herbs. Doesn’t work for me very well. Two, I used much to small of pots and stuck different herbs in the same pot. I think the competition was a bit much. Three, I kept having to close my shades to keep my apartment from reaching 95 degrees during the summer.

So how am I going to remedy these? First, I’m limiting myself to only a few plants. I’m going to grow basil, oregano, and maybe some sage or thyme. By keeping it simple I can research my needs quickly and keep them in seperate pots. Second, I purchased an old roll top desk that is going to act as my garden plant stand. It has three levels I can utilize and when I put it where I plan on locating it, I can leave my shades angled a bit and get some sun without doing getting quite such a green house effect as where they are located now.

I’m also going to try growing some tomatoes. I’ve never tried doing this inside, but I bought the pot for them today. I’m going to pick up the plants sometime this weekend. I haven’t quite decided where I’ll get them, but I have all weekend for that.

So here are some questions for my readers. First, any other herbs or vegetables I should try growing inside that don’t take a ton of work? Second, do you know of any great composting tutorials for doing the composting in an apartment with no outdoor access? Third, have you ever had success growing tomatoes indoors? Thanks for any feedback you might leave.

This is a cross post from my recently launched food blog, Garlic and Onion.

So I failed at writing about my food experiences while I was in California. It was equal parts being busy, having a horrible network connection at the hotel, and not eating quite as well as I expected. I still ate really well, but it wasn’t the gastronomical delight I intended it to be.

So here is a quick run down of some of the meals I did really enjoy while I was in California.

Caterpillar Roll, this was very good, it had eel and some other vegetables I’m having a hard time remembering. The part that really stood out for me though was the avocado topping it. It was some of the best I had tasted. Buttery, flavorful, and really put this roll over the top. This was from a little strip mall joint that was within walking distance of the hotel.

Tacos, specifically steak and fish. The steak was kind of blah, not exciting at all. The fish on the other hand was really good. Mahi Mahi, pico, cabbage, lettuce, and a sauce that was just the right combo of spicy and savory. To top it off they were 2.25 a piece on Tuesdays. This was from Cronie’s sports bar which was the one place in town I found with extra innings so I could watch the Twins.

Seafood Burrito, this was from a little hole in the wall Mexican place across the street from the office. It was fantastic, a little dingy, an open kitchen, and a serve yourself salsa bar. The burrito was stuffed with rice, beans, shrimp, and fish. Topped with cheese and cheese sauce. It was huge, dwarfing the biggest Chipotle Burrito.

Richard Roll, tuna, lobster, and shrimp. Wrapped in sesame paper and deep fried. Serve with sesame, sweet sauce, and Sriracha. This was fantastic. I’d never had sushi deep fried before, and it was really good. It warmed the outside and gave it a satisfying crunch while leaving the fish perfectly raw and tasty. This was from another hole in the wall place by the office. I was the only one in there when I ate and ended up chatting with the chef about soccer. He was the one that recommended this roll.

This was my favorite meal of the trip. It was a cold seafood platter and it was huge. You had to have two people to order it and it was a good thing they make you do so. Calamari, oysters, mussels, shrimp, smoked salmon, king crab, and ceviche. It was really tasty. I also ordered a cup of clam chowder before the meal and that was really good as well. The place we were at was called Paradise Cove and it was right on the beach in Malibu. Nothing quite beats eating really good seafood while drinking a beer and looking out over this.

According to Pillsbury’s website, Toast Strudels are “your family’s favorite breakfast solution.” Breakfast Solution? It’s words like this that should make everyone stand up and take notice that the food we have been consuming isn’t real. Food isn’t a solution, it’s not a way to fix a problem, it’s a necessity, it should come from the ground, have roots, or eat stuff from the ground that has roots. It should only have other things that follow those rules added to it. Granted their are exceptions to this rule, salt doesn’t have roots, some fish eat other fish, and mushrooms are kind of an oddity. But still the point is if it is a “breakfast solution” something is wrong.

What exactly is a Toaster Strudel made of? Well it’s true that it does contain flour, bleached and processed of course but it is still flour, and some fruit. Other than that it’s a mixture of chemicals, nutritional additives, processed sugars, preservatives, and coloring that are combined into something they refer to as a “breakfast solution”.

Now don’t get me wrong, before I started paying attention to what I was putting in my body, I used to really enjoy Toaster Strudels, the flaky crust, the sweet fruit, and of course the do it yourself frosting was delicious. It was similar to a turnover, only easier to heat up and take on the road since I sure wasn’t going to get up in time to warm up anything else.

So I have a mission, I’m going to develop a recipe that replicates the Toaster Strudel of my youth using only real ingredients. I have an idea of how to do this, it’s doesn’t seem too complicated, and other than the pastry dough I’ve actually made everything I need at one point or another.

So stay tuned, I’ll post my triumph in the near future.

So to sate your hunger for more Conner generated content, here’s a couple of photos of a pizza I made yesterday.

Spinach, onions, garlic, rainbow chard, mushrooms, homemade ricotta, and mozzarella cheese. It was pretty good, though the chard didn’t cook as well as I thought it would. Also, I discovered The Wedge carries their own pizza sauce, which is better than the canned stuff I had been buying, so that was a win.

I promise I’ll start writing again someday soon, I’m just really busy at work and bouncing around outside of work like a ball of flubber

As usual, I spent my weekend eating and drinking more that I should have. Friday night I went to Barrio and had a pretty good dinner, nothing that totally blew me away, but dang good food. Saturday, I tried Black Sheep pizza for the first time. I was really excited to try finally try their pizza.  I recommend a stop there if you are in the neighborhood, or even if you are not.

That evening, my friend Nicky hosted a sushi making dinner. We were taught by her friend Peter how to put together the rolls and then to roll them. We had some tuna, salmon, and sea bass.  All were really tasty and the rolls were excellent.

My friend Neely who broke her wrist a short time ago even managed to roll some sushi with one hand.

Sunday, I went to brunch at Red Stag Supper Club. I’ve gone there a few times for dinner, but this was the first time I had their brunch. It was excellent. I ordered one of their daily specials which was a crab cake, served with eggs and greens. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, I left my camera in my car and didn’t get a picture of it.

Finally, on Sunday night, Nicky once again hosted a dinner party, this time with our friend Erica. They made some amazing Asian dishes.

We were served bacon wrapped dates.

Spring rolls served with a lemongrass peanut sauce. Yumm

This soup was incredible, the broth may have been some of the best I have ever tried, and the salmon was to die for. We were served creme brulee for dessert, but I was too excited to eat it to take a photo of it.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend of eating, I’ll hopefully be posting some photos of the Art Sled Rally and the Art Shanties later this week.

It’s been a while since I made a pizza at home. In fact, it’s been so long that I had to lookup the dough recipe. Tonight, I remedied this and whipped up a tasty pie. I made a change to my dough and used stone ground flour. It added a bit of depth to the crust and I think I’ll use it again.

I topped this pizza with an onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning blend, a bunch of mushrooms, pineapple, and some whole milk mozzarella. I baked it and once done topped it with spinach. I wasn’t overly happy with how the spinach cooked up, but it was still better than baking the spinach on the pizza.

Looking at the photo it’s obvious I’m still getting used to my new lens.

What would be a good sauce for sweet potato fries? I’ve yet to find one that pairs “just right” with it. I know the answer won’t be Chipotle mayo . . . by emilysaysso

Definitely not chipotle mayo, and not chipotle ketchup either. Smokiness does nothing to enhance the fry.

The problem with this question is that sweet potato fries vary in quality so much. If you get a good batch, the sweetness comes through, but usually you get the fries that have been frozen and they lack a lot of that sweetness.

But that’s beside the point, we need a sauce that compliments the texture, the sweetness of the potato, and the saltiness (since anyone who doesn’t salt sweet potato fries is crazy). Ketchup doesn’t work because it’s already sweet, it works great for potato fries, but isn’t quite right for sweet potato fries. I think you need a savory sauce. Aioli has been done and it’s a just not right either.

Here is my idea, combine the tartness of the tomato from ketchup with the savory of an aioli. I think a sauce using sun dried tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, lemon, and cracked pepper. Blend that together and you might have something. It’ll be the consistency of a pesto so you may need to add it to mayonnaise to make it work.

Of course I could be completely nuts and it could be awful.

Let me start off by saying that I hate the concept of dieting. Diets can be good for some people, but usually only work for as long as they are on them. What you need to sustain your weight is a lifestyle change, and those are hard.

What does that have to do with me? Well I was doing really well at this time last year. I was the skinniest I had been since high school, felt great, was starting to move down to pants sizes I barely remembered. Then I moved into Minneapolis, my social life expanded, and I fell right off the exercise bandwagon. I didn’t notice it at first since I wasn’t weighing myself and I thought all the walking I was doing would keep the weight off. I was wrong.

This weekend I got on the scale for the first time in quite some time, and I was appalled. I weigh almost 20 pounds more than I did when I first moved to Minneapolis. Now, part of the problem is going out way to much, part is portion control, and a good part is a lack of exercise. These are all things I am aware of and can fix if I put my mind to it.

The problem is that I want to lose those 20 pounds at an accelerated (yet safe) rate. So I’m putting myself on a diet. First of all, I’m going to bring back the no-meat pact that I made in September, only instead of no meat for an entire month, I’m going to stop eating meat during the week.  This means that from noon Sunday (come on, you have to have bacon at brunch), until Friday at dinner time, I will not be eating meat. I’m going to start eating more beans, more dairy, and other alternative protein sources. Secondly, I’m going to avoid eating pasta for the entire month of February (an exception will be made for Mac N Cheese tour). This is going to be one of the toughest challenges for me.  I love spaghetti, ravioli, and every other type of pasta you can think of. It’s my go-to main course and I think that has to change. It just has too many carbs and I tend to eat way to much of it. Hopefully forcing myself to learn to cook alternative dinners will help me expand my cooking horizons and help me cut back on the amount of pasta I cook once February is over.

So I’m technically putting myself on a diet, but I consider it a short term solution with what I hope are long term implications. I think reducing my meat intake to 2-3 days per week will be huge, and of course broadening my cooking horizons will be a fun adventure. I intend on raiding the Minneapolis Central Library for cookbooks this weekend.

Finally, I have joined a gym, and my friend Nicky will be making me go until I start making it a habit. Of course I have been going three times per week without much effort since I joined two weeks ago. I even went to Cycle to the Movies on Saturday and biked for a hour and a half. This is the really important step because I don’t want to have to limit what I eat forever, and I know that once I get myself to where I want to be again, if I keep exercising and eat a reasonable diet I can keep it there.

I’m a bit excited today, I finally got my Christmas present, a new lens. It was delivered to me at work and I spent all afternoon trying to talk myself out of taking the day off and going out and playing. I had willpower and made it through the day. So I got home and what did I do, cooked and took photos of food of course.

I made creamed spinach for the first time, it went pretty well. Not perfectly, I had to improvise a bit at the end to get it to come together, but I’m happy with the results. Taking photos was also a breeze. I love this lens already, it’s a 35mm 1.8 prime and makes taking photos in the lighting of my apartment many times easier.

Recipe*

• Spinach
• Whole Milk
• Flour
• Lemon
• Sour Cream
• Butter
• Olive Oil
• Crushed red pepper
• Cajun seasoning of some sort
• Paprika
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Onion

Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan, once hot add the garlic and onion and cook until the onion is translucent. Once ready, start adding the spinach. Cook in the oil until limp and dark green. Transfer to a cutting board and chop coarsly.

In a saucepan add the remaining oil and butter from the frying pain, add milk and then put the spinach in the saucepan. Cook until heated fully. In a seperate bowl add a bit of milk, sour cream, and flour and whisk until smooth. Add that mixture along with a squeeze or two of lemon and stir. Continue cooking until the sauce is thick. Serve as soon as possible.

*Recipe is a bit generous, I kind of suck at measuring so have no idea how much of anything I put into the spinach.

I was inspired today when I came across this site by The Opie which lists the 1,000 beers he drank in 2009. If you know me at all you know I’m a big beer drinker. I love drinking beer, trying new beers, and bathing in beer. Okay that last one is a little creepy and wrong, but still the point is I like a good cold beer after a long days work, or after a lazy morning of watching Youtube videos. So I’m starting my own project and have setup Daytum to keep track of my beer consumption this year. So far I’ve had seven beers this year. If you are interested, you can monitor the decline of my liver here*.

I’m tracking what beers I drink as well so it should be fun to see how many different types of beer I can try this year. I’m kind of excited about this.

*Someday Daytum will allow me to easily embed a panel showing my beer count on my site and not force me to send you elsewhere to see my consumption.