Day 34

Last day! My post title numbering went awry at some point.  I had vaca frita and kale sauteed with a squeeze of lemon, a dollop of tahini, and plenty of salt.  If I had thought of it, these two things would have been beyond delicious wrapped in corn tortillas.

Day 30

I made these meatballs with squash and quinoa from the Guardian.  Subbed beef for lamb, potato starch for corn starch.  We had them with these sweet and spicy carrots.  I also tried these granola bars from Half Baked Harvest.  They're very tasty but very crumbly, I think I used too much oil.

Day 29

We were visiting my mom this weekend so I don't have all her recipes but the dishes were pretty simple.  She made carrot ginger soup by sauteing onion and garlic (maybe?), ginger, salt, pepper, and carrots, simmering in water, and whizzing with the stick blender.  Nice bright innards-warming lunch with some rice cakes.  For dinner we had pan seared ribeye with potatoes and asparagus that had been roasted in olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Note about long drives while on LID: eat as heartily as you can before you set off.  By the time we got home the thought of eating another raw almond was very depressing.

Back home we had the Crispy Lamb with Cumin, Scallions, and Red Chilis from the NY Times.  I misread the recipe and used rice wine vinegar instead of rice wine and I was out of cornstarch so I used potato starch instead.  My guess is the latter substitution was the reason why it didn't come out all that crispy but it was still good.  We ate it with brown rice and string beans that had been blistered in the wok.

Day 25

I love the stir fried beef and celery dish in Fuchsia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice (recipe posted here), it's so quick and satisfying. I was out of pretty much everything except ground beef and celery but filling out the basic template with chopped scallions, chilis, and garlic still yielded tasty results.  I didn't realize until I started eating it at work that it could have used a dash more salt which of course I couldn't do with the office salt shaker, so in the future I'm going to try to remember to have some non-iodized salt stashed in my desk for office flavor emergencies.

Under normal circumstances I sub balsamic vinegar for Chinkiang vinegar.  If you could give a source for gluten-free Sichuan chili bean paste it would be life altering for me; in the mean time I use a combination of gluten free gochujang and doenjang from Crazy Korean Shopping.

I also made the peanut butter cookies from the Thyca cookbook.  Very tasty (especially good spread with jam) and did not, as I feared they would, get too crumbly from being knocked around in my bag.

Day 24

For dinner we had the Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma from the NY Times.  Pretty delish, I'm looking forward to making it again when I can have it with feta and hot sauce.  I also made the Broiled Eggplant Salad from Good and Cheap.  Since the chicken takes a few hours I wanted to consolidate oven use so instead of broiling the eggplant I brushed the slices with olive oil and put them in the oven for the last 20 minutes or so while the chicken was cooking.

Day 23

Leftover watercress, duck, and brown rice for lunch.  For dinner I made the Mangalorean Pork Curry in the Holiday issue of Lucky Peach.  If you don't have the mag, this recipe from The Tiffin Box looks similar.  The supermarket near our place didn't have tamarind and in this weather an ingredient safari was not happening so I subbed the juice of three Key limes and about a teaspoon of sugar.  Since I didn't follow the recipe exactly I'm not going to pass judgment on it but if I make it again I'll make sure to use the tamarind; I think it would have given it a little extra depth of flavor.

To accompany we had brown rice and cauliflower "pilaf".  I whizzed up some chopped cauliflower in the food processor until the pieces were roughly couscous sized, then sauteed it with caramelized onions, a few dashes of curry powder, and a handful of golden raisins.  Forgot salt which would have improved the results.

I was startled when I started to open a package of brown rice we had sitting around and noticed it was enriched.  It didn't list iodine as one of the added vitamins but I got a pack of non-enriched rice anyway.  Possibly overkill but it's not like we'll be sorry we have some extra rice on hand when the LID is over.

Day 22

For a snack I made the granola bars on page 25 of the Good and Cheap cookbook by Leanne Brown (available here).

For dinner we had watercress sauteed with garlic and a fresh chili.  I attempted to roast a duck which I don't think came out that great; somehow I managed to overcook the meat but the skin wasn't very crispy.  I used the steaming and flavoring instructions from this NY Times recipe (I made a nest out of foil in the wok) and then roasted it whole according to the instructions in this Canadian Living recipe.  Both recommend seasoning the duck 24 hours before cooking which I didn't do and I'm sure there were a few other missteps (for one, the water level was so high that it bubbled up over the nest which probably made the bird soggy).  But it wasn't inedible and we'll get some nice stock and duck fat out of it.

Day 21

Lunch: I cooked brown rice in chicken stock and warmed up some leftover shredded chicken.  We ate the chicken and rice with the ginger and chili sauces from this Roast Hainanese Chicken Rice which really zipped up a simple meal.  The full recipe is also great.

Dinner: Porterhouse steak prepared by husband; baby kale and tomato salad with vinaigrette made of olive oil, red wine vinegar, minced garlic, salt, and pepper.

Public Service Announcement

If you are going on LID at the same time that your city is transforming into a punishing frozen hellscape throwing all means of transportation into chaos, make sure that your desk is well-stocked with snacks.  Otherwise, when you have eaten your last almond, the iodine-full vending machine is taunting you, and there is no chance of making it home for dinner at a decent hour, you will find yourself wondering how much iodine there is in printer paper.

That said, this guide on LID from the National Institute of Health includes a list of processed foods and snacks that, as of 2012, used non-iodized salt. There were some things in this guide that were a little different than the ThyCa document so go with your gut and your doctor's advice on which guidelines to follow. Personally I think I needed this period of time to test my ability to live without Fritos so unless I'm stuck in the office overnight I think I'm going to continue telling myself that they are not an option.

Day 19

I started my mid-week cooking catch-up evening by roasting some chicken thighs in olive oil and salt and pulling them apart when they were done.  Some of the chicken went into this stuffed pepper recipe from Marc Matsumoto substituted for the marinating and frying steps.  I assembled the rice and chicken mixture in the peppers, stuck them in the fridge, and did the final bake the day we ate them.

The rest of the chicken went into this Serious Eats roast chicken and kale salad with tahini dressing.  I didn't have any apricots or almonds handy but I've made it with the apricots too and it's pretty delightful either way.  A great lunch, very flavorful and hearty.

Finally, I made Laurie Colwin's pot roast (I've seen a few different versions, this one comes closest to what I did) subbing fresh chopped tomatoes and two cups of chicken stock for the tomato sauce. Ate with pasta.

Day 15

Still working my way through leftovers.  I did get some wings which I tossed in oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and roasted at about 375 for over an hour until the skin was totally crisped.  I also made Alton Brown's stovetop popcorn using canola oil instead of peanut and whizzing up kosher salt in my mini chopper since I didn't have popcorn salt.  I skipped the butter which certainly would have been great but it was tasty without it.  If you try it I'd recommend using the widest shallowest metal bowl you can. Mine's more deep and narrow which I think makes it harder to keep the kernels circulating and thus easier to burn, but it still came out 95% unscorched.  Finally, I tried a recommendation from this Food52 post for putting tahini in oatmeal with honey and it is delish.

Interlude

I've been working my way through a mountain of leftovers so I'm going to take a little break from daily menus.  There'll still be plenty of material though.  For scheduling reasons I'm going to be on the LID for a total of 5 weeks-almost twice as long as usual.  Good times!

One thing I did make this week was these macarons using some of the meal I've been accumulating from making nut milk.  I might just leave them unfilled but they'd be great with jam.

Day 11

Breakfast: oatmeal, nut meal, jam; apple and peanut butter.  Coffee with almond milk.

Lunch: Squash, carrot, fennel soup; beef pie. Skittles.

Dinner: Almond and banana muffins, roasted squash seeds leftover from making soup.  Marshmallow.


Again, way less austere than it sounds.  A LOT of Skittles.

Day 10

Breakfast: Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats, lingonberry jam, hazelnut almond meal.

Snack: Raw almonds.  Coffee with the last of the almond hazelnut milk.  The milk separated while sitting in the office fridge over the weekend but some good shaking took care of that.

Lunch: Squash, carrot, and fennel soup.

Dinner: Pork stew.  Peanutbutter and fluff on rice cakes.

The quantity of leftovers in the fridge seems to stay exactly the same no matter how much I eat.  Expect some combination of beef pie/squash soup/eggplant and chickpeas/pork stew to dominate over the next few entries.

Day 9

Breakfast: Vegan almond meal banana muffins prepared by very good natured visiting friend.  Beef and Bayley Hazen Pie from A Girl and Her Pig.  For breakfast, you say? It was meant to be for dinner the previous night but this recipe was quite a bit more involved than I had bargained for.  I left out the Bayley Hazen, used Cup4Cup flour, greased the pan with oil instead of butter, and skipped the milk and egg wash.  I got the tutorial for preparing suet here and let me just say, that was a trial even for someone who usually finds rendering fat deeply satisfying.  The smells and the leftover bits are far less appetizing than working with pork or chicken fat.  Thank goodness I could shred the suet in the food processor for rendering. I grated it by hand when I was preparing the solidified rendered fat to make the dough.

I'll definitely make this recipe again with Stilton or Bayley Hazen and probably some other filling variations.  If I make it while on LID I would up the salt by a few teaspoons.  Maybe throw in some carrots.  I might also try a different flour blend, the Cup4Cup was a little bitter.  Most importantly, I will start the prep at least two days before I intend to serve it!

Lunch: Pie.  There's still a lot. It's going to be in my life for a while.

Dinner: Brown rice. Eggplant and chickpeas with tomato.

Day 8

Breakfast: Coffee, almond milk.  Used the almond:water ratio from this recipe and added about twice as much sugar as I thought necessary, at least a tablespoon, and a teensy bit of salt.  Much better than the hazelnut-almond milk, either because I added more sugar or because the hazelnut skins made it bitter.  Oatmeal, hazelnut-almond meal, grapefruit.

Lunch: Eggplant and chickpeas with tomato from Claudia Roden's Arabesque, basmati rice, this pork and squash soup.

Dinner: Fried some string beans in a wok until blistered, put aside.  Fried some ground pork with fennel, chili, garlic, and salt until crumbled and browned (actually closer to blackened, whoops!).  Brown rice.  Marshmallow.

Day 7

Breakfast: Apple, peanut butter.  Oatmeal, jam, almond hazelnut meal.

Lunch: Another pureed soup.  Chopped carrots, a fennel bulb, and half a butternut squash, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, roasted until the squash was soft.  Sauteed garlic, added roasted vegetables, homemade chicken stock and about half a cup white wine, simmered for a little while.  Zapped with the stick blender.

Dinner: Ribeye prepared by extremely thoughtful and considerate friend who came to visit even though it is bitterly cold here and we weren't going to be able to eat out.  She cooked it in a cast iron pan in olive oil for six minutes per side with a bit of salt and pepper.  I am pondering whether I can just eat it for dinner every night between now and the end of the LID.  Also had Barilla GF spaghetti mixed with shredded zucchini, a drizzle of chili oil from Fuschia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice, and a spoonful of Chinese sesame paste (tahini would have been fine too).  Skittles.