Food

Sports thought: So I'm infinitely happy that the Eagles aren't going to the Super Bowl. Apart from the fact that they're an NFC East team not playing in northern Texas, and thus a sworn enemy, this also comes from a culinary standpoint. Every year, my dad and I make a big food production for the game based on the cities the two teams are from...and I was not going to be eating cheese steak. No way. I'm a little disappointed that crab is out with Baltimore, but Arizona still leaves us a lot of southwest, Meixcan-y options. And Pittsburgh has uh...you know...steel cut oats? There's gotta be some sort of regional cuisine for them.
Weather: It was like 65 degrees today. Texas is awesome when it wants to be.

This long weekend has been filled with various cooking escapades. Starting Friday (and continuing into Saturday morning), I made some scratch cinnamon rolls. Next time you go into a bakery and buy some cinnamon rolls, make sure you thank the makers/bakers profusely. So much more work went into these things than I thought possible or expected (although part of the reason was it was an Alton Brown recipe, which have like eighty more steps than you think should be necessary). The basic steps are make dough, let dough rise, realize three hours later that dough hasn't risen at all so do it again, knead and roll out dough, fill with sugar and roll into cool nautilus shape, cut into rolls, refrigerate overnight, put in empty oven and steam for half an hour, bake for half an hour, make icing, ice rolls, consume. This was definitely one of those recipes that will be made once and only once in my life, because it was so much work for so little payoff. When you can buy a tube of Pillsbury (as much as it pains me to say this) and they taste just as good (it's the delicious preservatives), then you really don't need to be making cinnamon rolls.

The next two meals were much more successful than that breakfast. I've been reading a lot of articles recently how it's getting really trendy to put fruit in hamburgers (food trend right here: fruit hamburgers and bacon desserts. I'm calling it), so we pulled a blueberry hamburger recipe. The ratio is like 1.5 lbs of meat to 1/2 a cup of blueberries, so you don't taste them at all. They really only exist to moisten the meat, which they do magnificently. I think I could serve the beef ones (what my dad ate) in a restaurant, since the black flecks of the berry pretty much disappear, but mine (turkey), looked like a moldy patty (although not tasting as such), and I don't know if the general public could be down with eating that. But seriously try it--you don't taste the fruit, it's full of antioxidants, and you can get away with a leaner cut of beef, since the blueberries add so much juice.

Today I made two different types of molé, which we ended up using for enchiladas. For those unaware, molé is basically just a general Mexican sauce, usually full of thousands of flavors and assorted ingredients. I made two different ones today, a green and a red. The green was pretty basic (well as far as molé goes...still pretty weird on the whole)--essentially tomatillos, cilantro, jalapeno, honey, assorted spices, pumpkin and sesame seeds all in a blender. The red is a lot stranger, but usually what people think of when they think molé. It had me roasting garlic, then blending it with dried ancho peppers, raisins, almonds, cocoa powder, onions, cinnamon, turkey broth, and probably other weird things I'm forgetting. This may seem like a lot of random things, but the end result is this awesome sauce, with really (ok sorry if I sound snobby-foodie here) complex layers of flavor going on. I would definitely make the red molé again...if it didn't involve me soaking dried peppers, blending various sauces, working things through a sieve, watching/stirring a sauce for 45 minutes, etc. You get the idea. Maybe someday for a party, but it's in no way casual food. We ended up making spinach and chicken enchiladas, using both of the sauces. Turned out pretty phenomenal. And just ask if you want any of these various recipes. I stand behind all of them. Except cinnamon rolls. Just go buy a tube.

Internet Goings-On

Food Find: I made some wicked chicken salad today. And we're talking the kind you put in a sandwich, not a salad that happens to have chicken on it. Someday when I open my restaurant/bakery/universal trend-setting-hub, I'll serve seven different chicken salads, one a day. Or maybe eight, that way people who only eat there on Mondays can try each flavor.
Weather: People keep saying it's about to get oppressively cold here. Well, I'm already spending all the time indoors, might just continue on with that.

Got home last night, and I've already run out of things today. Today I spent a lot of time with two websites--kiva.org and couchsurfing.com, both of which are really brilliant examples of the power of the internet, it breaking down physical barriers, getting people in contact with others, yadda yadda. Kiva is one of the coolest things I've seen; basically it has postings by entrepreneurs in third-world countries who need loans, then users on the site can give them 'micro-loans,' (starting at $25), which are interest free and are paid back usually within the year. In return, we, the lenders, get some assuaging of our hippie, liberal guilt, and periodic updates on how their businesses are doing with our money and so forth. I spent a while looking at the various people asking for money (which is hard, since the money is flowing in and, as a result, the people turn over all the time), and ended up giving to Dilorom Nurmatova, a bazaar owner in Tajikistan who needed a loan to buy more sweets (!!), and this baller Stephen Asare, a grocery store owner in Ghana trying to expand is inventory. To read more about Kiva, there was a pretty amusing editorial in Time a month or so ago by Joel Stein.

Also, I signed up for and starting perusing Couch Surfing. The basic premise is you volunteer your couch for wandering travelers, and at the same time are given access to a huge global network of people doing the same. Right now I'm trying to find somewhere to stay in Auckland, since I gave myself an intentional layover there of about three days. It's a pretty overwhelming process; there are hundreds of people in the city offering places to stay, ranging from 20 to 60+. Essentially, I'm trying to find someone who I think I would get along with and would be cool to be around for a few days from what is essentially a Facebook profile. I'm going to start corresponding with a few people in the upcoming days, and hopefully something will connect. And then superhopefully when I get back to LA, some cool, exotic travelers will come crash on my couch.