The grocery budget has snapped shut. I am adjusting.

I just discovered that, gram-for-gram, croutons from the bulk section are half the price of potato chips.

Tonight, I bought a kilo of cheese (for someone else's dish), a bottle of mango-tangerine juice from the center aisle (tango-margarine? EW!), and the rest of my diet consists of produce and bulk stuff. I'm pretty happy about this. I still pick up a fresh roast chicken, or raid the dairy section for milk or cottage cheese on occasion (that is to say, occasions I can justify the expense), but I am steadily learning how to shop and cook eat my way away from industrially produced and processed food, and into something healthier, older, and better known.

This is not hard when I don't do it all at once, and just check out one or two interesting ingredients at a time. I'm still experimenting, and still making errors (a little too much seasoning on this, cooking the rice a little to long on that), but I am evolving some pretty yummy dishes that are easy to make. And weird as hell.

Angel helped me connect the dots (thanks!) between that "cheezy" flavor I once tasted in couscous with nutritional yeast (not to be confused with baking yeast), which is something I looked for and failed to find at the local supermarket several months ago (on recommendations from some other friends). This time, I went in and asked a stocker, who sent me to the pharmacy section, which I hadn't considered ("It's probablyin with the whey and protein powders and stuff."). Even then, after scanning the shelves, I asked a pharmacist, and bingo. I found some.

They only have big bags ($15.99/400g), so I 'll have to come back for it, but I'll check it out.

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"What are you eating?"

"I don't know, but it's good."

"What's it taste like."

"I... don't know. It doesn't taste like anything else. it's just tastes... good. It's like some kind of strange Manichean cuisine, where it just either tastes good, or bad."

"So what happens when you throw Manichean good in with something that tastes terrible in a non-manichean way? Can it redeem other bland foods?"

"What, you mean like MSG?"

"Oh! Yeah, I guess that's it."

I'm adding couscous to my cooking.

I seem to recall couscous reminded me vaguely of cheese, a few times, but that didn't happen this time I wonder what it takes to make that work. It just seems like smaller bits of rice. While acceptable in a pinch as a filler, rice strikes me as entirely lacking in nutritional or culinary value. It tastes like water - that is to say, nothing. It was also about as cheap and easy to cook, as well.

Meh. *shrug*

Is there any way to get any flavor out of it?

Bake a potato and a sweet potato for one hour.
Mash lightly into a small pot. Add gravy. lightly mash avocado and layer over top. sprinkle with a modest layer of grated cheddar cheese (ok, so it's dairy). Bake for 15 more minutes. let stand 5-10 minutes.

Mmmmmm.

The texture is a bit bland, but it's quite flavorful! to say nothing of colorful! (Orange, white, green, yellow, Orange!) It still needs some crunch, and some spicing/seasoning. Broccoli, crushed kettle chips, diced onions, chicken.

This isn't done yet, but it will become something very nice, I'm sure.

Pop Quiz:

What's good to put on a baked potato that is NOT dairy?

I'll start: Avocado

Cottage cheese and peanut butter.

Separately, you nitwits!

1 cup dry chick peas
3 leaves romaine lettuce
half head broccoli,
2 tomatoes
2 tablespoons each of olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegar.

Seal chick peas in a container of water and soak in the fridge over night. The chick peas will expand to soak up the water, so be sure to leave them at least twice the space they take up. The next day, drain them, then put them in a saucepan of water to boil for 45 minutes.

slice up veggies.

mix oil, lemon juice, and vinegar, and shake vigorously for dressing.

Drain chick peas and add to veggies. Add dressing, and mix.

My amounts are probably off, as I'm still trying to get them right.

Pita bread
Pasta sauce
Sugar
Shredded cheese
Pineapple, diced
Sliced mushrooms

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix ~1 tbsp sugar with ~1 cup spaghetti sauce. Spread on a pita. Sprinkle cheese, mushrooms, pineapple, then one more layer of cheese over top. Bake 15-20 minutes.

Easy enough. Obviously, ingredients can be omitted or added however you like.

I've seen recipes recommending you pre-bake the pita bread naked prior to adding any other ingredients, in order to crisp it. I'll try that next. Meh. It kind of makes it tough.

Man, who knew stuff made in a regular oven was so much better than a microwave, just by adding a little more patience? I mean, really, who doesn't have something to distract them for 30-60 minutes while something cooks?

BACON: teaching kids to use the force since 1985.

(Dangerous! and) Fun fact: Did you know that bacon grease is almost exactly the same color as Fireball? Observe:

A (used) bottle of actual Fireball is on the left; smaller bottle with funnel used to collect this morning's hot pork-bellied hangover cure is on the right.

There are subtle differences, to be sure. Bacon grease has white bubbles on the surface, is a bit cloudier, and is slightly more viscous, but these are subtleties that can be easily lost on the inebriated.

Get me Sophocles on the phone! I do believe we have a tragedy waiting to happen.

What should we call this cocktail? Leading candidates include the "False Alarm", the "Greaseball", the "Greasefire", the "Burning Pitch", and the subtler "Molotov Shooter".

UPDATE: overnight, the color has changed significantly as it cooled. Now it looks like a latte. This makes for an entirely different class of unsuspecting fools.

--

I drank generously last night. I even went to bed drunk, but what's really kicking my ass today is... well, it's actually more accurate to say my ass has been kicking me, along with my legs and feet. Being unable (as I expected) to hail a cab home, Sam and I walked the mile or three home after ringing in the new year.

I officially had a good time. I'm glad my friends invite me places I wouldn't otherwise go. It's always gratifying when friends express how happy they are to see me in ways I don't expect. It makes me feel a little bit guilty that I don't make more of an effort to reciprocate.

I walk and I crawl but I don't never run.
Sometimes I fade away, like the setting sun.
Well I swim and I surf, but I don't never drown,
Everybody says they love me, but I don't know why.

-- Charlie Musselwhite - Everybody Loves Me

lettuce broccoli carrots tomatoes mushrooms dried cranberries croutons grated cheddar sour cream

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook

A variation on the previous stir fry recipe:

Take out lentils, cucumbers, and curry.

add mushrooms, chicken soup mix, and chickpeas, soaked overnight, boiled for one hour, and drained, and a little bit of chili powder.

I may have overdone the chili powder, but it's pretty good.

Of the cumin, turmeric, coriander, and chili powder [[http://bloodykitty.livejournal.com BloodyKitty]] sent me months ago, the first three are definitely gone, while the chili powder has remained practically untouched. I'm not a big fan, but I might as well check it out.

It's certainly more colorful with the chickpeas. Or should I call the GARBANZO BEANS! *sproing!* *bing!*

Chick peas and fresh bacon bits.

Bacon is among the most parsimonious of meats. By slicing thin, one maximizes the surface area of the food, and therefore the taste and texture one experiences while eating, while simultaneously minimizing contact with its deleterious effects on both the body and production environments.

I often say "reducing counts", but I wonder if the ethical objection to meat can really accept such an argument. However much or little of the factory-farmed animal you eat, it suffers the same. Ethical responsibility is not diluted when shared between more consumers. Losing your life feels no better when you lose it in a smaller group.

I suspect that the environmental argument against meat is more amenable to this strategy. Less pollution is decidedly better than less in far more circumstances.

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Cultured meat - "vat-grown", if you will - would theoretically satisfy the ethical argument of vegetarianism by virtue of the fact that, though an animal (part), it does not suffer. It's not sentient. The nerves don't transmit anywhere.

Would that make it a plant?

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Whenever you drain a can of chick peas, does anyone else get the INSTANT URGE to just grab a bunch and MOW? Something about that protein-y smell just activates my appetite.

I busted out the wok again.

Boil 2 cups green (green!? They're brown!) lentils for half an hour or until soft.

Coat bottom of Wok with Vegetable oil and soy sauce.
Add one carrot, diced.
Add one broccoli crown, diced.
Add one cup water.
Add one quarter cup of curry powder (yeah. A LOT.).
Add one onion, diced.
Mix and cover.

Drain lentils and add when ready.
Add one tablespoon salt.
Add one tablespoon instant chicken soup mix.
Add two tablespoons seasoned pepper.
(whatever, right?)
Mix and cover.

Optionally, add one long English cucumber, sliced.
When just about ready, add one diced tomato (tomatoes are such delicate things).
Cook down and stir until desired consistency is reached (Soup? Sure. Refried beans? Suit yourself).

For some reason, lentils remind me of ground beef. Except for the fat and grease part. YOM.