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5-Hour Energy Lasagna

On my first day off from cooking in about six days, I was wondering what to do with a free day. Those taxes still needed to be done, but that didn’t sound stimulating. I finally settled on doing some cooking and eating of my own after finding the sharpest, most bad ass knife at the Asian Market for $4.99 (seriously!!). It will be a strong competitor to my $135 Shun. Taxes can wait. And after all, a killer knife is somewhat like a new outfit: it’s impossible not to use immediately.

Since cooking rustic Italian food at my new job for the last month or so, lasagna sounded pretty divine. I have no doubt that you ES-ers love some good lasagna. But if you have your own secret lasagna recipe, I would like you to add one thing to the ingredients: one 5-Hour Energy shot. No, not to put into the lasagna…to drink before commencing said lasagna making. I’m a Red Bull girl, but this 5-Hour Energy is pretty stellar. You can do jumping jacks or wrestle on the couch when it is in the oven to burn off some calories, if you’re planning on eating half of the lasagna like a champion (which I would never do).

You should also add the following to your secret family recipe for lasagna: home made pasta (I challenge you to think outside the box of lasagna noodles), good tunes (forget Sinatra, My Morning Jacket is great lasagna making music), fun stories about Friday Fuck Ups, and some box wine (Bota Box Old Vine Zin perhaps) so you can’t tell how much you’re actually drinking. Please take note that you should not cook lasagna on an empty stomach (or without an energy drink). I always like to eat an opposite-type cuisine for lunch when I’m going to cook dinner. That way your palate has been awakened and will not be dulled with the same flavors. Thai food would go nicely in this instance.

by forkitude

#1 Most Invaluable Kitchen Tool

Wherever you’re reading this, put down your laptop and go buy this now. At only $104.40, this butter spreader is worth every penny. It does it all: it spreads butter on hamburger buns, and spreads butter on lots of other shit, and turns like a little hamster wheel, and looks incredibly cool. Simply put the butter in the bottom of the well, place it on some heat to melt, and the butter spreader does the work. You might even be able to use it as a cheese grater or a food mill for those lumpy mashed potatoes. Forget my Staub or my Beka pancake pan, my entire collection of chef’s knives, or even all of my culinary knowledge. Put me in kitchen stadium with this thing, and I am good to go.

in Rants & Raves 0 comments

by forkitude

If Only I Could Have Eaten My Way Through School

That cartoon light bulb sometimes appears over my head when I eat certain things; food is strongly connected with my memories. Ask me anything about high school calculus and I will probably stare at you blankly. But let me eat my way through Little Italy in NYC to find that amazing, hole-in-the-wall joint where I had that lasagna on our high school trip to the city, and I am sure I could tell you (or I would at least have fun looking for it).

Most of my memories of eating studying around Europe are connected with food. It was not only the food itself, but what was happening around us, the weather, how we were feeling, the people we were with, whether we were upset or happy or sick or drunk. Cantaloupe gelato in Bergamo, Italy. Proscuitto wrapped melon in Venice. And I can’t forget the bus ride out of Venice and the urgency with which I asked the bus driver to stop at the next exit. Too much vino and partying the night before? Of course not. I just needed some air. Ah-em.

I remember the potato soup and “mean green bean salad” (as I called it) that I cooked at a friend’s apartment while her French host parents were on vacation. American girls shopping for ingredients and cooking in a French kitchen. Yep, dream. What I learned in school that day? I couldn’t tell you. But every time I make potato soup, I think about that French apartment. It’s a memory so clear, it was like it happened yesterday.

in Fish / Restaurants 1 comments

by forkitude

Artsy Photo Of The Day

Now, this is what I call “winning.”

in Photos / Sandwich 4 comments

by forkitude

Meatless Monday: Will You Go Meatless For A Day?

Here we go again: conflict in the Middle East and the discussion incessant bitching about gas prices. I can hardly wait until the summer travel season. With a barrel of oil topping $100 for the first time since 2008 (my muscles start to twitch as I remember this era of my finance career), it’s a great time to talk about why our industrial meat system burns my bacon. I still wonder out loud why the average person hasn’t made the broad connection between meat consumption, the environment and the world’s resources.

Mark Bittman got it right three years ago in his New York Times article Rethinking the Meat Guzzler:

Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

As 925 million people in the world suffer from malnutrition he points out the following:

…about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University.

This brings me to my question: will you go meat free for a day?

There are a swath of Meatless Monday participants around the country including Baltimore Public Schools, Sodexho, and University of California Davis. The effort, started in 2003, is in large part directed at public health (heart disease and high cholesterol), but I would argue that we should take a moment to examine our eating patterns.

in Trends / Veggie 9 comments

by forkitude

Artsy Photo Of The Day

Beer will be involved in every single meal today. Including dessert. And breakfast.

in Holiday / Photos 4 comments

by forkitude

How to Sop Up Guinness: Cast Iron Irish Soda Bread

Believe it or not, the Irish are serious about their soda bread. I absolutely love the Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread’s website. You really shouldn’t mess around with Irish soda bread wanna-be’s. It’s the real deal or nothing. Go traditional or go home. As an Irish girl and a lover of beer, shamrock tattoos, Irish music, and leprechauns, I can appreciate that. Don’t call something soda bread if it’s not soda bread!

So I think I have done my Irish roots justice in this recipe. Ok, aside from the yogurt, which was not available in Ireland in the 19th century. But, there are no raisins in this bread, nor orange zest, nuts, eggs, baking powder or yeast.

Let me explain. Irish soda bread doesn’t contain yeast. The whole point of the bicarbonate soda was that it was used in place of the yeast as a leavening agent. I even used cast iron like they did back in the day. Plus, I love any excuse to bust out my cute little cast iron skillets.

They are cute. Don’t laugh.

This is a basic, delicious, easy, pretty damn traditional Irish soda bread to sop up the beer that you will drink on St. Paddy’s Day.

Slainte!

in Holiday / Recipe 5 comments