Scrapping your apples. Actually, not scrapping your apples. Making use of apple scraps

Does anyone else get the sense that the whole foodie/food blogging culture is just another way for people to be pretentious?

[*gasp*]

[oh no she di'in't]

[oh yes she di'id]

Here's the thing. I may have mentioned before that I've been trying, quite purposely, to get into food fermentation. It's allegedly good for you, and cures everything from bad digestion to death. So I've been slowly starting off making saurkraut and sourdough and whatnot, and recently I joined a fermentation group on Facebook. It comes up quite frequently in my feed, and usually is interesting and features pictures of things you really wouldn't want to eat.

So most recently, this innocent guy or gal comes along, and asked a question about whether it's ok to weight his food down with something on top of bamboo sticks. (You're supposed to submerge food under water to prevent mould and encourage the right kind of bacterial growth.) IMMEDIATELY a bunch of snobby foodies jump down this poster's throat with a chorus of 'nooooo how cooould you use bamboo you MUST buy snootie Foodie Fermentation Weights that are specially made from a tree that only grows in the depths of the Amazon!' and 'you're going to promote mould and DIE!'

All this because the poor person wanted to use sticks to get his or her food submerged under water.

Fortunately the voice of reason came along and others pointed out that yes, you could use bamboo, they've been doing it for years and haven't died yet. But it just kind of drove a point home for me, that as much as I'd like to believe that food fermentation is a way of preserving food, and maybe spending less money and being more thrifty and just, in general, doing things that are maybe good for the planet, maybe good for you, but what's for sure, isn't harming anyone - even that can be turned into a white privilege, snooty, blogger-speak, clickbaity, everything that is wrong with the world kind of thing.

Less snootiness, more not doing harm to others, nkay?

On this note, I will give you a recipe for vinegar. Yes, actual vinegar. That you can make from fruit scraps. That I'm not entirely sure how to do it yet, but I'm working on it, it's not perfect, I'm not perfect, but at least we do no harm.

Apple Scrap Vinegar

(comes from this website, which is way prettier and looks like they know what they're doing way better than me. Really you should go there. Go here if you want the short-hand version, and enjoy the way I write things. Go there if you actually want to see pictures and make sure you're doing it right.)

Materials needed

• apples (or other fruit? Apparently?)
• sugar
• water
• jar
• cheesecloth or other cloth
• rubber bands 

1. Use apples in some other application. (Apple pie, apple sauce, etc.)
2. Keep the cores and the peels
3. Stick cores and peels into jar. 
4. Cover with sugar-water at a ratio of 1 tbs sugar:2 liters water 
5. Cover jars with cheesecloth and rubber bands so that fruit flies don't get in and lay eggs. That would be gross. 
6. Stir several times a day until it starts bubbling, then once a day for 1-3 weeks. I like using chopsticks for this. It fits well and it doesn't make a mess.
7. Strain out the fruit, put the liquid back into the jar. Bottle when there is no more fizzing. Keeps for up to a year. 
8. Enjoy. You just beat the system. Congratulations, you now have less white privilege. Or maybe more. GAA!!!!

Hungarian Stuffed Chicken

In my previous post, you may have noticed, was a sneaky sentence about how matching the sides to the main is important in Hungarian cuisine. And then my sister pointed out, justifiably, where is the recipe for the stuffed chicken that this goes with?

Quite right. My bad.

I luuurve this recipe, but, yes, I realize for some people it can be a hurdle to make a whole chicken if you're not used to it. I didn't realize there were people who were squeamish about this sort of thing at all until I was 20-something years old, when I dated met some of them. I, apparently, grew up in the European tradition of eating animals that, yes, you could tell that they were once animals.

Silly Americans and their silly squeamishness.

On the other hand, the first time I made this, I was quite grossed out by the thought of actually touching a dead animal. Still sort of am. So when I made this recipe for the first time, it was after years of having been a vegetarian, and, instead of being easy on myself and making something that I wouldn't need to touch, like goulash, I jumped right in to whole chicken (see above for why I thought this was normal.) Also for some odd reason, I had friends over when I was cooking. (I think they were 'helping' me.) And one of those friends thought it would be HILARIOUS to open and close the chicken's legs while shouting out 'chicken butt!'

I ran out of the kitchen. I don't know how that chicken got stuffed. But somehow I managed to get it into the oven, and cooked it, and everyone ate it and had a great time. Point is, don't make friends with your food.

Hungarian Stuffed Chicken - Töltött csirke

Ingredients 

Yes, it tends to burn the pan a little. Aluminum helps.

• 3-4 slices old, dry, disgusting, freezer bread
• 3/4 to 1 1/4 cup or 200-300 ml soy milk (or regular milk if you don't keep kosher) 
• a bit of oil or schmaltz
• 1/2 a small onion, chopped small
• bunch of parsley, chopped up
• 2 eggs
• 1 whole chicken, WITH skin
• bit of salt, pepper to taste

1. Make sure to assemble the ingredients before you do anything else. Chop the onion. Chop the parsley. Get out the eggs. You're less likely to forget them that way, like I just did. 
2. Soak the bread in soy milk while you prep the rest of the recipe. Preheat that oven too while you're at it - 200-220C is good, according to my oven manual. 
3. Heat the oil or schmaltz (give yourself a high-five if you're using schmaltz) and fry the onion slightly, until it gets a little yellow.  My recipe says to add liver if you're using it, but I never have, so I can't comment. 
4. Remove onion from heat and add it to the bread. Mix. Add parsley, egg, a bit of salt, pepper if you want (I generally don't) and mash it all up with a fork or your fingers. Don't be concerned if the bread falls apart - you want it to. This is your stuffing.
   

   

   Lotsa parsley
5. Put the chicken on the tray you're going to be baking it in. From the cookbook, "Using your fingers, gently loosen the skin around the neck opening, without damaging the skin." Basically pry the skin away from the chicken. Not all the skin. Mostly the skin around the boobs and/or the back, I find, is the easiest. Yeah, kinda gross. I use gloves. 
6. Take the stuffing and stuff into chicken (still got those gloves on). Under the skin if you can (not that much fits there) and shove the stuffing into the absolute biggest kitchen euphemism I know of - the "cavity." Yeah. That's right. Into the cavity. 



Gloves.




7. Chicken butt.
8. The recipe adds two more steps here that I never ever do, but you can if you want to. One, is use needle and thread to sew chicken closed. Yeah right. Two, is probably a good idea, but I also just have a hard time following instructions, is to then top the chicken with melted butter (or oil. Or schmaltz.) Yeah, that does sound good. Maybe that's a good idea to do. I never have, but maybe I'll start.
9. Stick in oven. I find this chicken takes a good 2 hours to cook, but that depends on the size of the bird. Officially cook until it reaches 180 (that's fahrenheit) on a cooking thermometer, or, you could do what my roommate used to do, and cook until juices run clear when it gets poked. But you probably know how to cook a chicken by this stage in your life, and if you don't, call me. I'll come over with my kitchen thermometer.

Oh, sides - "Serve with potatoes or rice, braised vegetables, and salad. Töltött csirke (don't ask me how to pronounce that, I don't know) is also good served cold."

Notes
- You can tell this recipe is my peeps, right? A "bunch" of parsley. How much? Some. A bunch. If you want it less parsley-y, you use less. More, then you use more. A bunch. 

- Pro-tip - for the first time you make this recipe, yeah, go ahead and use oil. However, in FUTURE times, save the chicken fat drippings* and put it in the freezer, and use that in place of oil. It's much better and it's good sustainable living. Plus it's fancy - like how the French pair the wine with the cheese from the same region. Pair chicken dishes with chicken fat. 
*Do this with a spoon or turkey baster in the first hour of cooking, otherwise it cooks away. 

- Really one of the reasons I love this recipe so much is that it fits perfectly with my food philosophy. Whole chicken is one of the cheapest ways to eat chicken (I think because people are afraid of it), eggs and parsley are cheap, and this recipe is the perfect way to use up all that disgusting old bits and bobs of bread in your freezer, and elevates it to something simply divine. There you go, that's me going all food-blogger speak. 

Confucius say, take off rings when shoving hands into chicken cavity.

Hungarian Cucumber Salad, no thanks to Apple

This blogpost is dedicated to Apple. The jerks.

Once upon a time, I actually spent money on an app. Yes, I know. It was like $2.99, too. Almost broke the bank. But it was this wonderful little Hungarian cookbook, and it was written by an Israeli guy with Hungarian roots, and he had recorded his grandmother's precious recipes to be kept for posterity. How could I not buy it? Also it was really cutely designed and there were pictures and videos and whatnot. Adorable. I used it and I loved it, but mostly only used this one recipe - for cucumber salad. The other recipes I meant to try, one day, but never quite got around to it.

Really one of the things I loved about this app was that the recipes weren't fruffy. Take noodles and cabbage, for example. One of my absolute favorite Hungarian dishes. It goes like this - cook noodles. Fry cabbage. Put together. Done. But if you look on the internet, they get all complicated and tell you to add sugar, or dill, or balsamic vinegar....NO. Noodles. Cabbage. Stop getting all fancy, internet. This is how you do good food, and that app GOT that.

Then one day, a few months ago, I went to get my precious precious Hungarian Cucumber Salad recipe from the app, and I discover, to my abject horror - gone. As if it had never existed.

I contacted the developer on facebook. He had no idea why it was gone. He said his was gone too. I contacted Apple. They said the developer must have taken it down, and tough titties for me. Here, have three Apple credits. I told them they could basically take their credits and shove it, I want my recipes back. Shockingly, they did not respond.

Thank you, D. You get a shout-out.

Fast-forward a few months, the weather has gotten cold again, it's time to make Hungarian stuffed chicken, and, obviously, cucumber salad. (Because apparently having the sides matching the dish are very important in Hungarian cuisine.) That meant I NEEDED my cucumber salad recipe.

Bastard Apple jerkfaces.

Thank heavens and all one holds holy, at some point in the even further distant future, my sister had asked for this recipe, and, instead of just telling her to download the wonderful app (which I think I did, too) I sent her the recipe. And she kept it. And...wrote it down. Which it seems, in this age of digital wonder, is the only way to actually keep one's information and recipes. Oh, and it doesn't help to google it, because there are millions of recipes, and every single one is oh-so-slightly different, and no two Hungarian grandmothers made it the same way. Mine probably made it yet a different way, for that matter.

So, here you have it, the only precious remainder of my app of forgotten Hungarian recipes.

Hungarian Cucumber Salad - Uborkasalata

ingredients 

• 5 small cucumbers
• 1 small onion, sliced finely
• 1.5 tbs salt

• 1/8 cup vinegar
• 1.5 tbs sugar
• 1/4 cup water 

1. Slice the cucumbers finely. Sprinkle salt on them and let them sit for 30 min. Squeeze water out and add sliced onion. (I find that I sometimes need to rinse them as well, to get the salty taste out. 
2. Combine vinegar, sugar, water in a small bowl or cup. This is your dressing. After the cucumbers are ready, mix the dressing on the cucumbers and give it a mix. Serve immediately or let marinate in the fridge until ready to serve. 
3.  Alternatively, sometimes I have no time to let cucumbers sit for half an hour, and then I use less than the full amount of salt and mix with dressing. Mix and serve.

We are Going to Eat You

Why hello loyal readers.

I do believe I made a promise about Zombie Vegetables. I believe I also made a declaration of sorts that this blog is for testing Pinteresty things, and also somewhat for DIY.

Behold. I have kept my promises. Zombie Vegetables. 

"They're baa-aaack."

So you know those links with the 12 or 18 or whatever Vegetables You Can Regrow from Table Scraps?

Yes, they actually work! I know, I'm surprised too. At least for two of the vegetables that I tested - green onions and leeks.

It's pretty darned simple, costs next to nothing (basically the price of the dirt, which you can either buy for not very much money, or just, you know, get some OFF THE GROUND), and is really a life-saver on days like today when it's cold, potentially (or maybe by the time I finish writing this blog post, actually) stormy, and you really can't be bothered to go out to the store to buy token green things so you can say you ate your vegetables. Plus, as far as I can tell, they are immortal. (By which I mean you cut off the tip and they just keep growing back.) Obviously. You can't kill Zombie Vegetables.

Instructions

"Are you eating it ...or is it eating you?"

1. Buy, steal, or otherwise get tips of leeks or green onions. 
2. If you bought them or stole them whole, when you use up most of your green onion, leave enough at the root end so that you will be able to replant - about an inch or two. (You can see in the picture where the original death...um, cut...line is on those leeks.)
3. Stick into dirt. Root-side down. Bury it vertically so that the root gets, well, planted, and the tip is just barely above the earth.
4. Water periodically or hope that it rains. 

Thazzit.

Enjoy, and be sure to tell me if you successfully grew one of the other types of....Zombie Vegetables. (One day when I become a B-rated movie producer, you know that's gonna be a title.) 

Pasta with a side of philosophy

As may be evidenced by the previous few posts, I've been thinking a lot about the connection between food and money.

You see, I had this conversation tonight with people who told me they spend about 4000 NIS on food a month, for two people. We got down to the nitty gritty, and discovered that that's probably because they enjoy the finer things in life - fresh salmon, a good steak - and those things don't come cheaply.

I had another conversation a few weeks ago, about that food challenge that all the cool kids are doing these days of living on $150 for food per person for the month. (Ok, it wasn't really a conversation, it was a facebook comment and another comment.) Bottom line is - I said I could do that, easily, and other person said, 'Teach me your ways, Oh Wise One, I spend a gazillion times more than that.' (I may be paraphrasing. A tad.)

Point is, and I may have mentioned this before, I make CRAZY things from scratch. Like, truly crazy. Not just granola and cookies and cakes and bread, but, like, croissants and mayonnaise and yogurt and (most recently) pasta.

So yeah, usually those things save me money by making them from scratch. But the [white privilege] thing that happens here is - I FRICKIN HAVE THE TIME TO DO THIS. I am mostly unemployed. I can afford to spend the time making yogurt. Some people are partially employed or just amazing at managing their time, so they can "only" make bread from scratch. Someone I know, who is even crazier than I and only eats fair trade locally grown cow patties or something, purposely has a flexible hours type job so he can grind his own buckwheat flour and make it into coq-au-vin with home fermented wine, or something like that.

Not everyone can do this.

I am even realistic enough to believe that most of the people reading this blog (anyone out there other than my mom?) may just have day jobs and come home and not want to frickin make bread from scratch.

So what's a blogger to do?

Well, one could subscribe to the whole 'Make Amazing Meals in just 13 minutes a Day!' cookbooks, which frankly I think are full of bullshit.

One could become a stay-at-home-mom/dad/furry green alien, and spend all their time following oh so perfect blogs about how to perfectly make a perfect 10 course meal complete with truffle oil, and then take gorgeous photos and blog it and pinterest it or snapchat or instagram or whatever the kids are doing these days. Anyway that's how the Patriarchy keeps women down and out of the workforce, so I'm not sure I support this method.

One could be absolutely batshit crazy and scavenge for food and make bread out of thistles and leftover cat fur. There are bloggers like that out there. I ain't one of them.

Or....one could just say screw it and spend 4000 nis a month and eat good food.

Middle ground? Yes, I suppose there is. There are, like, freezers and crockpot meals and gazillions of websites promising 10 Amazing Meals that Cook in your Crockpot Overnight. I suppose some people are organized enough to do that.

What about you, readers? What is your middle ground? Can we  all be humble, admit we're not perfect, and maybe spend more than we want? Or buy more instant food than we want? Is that even allowed??

Obligatory Recipe: Pasta with Melty Cheese

Ingredients: 

• pasta
• cheese which you can totally keep in your freezer and it's fine
• salt
• make it fancy - top with green thing

1.  Cook pasta in salted cooking water.  
2. Strain, but keep a tiny bit of the cooking water (super cool Great Depression type cooking trick for making everything better.)
3. Put pasta back in the pot with that cooking water. Grate cheese. Stir. Melt. Add more cheese. 
4. Top with some sort of green thing. I'm thinking basil or parsley or green onion which you can totally grow like a zombie. More on that later. 
5. Serve with a large glass of red wine. 

The fine life - we has it. 

Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms and Rice in a Korean-ish sort of way (or, This Blog is not Froofie)

Dontcha hate it when food blogs keep going on and on and on with stupid words words words  blabla nobody actually reads this and you're all like, omagerd just get to the flippin recipe already, and you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page cuz you're really just here for the recipe?

Yeah, I hate that too.

So here's a recipe for food. It's good food. It contains protein, vegetable, and carb, which was how we were taught to make meals when I was in kindergarten and holy crap I don't even want to think about how long ago that was. It is vegan and can probably be made gluten-free, and I hate myself a little for even writing that.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or to my spouse's elbow

Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms and Rice in a Korean-ish sort of way

This recipe was based off of these guys because I had tofu and I had mushroom and I wanted to make a meal out of it. So I started following directions and holy crap, found I couldn't make the recipe without the spice mix that, conveniently, they were selling. That's evil and brilliant and I didn't want to wait that long to order it over the internet and also that's insane, so I made my own spice mix, based off of this. It sounds intimidating, but I promise it's not, and the whole recipe took maybe 30 min to complete. Really, it looks more complicated than it is, but I swear it's simple. Trust me. You trust me, don't you??

Step one - make steamed rice
Do this in advance. Keep it in the fridge, and serve as needed or microwave. Boom. Instant food.

Step two - spice rub - mix ingredients together

• about a tbs kosher salt, maybe a little less, that seems excessive
• 1 tbs brown sugar (you make me feel so good)
• recipe calls for 1 tbs korean red pepper powder. I don't have that, plus hubbie and I are wusses when it comes to pepper. I substituted with a pinch of cayenne pepper, and about 1 tbs paprika for the redness. You can do more chili pepper and no paprika if you are not squeamish about spice. 
• 1 garlic clove, smashed
• a pinch-1 tsp ground ginger (I increased to make up for lost spiciness)
• a pinch-1/2 tsp ground black pepper (ditto)

Now, I have a new kitchen toy, a spice grinder, so I ground everything together and had a lot of fun. However, I fully recognize that not everybody has such a thing, so just mix together.

Step three - now turn spice mix into marinade.

• spice mix (What you just done did.)
• 3 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tbs rice vinegar 
• 1 tbs mirin or white wine if you don't have mirin, like I didn't
• 1 1/2 tbs honey or sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil 

Mix all together in a bowl that will be big enough to contain tofu, which we're about to get to. 

Step four - now make the rest of the $#@ food so you can frickin eat already

Actual Ingredients

• Tofu - chopped
• Shiitake mushroom  (doesn't that make you giggle? shit-takee. Tee hee. I have the maturity level of a 5 year old.) 3 or 4 mushrooms, but more if there are more people eating or less if they are huge mushrooms.
• 1-2 carrots or sweet potato. Or something else. Or nothing.
• Avocado
• Green onions or basil or something green on top
• Sesame seeds if you have them

1. Chop tofu and put it into the marinade. The original recipe says 30 minutes. I say poppycock. It marinaded maybe 5 minutes, and it was fine. Just let it marinate while you chop all the other things. 
2. Chop all the other things. For the sweet potato/carrot - if you're froofie, julienne them. If you're not (hint: I'm not.) use a vegetable peeler and peel them. 
3. If you are so inclined, burn, ahem, toast some sesame seeds now.
4. Take pot. Big pot. Probably non-stick, cuz tofu sticks like a mofo. Heat oil. Take tofu out of the marinade (but don't be too OCD about it, some marinade is fine) and fry it up until it's fried. Should smell spicy and yummy. Remove from pot onto plate. 
5. Recipe says use more oil. I don't really think it's necessary, but if you want, go ahead. Now fry mushrooms, apparently 3-4 minutes, but I only did 1-2 minutes because I think the sweet potatoes needed cooking more than mushrooms needed cooking. Now add carrots/sweet potatoes and fry them too. Add tofu. If you want it more goopy, add marinade. If you want it less goopy, add less marinade. 
6. Put rice in bowls. Top with tofu mushroom thing on one side, avocado slices on the other side (they are a nice counterpart to the spice), then green things, and if you're really fancy, toasted sesame seeds.
7. Nom. 

On Food, Sociology, and Green Beans in Olive Oil

This blogger just got back from a vacation in America land, and, maybe for the first time, I get it. A little. Not entirely, but I get it now.

See, we were sojourning in the South, and there were three really noticeable things:

1) it was HOT!

2) it was poor;

And this one is probably not unique to the South, but to North America as a whole

3) food is convenient!

So, I get it a little bit more now. I get it how only crazy people would make their own crackers. Am I nuts? Why on earth would one make crackers when getting crackers from the store is so darned cheap, convenient, and easy? Let's not forget tasty. All the fast foods and all the instant foods and all the store bought foods are so good at adding taste enhancers beginning in e- and ending in 103. How can homemade food compete with that?

So I get it. I get how making your own blah from scratch is totally a White Privilege thing. I get how it fits in with the whole kale-munching, Whole-Foods-shopping, home-schooling, organics-eating, fermenting-thing. I'm not going to get into the factors behind that demographic because a) that's not me, and b) I'm not a sociologist.

But I get it.

However, I live in Israel, where convenient food isn't so convenient or cheap, whereas fresh fruits and vegetables are. So I don't bake my own bread because I want it gluten free, I bake it because it's cheaper that way. I make my own jam and ferment vegetables because otherwise the food will go bad and my ancestors died in the Holocaust therefore I can never throw food out. (Just...don't ask me about actually eating the fermented foods. They keep forever, right?) I get a box of organic veggies because I'm lazy and we don't have a car and this just shows up on our door like magic.

I'm not a hipster! I swear! (Oh, and also I don't have 5 kids and/or a full time job, and that also helps me have time to, you know, make yogurt from scratch and all.)

So after these realizations, and after this vacation, I've finally learned to take it easy on myself. A bit. Both because convenience is so darned convenient, and because it's seriously too hot to cook these days. It's so hot it's all we can do to eat Popsicles for dinner. If we cut up a tomato we have made an Herculean effort. 

But this isn't just a 'listen to me philosophize about food and sociology' blog, it's also a food blog, so  I'm going to give you a recipe that I did actually manage to cook this week (plus it gets cooked in a closed pot so it doesn't heat up your kitchen.) It finishes up ingredients that one gets in a CSA got that I find hard to finish otherwise; it's delicious in this blogger's humble opinion; and it's even seasonal if you are Jewish and starting to wrack your brain about simanim-type foods to make for Rosh Hashana.

Fasoliyyeh Bi Z-Zayt (Syrian Green Beans with Olive Oil)

(From allrecipes.com)

• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen cut Frozen?? Feh. Get a bunch of green beans. How much? A bunch. As much as you want to eat, basically. Long beans also work wonderfully. Chop up short or long. 
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or so
• salt to taste
• 1 clove garlic, minced- due to garlic sensitivities, I usually cut this out and it's just fine.
  
• 1/4 cup (Again with the measurements? What gives.) Just chop up a bunch of fresh cilantro. However much you want to/need to finish up.

1. Put green beans or long beans into a fairly big pot. You want it big enough that you will be able to stir them, even though they shrink a bunch. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt to taste (about a pinch) and clamp the lid on. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until beans are cooked to your desired doneness. According to allrecipes, Syrians like it cooked until the green beans are turning brownish in color. "The idea is not to saute them, but to let them steam in the moisture released by the ice crystals." (I can't speak for Syrians, but Jerusalem based non-hipster bloggers like them until they are wilted and a little browned.
2. Add cilantro and garlic (if using) to the beans, and continue to cook just until the cilantro has started to wilt. Eat. Or cool and reheat on plata.

To make it a meal: buy pita. Buy hummus. (Or maybe pbj if you're in America? I dunno. What goes with pita in America that isn't hard cheese?) Slice a tomato or if you're feeling REALLY ambitious, make an Israeli salad. Make this dish. Dinner. Done.

P.S. This was like the only thing I cooked this week. Otherwise dinner was store-bought bread and butter and jam. Cuz it's hot. And cuz, like I said, I get it now.