Frosting (No, really) (Day 14)

I promise I won't do this very often, but on occasion I can do something clever in the kitchen and maybe, just maybe, someone will find it useful.

Short version, because I found myself writing a longish post about a recipe and oh god, please no: measure out equal amounts of chocolate chips and water, boil said water and pour on chocolate chips. Stir and cool--use an ice bath and/or put it in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes until cold but not frozen. Then--and this is the crazy part--add a little bit of peanut butter and boom! You go from a think glaze to something that you can legitimately spread onto a cake or whatever else you put frosting on.

I was originally going to use just the chocolate and water, which I have done a few times and gotten to mousse consistency, but I had better things to do on Friday then stir chocolate for that long. I remembered something I'd read in one of Erin McKenna's cookbooks about coconut oil rescuing frosting that had started to melt (her frosting recipe is based on coconut oil). Guessing that the secret to that approach was really the saturated fat, I suspected the peanut butter would work--and it did.

Needless to say, you could use another nut butter or tahini, which I imagine would be delicious. You could also use something like cashew cream, but then I'd start out with less water during the melting phase.  

Saturated fat is not healthy, but if you're going to eat it, have it with fiber, i.e., a whole food like nuts or avocados, not coconut oil, palm oil, or vegan butter. (There's a surprising amount of saturated fat in those chocolate chips as it is.) I have a sweet tooth like so many other people, but since the Korean side of my family runs to high cholesterol regardless of what we eat, I'd like to indulge my taste for sweets without feeling like I'm shortening my life. Crazy, I know.

Deb in the City

I don't get it

I came across a story yesterday about a company in my state that is selling four products. I won't name all of them, but one of them is for a salad dressing whose name pretty much is the recipe. I looked at the website and blog, and blinked. Apparently you can put the salad dressing on roasted vegetables or salads with grains (known as "bowls" these days), and you can take something I've always called tomato sauce and make things like vegetable parmesan with it, in addition to pasta and pizza. Don't get me started on things you can do with sandwiches or pound cake.

There was a time when I would have gotten really excited if someone had said, hey, having these four items in your refrigerator will make your life so simple while varying your dining options, and here are the recipes, and aren't they clever for the little twists on the classic versions? (If I'm honest, I do pat myself on the back for being Just So Organized and Clever when I have homemade kimchi, tomato sauce, chili, and vegetable broth in the fridge.) But if they had said "or I can sell that to you for the low, low price of $9 per jar", I would have looked at them like they were crazy. Actually, I would have just walked away and figured out how to make it on my own.

I don't mind naming Crate & Barrel in a conversation I had with one of my sons a few weeks ago. While my husband was looking for the perfect bowl (which we did not find), my son came upon jars of sauces meant for things like Chicken Marsala and Pulled Pork. When he asked me how it worked, I explained that you needed to get the chicken or pork yourself, cook it, then add the sauce and let it simmer. That didn't seem like a great trade off to him, although he did think it compared well to the cost of take out, based on what he'd seen. And I think he's right, but it's a lousy bargain compared with the cost of actually cooking at home.

My husband reminds me that I'm not their target audience because, among other things, I know how to cook and have been doing so since I was little. I'm also, judging by the marketing photos, about a decade older. But...have things really changed so much since 2011?

Excuse me, I'm going to make some salad dressing with tahini, miso, and lemon while I cleverly ponder that one.

Cook Through Your Anxiety!

That will totally be the title of a self-help book in the next two or three years. Don't worry, I have no intention of writing it.

Thinking about food, as I did in my last post, makes me think about food, and on Monday night I took a close look at what I had in my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. I couldn't even face my over-stuffed spice shelves, and what I had was SO. MUCH. that I'm not going to list out everything. Just know that it was A LOT, and even after going on a cooking binge, it's still enough that I don't need to go shopping for almost a month (but don't worry, that didn't stop me -- more below).

I came up with no less than seventeen recipes that I could make without having to go shopping. When I say I could eat for a month, I wasn't kidding. On Tuesday, feeling anxious about my sons' food issues, the upcoming election, poverty, the environment, and pretty much everything else, I made: vegan, gluten-free sourdough bread (in my Instapot, no less), chocolate beet cake, tomato sauce, vegan chili, and lentil soup. That's just me cracking my knuckles -- seriously, I have twelve more dishes to go -- and the fact that I needed to do some homeschooling and other general parenting. The latter included a phone call with the nutritionist, during which it was decided that they both need a lot more protein. So, budget conscious though I'm trying to be, I spent more money than I'd like to confess to on animal protein sources. As I watched my husband and son devour one-fifth of what we'd spent in one sitting, I started to wonder if the mathematics of better food needed fewer times really works out when you're talking about two growing boys. 

 

I think even this picture is giving a good idea of the awesome texture of the cake and the for-real red velvet color.

(I'm making meat for my sons because they need it. And before someone wants to get on me for not giving them vegan sources of protein, please know that one of the things that seems to be bothering them is, yep, beans. Soyfoods, probably because of the fermented nature, seem to be bothering them less, but that's not cutting it for their growth. Before you say at least give them vegetarian options, they both have issues with dairy and one of them has issues with eggs. And to anyone who wants to argue that their growth and general health isn't worth what I'm feeding them, we don't have anything to discuss.)

Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear that stress-cooking doesn't actually make your stress go away. To really burn through stress, I need to move around, but I was confined to my home both Monday and Tuesday. By the time I got back from shopping I was ready to jump out of my skin, but then I found that my body bars (36 and 15 pounds) had arrived much earlier than I'd thought. Woo hoo! As soon as my husband cut them out of the boxes for me I did what I had been promising myself I'd do: deadlifts and squats (36 pounds) and overhead presses (15 pounds). Oh, my! You know how your body can just scream for something it hasn't gotten for a while? That's how I've been feeling for a very long time, but when I picked up those bars, the delicious ache in my muscles told me that it was finally getting what it needed. 

With the prayer that I will be able to avoid food shopping for, I don't know, a week, I attacked the kitchen this morning, making chicken soup stock and then chicken soup. (Did I mention we roasted a chicken last night? It happened.) After a little calculus and chemistry with the boys -- highlight of my day, I kid you not -- I think I'm going back for vegan, gluten-free mac and cheese and squash pudding. Or we'll see what else we can come up with that I can fit in the fridge.

Off to make someone an egg and vegan cheese sandwich on gluten-free bread,

Deb in the City