My rules for cooking

In fourth grade I invented the best food ever:

Shell pasta smothered in Chivo. 

For those of you who aren't familiar, Chivo—traditionally a baked potato topping—is a thick sour cream substitute flavored with chives. I think it's been discontinued.

The Chivo had a way of packing itself perfectly into every nook and cranny of the conchiglie, turning each bite into a dairy-free sour cream explosion.

It was groundbreaking gastronomy way before its time.

Image via CalorieCount.com

Since those days of early culinary experimentation, I've developed a slightly more sophisticated approach to cooking. But only slightly.

MARGARET'S RULES FOR COOKING:

• Season every component of the dish individually before combining them

• Keep everything PIPING HOT

• Chop things up really small

• Don't skimp on the onions

• Grind some black pepper over everything

I would also recommend that you keep a pizza (Freschetta if you're in the US, ChicagoTown if you're in the UK) in the freezer at all times just in case. 

Goodnight,
Margaret

A tweet you can eat

Welcome to the stage, tonight's guest blogger: Anna Gorohoff!

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Always looking to expand my dinner repertoire, I recently started following MaureenEvans on twitter. Ms. Evans rose to twitter fame in 2009 after becoming the Internet’s first “tiny cook”. She tweets out full recipes using only the given 140 characters. Not an easy task. But an even harder challenge, decoding those tweetcipes (my word, not hers).

Her tweetcipes range from everyday standards:

Pancakes: Melt3T buttr&brsug/c milk/3yolk. Whip3white. Sift2c flr/T bkgpdr/½t salt&soda&cinn. Fold all; +to grsdpan@med. Flip when bubbling.

To Google-worthy international dishes (at least for me):

Bisara: Brwn 6garlc/¼c oil; boil+c parsly&soakd fava/5c h2o/t cumin&paprka&chili&salt. Cvr,simmr h@low. Puree+lem. Top+olvoil&paprka&cumin.

Inspired by Madgespace’s can do approach to life, I’ve decided to attempt one of these recipe puzzles. Since I’m prone to cheating, I set a few simple ground rules for myself.

1. Can't be something I’ve ever made before
2. No Google searches, image or otherwise
3. Must have all ingredients on hand (more laziness, but we’ll call it a rule)

The first recipe I found fitting my requirements was the Skillet Pot Pie. I haven’t dined on pot pie in years and I’m sure I’ve never made one.

Here’s the tweetcipe:

Skillet Pot Pie: Brwn,rmv 6c veg/T oil. Brwn 3T buttr&flr; whisk+c stock&milk/T lem/t thyme&s+p. Mix all/4c cookdmeat; top+pastry. 30m@400F.

Hmmmmm . . . . let the decoding begin!

Step 1: Pick out hidden and missing items. In this tweetcipe 4c cookdmeat; top+pastry caught my eye. I precooked and diced chicken breasts and prepared a puff pastry top. Note, the ratio of butter to flour in a puff pastry is nearly 1:1 – so you’ve been warned. This is rich.

Step 2: Brwn,rmv 6c veg/T oil = Brown 6 cups of veggies in 1 Tbsp oil, remove. I used onions, purple and orange carrots, and peas.

Step 3: Brwn 3T buttr&flr; whisk+c stock&milk/T lem/t thyme&s+p = Brown 3 Tbsp of butter with 3 Tbsp of flour. Whisk in 1 cup chicken stock and 1 cup milk. Add 1 Tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp thyme, salt and pepper.

Step 4: Mix all/4c cookdmeat; top+pastry. 30m@400F = Add veggies and cooked chicken back into the skillet. Top with puff pastry sheet. Cook at 400 degrees F for 30 min.

All in all, this was a pretty straightforward recipe. It took me about an hour to prep and cook not counting a quick latte and nursing break with my lovely sous chef. 

While it wasn’t the most beautiful dish I’ve ever made, it was tasty (all that butter!) and surprisingly really fun to make. It turns out it’s pretty delightful to cook without a strict recipe. I liked picking my own veggies (aka – whats in my fridge), not following dictated cooking times (you’ll know when the sauce thickens, just watch it), and making decisions based on tasting the food rather than known amounts. You feel quite footloose and fancy free!

My next challenge: pick a tweetcipe for a dish I’ve never heard of. Then we’ll really see how well my decoding skills are!

LYMI

Anna

Epipha-threes

Terrible post title. Let's get that out of the way right here at the top.

It relates to the fact that, today, I had three epiphanies.

When each popped into my head, I wrote it down as a potential blog idea. However, not-a-one constitutes an entire blog post, so I've combined all three here for your reading pleasure.

1. I'm just not a dress gal. 

I wish I was.

I would love to throw on a dress and be like, yes, this works! But it rarely does. Instead, I'm cold, wide-hipped, without an appropriate shoe option and did I mention cold? Maybe if I lived somewhere sunny, I'd be a dress gal. Lord knows how much I despise shorts. Oh god, and skirts. Can't believe I forgot about skirts! Skirts are the worst of all. Above all else, I'm not a skirt gal.

2. Everyone my age has moments when they wish they grew up in the 60s. 

Let's face it, the late 60s/early 70s were a fascinating time to be alive. So much happened!

In reality, the world probably felt terribly scary and unsettling back then. Vietnam, assassinations, crazy cults running amok. There wasn't even any good TV. Even so, us millennials have moments of envy because at least things weren't boring. At least people were engaged and felt capable of administering change. Nowadays being angry about important issues seems futile, so we save our outrage for when someone says something that "offends" us. It's all very halfhearted.

For the most part, though, I'm glad I was born when I was (goes back to the TV thing).

3. The people in the flat above us can probably hear me singing Taylor Swift in the shower.

Pam, my singing teacher in the early 2000s, told me that it takes more skill to sing softly than at your natural volume. She was right.

Now my vocal chords are out of practice and in order to sound decent, I have to belt it. LOUD. I can hear the people in the flat above us when they are having a regular conversation, so it's safe to assume they can hear me when I'm bellowing: "I'VE GOT THAT RED LIP CLASSIC THING THAT YOU LIIIIKE..."

What do you think they're dreaming about?
This relates to the blog post because there are three of them. The number three is the link.
Image via Geograph.org.uk

OH. CRAP. It's nearly the dinner hour and we need lettuce for the caesar salaaaaaad!!!!!! It's only the main f-ing ingredient!!!!!!!!

Gotta go,
Marge

Pizza now, pizza tomorrow, pizza forever

OK, here we go again.

Day 3. Just 362 to go.

Reality is really starting to set in.

But let's not dwell on that! Time is a wastin' and I have a half-watched Mindy Project to get back to.

Today's topic: food! More specifically, pizza. If you know me at all, then you know how much I love the stuff. I've also been known to argue that pizza isn't that bad for you. Because it isn't! It's basically just tomatoes, cheese and bread. What's so bad about that?

Top tip: I like to sprinkle rocket, aka arugula aka rucola aka peppery greens on my pizza after it comes out of the oven! 

Top tip: I like to put my foot on the oven handle when posing for a photo next to my homemade pizzas!

It just seems like pizza gets a disproportionally bad rap. It might not be kale or roasted pumpkin seeds or acai berry (yikes, my health food references are so dated), but it's not a Krispy Kreme donut either. Yet, we—SOCIETY—have made pizza the villain.

Why am I so defensive? Because I'm going to have pizza tonight for the second night in a row. I made it last night with Andy, and Char's hosting a belated birthday 'za party for me this evening.

In the interest of balance and fairness, I will say that there's another side to the pizzathusiast lifestyle. A dark side. A greasy underworld. I've witnessed it first hand.

The year: 2007
The city: Spokane
The pizza joint: Eatza Pizza on Division Street

All you can eat pizza for just $5 each? Sounds too good to be true, we thought, as we pulled into the parking lot. Foreshadowing alert: it was. 

Fivers in our pockets and pizza on our minds, my friends and I headed into the no-frills family restaurant with high hopes. It actually felt like walking into the inside of a pizza. The velvety red carpet, the mozzarella-white curtains, the oily leather cushions in the curved bell pepper booths. It was like a pizza-themed ride at a budget amusement park. I had the sudden urge to blot my face with a napkin.

We approached the large buffet table. It ran almost the length of the restaurant, yet only three small pizzas lay before us. Enough for a couple slices each, without being rude to the other patrons. As the evening went on, we realised that this was a huge part of Eatza Pizza's business model. It was indeed 'all you can eat', but only if you had the time to sit around and wait for them to make the pizza, one scrawny pie at a time.

Back in our booth, we dined. Spongey crust, bland cheese and ketchupy sauce, but all in all, it was OK. The pizza was OK. 

Then, a pajama-clad lady in a reclining wheelchair was rolled into the restaurant by her carer. I had watched shows about obesity on TLC, but she was the largest person I'd seen in real life. She instructed her chauffeur to wheel her to the buffet, where she picked up an entire pizza and ate it on the spot. It was incredibly sad. 

It was also disgusting. 

But I knew that, if I let myself love pizza the way I knew I could, that would be me some day. We're all just a few bad months away from eating ourselves into an enormous pizza-shaped grave. 

Yelp tells me that Eatza Pizza is now closed. That's probably for the best. But I will be forever grateful for what that place taught me about the highs and lows of pizza eating, and the value of moderation.

A sign and an empty lot — all that remains of Eatza Pizza on Google Street View.

So, there you have it. Pizza, like all controversial subjects, is much more complex than the mainstream media makes it out to be. That's why you have Madgespace—voted top alternative news source by people who read—to turn to for the real truth.

Love ya,
Margaret "Pizza" Kay

P.S. Pizza

P.P.S. Just one more thing