Cooking Comments

Hello! I thought I’d address two comments/questions I received recently, both on the topic of foodstuffs.
– First of all, my green veg. I think I’ve written about this before, but I can’t remember if I did so here or on flickr, so this is what I do, for the record. I steam broccoli until it’s nearly cooked through. Then I sautee a bit of onion in a separate pan, usually just using a bit of cooking spray. I drain any excess moisture from the broccoli and throw it into the pan, along with asparagus and kale that I’ve cut up. The pan gets covered for about a minute, and then I pour in a splash of soy sauce, stir it up, then add a few shakes each of nutritional yeast, cumin, and chili powder. Stir it up again and cover for another minute or two, or until the kale is tender.
At that point I leave the lid off, so that any trapped moisture can cook off, and I’ll add some sort of protein, if I’m going to. Well, I wait until that point for stuff like veggie sausage or fake bacon, but if I were using beans, I’d add them right before I season everything (but after the soy sauce), so they can benefit from the spices. If I do tofu (like so), I cook it first and THEN add the veg.
That’s how I do it, pretty much every time. You might think I’d be getting tired of green stuff flavored with soy sauce, nutritional yeast, cumin, and chili powder by now. But nope. I’m especially going through a kale-craving phase.
– Second, yogurt. I started making my own two summers ago, after reading about it here. It’s very simple, and you really only need two ingredients: milk and a starter culture (I’ve never added powdered milk to mine). I usually use plain Dannon naturals as my starter, since that’s what I eat if I’m not making my own yogurt.
That first summer, I just used the oven, and I figured out that a good method for me was to let the oven preheat for a minute every hour or so. Just a minute, and then I’d turn it off. Obviously, that required being around all day. But I found an older Salton yogurt maker a little over a month ago, and I’ve loved using that. It maintains the proper temperature, and all I have to do is to remember unplug it and stick the yogurt in the fridge afterward! You still have to repasteurize the milk and then cool it down before adding the starter, but that doesn’t really take too long, especially if you use an ice bath for the cooling.
And the best part? I can make a quart of yogurt for $1-$1.50, once I’m using the previous batch as starter for the next. Thrifty!
P.S. — I successfully ran 6.2 miles (10km) this morning, which I’m awfully pleased about. I’ll write more this weekend, hopefully!