etc

trader joe’s sells cashew / macadamia nut butter… it is tasty. real good on a sandwich with preserves of some kind or with cut-up apples.

while going through my mom’s stuff with my sisters, we found a pink pocketed lacoste/izod polo. i totally took it and it fits. i am not sure if it is womens or mens, but it fits so i can’t complain!

we also found my mom’s sisters letter sweater (for being in the booster club or something) and i want that too haha. the sad thing is that i may be the one who fits in it best… although my arms are probably way too long.

one last thing we found… a $100 bill from 1929. pretty cool.

one more picture, kinda cliche, but i like it

messing around again

thing for music nerds

On the I Love Music message board about 5 years ago, a member challenged people to make a cd-r of 100 of their favorite songs… but the catch was that you could not repeat any artists.

Some people expanded it to however many songs from different artists that they could fit on a 700 mb cd-r, which i think is fair enough.

Anyway, the thread was recently bumped to the top and I think that I want to reprise my list as my old list is kinda embarrassing. (you can use the find function with my last name if you really want to see it). I have done a very rough draft and only about 1/5 of my original list will make it to my current list. Sorry if you find this type of thing dorky… i think it is fun!

ok, here is the link:

Nate’s CD-R 700MB MP3 SUPER CHALLENGE (of death)

food food food

Saturday night, i did make the pav bhaji. It was tasty with a bit of a kick. Cooked up cauliflower, red pepper and potato and combined with spice packet thing. Success!

Sunday (while in Wicker Park for Renegade Craft Fair) a friend and I went to Jerry’s Sandwiches… they have the biggest sandwich menu i have ever seen! I had the Baba R, which is peanut butter, apples, grilled onions, and chipotle chutney on dark rye. It sounds strange, but it was fantastic! Definitely recommend that place.

Tonight I finished my avacado with something of a toned-down guacamole. Didn’t have any cilantro, so it was just avacado, a mini heirloom tomato, red onion and a splash of lemon juice. It was tasty nonetheless.

i guess thats all about food i have to write now.

man oh man

last night I made a decent salad… mixed greens, heirloom tomato (one of the orange ones), a couple of cut up morningstar fake buffalo wings, shredded cheddar, and peppercorn ranch. it was a nice little tasty salad that was easy to make. i am totally stuck on ranch as a dressing… does anyone have any dressings to suggest? Ranch is good, but so bad for you and I am open to whatever.

For lunch today, I kinda wanted to copy a plate i had at green zebra, but not totally. what they make is called “slow roasted shiitake mushroom in crispy potato and savoy cabbage.” They look basically like sushi rolls. What i did was take a huge leaf of savoy cabbage and used it as a wrap. i sauteed some criminis, thinly sliced some potato and fried them in a pan with butter + salt + pepper, added a good amount of avacado and sliced up a small amount of heirloom tomatoes. I topped it off a bit more sea salt and pepper and then rapped the cabbage around the junk.

so so good. after the wrap, i finished off the half avacado with sea salt and pepper (which Ms. Harvey also kinda told me about). loved it!

pav bhaji musings tomorrow sometime probably… we will see how it goes.

brrrread

I saw this picture in the Naperville Sun yesterday on my lunch break. I don’t know why, but it makes me really happy. It kinda is the twee-est thing ever. I guess some 82 year-old woman cut into her bread and this is what it looks like haha.
I didn’t want to steal the paper, so I took a picture of it with my phone.

I got my food yesterday… I did a tiny bit of sampling yesterday and today, but I will write about it after lunch and dinner experiments tomorrow. I am sad that they didn’t send me snap peas, but they sent me raspberries instead, so I can’t complain too much.

Tomorrow I am making the pav bhaji for dinner probably and we will see what I do with lunch… I have some decent ideas, but it will depend on my motivation!

more food

I was feeling kind of boring and forgot to pick up some garlic, so I made the same burger as in the other food post, but with Havarti instead of the Cheddar. It was a minor improvement. I also did a good job of setting the smoke detector off when sautee-ing. awesome.

I am looking forward to getting another shipment of stuff on Thursday from Natural Direct. I have this packet of pav bhaji mix that requires cauliflower and peapods for the recipe, and those are both coming. I guess i will have to stop off for a green pepper though.

pretty pumped about the pineapple too, i have heard that organic pineapples are leaps and bounds better than regular ones. and uh, an avacado is coming, so i am excited about that too!

I am getting an eggplant too, but i dont know. Every time i have tried cooking them, it has been the biggest disaster. Does anyone have any positive eggplant cooking stories to tell me? I know that my dad failed last time he tried too.

does anyone in the world understand the Seinfeld / Bill Gates commercial?

first food post

i think that i will start writing about food on this blog too now.

Last night i made a pretty great veggie burger.

It was as follows:

morningstar “grillers prime” fake burger

sauteed crimini mushrooms (baby bella’s for you amateurs haha) and red onion

sharp cheddar

slice of heirloom tomato

wasabi mayo (from trader joe’s)

wheat bun

I have made variations of this in the past with mixed results. the tomato really added a certain something. the next time i make a veggie burger like this, i am thinking about adding some minced garlic to the sauteed mix for a little flavor. i may also change the cheese to havarti or i might splurge and buy a block of gruyere and finely shred some of it on the burger.

I dont think any other condiment would really add anything to the mix.

all of the veggies on the burger i got from one of my favorite websites: www.naturaldirect.com

They are based in Oswego, IL and deliver organic produce to your door. Since it is the summer, most of the veggies and some of the fruit is local as well, which is pretty damn cool. I can honestly say that they have sent me some of the best fruit i have ever eaten.

Here is an image of the heirloom tomatoes i got from them:

I have mostly been digging into the red behemoth there. I used it on the burger, in a kale-based salad, on a pizza and just slicing it up with sea salt and freshly ground pepper (the last thanks to Ms. Harvey). I gotta start on the orange one before it goes bad.