Chile poblano soup

Con ajo asado!

Actually, there are Anaheim chiles as well as poblanos. 

You want to hear something? I'm bad. I made a mistake at the self-checkout scanner at the grocery store. I misidentified the chile types and charged myself for two piles of Anaheim chiles instead of one pile of each. Anaheim chiles are cheaper than poblano chiles by a dollar a pound or something. See? That's what they get for cutting corners by making spazzes such as myself be our own checker outer. 

ARTS !

Roasted until burnt all over. You can char these however you see fit. If it were legal for me to have an open flame grill then I'd go all Medieval on them and put them directly into the coals. Another option is stovetop directly on a gas flame or on an electric burner. Still another option is in a cast-iron pan. In any case, make them black and blistered. Then let them all sweat it out in a paper bag or a covered bowl, or roll them up in a clean kitchen towel. Then pick off as much of the charred skin as possible, and pull off the stem and the seed cluster. Flick it around or scrape it to remove loose seeds.

Ta-daaa. Init purdy? Yummy too. 

The super-duper high-powered immersion blender is employed to good effect here. It processed these clumpy piles in liquid handily, much more effectively than an actual processor. The resulting thick liquid is forced through a strainer to pick out any errant seeds and solid bits of debris like garlic paper. If I had a food mill, I'd use it here, but alas, for I am food mill-less. 

This soup is delicious with the customary especias mexicanas, coriander powder and cumin. I neglected to mention an odd piece of sweet onion forlornly chilling in the refrigerator was quartered and included in the simmering sauce. The remainder of the soup can be easily altered with Mexican cheese or masa harina. I am interested in seeing how I can change it. Who knows, maybe I can even improve it. 

Oatmeal with fruit

Rolled oats from the bulk bins at Whole Foods. These were marked "thick" rolled, but frankly, I cannot see any difference between these and regular rolled oats. 

You know, they do a lot of things to oats to make them cook faster. Oat groats, the best of all, take a long time to cook so they're smashed with rollers to flatten them, they're steamed to give them a head start in cooking, they're cut into tiny bits. They do all three things, smash, steam, cut,  to make instant oatmeal, by then there is little of the salubrious health benefits left to the abused exhausted grain. Plus they're marketed in tiny bags that contain about 1/4 cup along with some kind of dehydrated goodie, and who can get by on that? Nobody!  Instant oatmeal is a pathetic and a cruel hoax perpetrated upon a weary and unsuspecting  misinformed public. You can do much better. 

A touch of salt because all grains needs salt or it's just *putewey* gross without it, cinnamon, brown sugar. A mixture like this can be combined in advance for convenience. Then as you go,  scoop out 1/2 a cup oatmeal premixed to your own preference then cook stovetop or microwave in double the water for under five minutes. This is 3/4 cup oatmeal with 1 +1/2 cup water. 

The odd yellow thing that looks like a squared off banana is a wedge of fresh pineapple that was frozen. 

I guess I went a little overboard. All this fruit couldn't fit in the bowl so the surplus will get munched separately. 

French fries

This was dinner. 

One potato deep-fried earlier then frozen then fried again straight from the freezer. They are indeed more crispy than the non-frozen sugar-water soaked, double fried version, but they are not the amazing crispy tender interior French fry of my youth. They are still a little bit too wet. 

Maybe they were insufficiently damaged by freezing. The pot was still bubbling fiercely when they were pulled from the oil. I'm not giving up. Next try I'll pre-cook them at a lower temperature so they can go longer before being frozen. And I can try damaging them by freezing while still raw, then double frying them. There are still a lot more things to try but the problem is there is a limit to the amount of French fries a guy can take so those experiments will have to wait. 

I'm behind the 8-ball with the grasshopper card. I didn't realize until tonight that the card must be in San Francisco by Saturday. That leaves one day to finish it up and have it in the mail by Tuesday. I've learned by tracking that service in California is slowest of all and least reliable. I send out cards certified across the country and pretend they're having a race. I observe online and California always loses. 

If you like, here is the  the grasshopper card. The background is finished but not shown in the photo set. I'll show that later when the whole thing is finished. It's very similar to the background to the second page. 

Hamburger patty on mushrooms, onions, and napa cabbage, French fries

A pound of ground sirloin was beginning to turn from bright grocery store red to lightly tinged brown, which is how I like it, and the remainder of a package of mild Italian sausage with no specific purpose was sitting there next to it, so I combined them. This is ground sirloin + Italian breakfast sausage. 

For some reason I thought this combination of vegetables would be delicious. It is not. Napa cabbage, mild Hatch green chiles, small portobello mushrooms, sweet onion. I could have done without the cabbage. 

So I fixed it by slapping on a slice of American cheese!  I'm still not sure the cheese is real cheese, but I like it. 

The hamburger/sausage patty is formed in the shape of the failed azuki bean loaf. Failed because I neglected the proof, but no less delicious for its misshapen appearance. The crumb is perfect for this sort of heavy lifting. Anything lighter would have turned to mush. 

I do not know what is going on with these fries. When I was 13 years old living in Louisiana I'd make french fries that blew people away. I'd cook them partially, then freeze them, then cook them again. Their exterior was completely crisped. 

I read online a new trick. Presoak the cut potatoes in sugar water for at least 20 minutes. Commenters rave about results. In my case, presoak in sugar water + double fry method did not result in crispy fries. I am so disappointed. The difference between this and the fries of my 13 year-old self is the freezing stage. Could it be that freezing is the key to crispy fries? Are potatoes more wet now than they were in the days of yore? Did I use a different type of potato? Is the oil different? These recurring questions vex my crispy French fry potato confidence. 

BLT with cheese on bread made from azuki bean and Kemet flour

Bread flavored with azuki bean and Kemet whole wheat flour. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. 

1+1/2 cup hot water

1 level teaspoon active dry yeast

1/16 teaspoon sugar

1 egg, room temperature

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt, finely ground

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

1/2 cup Azuki bean milled to a powder.

1/3 cup Kemet wheat flour

Such a promising start and such a disappointing finish. The thing is I failed to pay attention to proofing periods because I was distracted with this pop-up card and I'm still not finished. Hours elapsed. I think. I don't know for sure because time's just not my bag, Man. 

Eh, ya win some, ya lose some. This turned out to look more like a Pullman loaf instead of a nice puffy rounded top loaf, but it sure is delicious. I might give it another go tomorrow if I feel like it. But I'm going to be distracted tomorrow too even worse.