Carnitas!

Well, it seems that October has up and passed me by without a post. It's only slightly embarrasing suffering from such blogger-idleness. Embarrassing because in a way, I'm failing to do what I set out to do with the frequency that I had hoped for. On the other hand, it's only slightly embarrassing because this is what happens from time to time - bloggers fall off the map, and then appear again. Writing posts is always on our minds, but there's a point when life gets in the way. And honestly, life > blogging. Unless life = blogging. In which case, you are kind of my hero.

At any rate, Sunday used to be my cooking day, but since I started volunteering on Sundays, food has fallen by the wayside. Today, however, I got the morning off and was able to plan out something amazing: carnitas! Here's the rub (no pun intended (did I already use that joke? (I suck))):

Chipotle Carnitas
Adopted from Ronaldo's Beef Carnitas
serves: as many as you want!
prep time: 10 minutes
cook time: 6 hours!

The recipe is ridiculously simple and denies the need for steps. Plan on buying 0.4lb of pork tri tip (aka, butt / shoulder) for each person you're feeding (1.5lbs for 4 ppl should be OK). Preheat your oven to 300* F, and put the pork in a mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl, measure out approximately (PER PERSON):
-a teaspoon of kosher salt
-a tsp of chili powder
-a large pinch of ground cumin
-a large pinch of mexican oregano (mediterranean would work fine, i'm sure)
Hit the pork with the rub. You know how to do it. Lastly, chop up 1-2 chipotle chiles per person. Steal some adobo sauce from the can and smather it on the pork, then do the same with the diced chiles.

Line a pyrex (8x8? 9x13?) with heavy duty foil, and place the pork inside. Then fold the foil over and seal it tightly. By the end, the pork will be sitting and cooking in its own juices, so make sure that there are no leaks. Throw it in the oven and wait 6 hours.

At the end of its journey to Flavor City, pull the pyrex out of the oven, and put the meat on a plate. WRAP IN FOIL to keep those amazing juices in and let them redistribute, and, using 2 forks, pull the pork apart. Serve on corn tortillas with diced onions and cilantro, and guacamole. Makes ~3 tacos per person.

Potato Leek Soup

last night i had dinner with BP and ZN in westwood for what i hope will a weekly event. they're both old friends from college (and high school), and it's always fun to see them. we made alton brown's potato leek soup, and it was quite yummy. there's a recipe, sure, but i think this is a soup that you have to make once, and then modify based on your feelings - because everyone likes different consistencies, onion-ness or potato-ness, creaminess and saltiness.

potato leek soup
inspired by alton brown, good eats

1-1.5 lb leeks
3 tbsp butter
salt
1 qt broth
5 medium russet taters
pepper
1 c cream

notice that this recipe only has 4 real ingredients (butter and spices don't count). that is pretty cool. here's the rub:

cut and clean the leeks. look anywhere online for advice on how to do this, it's pretty easy. slice thinly. melt the butter in a soup pot and add the leeks. add some salt and sweat for half an hour or so. while thats happening, cut the potatoes into uniform pieces. online i saw some people cut into cubes and others slice, it's just a matter of preference i suppose. we left the skins on for the nutrients, but they slightly unsightly in the soup, so unless you care about aesthetics, i say leave em on. throw the taters in the pot, bring to a boil, and simmer for 45 mins or until the potatoes are squishable against the side of the pot. add as much pepper as you want, and hit it with a stick blender. sadly, i did not have one, so i just tried to squish as many against the side of the pot as i could. it ended up smooth-ish, but we were going for a chunkier soup. then, again based on your preference, incorporate the cream. top with a dab of soup cream, chives, bacon, whatever.

yum.

Finally

Well I figured it would sort of cheating if I didn't update at least once in August. It's been a transitional month, to be sure.

My computer situation is still ballz. It started back in July, when my external hard drive started malfunctioning. The hard drive would whir but the laptop wouldn't recognize it. So there goes updating my iTunes or accessing any of my archived documents. Then my laptop's screen mysteriously dies. It's a 5-y/o Dell Inspiron, which has been giving me problems for 3 years running, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. My spare external monitor couldn't handle the signal coming from the laptop (bizarre, right?) but luckily my then-roommate had one that did work. So for a limited time I could access my laptop and the internet (I stupidly forgot to update my Foxmarks Sync, so since then I've lost a bunch of good bookmarks....poop). Then, he needed his monitor so it went away. My mom gave me her old computer, which was old and slow but functional. Now, in the new house, I try to turn that same computer, and nothing happens. I open it up, turn it on, see the fans start to turn, and then a second later die. I don't know what could be causing this problem, but the result is no computer at home.

It's really not a huge deal, since I get most of my random emailing/facebooking/etc done at work, but at the same time, not having a computer is an ideally liberating but practically inconvenient situation. Not being able to look up Google Maps directions from home, not being able to scan FoodNetwork for recipes, not being able to look up movie times...etc. I get paid monthly (grrr), so once September comes around, I will be visiting the UCLA Store and using my staff discount to purchase a new MacBook ($1149 for the bare-bones white one). I'm seriously debating getting the black version (+ $200), because I'll be saving the $180 that I would otherwise be spending on the extra 80 gigs of memory (it comes standard with 160)....even though right now everything I own/use fits on my 40 gig external hard drive. Brilliant. Speaking of which, that piece of equipment is still not working. However, I think that my roommate will let me borrow her External HD, and I can unplug everything and use solely the hardware to transfer my docs and music to the new computer...and then I'll never need an EHD again, because I'll have more memory than I know what to do with.

Since developing a new groove for the new house and job, I've been steadily cooking more. Pomegranate trees grow rampantly in E-Ho, and using one of my neighbor's (er, the public's, right?) fruits and the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, made some homemade pomegranate-vanilla pudding. I procured about 2 tsp of the pom's juice and added it, but the flavor was not very pronounced...I tasted the vanilla and only a slightly tart aftertaste, so I think next time I need to make homemade grenadine, and leave out the vanilla alltogether.

Vanilla Pudding
Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, (2007?)
(mostly from memory)

3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1-1/2 cups milk
2 slightly beaten egg yolks
1 tablespoon butter
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons fresh pomegranate juice

In saucepan, blend sugar, cornstarch, and salt; add milk. Cook and stir over medium heat till thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir 2 minutes more. Remove from heat. Stir small amount of hot mixture into yolks (or beaten egg); return to hot mixture; cook and stir 2 minutes more. Remove from heat; add butter and vanilla. Pour into serving dishes; chill.

I've also become a decently adept lasagna-maker. My friend Bethany came over for dinner a while ago, and "Italian" was her answer to the concern of what we would be eating. Pasta is boring, unless you make it yourself, and I didn't feel like pizza, even though I do tend to have fun with it. We ended up making two 9"x13" Spinach-Chicken-Alfredo Lasagnas, which I tupperwared and froze, and have been lunching on for the past 2 weeks :) I won't include a recipe here, because I don't have the time, but search any old lasanga recipe on Google, there are hundreds of them.

Aiyah!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailer!!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sBGbKCm_pQQ

New house + broken computer

= no time to bake or cook :(

In the meantime, check out

http://kinut.muxtape.com/
4th song
Loo & Placid - Black Beatles (Beatles vs. Black-Eyed Peas vs. Ludacris vs. Kelis)

Bah

I regret that this month is not looking good for the Daring Bakers challenge. I moved into my new house, which I love, but I am sadly sans internet at home, which is where I would load my pictures to this very blog. I'll do the challenge, I swear! Showing the results may not be so easy :(

In other news, there was a fascinating article in the New York Times by Natalie Angier called "Mirrors Don't Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes.", which explores the psychological effects of mirrors. Here's a snippet from the article. Hit the link to read the whole thing.

"Researchers have determined that mirrors can subtly affect human behavior, often in surprisingly positive ways. Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings. Reporting in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, C. Neil Macrae, Galen V. Bodenhausen and Alan B. Milne found that people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion.

" 'When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,' Dr. Bodenhausen said. 'A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.' Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself. ...

"In a report titled 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition,' which appears online in The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch described experiments in which people were asked to identify pictures of themselves amid a lineup of distracter faces. Participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face. Such internalized photoshoppery is not simply the result of an all-purpose preference for prettiness: when asked to identify images of strangers in subsequent rounds of testing, participants were best at spotting the unenhanced faces.

"How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? 'Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don't look exactly the same every time,' explained Dr. Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. There is the scruffy-morning you, the assembled-for-work you, the dressed-for-an-elegant-dinner you. 'Which image is you?' he said. 'Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.' "

Natalie Angier, "Mirrors Don't Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes." The New York Times, Science Times, July 22, 2008, F1.

Note to self: see WALL-E