Haul Me Off to Baking Jail

I failed.  I'm guilty.  Take me away to baking jail...I did not, in fact, post daily as I intended...*sigh*  I have a good excuse though!  No, I'm not going to blame the cat for eating my blog posts...wouldn't that be a good one though?  Would you believe me if I tried that one?  Maybe?  Next time, then.  In the mean time, I do have proof of my good excuse!  Liz and I had a huge paper due on Friday (50% of our grade!) which resulted in no time to sleep or eat, let alone cook and post, sadly.  And this weekend was given over to an attempt to get caught up on sleep.  Here is my proof...we got the guy at the printing place to photograph us in our sleep-deprived state:

I'm pretty sure the picture being out of focus is because we were just soooo tired.  The guys at Printworld were exceptionally helpful and nice, so if you need something printed in Milwaukee, be sure to go see them!    http://printworldmilwaukee.com/

Now, back to my food.  Today I haven't gotten to cook yet, but here are a few dishes featuring red pepper flakes, which I am rather partial to, myself.  I'm pretty sure they are good on just about everything...

Not surprisingly, I enjoy them on pizza:

This was a quite delicious pizza I made this weekend.  I had been craving pizza, but lacking time to make any.  It was quite tragic.  This one has a basic tomato sauce, cheddar style Daiya, and olives.  Also oregano and red peppers.  And just for fun, when I was making the crust I added a bit of chili powder to give it a bit of a kick.  It was, as expected, delicious.

One of my favorite easy meals lately has been edamame...Though much better with fresh soy beans, the frozen kind is still a very nice meal.  I put a bit of salt and some red pepper flakes on mine:

This may have also resulted in my super-vegan moment of the week last week.  I was packing some of my edamame to bring to school with me for lunch.  Which does mean that I was eating the above bowl of edamame for breakfast, rather than dinner.  That is part one of my super-vegan moment.  Part two is that I packed my edamame in a washed-out salsa jar to take with me...Next to all the other lunches in the school refrigerator it looked a bit out of place...

Regardless of being slightly out of place (to put it mildly), it was probably the tastiest lunch in there.  

Another meal that I really love, though I am out of spinach so I can't make it at the moment, is a spinach-noodle toss that I eat probably twice a week or so...sometimes I even leave the noodles out because it is just that good.  This probably also qualifies as a super-vegan moment I have occasionally...I find myself bringing up how much I love spinach in near-daily conversation...I will be talking about who knows what with my friends, and suddenly I realize I am proselytizing on spinach.  It may be a little ridiculous.  I cannot currently find a picture of this miraculous dish, but here is the general way to make it...picture coming soon.

1 bundle soba or udon noodles

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon mirin

1 teaspoon soy sauce

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (or to taste)

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

1/2 package frozen chopped spinach

Cook noodles according to package directions.  Heat oil, mirin, and soy sauce in wok and add garlic.  Saute for 30-60 seconds, add spinach (you can thaw it first or not...depending on how hungry you are and how that affects your patience).  As you cook the spinach, add pepper flakes.  Once spinach has cooked through, add noodles and sesame seeds.  Remove from heat and mix.  Serve hot.  Enjoy.  

Obviously more has happened in the past week than I had realized.  However, I think I will leave the rest of my recent excitement to another post.  Possibly even today, if I'm feeling ambitious, to make up for a week of absence....

Chili Powder (and cumin!)

Sadly, today cooking has not happened.  However, I have my spice adventure from yesterday!  Yesterday was about chili powder, and yet again, cumin was thrown in as well.  Poor cumin, look at how sad it looks back there next to yet another spice that is overshadowing it:

Cumin will get its day sometime soon...promise.

I suppose I should also share what I've make with the chili powder...

Breakfast and lunch yesterday were the same thing:

It may look not so appealing, but it was really tasty.  I took a can of black beans and heated them in a bit of olive oil with some chili powder and cumin, then once they were mostly heated through I added some hot sauce, nooch and some Daiya cheddar until it got all gooey and delicious.  Then I sprinkled a bit more hot sauce and chili powder on top.  So good.  And it was good cold at lunch.  

For dinner I had hummus again (I know, it is surprising).  I added some chili powder and mixed it in, which added a nice layer of flavor.  

My brief is due on Friday, so Saturday I should have some more exciting food reports.  I think tomorrow's post will be from my stock of pictures that I have collected over the past few months.  I'm not sure what I've got that highlights a spice, but we will find out together, I guess.  Here's to hoping this brief doesn't kill me...

Smoked Paprika and Cumin

As I mentioned yesterday, this week is rather hell-ish for me (and my fellow law students with a million things due this week), so my cook time has been limited.  Luckily, I snuck away from school yesterday for an hour and a half and whipped up some hummus.  Yum.  The best part about hummus is that I can add a different spice to the individual serving and get a new variation that way (and a way to be lazy about my theme...).

When my parents were here a few weeks ago, my mom and I came across this smoked Spanish paprika...and it has changed my life.  Seriously.  I put this stuff in just about everything now.  It is so good in bean dishes, on popcorn, in soup, and, as I did yesterday, in hummus.

Here is a picture of my beautiful jar of smoked paprika, with the poor cumin lurking in the background, being sad it isn't the star anymore:

And nothing makes me happier when I have hummus, than to also have some nice, fresh veggies.  So I chopped up a red pepper and a cucumber.  Yum.  I had a variation on this for dinner as well...I brought some Sticks & Twigs pretzel snacks to have with my hummus in the evening, and that was amazing as well.  Now look at how pretty my lunch was:

I am almost sad that I have to use other spices all month...I would probably use this one every other day if I hadn't committed to exploring my spice rack.  I can't promise, though, that I won't highlight this glorious spice again.  

I need to track down the rest of my pictures of dishes that I've put this in, but until that happens, here is Benjamin, working hard, again: