Cooking for One: Salads and Leftovers

I've only been cooking for myself because hubs has to temporarily be on a clear-liquid diet. And there's really no time to cook because I've been running errands for the hubs, going to the pharmacy or the drugstore or to the grocery store for just boxes of bone broth, gummy bears, Jell-o, popsicles and lollipops. I harvested all that lettuce, and so lots of salad for me. But before the weekend, I decided on one of the $5 Friday specials for my dinner, and so I indulged in tuna sushi and wasabi tuna poke.

I'm so okay with eating leftovers consecutive nights, and so this weekend, I made that hummus bowl for the neighbor's party of which two portions for me are leftover (sorry no pic, but it was beautiful and delicious in my handmade ceramic salad bowl). The boxed broth is too bland for the hubs, and so I boiled it with a couple of chicken bones (because I had poached chicken for dinner later), the tops of leeks, carrots, celery, and onion. I also studied the recipe for making kimchi with that Napa cabbaged I had harvested and the recipe on the box of the seasoning for Chicken Masala.

The kimchi was surprisingly easy and rather fun. I just threw in the last of my chopped scallions into a bowl with the Napa cabbage and liberally salted it with a tablespoon plus a bit. I figured I only had enough cabbage to fill a pint jar, and so I was halving the measurements called for in the recipe. And because I don't have a food processor, nor wanted to dirty up and clean my Vitamix blender, I ground the garlic and ginger and miso paste and sugar in my mortar and pestle. I also added a bit of fish sauce. My neighbor, Cecilia gave me Korean chili powder which I also added. And once the cabbage had wilted after an hour and a half, I put it into a jar with the paste of seasoning. I didn't bother putting salty water into the jar as there really wasn't room for it.

I also put the jar of kimchi outside because I didn't want the jar exploding inside and making a big mess for me to clean as it fermented. When I get home from work today, I'll open the lid to release some of the gas and put it in the fridge. In the meantime, hubs' bone broth boiled with the vegetables practically all of Sunday, of which I used some for my Indian dinner. And the chicken masala is a new dish in my repertoire of Indian food

My flower garden is looking particularly lovely, but I'm gonna pull up some more withered plants when I deadhead over the weekend.

I'm only cooking once or twice over the weekend and hardly or not at all during the week because I'm partaking of those leftovers for dinner over the work week. I like it as it has freed up time for more making, either in ceramics or quilting. I get now why my mother-in-law said no more cooking when her 5 kids were almost done with being teenagers. Cooking for others entails a lot of time and energy though I've always felt the kitchen was where I was most Zen. Nourishing myself and others makes me feel so present and loving.

Ruminations of a First Generation American Immigrant and Work Week Cooking

Growing up, my dad moonlighted at various fast food restaurants after his day job as cook for the Admiral of the U.S. Coast Guard when we lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I guess military families with stay-at-home moms didn't have a lot of money, and so my dad worked part time jobs to supplement his pay. My siblings and I loved though that our dad came home with buckets of fried chicken from KFC or hamburgers from Gino's or candies from 7-11.

I think about those fast food meals and the immigrant hands that cook them even now when I go to McDonald's for my large decaf and if kinda hungry, a sausage McMuffin too. 

However, my dad also cooked at home from scratch, and his meals have influenced my own garden and kitchen practices. This past week, I helped hubs clear out the garden for his tomato plants by harvesting all the cauliflower and broccoli and uprooting the kale. I had leftovers for dinner and cooked the cruciferous vegetables as my main. I got a cast iron pan searing hot and then just before sautéing the vegetables, coated the bottom with a thin layer of olive oil and laid the cauliflower on to the pan to brown. Once brown, I turned the vegetables over to brown on the other side.

Once the cauliflower was browned on both sides, I sprinkled salt and minced garlic and put a lid on the cast iron in order to steam the vegetables. The bottom of my frying pan was kind of dry, and so I ladled on a bit of bone and vegetable broth before steaming.

Once the cauliflower was tender to my liking (and I detest veggies that are too soft), I served it up.

I love that the purple cauliflower got even darker in hue. Leftover beer battered fish and macaroni and cheese accompanied my vegetables.

And the plate that my meal was served on was acquired by my dad, probably a castoff from Admiral Siler that we used forever. Once a set of four dinner plates is now reduced to one. There's crazing on this plate and once it breaks, I'll mourn the loss of this memento from my childhood.

Hubs is still incapacitated after surgery a couple weeks ago, and so I harvested the lettuce this week as well as the last head of Napa cabbage. Alas we had a hot spell over the weekend which wilted a lot of the cabbage, but hopefully I'll be able to make a small jar of kimchi from it. And oh my gosh, there were so many slugs and worms in the lettuce. I kept filling the sink with water and would then pull the drain to let the bugs wash down. I rinsed each leaf under the running faucet even after filling the sink a couple times and still more bugs. I was amazed by the critters still in the sink after the final wash. Sometimes a bug that I didn't trap will escape from the greens in my fridge. I cleaned a tiny caterpillar recently.

After I spun the lettuces dry, there was enough to fill a giant bread bag.

Whew now time for a drink and putting together leftovers for a mezze.

That was the last of my hummus and baba ghanoush and Greek salad and mint and cilantro chutney. My neighbors are holding a spring cleaning happy hour this weekend as in clean out pantry and refrigerator and serve communally. I was going to make a Broadway pea salad, but I'm obsessed with hummus bowls. I'm going to cook that instead because I've a package of beef gyro strips in my freezer. And bomba or fermented Calabrian chiles. And more whole wheat pita that I'm going to drizzle olive oil and sprinkle dukkah on to dip into the hummus bowl. I'll post a pic.

Ceramics: My Love Hate Relationship with Frost Porcelain

I made a lot of porcelain pots these past two Saturdays, but alas two of them cracked.

Aaargh. I so love the result of frost porcelain when it has not cracked during its drying in the greenware stage or during its firing in the kiln. And so I did some research on how to not get cracks.

1) Join only pieces of similar dryness and reinforce all joints with extra clay and compress them together with a rib. Compression, compression, compression.

2) Slow and even drying is critical. Periods of rest, where the pieces are wrapped in an airtight chamber to slow drying and redistribute moisture, help. Also restrict movement of the piece during the drying phase.

3) Turning your pots over once they're hard enough to pick up without damaging, may help as it exposes the underside to air.

4) Put your pottery on a shelf or a rack to help the airflow circulate evenly around a piece evenly and prevents certain areas like the underside from holding on to their moisture longer than others.

In looking at the cracked piece above, I think the cookie on which I adhered the rounded slab was so much drier. The bottom and the wall weren't of similar leather hardness or moisture content. Oh well. That wall was so much wetter than the bottom. Live and learn. Here's hoping this bud vase survives drying.

And this larger than a soup bowl too.

I kind of wished that I hadn't adhered that rectangle wider than the circumference of the bud vase on the bottom. I kind of wished that I made the rectangle flush with the walls of the vase. But I worried that it would topple over too easily. Oh the design choices that must be made for a pot to function.

Ceramic Ambitions

I haven't cooked adventurously of late because I've been obsessed with pots. I recently saw these gold lustered cups (I think they're from Anthropologie in the U.K.)and want (because I think I can)to reproduce them with the Frost Porcelain I have left. And I'm just now noticing that the horizontal stripes are inside the mug too.

If I try to re-create my version of the mug below, I should definitely try to play with cobalt oxide.

I've also been admiring the stencil work of Diana Fayt. I may have to add a bag of Laguna Electric Brown clay to my shopping list at Clay Planet and use the Oriental Pearl slip that Kat gave to me and Meral.

Yesterday was Ceramics Club, hosted by my colleague Zan. Before going to her classroom, I copied an image of Frida Kahlo and lines of text, one of which I affixed to the plate I bought at the Pick of the Litter.

I wasn't quite read to dig into the bag of Coleman Porcelain and instead opened a bag of BMix with Grog (which I learned is Cone 5/6 whereas BMix with Sand is Cone 10). Whenever at a loss at what kind of project to build, I turn to hand building mugs or plant pots. And test tiles. I think I was only in the ceramics classroom for an hour and a half. Zan watched me inexpertly pulling a handle and gave a quick lesson, and so I stole her handle and attached it to my mug.

When I got home for dinner, there was no reason to cook because I had made baba ghanoush and hummus and a Greek salad and bought feta with sundried tomato and basil at Grocery Outlet over the weekend and stopped at Safeway for gyro beef and whole wheat pita.

Back to ceramic dreams. I've a bag of speckled buff too and want to be thoughtful about what I make from it. I want to go geometric angular like these espresso cups and saucers.

Those mug handles are so cool. But I won't make saucers though I love that contrast of raw and glazed clay. And if I'm going to make it on a bigger scale, the size of a coffee mug, then maybe I need to go back and make my brass knuckle-like handles. And cobalt oxide! But I've a feeling that the pots below are outlined in marine blue underglaze.

In looking at all my bottles of underglaze, I've every shade of blue from sky blue to royal blue to ice blue, but no navy or indigo blue. However, Zan says I can play with cobalt oxide to create all those different shades. My aim will be to use that color palette to create something almost as intricate as this vase.

But I'm not interested in peacocks. I love nautical, and so my plan is to make a big porcelain (or not....maybe I'll have to use Grogzilla)lamp. Really I need to measure some lamps and look at the electrical hardware I have to figure that out. Meral wants to do the same--only she also wants to build a shade or some kind of frame in which to weave the shade on to.

I'm not that ambitious. The above image is from a painter, who's a sometime potter? I suspect that the surfaces on the pot above are acrylic painted and collaged with paper. The ceramic vase is lovely, and I love the whales and the sailing ship, two motifs I would like to include on my lamp.

Cooking: Kale, Sausage and Cannelini Bean Soup

Leftover Italian sausage along with a jar of chicken broth, a can of cannellini beans and a large bunch of kale turned into soup. And herbs! I plucked rosemary, thyme and sage from the garden as well as chopped up a red onion and parsley.

As I was sautéing the onions and herbs, I remembered the Calabrian chili pepper sauce given to me by the Agi sisters. 

Oh much better tasting! Once I got the beans and chicken broth into the pot, I also added the sturdy kale to the soup. And how could I have forgotten to sauté garlic with the onions? Garlic powder to the rescue. 

Yay soup!

I ladled this soup into two large jars and am wondering with whom to share one of the jars while I consume one for my lunches and dinners for the week.

An Uneventful but Creative Spring Break

Most of my spring break was spent spring cleaning, sewing and hand building. I vacuumed my kitchen drawers and cleared my dining table of a few sewing projects by finishing one. I delivered the Bob + Lisa kimono quilt this past Friday, and they treated me to lunch at the Tadich Grill. There strangely was a bit of traffic in San Francisco, but oh! then I saw masked fans outside the Willie Mays Gate because of a ball game between the Giants and the Rockies at Oracle Park. Of course in this pandemic, I was able to find parking on the street close to the restaurant in the Financial District. I spent some time window shopping at the Goodwill and the SPCA/Human Society thrift stores. I did go back after my jaunt to the city and got that plate of the 18th century couple on which to adhere snarky text. I also found a darling porcelain tea cup and saucer earlier at the Goodwill. And I don't think I'll add any text to its bottom because it's so adorable. I instead want to build a little teapot to go with it with melon glaze and and gold luster. I don't know however if I could built it with frost porcelain. I might have to use Bmix stoneware for its clay body if I'm to make it as thin and delicate as I can. I know I'm going to make two slab bowls and then join them together into a sphere, cut a hole in the top half of the sphere to shape into a slightly domed lid and on which to adhere a knob and a flange and fashion a spout.

I also got curious about this little velvet suitcase...

...and oh! it's a cute record player.

Of course, I didn't buy it. I'm not about to start collecting vinyl for which I've neither the room, nor the patience. But if I were a record collector....

My meals lately have been my regular rotation of sandwiches and re-making leftovers like the Denver O'Brien potatoes with a fried egg and an English muffin that I served for dinner one night. Hubs surprisingly liked it.

And we are almost done harvesting our winter crops.

Hubs sautéed the purple cauliflower per usual and steamed that huge head of broccoli, the leftover of which I incorporated tonight into mac 'n cheese.

And I've got pots to deliver to the kiln:)

Here's my truth for how I've been processing my mental crises from two years ago.

This therapy admonition so resonated with me and is how I justify withdrawing from the world for the past couple years after my midlife existential angst.