Chickpea and Broccoli Scramble

So, I think that over the December break at least I'll probably be updating the blog more. That means that I'll probably abandon the "Frugal Sunday" format for this month. Tonight's recipe was improvised based on me seeing what food was around. I also made a small amount of stock for this recipe out of the peels and scraps from its ingredients. I also learned that my rice recipe doesn't scale as well as it could – there were remnants of water in the pot.

Chickpea and Broccoli Scramble

Oil

1 onion, diced

1 broccoli, chopped (what is the unit for broccoli?)

1 dried chili pepper, crumbled

1/2 cup stock

1 can chickpeas

1 red pepper, chopped

1 tablespoon ginger

1 tablespoon garlic

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

1/4 small lemon

1 teaspoon cumin

Sauté the onion in the oil for a few minutes and then add the broccoli and chili. Add a bit of stock to the pan. After a few minutes, (when the broccoli are bright green) transfer them to a plate. Add the chickpeas, soy sauce, vinegar and remaining stock to the pot and cook for 5 minutes. Add the red pepper and continue cooking. Return the broccoli/onion mix to the pot and add the garlic, ginger, cumin and lemon. Serve over rice.

Serves 4.

Martin the Warrior

A few weeks ago my washing machine tried to kill me. It was the first, but not the last, instance of attempted murder in this sordid story.

I was just washing my clothing when it started to shake and heave and emit banging sounds louder than the Battle of Thermopylae. When I went to investigate it literally charged at me. A side note, I hate it when people use "literally" to mean "figuratively". But, aside from the anthropomorphizing implicit in the statement, I'm telling the truth here: that washing machine actually lunged several feet toward me as if demonically possessed. For a while my roommate and I did laundry as a team effort, when it got to the spin cycle we would both go and restrain the washing machine so it would stay in one place. We realized, ultimately, that this was both not particularly safe nor a good use of our time. Before we could decide whether we should stop doing that the spin cycle broke all together. So, no trying to kill us = good; clothes still completely wet after come out of dryer = bad.

Our landlady got a washing machine repairman to come over who made an interesting discovery. We had acquired a pet. A mouse was living inside the washing machine and had gnawed through some of the wires (he didn't see the mouse, but did find... evidence of its life inside the machine). We decided to name it Charles Martin. Also, my roommate got some traps from our landlady to kill him. I was a little sad as I went to bed, knowing he couldn't resist the delicious cheese laid out. Poor little guy.

I was right that Charles Martin couldn't resist the cheese. What I was less right about was my assumption regarding his mortality. Because when I woke up, the cheese was gone and the trap was unsprung. Over the next few days my roommate tried various combinations of cheese and peanut butter and every morning the situation was the same: no food, no mouse. He even got up in the middle of the night one time, noticed the cheese was gone, put more in and woke up to find it gone.

Last week, I noticed the trap was different. Hewing to the adage about better mousetraps, my roommate had beaten a path to Canadian Tire's door and bought an evil looking spring-loaded trap with a hair trigger. He put it out, laden with peanut butter, knowing that this trap would get the mouse. But in the morning, the peanut butter was still there. Charles Martin had outsmarted us! He became somewhat of a folk hero in my mind. Much like the protagonist of the excellent Fantastic Mr. Fox (seriously, go see it), he was a wild animal besting us in a battle of wits and stealing our food. His very existance was a critique of our petty bourgeois student life style and our social norms about property.

This morning there was a dead mouse in the trap.

He was grey with cute little white paws and a long pink tail. I buried him in the garden next to the ivy. Requiescat in pace, Charles Martin.

Frugal Veggie Semiversary

Six months ago today, I started the Frugal Veggie blog and put up the first post (appropriately enough about lentils). Since that time I've done 62 posts (including this one) and been visited 718 times with 1492 pageviews. These visits have come from 5 continents and 17 countries. The majority of my entries have been recipes and restaurant reviews (respectively about 2/5ths and 1/5 of my posts) but posts about my garden or animals eating stuff in my kitchen are also up there.

Who knows where this blog will be on its real anniversary 6 months from now.

Peaceful Lentils

Okay, this recipe is not actually called "Peaceful Lentils"; it has the more proasic name of "Lentil Barley Stew". I had made this recipe while I was a cook at Sci '44 Co-op and then there, on the board, the vegetarian option was listed as "Peaceful Lentils". It confused me for a second until I realized the cookbook it was from was called "The Peaceful Palate". I am, I think, the only one in the world who finds that story interesting. Yet I still tell it. Good times. Whatever you call it, Lentil Barley Stew is an old favourite from my childhood – its a simple hearty stew that is just as good leftover.

Lentil Barley Stew

2 cups lentils (about 1 pound)

3/4 cup pearl barley

8 cups stock

1 large onion, chopped

2 carrots, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1/4 tsp black pepper

salt to taste

Place all ingredients except salt in a large pot and bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer for one hour, stirring occasionally, until lentils and barley are tender. Add salt to taste.

serves 12 6.

The original recipe says it serves 12, but really half that. I guess they're talking about serves 12 as a course as a meal, but my number comes from it being the whole dinner. This is also a good exam-period meal, as once you've done the chopping it's very low maintenance and you can do other things (e.g. study). Plus, it produces lots of leftovers (and, as indicated above, it makes good leftovers).

The Cider Experiment

Happy at how the first batch of cider turned out, we decided to lay down not one but two bottles of cider. One was the same "Simply Apple" Apple Juice and the other was Mott's Fruitsations Apple Juice (I checked, it was clam blood free). For the "Simply Apple" we used Morgan's Lager Yeast. We'd read that lager yeast provided a more cider-y flavour and said "Hey, why not." For the Fruitsations, we decided to try an experiment and added honey and cinnamon to it, while using the champagne yeast from last time. For that one, we decided to do the balloon trick for an airlock – a white balloon with a pinhole in it. The fact that it's white will have some later significance. We had added more water than we were supposed to the yeast last time, so this time we added just enough. It turned the yeast into a solid (a colloid?) and made it very difficult to scope the yeast into the cider. That done, we put them downstairs in the closet.



Soon after I had the following conversation with my roommate.
Roommate (excitedly): I have a great new idea. Can I use some of your friend's honey to make fermented honey?!
Me: You mean mead?
Roommate: Mead?
Me: Yeah, that's what that's called.
Roommate: Nerds. I thought I had invented that.

As you saw above, there was a lot of fermentation in the experimental bottle and a bunch of the cinnamon had been kicked up into the balloon itself. However, when the balloon had deflated enough we decided to try it. It was gross. Like really gross. It tasted watery and sharp and bitter and a grim parody of cinnamoness. An idea struck me and I added some of my roommate's mead to it. It still wasn't great, but it really complemented it well. The mead filled out the watery taste and took away the bitterness. Seeing inspiration, we dumped in the rest of the mead and capped the bottle.

We decided to taste the other bottle and it was actually pretty good. It tasted more like cider than the first batch did, with a nice crisp apple taste and a gentle fizz.

Heartened by the good cider, we decided to check on the experimental cider. When we opened the lid, it vesuviused all over the place. I starred at it in horror for a couple of seconds as it foamed all over my floor. I suppose we should've predicted it. After the foam out, we tasted it and it was even grosser. So we threw it out.

We have since drank all our cider, but we have part 3 fermenting downstairs as I write this. We used lager yeast and a bit of honey, so we'll see how it turns out.