The Omnivore's Hundred

Here is a fun activity. It is a list of 100 food items that I have, have not, or refuse to try. Taken from Very Good Taste, it's kinda like a MySpace survey, but with food!

Yes, I am a dork.

Ok, here we go!

P.S. There will be a lot of stuff crossed out, considering my half-assed vegetarian status. Meh. I'm ok with it.

Here’s what I want you to do:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare  
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich (these composed the majority of my diet between the ages of 4 and 9) 
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (Mostly because of the Big Mac. McDonald's is gross)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (I've had a vodka one of these. Blech. I do not like dirty martinis.)
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (I so want to try this!)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (I have NO IDEA what this is. I looked it up online and could only find a reference to a type of metal)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (My dad often joked with me when I was a kid that he was making snake soup for dinner. Does this count?)

Mango-Banana Popsicles

So we've been having a heat wave as of late. We are not used to 90 and 100 degree days here, so lots of people complain when it's that hot. I am not one of those people. It doesn't stay that hot for very long, and our winters last about six months, so I relish the hot summer days because I know they are few and far between. That being said, that doesn't mean I don't want to cool off when it's that hot!

I made these mango-banana popsicles as a healthy treat to cool off with. All I did was puree frozen mango chunks with a banana and some sparkling water in a blender, then add some Splenda 'til it was a little sweetened. Then I poured the mixture into an ice-cube tray and inserted toothpicks for handles.

Voila! Easy, healthy popsicles for a warm summer's day!

My garden's bounty!

Here are some beautiful things that came out of my garden:

Aren't they pretty?

Homemade pretzels!

Ok, so I think we've established that I am not a baker. I am a cook. I have not the patience to measure everything just so. I am, like my sidebar says, a "throw it in there and it will probably taste good" type of cook. So things like making bread--or really just using yeast in general--are intimidating to me. I can make a batch of cookies or a cake, but they never turn out as good as my cooking concoctions. But I have been trying to branch out, and when I saw this recipe over at Sugarlaws, I was sold.

Who ever thinks about making soft pretzels at home? Soft pretzels are something you buy with neon-orange "cheese product" at a baseball game, or from a stand in the mall. It makes me laugh that making something like this at home never really occurred to me. When I saw her post, I was like, "Oh yeah! I guess you can make that stuff at home."

And guess what? It was really easy.

Here we have my pretzel-making assembly line. Once the dough has risen and rested, you roll it out into long logs. Here I am rolling the logs. Look at my fat little hands! Neither of my parents are tall, and I inherited all that is short and squatty. My feet are so wide they're nearly webbed, my torso is short and round, I stand 5'2" on a good day, and my hands match the rest of me.




Next, you take the pretzel dough-logs and twist them into pretzel shapes. No need to be perfect here--these are homemade and can therefore be termed "rustic," which is what I like to call "I have no idea how to make a pretzel shape, so here's my best go at it."

After they're rolled, the pretzels take a short bath in a mixture of baking soda and warm water. Then they're sprinkled with salt. Their rustic appearance doesn't matter, because once they come out of the oven looking like this, you wouldn't care if they resembled Godzilla. All you wanna do is cram them in your face. Really, they are best warm right out of the oven. And with a touch of dijon or Monastery Mustard, they are simply delightful.



Ok, Mr. Pretzel, you're ready for your close-up.

Zucchini Sticks and Pasta with Herb Sauce

Here we have a lovely zucchini straight from ChezVCK garden! Those snap peas are also from the garden!

Watch out, zucchini. I'm gonna eat you!

Here is the zucchini stick-making assembly line. Fried zucchini is a very delicious food that I would love to consume. However, eating fried food makes my pants very angry. In protest, they refuse to fit me anymore. So, I have adapted fried zucchini in a different way, making it taste like fried zucchini without actually frying it. (Ssshh... don't tell my pants.)

Instead of dredging the zuke slices in egg, as is typical, I just used a bit of vegetable stock to make sure the breading adhered. This saves some calories too!

After I dredged the zuke sticks in the veggie stock, I dipped them in a mixture of Italian bread crumbs and grated parmesan cheese.

See?
Then I put them all into neat little rows on a cookie sheet sprayed with a little cooking spray, so they won't stick.

And this is how they turned out after a short stint in a hot oven. I think it was about 15 minutes at 400 or so.
I served the zucchini sticks alongside some whole wheat pasta and a tofurkey dog. For the pasta, I made a simple pesto-like sauce. I grabbed some fresh herbs from my garden--chives, basil and oregano--and buzzed it all together in the food processor with some olive oil, veggie stock and good ol' S&P. It was really simple and really tasty. Finished with more parmesan cheese, it was done!

De-lish!

Zucchini & Potato Cakes (& a salad too)

I got a lovely zucchini from my garden! Finally! It was a pretty decent-sized zuke, too, because it was ready to pick, but we left it on the vine while we were gone for four days. So it was rarin' to go when we got back!

I was looking for a different way to prepare zucchini since it's so versatile, and found this recipe, courtesy of the Pioneer Woman.Thanks, Ree!

I started off by grating about half my zucchini (it was big, people) and three baby purple potatoes into a bowl. Then I made cookie monster squeeze out all the liquid so the cakes would not be watery. I know this looks like coleslaw, but trust me, it's not.

Meanwhile, I started one of my favoritist summer salads: warm tomato salad. I concocted this recipe last summer when my mom had enough cherry tomatoes to make tomato sauce that could satiate Italy. Seeing as how shipping costs for tomato sauce to the entire country of Italy were a tad astronomical, I opted instead to use the bounty of tomatoes in a new way. Thus, this salad was born. I always start off by sauteeing the vegetables we have on-hand at the time. This time, it was zucchini (surprise!) and some delicious sugar snap peas, also from our garden. Since I also had some tempeh that needed to be used up (really. Have you ever smelled rotten tempeh? Blech!) and to add some protein, I cut that into chunks and sauteed it up too. Then I added the tomatoes, halved if they were big, and let it cook away.

Meanwhile, back at Zucchini Potato Central, the lovely crimson Lady Purple Potato and Lord Zucchini were introduced to good ol' predictable Ms. Salt and Ms. Pepper, the sturdy and versatile Mr. Egg and his son, Mr. Egg II, Fru Danish hard yellow cheese and the unpredictable addition of Rabbi Matzo Meal, since I forgot Signore Breadcrumb Italiano's invitation in the mail. It was a quite the rockin' (and diverse!) party!

...And back to the salad! It's like a TV show focusing on two different plot lines. How will they intersect? [Cue suspenseful music]
After all the veggies were sufficiently cooked through, I added a clove of chopped garlic, wilted in some spinach and basil (guess from where?!) and added a handful of bleu cheese.

Here, our cast have joined into a flavorful ensemble and are cooking away a small amount of olive oil. Sorry, P-Dub, just can't use the amounts of butter you do in your kitchen. My thighs cling to it like they may never see butter again.

Everyone outta the pool!

Oh yeah! I made garlic toast too! I spread some sundried tomato and basil Alouette cheese onto some bread and topped with a little parmesan, then toasted 'til it looked like this.

Wow, my whole mouth just filled with saliva.

And here we have our dinner!

The zucchini cakes were frickin' awesome! They were starchy from the potato but still very light, with just the right amount of cheesiness (from the cheese I think was Danish fontina, but can't remember) and they had a very mild zucchini flavor. Cookie Monster even liked them, and he hates squash! Ding ding ding! We have a winner!