Making More Booze Than We Can Drink

A pretty picture of the makgeolli all bottled up before I ended up spraying half of the contents down the drain.

Although we've had an uptick in productivity from our garden, we're still by no means growing enough veggies for our daily use. So far, this has been fine because we usually do dinner out 3 times a week. Also, we've made our front yard look like a prison compound by caging off all our edibles to deter deer. It's working, although I just hate the way it looks - no French potager garden for us. Instead, we have what I would describe as a somewhat efficient, American ugly garden. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but I'm still bitter about the limitations the deer put on our yard. About the 10th time they came nibbling our greens, I had enough and we bought rabbit fencing and fenced the whole damn yard in. 

While we fail at gardening, we excel at making booze (I realize that it sounds like the second part of the sentence sounds like the reason for the first part of the sentence). We have more booze here of the homemade variety that we can possibly drink. Last week, after reminiscing on the terrific Korean dive bar scene (delicious Korean street food and booze make Korean bars kick ass in comparison to their American counterparts), I attempted my first batch of makgeolli (Korean sparkling rice wine). Nevermind that we have at least 15 gallons of beer and wine fermenting already. What's another 5 gallons?

Perpetual spinach, amaranth, and bok choi

Remember my last post where I said that my husband and I seem to work in parallel rather than in series when working on projects together? The same thing happened here. This started out as my project, but since it involved making booze, the boy (who has made hundreds of batches of beer) had set ideas on how I should go about making booze. While I was out in the front yard piddling in the garden, he dove into the project. And since he is known for his lack of moderation, he started us off with 6 pounds of rice. 6 pounds of rice!!! I was going to use 5 cups of rice for my first batch. 

By the time I realized that we were going to have gallons of potentially crappy makgeolli, I had to keep going since the ball was in motion. So far, I've bottled it up, sprayed one bottle all over the kitchen after checking it, then sprayed 3 bottles into the sink with a tool over them to prevent more blow outs. The fermentation was still too active when I bottled them, so the fear was that the glass growlers would all explode. Dare I say that this tops the "molten beans on the ceiling" incident of 2001?

Straining the rice from the rice wine

Sesame and I are onto our 3rd round of Canine Circus school. I dig it, she digs it, and it makes us both communicate better. It sounds like couples therapy, which in some way, I guess it is. 

Sesame at her happy place

Other random notes to share that won't fit anywhere else: watch Stranger Things on Netflix. It reminds me of the Goonies and X-Files all wrapped up into one. Winona Ryder is excellent! Read We are Water by Wally Lamb. This is the first non-dystopian novel I've read in some time, and I couldn't put it down. I'm currently reading another Wally Lamb novel, The Hour I First Believed, and although it's good, the subject matter (Columbine shootings) makes it hard for me to read in big chunks. Something always disturbs me and I have to put it down.

Also, I may have another knitting pattern out soon! If anyone feels like test knitting a small cowl, drop me a line.

And the Gardening and Kitchen Experiments Continue...

It's been roughly two months now since I decided to revamp the garden, and I'm finally happy with its progress. During the first month, since I'd let the front yard atrophy for a year, I was weeding, hacking back bushes, and pulling ivy.  Also, I'd never been happy with the previous landscape design, and I wanted something that was more functional (more vegetable gardening space), yet not an eyesore. Since my only choice for a food garden is to have it in the front yard, it gets tricky. 

For those of you not in California, we're in the midst of a drought. For me, this means that anytime I use water in the garden, it has to be for edibles 99% of the time. The succulents, once established, can be watered once a month. We put in a rain barrel system and it's been unusually rainy, so all this gardening I'm doing now hasn't used city water.

Chinese Dunce Caps are branching out!

I've added three more vegetable gardening areas, either by wall or by tearing out the previous, inedible landscaping, and now I'm in the process of growing green manure and clearing out yard waste (old scrap wood) around the house. It's amazing what you can put out for free, sometimes with the help of Craigslist or the homestead hookup list, and the creative things people use what I would normally throw away is astounding. For example, the guy who picked up the old oak scrap leftover from taking apart 3 wine barrel planters is going to turn the wood into biochar.

My favorite succulent, the dinner plate aeonium

I have a tray of succulent leaves I've culled from the new plants. Now, 6 weeks later, I have succulent babies! Once they're a little bigger and they've used up all the nutrients in the mother leaves, I'll put them outside because the front yard is still has bare spots that need some erosion control.

Babies!

Yesterday, I ordered a grow light setup online, mainly because when I grow most seedlings outdoors they're wimpy! This is what I didn't see before when I was lured by all the exotic seed packets that were all under $3 - there's a hidden cost!  The best grow light reviews, not surprisingly, are from people growing weed. It took me awhile to sort out what type of lights I should use and what would fit into our tiny house without looking like an eyesore.

The boy has mentioned several times that the cost of the vegetables we grow better be more than what we've put out, but I can stifle that conversation by pointing out his various toys in the garage that will never yield anything useful for us to both enjoy.

The collard and kale trees are recovering from the slugs. Favas are going well!

Sesame is back in Canine Circus School, and she likes to use school time to catch up on her sleep. If you want to see some adorable and impressive dog tricks, follow Canine Circus School on Instagram. You may even see some action shots and videos of us, that is, when Sesame isn't sleeping through school.

Circus School is the perfect place for a nap

Hiking it

Back in October, I started fermenting a jar of habaneros. 6 months later, I blended the fermented habaneros with lime juice and some of the brining liquid. It's good! Wicked hot and a little tart. Between this and the homemade Sriracha, I don't think we need to buy commercial hot sauce anymore.

The habaneros are finally ready to become hot sauce

I also brined some eggs for 40 days in preparation for making joong. Joong, at least in California, is usually described to those unfamiliar with it as "Chinese tamales" - I love how Mexican food is so prevalent here that I can use a tamale as a descriptor and people shake their heads in recognition. The reasons joong is likened to a tamale is because it's sticky rice mixed with a salted egg yolk, beans, and various pork products all wrapped up in a bamboo (traditional) or banana leaf. I've been using banana leaves because I have them on hand for making tempeh.

Brining eggs

I used this recipe for brining the eggs, but for my next batch, I'm going to add a splash of rice wine and star anise per this recipe. The previous attempt was good, but the flavor was a little flat. It still tasted better than what I get from the Chinese markets, and by using my own eggs I know that the quality is better, but I think a seasoned egg yolk will be delicious. This time, I have a dozen eggs I traded with friends. The boy makes beer, and our friends use the spent grains to feed their goats, chickens, and turkeys.

Finished yolk!

The hardest part is waiting for the yolks to be finished, but since making joong is a lot of work (nothing hard, but a lot of preparation), the 40 days gives us enough time to recover.

Until next time, blogosphere! I notice that a lot of bloggers I follow have moved to Instagram, and that's where I spend the bulk of my social media allotment. So, follow me there if you'd like to see more pictures of Greaseball, Sesame, or be bombarded with succulent and garden photos.  My user ID is sungoldtomato.

Foraging the Bay

Herring season is here! Since the boy struck out catching any herring (timing is everything, and we were out of town at the height of the local herring spawn), we decided that a consolation prize would be herring eggs. 

Herring eggs on seaweed

We now have a jar of brined herring eggs, and they are rad. Not surprisingly, they're crunchy, slightly salty, and mildly fishy. It's their crunch that makes me want to sprinkle them on everything I eat. I even mixed some in with mashed potatoes the other day.

Brined herring eggs - they should last a few weeks refrigerated

Still, as pleased as I am with our consolation prize, I wish he was able to score some herring. I had dreams of making pickled herring, but that is not to be. Our salmon supply is almost out, and I've become accustomed to having fish a few times a week. Even better is that I don't cook or clean any of that fish since this is the boy's thing.

If you'd like to chase herring, the best way to keep track of the spawns is by checking the CDFW's herring blog: https://cdfwherring.wordpress.com. The herring come to the Bay Area from November to February, and the chase is on when they get here because, as mentioned earlier, timing is everything. We were in town a few days after the big spawn in Richmond, and we didn't get squat.

Tempeh for the People

Tempeh pan fried with chorizo seasoning

I've been on a tempeh kick for the past 3 weeks. And, as you may have figured out by now, when I get into something, I *really* get into something. So far, I've made 3 batches of tempeh, one with soybeans, another with soybeans and adzuki beans, and another with soy/adzuki/mung beans. All three have been delicious!

If you've every looked into making tempeh yourself, believe it when you read that fresh tempeh is nothing like the stuff you buy pasteurized and packaged in the stores. Fresh tempeh smells nutty, slightly sweet, and mushroomy. When cooked, which is the only way to eat it, the nutty flavor is intensified. I'm experimenting with different additions to my mixes, so far adding different beans. I want to try a batch with added sesame seeds and peanuts (not together, though).

For my first batch, I followed the known methods carefully, incubating my tempeh in a perforated plastic bag. It turned out delicious and was a good confidence builder.

For my second batch with adzuki beans and soybeans, I pressure cooked the beans together. This was a mistake because while the soybeans stayed firm, the adzuki beans disintegrated. Still, not wanting to throw away anything, I forged ahead and mixed in the tempeh starter, Rhyzopus oligosporus. I also used glass containers with no holes during incubation. The mycelium took off! I was so glad that I didn't dump that batch over a perceived mistake.

When you don't use a plastic bag to tamp down the mold,  it begins to look a little gnarly.

However, just cut the tempeh crosswise and you'll get the familiar form factor. I like how the jar made this batch of tempeh round, perfect for burgers.

My third batch took longer than 48 hour to form because I filled an entire jar to the top with the bean mixture. After 2 days, only the top half had enough mycelium, so I cut off the good part and put the rest in a shallow stainless steel try. The change of container gave more oxygen to the tempeh, and it finally took off. So, if you don't use a perforated container, only fill the tempeh mixture a 2-3 inches high so moisture evaporates instead of condensing in the container.

Delicious tempeh sandwich

Between the tempeh I'm making and the fish the boy is catching, we really don't have a need to buy meat. It's pretty cool! 

So far, I've made a Rueben marinade and a traditional, Indonesian marinade of salt water, ground coriander, and crushed garlic. Both were delicious.

Tempeh hasn't really taken off in the US, although at various times, optimistic vegetarians predicted that tempeh was going to be the next big thing. One optimist lives near me in Lafayette, CA, and he co-wrote The Book of Tempeh (an excellent read). I think one reason that DIY tempeh hasn't taken off is because people get grossed out by mold. When I posted mold pictures on Facebook and Instagram, there wasn't a favorable reaction. What I though was cool, others thought was spoiled and gross. Does this look any worse than mold-covered hanging sausages, blooming cheese, or a dead meat animal? To me it doesn't. It's the reality of food. 

Lately, I've been thinking of tempah as tofu's wild, tastier, cousin. I love tofu, especially fresh tofu, but it's a bitch to make in comparison to tempeh. Plus, it's mild. Tempeh, depending on how long you ferment it, can have a blue cheese funk.

If you want to make your own tempeh, I got my starter from Cultures for Health.

My blog posts are infrequent, at best, so if you want to see what I'm up to, follow me on Instagram. My user name is sungoldtomato.

Preserving the Catch

Once a week, the boy has been kayak fishing. For the most part, he isn't catching that many fish and we can eat what he catches within the span of a few weeks. Recently, however, he brought back a ridiculous haul of rockfish and ling cod from Half Moon Bay. It was time to learn some different ways to preserve fish.

My first experiment was salted rockfish, fashioned after Spanish bacalao. I layered a couple of fillets with salt, and then let them rest in the refrigerator for 48 hours.

After a brief rinse, I dehydrated them at 145°F for 10 hours, at which point they were leathery. For now, I'm storing them in the freezer in a plastic bag, but I have a stainless steel airtight box on order that will hopefully be a plastic-free solution to storing the dried fish.

I have yet to cook with the salted rockfish, but I'll report back when I do. Hopefully, my NorCal bacalao will turn out delicious.

The second fish experiment was cured salmon. The boy's kayak fishing partner caught a 10-lbs king salmon off of Bodega Bay, and he was kind enough to share the fillets. We ate some right away with herb butter, and I chose one filet to cure with salt, sugar, peppercorns, parsley, and dill. I had to weigh the salmon down to press out the excess liquid.

It's good! I have a huge chunk of salmon to cook with or to enjoy as is - such a luxury. Usually, I don't even buy cured salmon because the local, wild-caught stuff is expensive (I spied it at $24/lbs at Whole Foods), so it's going to be fun figuring out different ways to use this. If you have a favorite recipe with cured salmon, please let me know!

Since we ran out of paper towels, I decided to put together a jar of rags that we can use in place of paper towels in an attempt to waste less. So far, this has been an easy transition with minimal complaining from the other occupant of this place, but nothing really disgusting has gone down yet (no puking animals). I have a feeling the second that one of us has to deal with something gross, we may cave and the paper towels will reside on the counter once again. But, for now, this works and is minimal effort.

Homemade Garlic Salt

For consecutive weekends, the boy has spent half his time kayak fishing. What this means is that, if we're lucky, once a week we have fish for dinner. Fish smells like, well, fish, so the best way to prepare it without being reminded that we had fish for dinner days later is to grill it outside. Especially since we're eating different fishes and want to compare their tastes, we're marinating them the same way with shake of salt, a grind of black pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, a mince of garlic, and a squeeze of lemon. So far, we've had striped bass, rock cod, halibut, and skate (listed in order of my preference) prepared this way.

The boy has been asking me to pick up garlic salt from the store for ages because sometimes the fresh garlic burns on the grill, and I've hesitated because it seems stupid to buy something that I knew had to be easy to make, especially with our dehydrator. So, when we found ourselves in Martinez as the farmers' market was closing, we struck a deal with a garlic vendor and got 3 pounds of garlic for $3. Score! Now, it was time to figure out how to make garlic salt.

The hardest part is peeling the garlic, which is to say, making garlic salt is not hard. Once the garlic cloves are peeled and washed, it was quick work to chop it up and spread it out on a dehydrator rack. I put the temperature to 125 °F, the vegetable setting, for 8 hours.

It will smell like Gilroy in your house for the first few hours, so you and your roomies will be safe from vampires.

Once the garlic is dehydrated, let it cool to room temperature, and then pulse it in a blender 4 or times times and assess the volume - my blender has graduated markings on the side, so I saw that I had about 1 cup of garlic. I added 1 cup of flakey sea salt to the blender. If you want your garlic salt less garlicky. add more salt. Continue pulsing the blender until the garlic salt is as course as cornmeal. That's it! Now you have homemade garlic salt. For the quantity I processed, I ended up with about 1.5 cups of garlic salt.

Roasted Chickpea Snack with Smoked Spanish Paprika

In Sri Lanka, my snack of choice was fried chickpeas. I had a bag of them I took on the bus, and I'd happily munch on them between meals. I've been thinking about making my own version for awhile, but the final push came when I was trying to think of a vegan snack to take to crafty gathering. Sadly, I ran out of nut cheese, but I did have some cooked chickpeas that were canned in quart jars.

Since deep frying takes too much tending, I wanted to make these chickpea snacks by roasting them in the oven. I'm happy to report that my first try turned out crunchy and addictive. In other words, it was the perfect snack!

For seasoning, I mixed together smoked Spanish paprika, cumin, salt, and evaporated cane sugar. After I rinsed and dried the chickpeas (using a clean kitchen towel), I gently stirred the spice mixture and olive oil over the beans. I adjusted the spices until I felt that the beans were just slightly underseasoned because I thought that the seasoning would taste right once the chickpeas were dried. In retrospect, I should have added a touch more salt, but that could have been corrected once the beans were out of the oven.

Once the beans were seasoned, I spread them out, single layer, on a baking tray brushed with more olive oil. They were roasted at 350 °F with the convection fan on (roast at 375 °F if you don't have a convection oven) for roughly 40 minutes. After 15 minutes and every 10 minutes afterward, I checked the chickpeas and shook them around in the pan so they didn't stick. They are done when the beans are golden brown, but not burned.

Bottle Drying Rack

Homebrewers are all familiar with the accumulation of beer bottles on the kitchen counters. The bottles can't be thoroughly cleaned in a dishwater due to the beer sediment, and therefore they pile up until they reach critical mass (i.e. someone gets fed up and starts complaining).

Our excuse for letting the bottles pile up is that we didn't have a good place to dry them. I hate counter clutter and we have limited counter space, so anything that needs to be hand washed is dried and put away immediately - we don't have a countertop drainboard. It's hard to dry a bottle immediately unless you want to shove a small rag into it or use a hair dryer.

The boy wanted to weld a bottle rack, but again, it would pig up some room on the counter and it would drain on the counter. We compromised on a simpler solution: a drain board that straddles the sink and holds the bottles upside down. He found some wood scrap, drilled some holes, and problem solved!

(Actually, the problem is almost solved. Someone still needs to clean the bottles out with a bottle brush.)

The rack works well for wine bottles, too. We save those as well because we have a friend who grows grapes and makes way more wine than he can possibly drink, an excellent quality in a friend.

No More Boba Tea Guilt

Today marked another baby step in my quest to create less trash: my cobbled together boba cup!  I love boba (also known as bubble tea), but I get queasy when I get the plastic cup heat sealed with the plastic lid and the giant plastic straw. After inhaling another boba tea, I mentioned to my friend that I really need to stop ordering these drinks or think of a way to get the drink without all that trash. Since I so rarely get single-use cups nowadays, it felt odd and wrong to toss everything. (Yes, I've been living in Berkeley for a long time!)

I started by researching the crux of this setup, the boba straw. I found a glass option and a metal option, and after mulling over the two, I went with the 10" boba straw from The Mulled Mind. Once I had that, I had the other pieces of the setup at home. The lid comes from reCAP, and the jar is a Ball Pint & Half. The reCAP lid is for wide-mouth jars. If I were to buy the setup, it would cost around $15 (jar is $1.50 jar + $7.00 lid + $6.50 straw). Mine boba kit costs a few dollars less than that because I bought the lids and jars in bulk. The lid is the most expensive component, and it certainly isn't necessary - I like mine because I'm usually in my car when the urge to get a boba hits me, so this keeps spilling to a minimum.

For you Bay Area boba fans, County Cheese in Kensington makes a fantastic version. They use high quality tea, real milk (instead of that sketchy powered creamer stuff), and the boba is boiled in sugar water and has the right amount of chew. I always hate it when I order a boba and instead of being chewy, the tapioca balls are old and mushy or, almost equally as bad, the balls are tasteless because they have been boiled only in water. That defeats the whole purpose of the drink! I know there are some other boba places around that don't use the gross stuff, so please leave me a comment if you have a recommendation.

Superbags for the Masses

I've been hesitating over a nut milk bag for awhile, and not just because of the name. Although they pack up small, the nut milk bags seemed like a one trick pony. Enter the Superbag, a filter bag that is not only useful for straining nut milks, but is large enough to hold a whole chicken carcass and be thrown into the cooking pot. All I have to do is pull the bag out of the pot when the stock is done!

Superbags are super expensive. The large 100-micron bag sells for $42. But guess what? You can buy a similar bag on McMaster-Carr for $10 - I purchased the nylon bag that is 7" diameter and 16.5" height. Since both the McMaster-Carr nylon bag and the Superbag have a maximum temperature of 325 °F, I'm pretty sure the Superbag is just nylon. I got the idea from this discussion on egullet, and now that I've used the 50-micron bag to make hazelnut milk, I'm wondering what took me so long to purchase it. So far, it seems robust and is easy to wash, but I'll use it to make stock soon and report back.

I read that I can make tomato water using these bags, and once summer hits, that'll be my next experiment.

Obviously my "don't buy anything" streak is over, because I also bought two silicone reusable bags. If I ever decide to buy a sous vide, these bags are supposed to be a reusable option. I bought them because I like the convenience of bags for keeping my washed and chopped greens fresh and I also wanted them for storing homemade frozen potstickers, although they are a little too small for the later task. Hopefully, they'll come in a bigger size soon.

Each 1-quart bag held 1 bunch of chopped kale. Today, I made a risotto with kale, chorizo, smoked paprika, and a splash of sherry vinegar. I'm in love with the pressure cooker method of making risotto - same results, but 25% of the time.

Vitamix Soy Milk Recipe

Soy milk, especially when it's  hot with just a hint of sugar, is my comfort drink. The stuff you buy from cartons is marginal and they are usually flavored and thickened. Any decent Chinese market sells fresh, and sometimes hot, soy milk from a plastic jugs, but it is still not ideal because of that plastic jug (landfill!) and because it isn't organic.

I've thought about buying a soy milk maker before, but it's such a specific machine and it would take up a lot of precious space. What if I could use what I already have, specifically my super duper Vitmix blender? Pickiness, not necessity, is the mother of invention in my world.

A little research showed that this has been done (and there's one baffling website where someone makes soy milk while wearing a bikini), and after a few tweaks, I made fresh, hot soy milk that tastes just like the stuff I love at Chinese breakfast restaurants. The best part is that if you have dried soy beans handy, you can make it in less than 10 minutes from start to finish. Even better, there isn't a pot of soybeans you have to watch and stir, you don't have to remember to soak your beans overnight, and there is no straining.

Start by boiling two cups of water. While the water is boiling, measure out 1-ounce of dried soybeans. Combine the boiling water and the soybeans into a Vitamix and mix on HIGH for 6 minutes (start the blender at 1, ramp it up to 10, and then flip the HIGH button). If you want to sweeten the soy milk, add your sweetener and blend for another 10 seconds. I added 2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar to my soy milk, but I've also added maple syrup or just plain cane sugar. I've also added a pinch of salt, which is also very good.

Although the temptation will be to make more than 2 cups at a time, don't do it! The soy milk foams up as it blends, and there is plenty of clearance to prevent it from foaming over and out of your blender when you only do 2 cups at a time. Also, starting with boiling water is key since you want to cook the soybeans - I tried with hot water from the sink, and the resulting milk was disgusting because it still tasted like raw beans. 

If you don't have a Vitamix, any blender on steroids will do, like a Blendtech.

I love when I can figure out a way to make something I usually buy, and it is way easier than I anticipated. I've made soy milk the old fashioned way (soak beans, blend beans with water, strain, and cook the milk), and it was a mess and not worth the effort. However, I can boil water and weigh beans just fine, thankyouverymuch.

DIY Sriracha Sauce

Rooster sauce? That's the gateway drug, but once you get sick of it, you'll find that there are other sriracha sauces worth seeking out. I made the switch from Huy Fong's sriracha sauce to Grand Mountain last year after trying it at Hawker Fare, so there was no panic in my household when the now averted sriracha crisis of 2014 started to make headlines. Since the only ingredients in Grand Mountain are chiles, sugar, vinegar, garlic, and salt, it couldn't be too hard to make, right? 

Chiles are in season now, hence cheap, so I sauntered over to my market and picked up some beautiful chiles still on the stem (2 pounds for $4 - what a deal). Using this recipe as the base, I cut the stems off a pound of chiles but left their green caps on.

I pulsed the chiles in the food processor until they were roughly chopped, then added 2 tablespoons of palm sugar, another tablespoon of evaporated cane sugar, two small cloves of garlic, and 1 tablespoon of sea salt. I pulsed the mixture until it was wet and the chile skin was about the same size as the seeds.

The mixture was put into a canning jar, and I left it out to ferment for 5 days, tasting each day after the 3rd day until I detected a slight sour tang. There was a bit of white fuzzy mold at the top, but it was easy to discard with a spoon.

I added 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar, and then boiled the mixture for 5 minutes. When I tasted it after the mixture cooled down to room temperature, it needed some more vinegar, so I ended up adding an extra 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar.

After blending the sauce for a few minutes with a splash of water, enough water to get the mixture moving, I pressed it through a fine-mesh sieve. This step took the longest!

The result is a complex sriracha sauce that is hotter (and dare I say better?) than Grand Mountain Strong. It's terrific, and now I want to try this with different chiles and can it so I can have enough around until next year.

Have you made fermented chile sauces? If so, please leave me a comment because I'd love to compare notes and hear about your experiences. I have some green chiles I bought at the same time and I want to make another fermented hot sauce.

Hot Dogs Are Evil

My hands reek of hot dogs on dog school day. Eager to get Sesame back into a training program, I signed up for Canine Circus School, appropriately dubbed "art school for dogs." It has been years, DECADES, since I've purchased hot dogs, and all I can think of is pink slime when I purchase those things as training treats per the recommendation of the instructor. I buy them covertly, ashamed, at places where no one who knows I'm an Alice Water disciple will recognize me.  But of course, the first time I had my cart loaded with hot dogs, I ran into a coworker who glanced at my hand basket (Meyers hand soap, Seventh Generation dish wash tabs, and 4 packages of cheap ass hot dogs - 4 of theses are not like the other).  Then, he proceeded to keep me there to talk about work stuff, while sneaking multiple glances at the hot dogs. Busted! I thought about telling him that they were for my dog, but he's no nonsense guy who probably doesn't know of Alice Waters and who would think it frivolous to buy human food (and I use this term loosely) for a dog, so that would make it worse. 

Still, Sesame works her butt off for a nibble of hot dog, more so then she would if I offered her my homemade, dolphin-free tuna, pastured eggs, and Parmesan cheese treats.  For the first class, I bought organic beef hot dogs, but when the instructor came by and offered her the crap hot dogs, she did back bends for him despite her "stranger! danger!" issues. I was sold. Pink slime hot dogs it is! I bought my second round of hot dogs at Ranch 99, where a cart filled with 3-liters of peanut oil, 4 packages of hot dogs, a carton of fermented rice, and salted turnips doesn't make anyone raise an eyebrow.

Did you know that the cheap, pink hot dogs are made from chicken now? I was shocked! I thought they were pork, because that's what I thought they were when I was a kid, but when I checked out the $2 hot dogs at the store, they were either chicken or chicken/turkey mixes. My childhood memories of hot dogs are fond, and I remember that, as a kid, a special treat was the hot dogs filled with a nacho cheese sauce. I could nuke it myself for an after-school snack, along with Spaghetti-Os and canned beef raviolis. They tasted good, and I'd probably still eat those things today if I didn't worry about things like type 2 diabetes which, unfortunately, is a disease both of my parents now deal with on a daily basis.

The boy hates melon as much as I hate hot dogs, so since it's melon season and our CSA is giving us one a week (one too many according to him), I have had to come up with ways for the melon to be useful. Enter infused vodka. I still have a lot of lemon zest infused vodka and some other bottles of plain vodka, so I mixed the vodkas together and added half a chopped melon. Perhaps I've made the most disgusting vodka in the world? Or, just maybe, I'll have a good ingredient for cocktails. I already have some black cardamon infused vodka and a bottle of Thai chile tequila, and those have proven to be good cocktail mixers.

My CSA and my modest garden are providing us with loads of tomatoes, so I've been saucing them, roasting them, and stuffing them. Tonight's dinner is tomatoes stuffed with quinoa, brown basmati rice, fennel, dill, pine nuts, and tomatoes. Currently, it's sunny and hot during the day, but the fog rolls in by dinner time, so it's a good time to have the oven on. Stuffed tomatoes and peppers have become an end of summer tradition here. Any other tomato ideas are appreciated!

The boys like hanging out on the couch, and I've given up on making the couch forbidden. I slays me how each of them has to have their head on the pillow. Spoiled! Totally our fault, though, so I can't harp on them too much. Often, I wish I could join them on that couch instead of working/cleaning/exercising. Someone has to pay for their loafing, though!