Finding Fault

1. Pasta with anchovy-lemon sauce tastes okay on the first day, but makes for really vile leftovers.

2. As good as oven roasted asparagus and fingerling potatoes should taste together, the cooking times are pretty darn different. And over-roasted asparagus is not so good.

On the bright side, I used Cookthink for the first time yesterday - it’s a site where you can find recipes using key words for ingredients, cuisines, and “moods.” I was going to stop at the grocery store on my way home, and wanted to make some kind of casserole with vegetables in it. The site came up with a butternut squash and sausage casserole that ended up being really delicious.

About my summer adventure… I’m spending the month of June and July living on a sailboat with the Captain. (For those of you who are properly horrified to hear me refer to my boyfriend as the Captain, it’s important to note that he refers to me as the Admiral.)

The Captain (also known as Captain Gladiator or Captain Crankypants, depending on his mood and mine) has been living on the boat since October and chronicling his adventures here. I’ve spent a little bit of time on the boat with him (two weeks in January and one week in March), and I’m pretty excited to move on to the boat with him for a couple of months. In part because I haven’t seen very much of him recently, and I’m looking forward to some quality time. But more and more, I’m getting excited about the boat trip itself, learning how to sail and having a mostly carefree time.

I’ll have some materials I need to prep my fall classes, and I have some research work that I’ll do on board. Outside of that, our only agenda is to sail north to meet friends for the Best Vacation Ever in Martha’s Vineyard at the end of June, and then we’ll probably stop a couple other places up there before a nice sail back.

I expect I’ll have (and will write about) a lot of challenges, too. (Strangely enough, the one thing I’ll rarely have to go without on the boat is internet. If only we could get pipeless hot water as easily as one can get wireless internet.)

In a move I can only interpret as preparation for the summer, my TV died yesterday. And there’s no way I’m replacing it now, just before I put all my things in storage for the summer. I really need to get the carcass out of my living room, as my eyes keep wandering over to it, hoping for some sort of resurrection.

I’m not much of a morning person. I set my coffee maker at night because I can’t really be trusted to make the coffee properly at 7am. In the past, I have done all of the following: forgot the coffee, forgot the water, remembered the coffee and water but left the lid up on the coffee maker, and one terrible terrible morning, forgot to put the pot under the coffee maker. (Yes, my coffee pot has a lever that stops the coffee from coming out if the pot isn’t there, but that doesn’t stop the water and grounds from flowing over the top.)

Honestly, I am in awe of those people who wake up early enough (and are lucid enough) to prepare and eat breakfast at home. On a typical morning, I usually wake up, shower, dress, pour my coffee and stumble out to my car. This takes me all of 15-20 minutes. Then an hour later, I’m in my office catching up on email, getting hungry. To avoid morning trips to the cafeteria in the next building, I’ve started packing breakfast. I throw a yogurt and one of these muffins in my bag and eat them while I get ready for my first class. I almost always have the ingredients around the house, and it only takes a few minutes to make the batter. I bake a dozen of the muffins at a time and freeze half for the next week.

This recipe is a combination of a few that I found online and in cookbooks. I usually use half white and half wheat flour. Or as Rachel recommends in her recent muffin recipe, you can substitute wheat bran for part of the flour to make it more crunchy.

Carrot Ginger Muffins
(Makes 12 muffins)

2 c. flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
4 tbspn butter
2 large carrots, shredded
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp fresh ginger, minced or shredded
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp dry powdered ginger
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup to 1 cup raisins or nuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut butter into small cubes and let soften. In a large bowl, combine flour and baking powder with the butter, using fingers to break down the butter into fine pieces mixed with the flour. Add everything else but the raisins and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon or spatula. Add raisins or nuts if using them. Spoon about a 1/3 cup of batter into each cupcake liner. Bake for 25-35 minutes (until a toothpick comes out clean) and let cool.

So, here it is, the new blog. (For those of you who don’t know it, there was once upon a time, an old blog, that died a natural death a couple of years ago.) We’ll see if this one lasts, but at least recently, I’ve been feeling the urge to document some new things I’ve been doing, including cooking, picture taking, and what should be a new summer adventure that I’ll write about in the next couple of days.

Let’s start with the food.

I have always been an uneven cook - I’ve gone through spurts of cooking with equal success and failure, but often fell back into prepared foods and take out.

I have many, many excuses for this.

I have a sporadic work schedule - as an academic, I have lots of time in the summers, but during the semester, I work long days and often weekends, which makes it hard to maintain a regular cooking and shopping routine. I’ve also spent the last three years living in NYC (though that will be changing soon) - home of cheap and plentiful take-out. I live alone (though that will ALSO be changing soon), and energy put towards cooking for one doesn’t always feel worth it. And finally, I’m pretty lazy. (Oh, and I did I mention I’m cheap too? But that one actually works in my favor for cooking.)

Earlier this year, my blood pressure got officially high, making me realize that at some point, I had started getting older. I mean, seriously, when did that happen? At the same time, my life has been pretty good lately, and I’m thinking I’d like to live past my 60s. So I decided to start with my diet. Since then, I’ve been spending a lot more time cooking and learning new dishes.

There are a few rules/guidelines that I follow semi-consistently:

1. If I want to eat it, I have to cook it myself. I’ve been semi-converted to the current cult-like opposition to super-processed, artificial and pre-prepared foods. So, I’m trying to go back to eating real food whenever I can. I still rely on store-bought bread (although I’ve tried making my own bread a few times), and canned tomatoes and some frozen vegetables. But otherwise, I’m making a lot of things from scratch that I didn’t realize I could. This rule has also spawned some innovations in what I make. When I started craving pizza and vanilla pudding, I had to figure out how to make them. Overall, I find that I’ve been eating pretty well. I also find that the things that are really bad for me are also the things that I won’t make at home (e.g., deep fried things) because I’m too lazy.

2. I’m allowed a cheat meal (take-out or restaurant food) once a week. (Of course, when I have guests in town, I end up eating out more often, so I try to plan for that.)

3. Other than cooking from scratch, I don’t pay any any attention to calories, fat, salt, or quotas of certain food. I don’t use low-fat substitutes. I use real eggs, cream, and butter (mmm. butter). I cook things I want to eat.

4. Keeping in mind that I am pretty lazy after work, I try to cook a few meals a week that I can recycle and store for lunches. I’m also resistant to labor-intensive recipes, unless they are really good.

At this point, I’d call my cooking experiment a qualified success. My blood pressure is still high (supposedly I can blame my genes for that), but I’ve been cooking consistently, and am actually getting better at it. Despite rule #3, I’ve lost a few pounds. And strangely enough, I find myself actually craving vegetables and fruits lately.

The purpose of this blog is to keep me doing some new things by making me write about it. Along the way, I expect to share some recipes I like, and I hope to get some suggestions from others.

About the name of the blog. For me, learning has always been about trying things out and learning from the many mistakes I make. I work in a field where I get a lot of feedback and criticism, and I find that I actually miss that in some of my new hobbies (like cooking and photography). I’m hoping that this blog will help me figure out what I could do better.