Day 158: Broccoli Slaw

I'm always a fan of finding ways to waste less food, so when I saw Anne Burrell make coleslaw out of broccoli stems, I was intrigued. So intrigued, that I made the whole recipe: pulled pork with broccoli and carrot slaw.

It was a long day of cooking. I mean, not a huge amount of work--except the slaw, which required a lot of julienning--but a lot of cooking. Nine hours in a low oven for the pork. Lots of meat smell all day long. And in the end, a delicious sandwich with pulled pork, vinegar based sauce, and broccoli slaw on a sesame seed bun. Honestly, the broccoli slaw was way more amazing than I could have expected. Not woody or hard to chew like one might expect with broccoli stems. And I still have the florets leftover, so tomorrow I'll make a broccoli-based stir fry.

Yum yum.

Day 157: Bavarian Cream

Every now and again, I get the urge to open my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and try my hand at one of the many fancy recipes therein. Tonight, I tried a dessert: a chocolate bavarian cream.

As you can see, this was not entirely successful. Some of the chocolate sank to the bottom (the top, in the picture), some of it set nicely, and some of the frothed egg whites would not fully incorporate (the foamy stuff at the bottom). However, I was still incredibly proud of my work on this bavarian cream because, as you can see, it molded and set and unmolded again. Sure, it's not perfect. But I have a terrible record with desserts that need to thicken, set, etc. They generally don't turn out at all. But for a first shot at a bavarian cream, this came out nicely. Maybe next time, I'll get it right. Right or not, this dessert was delicious.

Here's my problem with Julia Child's recipes: they're hard to follow. If you're making the chocolate bavarian cream, you have to read and understand the recipe for orange bavarian cream. If you're making the orange bavarian cream, you have to read and understand the recipe for creme anglaise. Julia doesn't repeat herself, you see. She just tells you to refer back to another recipe, which can be quite confusing.

Anyway, next time I'll read more carefully. I can't blame all my failures on Julia, can I?

Day 156: Stinky Stinky Stinky

For years, I thought I would like limburger cheese. I know it's infamously stinky: the stinkiest of the stinky cheeses. But I like a strong cheese. I've tasted quite a few cheeses that smell like sweaty feet but taste like heaven. But I've got news for you: limburger tastes as bad as it smells.

It was packaged really well, I guess. Wrapped in foil and tightly sealed. Its smell didn't leak in the slightest. But as soon as I opened it, the smell exploded. The cat started sniffing around curiously. It was a little repulsive, but I had faith that the flavor would transcend. I was so incredibly wrong.

It's like the worst morning breath you've ever had, like if you didn't brush your teeth for weeks, drank copious amounts of alcohol, and slept all night with your mouth open. Or worse: it's like kissing someone who's done these things. I mean, it is a repulsive foodstuff. It didn't make me gag, which I suppose is something. But it is definitely not something I can imagine adding to a cheese plate unless I want my dinner guests to go home. (If you ever come to a party and I'm serving limburger, take the hint.)

However: I did not throw it all away. I was tempted to, but I wrapped my remaining cheese and bagged it in plastic, and I am going to take another crack at it, trying to incorporate it somehow into a more savory food. Will I do it? Will I just end up wasting food? I suppose only time will tell.

Day 155: Pickled Cauliflower

Of all the possible things to pickle, I never would have thought of pickling cauliflower. But since I've recently discovered a taste for cauliflower, I was eager to try it in a hot, pickled form. And guess what? It's lovely. A really good little snack or addition to a lunch.

Short post, I know. Sorry.

Day 154: Gizzards

Ian's and my favorite bar in Pullman is an interesting place. It has the standard plethora of alcoholic paraphernalia on the walls, windows, and ceilings. It's the home of a weekly dart league. We like to sit on the carpet-covered bench seats and play trivia. Any Pullmanite knows, from this description, that I speak of My Office.

Yes, My Office--so when your wife says, Where were you? You can say, I was at My Office, and she'll think you were at work! Ha ha!

Anyway. My Office actually has pretty good food--mostly deep-fried, of course--but we like to walk down there every once in a while, get some fries, a burger, and a beer, and play the trivia game until we get bored or someone reeking of cigarette smoke sits next to us (as happened last night). But we rarely sample around their menu. Mainly because it's all standard bar food--except for one item that I previously would not have dared try: chicken gizzards, deep-fried.

I've seen a lot of old men order the chicken gizzards and the waitress didn't bat an eye, but for some reason when I ordered them I expected a reaction. Like, REALLY? But she was very cool. She took my order, told me I should get them with ranch dressing because ranch is good with everything, and I had to agree. I figured, I've become an eating champion. How hard could this be?

Let me put it this way. People told me I would have trouble with the chewiness of squid. I had no trouble at all. But the chewiness of a chicken gizzard--I couldn't even get my teeth through it. The breading, yes. The gizzard, no.

The taste of the chicken gizzard, though not the most pleasant (Ian thought it was wretched, I just thought it tasted like old meat) didn't get me so much as that dang texture. They're practically inedible, by design. The men who order them so often must have iron dentures or something. Anyway, we gave up on the gizzards pretty quickly, and ate a regular meal.

Now, having ingested at least a small quantity of gizzard, I figured I should look up what exactly a gizzard is. I know I've removed them from turkeys, but they've been already detached and generally in a plastic bag. Apparently a gizzard is a sort of stomach where a chicken can grind food with stones it's previously swallowed. They do this because they cannot chew. They're so tough because they're line with special proteins, because chewing your food with a stomach full of rocks is probably not the most delicate of processes.

So now I've had chicken gizzards, and I know what they are. How enlightened am I?

Day 153: Home Brew

Yesterday, after my last MFA class ever, I came home to Pullman to see my husband and cat. I could have stayed in Spokane, gone to the bar, had a beer with everyone--but I didn't. I was in a funk, you see. It's the end of the school year--the end of my graduate program--and I'm having the wish-I-had-the-do-overs blues. Not that I regret everything about my grad school experience--far from it--I just wish I'd been able to connect more with the people, move past the getting-to-know-you phase with more of them. That's part of why I didn't want to go out--even at the end of the program, I still feel like I'm getting to know most of these people, it's still on small talk terms, and it's difficult to start saying goodbye when you never finished introductions.

Now, I realize that for many people, the small talk phase lasts forever. Not everyone will be your kindred spirit... blah blah blah. I get it. But isn't it lonely? Don't jokes and surface-level conversations get old?

Anyway. This is a food blog. Sorry. The point of all that was to get to the fact that I went home rather than out for a beer, but that when I got home, I got to taste my husband's first batch ever of home brewed beer. It was sweet. Not just that he had a beer waiting for me when I got home, but literally--the beer was sweet. The yeast had yet to eat some of the sugar that is supposed to help them carbonate it, I think. Not that sweet was bad. It was actually quite drinkable. But I like girly beers. Either way, not bad for a first batch.

Okay, back to that mushy stuff. I am so grateful to have my husband and cat. I am really lucky, really blessed. When I whine about not making deeper connections with my school chums, I have to admit that I have one bone-deep connection, and that is a miraculous thing. I mean, my husband and I love each other to our very marrow. On top of that, I have a cat who, if she had her way, would burrow under my skin. And I have wonderful parents, who I just got to see this weekend, the fresh lack of whom definitely contributed to yesterday's melancholia. Every time I see them I'm so happy, and when I come home I go through a sad phase, which is augmented when I've also gotten to see my oldest, dearest friend, which I did last weekend. I saw all these people who make my heart burst with happiness, and I came home to Spokane--not even to Pullman--and had to let my husband go home and back to work while I stayed in an empty apartment (my roommate, my one real connection from grad school, has gone back to Hawaii and I miss her). So I was sad. I still am, a little. But I was very happy, last night, to have a beer at home with my husband.

Day 152: Steamers

Yesterday, I defended my thesis, which means that, basically, I have a master's degree. Technically, there is paperwork to be turned in, including final grades and one important sheet with my thesis committee's signatures on it, but once that's done, I'm done: Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (fiction).

After defending my thesis, I went to the Globe with a pal and we drank and shot the shit and generally celebrated my passing my defense. And he ordered some steamer clams, which he was generous enough to share with me. And my word, were they fantastic. The fact that, until this year, I'd been completely missing out on mollusks just astounds me.

Though, I do think they might have contributed to my tummy ache later in the evening. A lot of that probably has to do with the alcohol I imbibed, and on top of the clams and a stick of fried cheese, I decided to add my leftover muffaletta. Plus, until going to the bar, all I'd had to eat was a caramel macchiato and a couple pieces of candy, neither of which would I say qualifies as food. So I was in for a world of trouble. I'm definitely not going to blame the stomachache on the clams, because they tasted too good for me to develop a negative association with them already. If they give my problems again, maybe I'll become wary. For now, I'm looking forward to the next time I can eat them.

Though--my friend did say that they don't always use the same kind of clam for steamers. I guessed we had littlenecks, though I'm hardly a clam expert, but the websites I've been perusing seem to agree with me/tell me that littlenecks and steamers are both names for the same clam. I don't know. Small and gray. Good stuff.