Holiday Spuds

Mashed potatoes aren't very Christmas-y but, I only get this kind once a year.

Clean and mostly peal as many potatoes as you want (I used about 6 medium red spuds). Quarter potatoes and add to cold water. Add a liberal amount of garlic that has been cut into chunks with the potatoes (I had about 1.5 head of it). Add 2-3 sprigs of rosemary tied together with string or some other fancy tying mechanism.

Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and let simmer till spuds are soft, then drain. But save some of the water because it contains good flavor. Toss the tied rosemary.

Begin the mashing using the water from above, milk and butter till creamy. Keep on low heat, not to high or can burn bottom. Too much water or milk will make watery. Butter is good no matter what and helps with creaminess. A dollop or 2 of sour cream can aid in making creamy. Continually add and mix these ingredients until at desired consistency.

Consume!

Star Trek Christmas

This week's theme was holiday food, and nothing says Christmas like gingerbread starships. Given that I have a tendency to experiment with (and thereby ruin!) recipes, I decided to go for the tried, tested and true -- the Joy of Cooking's gingerbread men recipe. I recruited Katie to come down and help me decipher the recipe, and to shame me into actually doing everything it says (does anyone really sift their flour?).

Once the dough was functioning within normal parameters, we had a great time making creative cookie shapes -- gingerbread ensons, communicator badges, and even an edible enterprise. Here's a picture of me biting the head off of a gingerbread Wesley Crusher, wearing a really bad icing sweater. Merry Christmas, Wesley!

Verdict: 3 Picards -- delicious and crafty!

For our Holiday Dinner: Latkes

I will augment this post with pictures from Nicole's camera in a bit.

Knowing I would be making latkes for dinner, I crammed a bag this morning with the important bits: a few pounds of potatoes, three onions, canister of matzo meal, three eggs, and what was left of our bottle of canola oil. I also tucked along Dave's trusty How to Cook Like a Jewish Mother, just in case I suddenly lost the ability to make them. Fortunately, it didn't come to that.

So, how to make latkes. Grate about two or three pounds of potatoes, sparing your knuckles and nails as much as possible. Grate a few onions. Cry a lot, because grating onions hurts. Mix onions and potatoes with a few beaten eggs, a few handfuls of matzo meal, and lots of salt and pepper. Schmutz that around with your hands until it is good and mixed, and can be squeezed into a coherent pancake. If you can't make a pancake, add another egg and some more matzo meal and try again.

Pour oil into a pan up to about 3/4 inch deep. Heat it up until a potato shred dropped in bubbles, but not TOO much-- if it spits and fizzes and runs around the pan, the oil is too hot. It should just fizz a little. Then, pick up handfuls of potato mush, wad them into pancakes (you should be squeezing liquid out to do this) and slide them gently into the hot oil. BE CAREFUL NOT TO SPLASH. Leave them be for a minute or two, then flip them over GENTLY. The bottom should be golden. Let them fry another minute or two, until the other side is golden. Drain briefly on paper towels. Serve warm with applesauce and sour cream.

YUM. I give it all the Picards, but I'm partial. How did everyone else like them?

Hannah making onion rings

Hannah making onion rings
Originally uploaded by centrallyisolated.

I think this may well be the first time that anyone has actually fried anything in my kitchen... Hannah looked extremely skeptical when I pulled out my dinky little bottle of canola oil that I use on the rare occasions that I feel inspired to bake. Nothing burned down, though, and the onion rings were quite tasty!

In the future, we'll just replicate meat pie

Vegetarian Tourtiere
Originally uploaded by centrallyisolated.

Alright, so maybe the idea of making a meat-free meat pie was doomed from the start... but our theme for the week was "french Canadian food," and it's just not franco without tourtiere. I found this recipe online, and went down to the co-op to buy my very first bag of textured vegetable protein.

Fortunately for my tourtiere, I had lots of non-alcoholic beer on hand from my horrible mishap at the grocery store a few weeks earlier, but that's about where my luck ended with this pie. For some reason, the filling seemed to be much too dry, epecially with all those bread crumbs, so I added a bunch more veggie stock. In the end, I think the texture was a bit gummy from the bread crumbs, so next time I'm going to try it with mashed potatoes instead.

Verdict: 1.5 Picards, maybe two with ketchup :)

Worst Sweater Ever

Poor Wil. Bad sweater.

Welcome ladies!

Okay, here it is... our official trek logbook! Now we can post all of our recipes online so that we can remember what was tasty, and what was fit to feed to Wesley. See you next week....