No posts for a while. Yours truly has been sick and is still not feeling great. bad headache. sore throat. cough. Nose drips.

Have been treating said general yucks with Magic Chicken Soup of Get Wellness (recipe posted at an earlier date) but gussied up with ginger and sirachi and sooper spicy chili - neither of which seems to be working, dammit. About to break out the honey loquat. Yeah, Chinese herbal medicine that doesn't involve body parts from endangered species!

Jackpot!

So I haven't posted in a while, but that's because I have been food busy!

First off, I found yogurt! It's this little store brand. I have to drive to Wilmette (about 20 minutes awawy) to get it, but it only has 15 grams of sugar per container so that is do-able. Plain yogurt has about 10 grams. So far, it has been pretty tasty. The blueberry is my favorite.

Then, I put to good use this book I just got. It's called A Cook's Guide to Chicago. I will have tons of little places to go to all over Chicago that sell everything from imported cheese to pierogies to ethnic foods of all types. My big trip was to Mitsuwa Marketplace. It's a mostly Japanese and a few other Asian ingredient supermarket and food court locted in Arlington Heights, which is southwest of Lake Forest. It's definitely a field trip but I was able to purchase pickled daikon, kim chee, Pocky, Japanese produce, and a bunch of other stuff, including a huge bag of brown sticky rice for $13. I was also able to have a nice lunch and I took home some dim sum for breakfast the next day, including a decent if not spectacular sticky rice in lotus leaf.

Over the weekend, I also went to the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha, WI, and got some string cheese and some cheddar with blueberry and some landjagger smoked sausage. Yum yum!

After the cheese castle, I hooked up with my aunt and uncle in Brookfield and we went to Penzey's Spice (Go everyone, or order from them online!) and afterwards, we went to the Olive Garden, where I tried the new Chicken Roma, which had good flavor but was a little heavy with the oil on the noodles.

I haven't been cooking much, however, because I made a huge soup pot of Heather's Magic Chicken Noodle Soup of Get Wellness. Here's how to make it:

Take one whole chicken and make sure it is clean. Put it in a large stock pack; I use a 7 quart one. Cover chicken with water. Throw in one bay leaf and about 2 tablespoons of coarse salt. Chop up two large onions, two carrots, and two stalks of celery and chuck it in the pot. Turn on the stove and boil it. Once it really gets going, throw on the lid and turn it down to a roiling simmer. Cook until the chicken is falling off the bones and the broth is tasty tasty. Put the whole pot in the frig over night. The next day, take out the pot and skim off most of the fat. Then take the meat off the bones. Discard bones and throw what meat you want in the soup back in the pot (freeze the rest of the met for some other use in the future). Turn the stove on and heat it until it is boiling. Throw in 3/4 of a package of country blend frozen veggies (mix of carrots, green beans, and corn) and about 8 oz of egg noodles (use more or less depending on how noodle you like it). Cook until noodles are done and then enjoy! It's good for what ails you!

I ate this soup for about a week, until I was tired of looking at it and my sniffles went away. I stuck about two large bowls worth in the freezer for future sniffle countering.

The next big cooking project (and this week's vegeterian recipe) is pumpkin curry. Take 5 small onions and slice so the onion slices look like little half moons. Saute in some oil in a large pot and then throw in 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 1 tablespoon ground coriander, 1 tablespoon garam masala, and 2 tablespoon of a sweet but not spicy curry (I like Penzey's Maharajah Curry. Can you tell I love me some Penzey's?). Cook until the spices are fragrant. Then throw in three cans of pure pumpkin (don't get the pie mix, that's just nasty!). Start cooking. If it looks like it is thicky and pasty, add in some broth to thin it out. This makes a hearty stew that I throw over brown rice. To add protein if I am being entirely vegeterian, I might throw in some seitan into the stew.

Also, remember, feel free to adjust the spices to your desired level. I like a little heat, so sometimes I throw in some red pepper. It's all about what makes you happiest!

Back in the Mood

Well, I have started cooking again. Not every day. For example, tonight was a popcorn night again. But after my recent post about how I am a meat idiot, I remembered something.

It's called braising.

Getting towards the end of my sad, dry, greasy roast, I decided I had to use it up somehow. So I chunked it up and then threw in some prik king sauce, which is a spicy Thai condiment. I use the version that comes in the bag of prik king green beans (frozen food aisle at Trader Joe's). I let the meat and the sauce simmer together - which is braising - the meat cooks slowly in a sauce that allows it to become tender and the flavor of the sauce to penetrate. I then threw in the green beans, and served the whole mess over brown rice.

My god, it was delicious. The meat tasted good and was moist and tender.

I can't believe I forgot about braising. I must be a bit down. I mean, duh, it is a bassic of poor person's cooking. You get the cheapest cut of meat you can find and you work with it until it is not only edible but delicious.

Anyway, the braising got my juices going again and since then I have been cooking up a storm. I currently have a whole chicken in a pot with celery, onion, carrot, salt and a bay leaf (Greek, from Greece, sent to the state by my friend Ruth's mom who is very cool and I want to go visit her. In Greece) making a rich stock that I will use tomorrow to make Heather's extra magical chicken noodle soup of get wellness (I have the sniffles. I keep saying it is allergies but a soup remedy is never a bad thing).

A couple of days ago, I made the following recipe, which I have been eating for a couple of days - spinach in tomato sauce with mozarella.

Take a 1 pound bag of frozen spinach. Throw it in a sauce pan with about .25 cup of water and start cooking. Then throw in about .5 cup of green onions and 2 cups of tomato sauce. Cook until bubbly delicious. Then turn off the heat and throw in about .5 cup of mozarella cheese. I had some mozarella pearls, but if you just have a block, go ahead and chop it into pieces about the size of the tip of your pinkie. Serve with a nice crusty whole wheat bread to soak up the juice.

Anyway, a side note. Some folks, noting that only one of the original seven wonders of the world still exist, have decided to have a contest to pick a new seven wonders of the world. Sadly, all of the candiates are human-made, but still if you get a chance to go to the website and vote, please do. Here is the website and the list of candidates. it is going to be hard for me to choose. I personally think it would be cool if they would include natural wonders and then we could pick one from each continent. My current choices? Angkor Wat temple, Easter Island statues, the Great Wall, Petra, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, and one that isn't listed Serpent Mound in Ohio.

Votes can be made online, at www.new7wonders.com.

The 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World, alphabetically:
1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece
2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia
4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico
5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
6 Colosseum, Rome
7 Easter Island Statues, Chile
8 Eiffel Tower, Paris
9 Great Wall, China
10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey
11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow
13 Machu Picchu, Peru
14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany
15 Petra ancient city, Jordan
16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
17 Statue of Liberty, New York
18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom
19 Sydney Opera House, Australia
20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India
21 Timbuktu city, Mali