My constant dilemma, throughout the course of my entire life, has been that store bought gucamole is teh sux. This was compounded by the fact that no human being could possible fabricate this ambrosia with the mere sweat of their brow (and presumably avocados).

Well imagine my surprise when, just like roasting a red pepper, guacamole is embarrassing simple. I’m going to give you two recipes here, below is the first:

• Avocados

Cut the avocado in half, remove the seed, and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Mash up the avocados with a fork. THAT IS IT. The ancient Mexican secret of guacamole has been unearthed from the equatorial bowels of Mexico.

Or you can be insane and follow this guacamole authentico recipe. It is trés authentico.

• 4 ripe avocados, peeled, seeded
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 ripe, medium Roma tomato, seeded, diced — i used a handful of cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 cup minced sweet white onion
• as much jalapeño as you feel comfortable with — i used 1/4 of a pepper
• 4 Tbsp fresh lime juice
• salt and pepper

I also added:

• so much garlic I thought I would die (5-10 tsp)

Mash all this up in a bowl and you’ve got delicious guacamole. Again, as is the theme with stuff I make, this recipe is extremely forgiving. Just throw in what you have laying around or what moves you.

WIU data

• Was the recipe easy to follow: This is easier than Suze’s pancakes. Don’t listen to her. SHE IS A LIAR.
• Did the dish taste good: Of course! Avocados are the gods’ ovaries. How could they not taste good. Furthermore how could any of their byproducts not taste good?
• Would you make it again: Yes, yes, and yes. I wish I had an avocado tree so bad.

My friend Tasneem came to visit (more like “blew into town”) and said “Tomorrow for brunch we need to make these whole wheat pancakes I found on CooksIllustrated.com.” Cook’s Illustrated Dot Com is the best $19.95 I spend all year. It’s like a giant database of amazing stuff from America’s Test Kitchen. Everything is tested within an inch of its life and a lot of it is pretty easy to make.

So while Tasneem slept peacefully on my couch on Saturday morning, I made these pancakes, and she ate them.

Whole Wheat Pancakes
(copied faithfully from Cook’s Illustrated. I didn’t need to change a thing)

Note: I used my powdered buttermilk blend instead of going to the store to buy regular buttermilk, and it was fantastic.

(Cook’s Illustrated’s pithy comments begin now:)

1. Mix dry ingredients in medium bowl. Pour buttermilk and milk into 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Whisk in egg white; mix yolk with melted butter, then stir into milk mixture. Dump wet ingredients into dry ingredients all at once; whisk until just mixed.

2. Meanwhile, heat griddle or large skillet over strong medium-high heat. Brush griddle generously with oil. When water splashed on surface confidently sizzles, pour batter, about 1/4 cup at a time, onto griddle, making sure not to overcrowd. When pancake bottoms are brown and top surface starts to bubble, 2 to 3 minutes, flip cakes and cook until remaining side has browned, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Re-oil the skillet and repeat for the next batch of pancakes.

WIU data:

• Was the recipe easy to follow: You mix one thing and then add another. It could not be easier.
• Did the dish taste good: Delicious, topped with some FOR REAL maple syrup. (The People should never ever buy FOR FAKE maple syrup).
• Would you make it again: I want to make it every day.

After a delicious score from my local CSA of cherry tomatoes and onions — and knowing I had an ass ton of pesto in the freezer — I thought I’d throw together some sort of sandwich for dinner. Also, because I am a little bit sassy, I thought I’d attempt to roast a red pepper.

Now hold on The People, hear me out. I’ve always loved roasted red peppers while hated paying six million dollars for them packed in glass jar filled with oil. I mean how impossible does it sound to roast a red pepper? I sure as shit don’t have a roaster — or whatever.

But imagine my surprise when it turned out to be the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

How to roast a pepper

1. Turn your oven on to the “broil” setting, it’s like turning your stereo to eleven
2. Put the pepper on a pan of some sort
3. Put the pan in the oven on the top most rack
4. Wait until the pepper looks charred and blistered (like a zombie), about 4 minutes or so
5. Turn the pepper over
6. Wait some more
7. Fin.

I lied, there is one more step. If you like crispity peppers simply peel off the skin — it should slough off as if it had been exposed to a nuclear blast. If you like softer peppers (which I do) throw the pepper(s) into a paper bag and wait until they cool a bit. That is it! They taste awesome! So easy! Hurrah!

After that bit of culinary triumph the sandwich was facile.

Delicious open faced sandwiches

Seriously, this is play it by ear. Here are the critical ingredients:

• Fresh mozzarella, like the kind marinating in what looks like dirty bath water
• Tomatoes
• Bread

I got some nice bread from ET’s which I then covered with a judicious amount of pesto from the freezer (note: olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder would be great too). Then I sliced some of the fresh mozzarella, onions, tomatoes, the roasted red pepper, and layered them up.

Add some fresh basil too, if you’re feeling like it. Ooo maybe some black olives. See, what I’m saying is follow your heart.

WIU Data

• Was the recipe easy to follow: Yes because I made it up. I’m telling you people: roast a red pepper right now. It is so easy and you will feel like a genius. Also this type of fresh vegetable and cheese sandwich is easy, filling, and good for you. It is The People’s Trifecta.
• Did the dish taste good: Heck yeah. Nothing beats tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella on a hot day. Nothing.
• Would you make it again: Duh. I might even make it again this week if I don’t run out of tomatoes.

Here is the base recipe:

• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 3/4 cup diced fresh mushrooms
• 1 15 ounce can black beans
• salt and pepper to taste

To this I added:

• A couple of carrots
• Green pepper

Take everything but the beans and throw it in a food processor. Sautee the mixture in a pan with some olive oil until it gets soft — something like 5-8 minutes.

Meanwhile, thow the beans into the food process and mush them up good. Hey, here is somethign I always do: drain and wash the beans in a collander. I hate the way black bean juice turns everything purple. Once you’ve got the bean paste ready and the veggies soft mix them together into a SUPER BEAN PASTE.

Take the mush, form into patties and pan fry in some olive oil for a couple minutes — until you feel like they’re solid enough to take out of the pan. And therein lies the problem: veggies burgers are always so toothpasty. Sigh. I put some avocados on mine because I am addicted to avocados. Strictly optional.

WIU data:

• Was the recipe easy to follow: Yes, yes it was. Basically you need beans and vegetables mixed together. You could use practically anything. It would be incredibly hard to screw this up.
• Did the dish taste good: eh. I mean it was ok, it is really the consistency that is an issue. Next time I think I would add eggs and some bread crumbs. I’ve got to find a way to STABILIZE THE MIXTURE.
• Would you make it again: Definitely. I am on a quest to make a veggie burger that you couldn’t squeeze out of a tube.

I don’t typically read Bon Appetit, I gues because it’s part of the hated Gourmet family (my biases are wildly without reason sometimes), but someone gave me this issue, and PLUM SORBET caught my eye. Plums are my absolute favorite fruit, and I wish I could eat them with everything.

So then I changed the fruit. Well, the recipe said you could substitue pluots (or plumcots, if you’re nasty). What the f is a pluot? It’s a plum/apricot hybrid, and I had happened across it last week at the ol’ local grocer, so I figured I’d try something new and go for it. The result is SO EFFING GOOD. Like SO GOOD. And SO WORTH IT. It makes me THINK IN ALL CAPS. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, borrow one, and get to work.

Pluot Sorbet
(reproduced and adapted from Bon Appetit!, July 2008)

• 1 c. sugar
• 1 c. water
• 1.5 lbs pluots (or, yawn, plums), halved and pitted
• 0.25 c. creme de cassis (this is a black-currant liqueur that you can get at any liquor store and is useful in all sorts of stuff, so is handy to have around. The upside of putting liqueur in sorbet or ice cream is that it makes its shelf life longer, since homemade sorbet/ice cream tends to freeze into a block of inedible ice after a few days. Alcohol, as you know, resists freezing. But it’s certainly “optional,” although you should probably replace it with some sort of juice.

1. (Can be done ahead of time) Stir sugar and one cup of water in small saucepan over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Boil until syrup is reduced to a generous 1 cup, about 6 minutes. You have now made simple syrup! Then stick it into the freezer asap so that it can chill as much as possible. It should be COLD before you use it again.

2. Puree pluots in a food processor until smooth. Push mixture through a mesh strainer set over a large bowl, extracting as much pulp as possible. Discard solids left in the strainer.

3. Stir cold simple syrup and creme de cassis into the pluot puree.

4. Freeze according to the ice cream maker’s instructions (usually just turning on the ice cream maker, pouring in the stuff, then going about your business for like 35 minutes). The sorbet will be very soft. Resist the temptation to try it now, and transfer it to a freezer-safe container with a cover and let it freeze for a few hours. Honestly, overnight is better, but I cant blame you if you want to try it before then.

WIU DATA:

*Every time I go into a liquor store for something like this, I feel like I have to announce loudly at the register that it’s for a BAKING project. “I DONT JUST DRINK AMARETTO AT HOME HA! HA! HA!” is usually what I end up saying, and it is so forced and so awkward, especially when they card me for it and I inevitably drop my wallet.

Anyhow, Ross and I had a pasta party, as he mentioned, where our spouses humored our enthusiasm (well, Ross’s enthusiasm and my natural bossiness) and waited until 10pm to eat delicious fresh pasta, AS PICTURED:

As you can see, the spouses were well-pleased.

OK but my real recipe entry for Whip It Up is Tiramisu Cookies!

Recipe below copied directly from MarthaStewart.com (cookie of the month, May 2008) with my customizations in italics!

These cookies involve all the best parts of tiramisu — ladyfingers, espresso, chocolate, mascarpone cheese (the most widely-mispronounced cheese in all of cheesedom), and amaretto. And my slipshod success with them reassures me that no matter how much I enjoy making fun of Martha’s dubious grasp on reality, her instructions are pretty sound. I’m a seasoned baker, but I rushed through this recipe so that I could pay more attention to Hellboy, which my husband and I were watching on DVD. A less experienced pastry bag wielder should take their time. And by time, I mean like a hundred hours, because that’s how long these cookies took to make. In fact, just go get some Newman-Os and call it a day.

Making pasta really isn’t hard and only requires a little bit time more time. Although, it’s definitely something to do when you have a bunch of people lying around — you’ll need the extra hands. The end result was light and delicate and really quite good. But onto my WIU submission from the evening:

Arugula (and basil (with walnuts)) pesto

Now, hey. I tripled (and modified) this recipe I found over at Simply Recipes. Since I am awesome I took the extra pesto and put it in an ice cube tray in the freezer. I’LL NEVER HAVE TO COOK DINNER AGAIN. So just be aware, if you are making pesto for a group of people less than an army, you might want to halve or even third the quantities.

• 3 cups basil
• 3 cups arugula
• 1.5 cups grated Parmesan
• 1.5 cups walnuts
• 15 - 20 cloves of garlic (depending on how manly you are)
• 1.5 cups olive oil (of the evoo variety)

Arugula isn’t for everyone. You could easily substitute and go 100% basil. My arugula this week was from my awesome CSA and, for some reason, was pretty pungent and a little bit bitter. So I decided to go halvsies with sweet basil.

First toast the garlic in its peel (aka put the garlic in a pan with a tiny bit of oil on med/med-low) until you feel like the garlic is pretty soft throughout, you don’t want to burn it though. This will help sweeten the pesto and get rid of some of bite from the garlic. I think if you were feeling up to it you could actually roast the garlic in the oven. After that dump the garlic in a bowl and peel it.

Next toast the walnuts. Seriously I don’t think this is necessary. I mean it might be — toasted sesame seeds are like 100x better than non-toasted.  Up to you.

Next get out your big food processor. Suze had one that blew my mind. Put the leaves, walnuts, and garlic into the processor and “pulse” it while you add in the olive oil. Pulse away until you are comfortable with the consistency — it should be nice and thick. Add the cheese and pulse a couple more times and you are done.

I threw some cherry tomatoes on the top which were excellent. I recommend you do the same.

WIU

• Was the recipe easy to follow: yeah definitely. The recipe, as you can see, is really flexible and ripe for adjusting. Also the whole thing took probably 15-20min. Depending on how far you want to go with toasting the various things you could cut 10mins.
• Did the dish taste good: yes. It was a good idea to cut the arugula. The pesto was fantastically peppery so I can only imagine what it would have been like at 100%.
• Would you make it again: sure — but I won’t be making it for a while now that I’ve got loads in my freezer.

Ginger Chicken with Whole Wheat Spaghetti and Green Beans
copied with my notes from the American Heart Association’s Low-Calorie Cookbook

serves 4; 1.5 cups per serving

Ingredients
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, all visible fat removed
for marinade:
3 Tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
3 Tablespoons dry sherry or 2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar (I used 2T of sherry vinegar - booya!)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon minced peeled gingerroot

4 ounces dried whole-wheat spaghetti
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil (I used toasted sesame chili oil and it added some heat)
2 cups frozen no-salt-added grean beans (I used french cut - much crisper)
2 medium green onions (green and white parts), thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest (if you don’t feel like buying an orange, you can leave this part out)

Cut the chicken into thin strips about 2 inches long. Put the chicken in an airtight plastic bag or glass baking dish. Add the marinade ingredients.

Seal the bag and turn to coat, or stir chicken and marinade together in dish, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 15 minutes to 8 hours, turning occasionally.

Prepare the spaghetti using the package directions, omitting the salt and oil. Drain well. Return the spaghetti to the pot and stir in the sesame oil. Cover and set aside.

Meanwhile, cook the beans using the package directions, omitting the salt and margarine. Stir the beans into the spaghetti.

Heat a nonstick wok or large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken and marinade for 2-3 minutes, or until the chicken is no longer pink in the center, stirring constantly. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the spaghetti mixture, green onions, and orange zest. Cook for about 3 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated and forms a glaze on the chicken, stirring occasionally.

I threw some parsley and red chili pepper flakes, and I can’t say anyone complained.

The titular host of Definitely RA is hosting an eight week food/cooking contest in which participants cook a new dish each week and submit posts (with pictures!) for judgement. The winners of the contest will be awarded with eternal life glory, honor, and cook books.

As cooking and contesting are both things in which we regularly participate, Suze and myself have entered TPN into Whip it good! We plan on masticating the competition.

If you have anything you’d like us to try just drop us a comment.

Aside

My local CSA harvest continues to reign supreme. This week I got:

• Potatoes
• Tomatoes(!)
• Broccoli
• Lettuce
• A green pepper

So I’m thinking something with cheese + broccoli + potatoes sounds delicious. I’ll see what I can come up with — UNLESS YOU HAVE SUGGESTIONS INTERNETS!?

Item 1: Stainless Steel Water Bottles

The People! Why do you hate Mother Nature? Don’t you know about WATER BOTTLES?

I think I’m pretty slick when I use only Diamond Springs water from the giant cooler thing at work…that is until the Dasani bottle I’ve been drinking from starts getting kinda aquariumesque and I have to buy another from the machine. Oh yes, I throw the old, gross one into the recycling, but think about this:

I use one water bottle every five days. That’s 73 bottles a year! If I have nine friends (DO I?) and they all are as stupidly unconcerned about the leechy chemicals in plastic water bottles as I am, together we use and discard 730 bottles! If they DO care about leechy chemicals and they get a new bottle every time, they’re piling up about 568,326 bottles a year.*

Nalgene makes water taste gross and is for hippie college students.

I just bought myself a Klean Kanteen!

It’s efficient (thing gets cold and stays cold), it drastically reduces waste, no chemicals get into my water, and it looks fantastic. Everybody wins! Except Dasani!

Item 2: CatalogChoice.org

I shop online a whole lot. I love shoes, I love clothes, I love books, I love pet grooming things (?), I love cookware. I love stuff that comes for me in the mail. I get like four catalogs a day. I don’t shop via catalog because it’s not 1953, so I toss them immediately into recycling.

Have you noticed that NPR is always talking about CatalogChoice.org? It’s a free service created for people like me who get so many catalogs that the idea of calling them all and telling them to quit seems both daunting and fruitless. You enter your address, type in the catalogs you get, and finally have a polite way to refuse delivery of the Newport News catalog. I figure it saves the company money, the postal service some extra weight, and Mother Nature her children the trees. Everybody wins! Except Newport News! Wait, even they win!

I’ve been making a ton of stuff lately that I am all too happy to share. Stay tuned.

*Made up number.