Lazy Lunches

What do you do when you want an omelette but don't want to have to wash all the dishes from it (because you live with a commune style kitchen system where you have to cook, wash and put away things before going back upstairs to eat your food in your room)?

FRIED EGG CHEESE "SANDWICH"

Fry up some onions, fry up some eggs, layer egg then cheese then egg then sprinkle with the onions. Simple!! This way, the only things needed to wash right away are a cutting board, frying pan and spatula (unless you can hide those under the sink like everyone else does for later, bonus!).

This time with a little nod to the coming easter holidays. I toasted up some hot cross buns to go with it. They're sliced and buttered but you can't see the golden glory that is. Oh but I tasted it, yes sir. mmmm. And they were on sale.

Love and Lazy Times,

~Valiant V

Leftover Lovelies and Lazy Lunches

Another segment I thought I'd try to add

LEFTOVER LOVELIES

(Things I do with leftover food items)

and/or

LAZY LUNCHES

(Things I make that are tasty but simple because my kitchen space sucks at the moment)

First up a Leftover Lovely...

PESTO PITA PIZZA

Say that five times fast :)

Ingredients: Leftovers from various dinners and lunches of the previous weeks

-Pita Bread

-Fresh Red Chili

-Garlic

-Pesto

-Cheddar Cheese

-Grana Padano Cheese (like parmesan)

Alright I know it looks a little strange but oh my goodness ya'll this was delicious.

Brown up the garlic and chili in a little olive oil while the pita toasts a bit in the oven. Take out the pita, spread on some pesto, top with cheeses and the garlic chili oil awesome you just made. Put back in oven to melt. YU FRIGGIN UM.

Sorry, I get excited when I don't waste food AND the result tastes good.

Try it out if you ever get this combination of things leftover in your fridge.

Love and Leftovers,

~Valiant V

Look What I Made!

So there was this place in Oakland I mentioned before, Farley's, that has amazing things called egg baskets. It's basically bread and egg (and prosciutto if you're feeling randy). But so yummy. And they bake them inside a muffin tin in the oven. So I thought hey, I could do that too. And I did, kind of.

TA DA!

So I basically sprayed a muffin tin with oil and put in a piece of toast, kind of smashed and crusts cut off, into one of the holes.

Then I added some prosciutto and the egg.

Things I learned or am still working on:

*make sure your muffin tin is deep enough to hold all of it, mine can't really hold all the whites from one egg

* the temperature was at about 350〫F and I didn't actually pay attention to the time. I was looking to see that the egg was at least white. I actually over cooked them a bit.

But hey it was easy and looks super fancy and next time I'll add the potatoes underneath them.

Yum!

Love and a lil bit o home,

~Valiant V

Summer Roll Update and New Kitchen Tool

So yeah I tried to make the summer rolls with my friends. Brian and I had gathered everything from the store. Everything except the actual rice paper you need to roll the innards up with. But luckily Jason was at the OTHER local store getting random house hold things and could grab it there. BUT they didn't have any at that store either.... guh, after all that running around the store finding everything, I felt defeated. We were trying to think of other plans for dinner and I was so frustrated I didn't want to make anything else or even go out somewhere to eat.

Then Brian suggested pizza,

oh god that is the best/worst thing for situations like this.

So we tried again the two nights later. This time with all the ingredients needed. And it actually was really easy!

I especially loved using my new kitchen tool. A julienne peeler.

It basically looks like a potato peeler but it has these teeth to shredded things into little strips! Like a dumb ass I peeled the carrot and cucumber in my hand instead of holding one end on a cutting board, so there was a lot of left over vegetable because i didn't want to slice my hand.

I even tried to make the peanut sauce the recipe called for.

But the peanut butter I had was salted instead of plain, so adding the fish sauce to it made it super salty and brought out the sweetness of the peanut butter too much. We tweaked it a bit, adding rice wine vinegar or more cock sauce to individual tastes (thanks for the suggestion Gina!). But next time I will try the recipe to the letter with plain pb and we'll see how it goes.

They were so tasty that there was no time to take pictures of the end results. Yummy!

I must now think of other things I can make with my new shredder. hmmmm.

Love and Summer Rolls

~Valiant V

Alcohol and Fruit a Recipe

Hello fellow enjoyers of summer and spirits!

Saturdays in Oakland mean the Lake Merritt Farmers Market.

And I always buy too many yummy things and they end up going bad before I enjoy them.

So this time I said NO, you will not be wasted yummy things.

I purchased a basket of ready to go strawberries. Boy howdy.

I ate some, gave some away, and still had some leftover at the ending of the day.

These bad boys were so ready they wouldn't have lasted the night. So what to do with tasty sweet strawberries that doesn't involve having to bake desserts in the hot summer night?

Infuse Booze!

I just found some alcohol my hosts were not planning on drinking (they're whiskey drinkers)

And sliced up the strawberries into the bottle et voila!

There are plenty of recipes/instructions out there in the interwebs. Go check em out!

*Keep the booze in a dark, cool place while it's working it's magic. *And go check how long you should be letting it sit, cause that timing depends on what you put in it.

I only let mine sit for a few hours before I tried out some cocktails that night.

Here's a serving suggestions for you lazy drinkers out there. 8)

Strawberry Ginger Lemonade!!

Portions may vary depending on how sweet or ginger-y you want this but basically...

*1 shot strawberry infused vodka

*Splash of simple syrup

*Juice of half a lemon (juice from the store works as well but won't be as bright tasting!)

*Grated fresh ginger

-Pour all into shaker with ice and shake shake shake seniora. Then strain into glass and enjoy!

It took a couple times to perfect the right ratio for my taste but once I got it ooohmm doggies it was good. You can do a non-alcoholic variation of this too. Maybe puree the strawberries instead and add lemonade and grated ginger. Yummy either way I think!

Cheers!!

Love and Infused Booze,

~Valiant V

I Rack Diciprine. But I made a sandwich. eh?

So this is the second day of me sleeping way too late. And being fairly unproductive and not going anywhere. So I thought I'd perk up a bit and post a recipe entry.

It's from a favorite book I randomly discovered in a used bookstore in Oakland, CA.

The Pooh Cook Book's: Radish Sandwiches with Bread and Butter Prickles.

I love radishes.

The recipe basically calls you to grate some,

add some mayo (made from scratch for the first time!)

and spread that onto a piece of bread or cracker and top with "prickles" or pickles cut into thorn shapes.

With the pickles, and fairly watery first try mayo, it kind of tasted like KFC coleslaw actually. It gave me the idea to make a shreddy slaw with my grater. For someone's bbq later or something.

Love and Prickles,

~Valiant V

French Apple Awesome

Saturday night was spent making this french apple tart from Ina Garten's recipe. It was actually really easy, even if I didn't have a dough making blade on my food processor. Definitely gonna pull this dessert out again next time I want to impress someone.

I want to say thank you to Jason and Brian for lending me their kitchen to make this. I made this in the kitchen while they played Halo 3. Wonderful Saturday night.

~Valiant V

ps- new flower coming soon! And listings available in a few days. yay!