Veggie Cooking: Baked Buffalo Cauliflower Wings

Don't let Bertie's expression fool you, he was also impressed by the final product! (11/11/17)

Attempting to maintain a less cruel diet, I haven't eaten meat, fish or chicken since July 1. While I have also tried to reduce/eliminate products harvested from animals, by replacing animal milk with Almond for example, a satisfactory replacement for some favorites has thus far eluded me. By far the two animal-product-based meals I most miss eating are ice cream and chicken wings. With the ice cream absence addressed by a delicious banana-almond milk-peanut butter smoothie, the chicken wing "loss" is one that often aches at my gut, especially on Sundays.

After recently enjoying some baked cauliflower buffalo wings at a local vegetarian eatery, I sought to duplicate the epicurean experience at home. Fortunately an easy to prepare recipe for Baked Buffalo Cauliflower Wings online at Gimmedelicious.com was quickly found, and after carrying it around on my cell phone for a month, my tummy prompted me to action. On this wintry November afternoon, Bertie, our English Springer Spaniel puppy, and I set about making our first batch.

I am an unremarkable cook, choosing rather a clichéd path of learned helplessness when it comes to the kitchen. Even with this culinary handicap, I found this recipe remarkably easy to prepare, in addition to being incredibly rewarding. That the sauce consisted of two favorite ingredients (butter and Red Hot) was a bonus.

A key ingredient: classic Frank's Red Hot! (11/11/17)

Baked once in batter for 20 minutes. (11/11/17)

At this point Bertie had other plans. (11/11/17)

Twenty more minutes after being drizzled with buttery Frank's. (11/11/17)

Plated and ready to SLAY! (11/11/17)

The final product proved an excellent gustatory eexperience. Though too spicy for milady, my stepson and I quickly gobbled down the order of "wings" with a side of dressing. The crispiness of the twice-baked flowerets was solid and the overall flavor VERY reminiscent of the far less fowl-friendly original on which it is based. I am excited to have discovered, and actually tried, a recipe from GimmeeDelicious and look forward to attempting another cauliflower recipe, the Sticky Honey Sriracha Cauliflower “Wings” in the very near future!

Spring Veggie Garden Set-up... in Summer

Chilling near an entrance to his underground lair, the backyard bunny surveys
that area prior to my preparation of the vegetable garden bed. (6/10/17)

Getting the garden started this Spring took a little longer than expected, so long in fact that our backyard bunny had grown fairly comfortable lounging around his newly appointed snacking field. Summer's arrived and I have a number of other projects lining up for completion during the two week break from teaching. With time to get started past due, I finally turned over the garden patch and prepped it for planting last weekend. Two days later, my wife and I drove out to the gardening store, purchased plantings and plopped them into the ground. The next day, she and her son installed our anti-rabbit fence, and now the tending begins...

Clearly it's time to get down to the business of turning over,
weeding and mulching the garden bed. (6/10/17)

At one point many years ago I stopped using roto-tiller in favor of
a pitchfork and rake--a much more satisfying method! (6/14/17)

Pitchfork'd. (6/14/17)

Weeds be-gone, compost applied, garden ready. (6/14/17)

A line of bean seeds planted and marked with stick. (6/17/17)

Each year the content of our vegetable garden shifts and changes. (6/17/17)

Ready, set... GROW! (6/17/17)

Last summer kale, this summer string beans. (6/23/17)

After Anne sets up bunny fencing and bean poles,

things are ready to rock... aided by a welcome summer

rain.(6/24/17)

Reaping Some of What We've Sown

Under the hood: celery, kale and Swiss chard. (7/22/16)

Things in our vegetable garden have been going very well this summer. This success is due to my wife's strategic watering (despite drought-like conditions) and the use of new garden equipment, including more well-designed tomato cages and a row cover.

Last weekend, Anne and I harvested a nice amount of kale and Swiss chard. While I am not a fan of eating copious amounts of either leafy vegetable, I have become more accustomed to eating. In small quantities or as an ingredient both can be made more palatable. Despite my awareness of how each is a "super food," I have yet to acquire a taste for it. I am working on that, though.

This summer's backyard garden developments have been rewarding to be a part of. The row cover, and some well-placed bunny repellent, have created perfect growing conditions and kept away cabbage looper caterpillars from eating away at the vegetables.

Blackbeard the cat checking out the haul. (7/22/16)

Washed and ready to eat. (7/22/16)

Sauteed Swiss chard. (7/22/16)

Next up: this weekend we are taking the next step by taking on the challenge of wrapping the celery for future harvesting.

Turning, Spreading, Mixing

Nearly a week, and a few days rain, after prepping
the gardens, the opportunity presented itself to lay
 the vegetable plants in the soil. (6/5/16)

Another late spring and another go round with our vegetable garden. With each passing year the seasons come more quickly and it feels as though (too) shortly after pulling up stakes and turning over dirt in October, comes time to turn over the soil again and reappoint certain sections as tomato territory and cucumber lane. As is our tradition, I usually wake up early, around 6 a.m., to weed and prepare the bed, while my wife plans and plants. Slipping neatly into our archetypal roles, I, as the man, am the destroyer and my wife is the nurturer.

This year, Memorial Day weekend once again proved to be the first time our other individual activities gave way just enough to create the opportunity to work together in the yard. Though the images look roughly the same each year (so, maybe the house was a different color last year, or the bed inched out a little further this year), the transformation from weed bed to vegetable garden is a rewarding one even before the vegetables take root.

Rather than cutting down the length of the weeds and grass,
 not mowing allowed for an easier grasp for yanking out roots.
(5/30/16)

Once used a roto-tiller, but preferred a
pitchfork and my hands to turn the soil and extract the
invasive weeds; it's a small enough area and it feels good to
get dirty. (5/30/16)

With the overgrown weeds, removed, a bag of
compost left over from the previous summer comes into view
as things begin to take shape. (5/30/16)

Ready for the annual mixing of compost, both earned
through our recycling efforts with Community Composting
and self-generated in the corner composter. (5/30/16)

Spreading, mixing and turning. (5/30/16)

Ready to receive whatever vegetables milady
wishes to grow this summer. (5/30/16)

Digging in the Dirt

The old ceramic bird feeder that wintered neatly against the shed, 
now ready for spring retrieval. (5/24/15)

Our family garden has finally come together over the past two weekends. With my summer break still a few weeks away, and with it more time to dedicate to such things, my wife and I took every opportunity to get between raindrops in an effort to grow some vegetables. As is the case annually, my role is destroy and prepare, while my wife plants and nurtures.

Though our roles stay pretty much the same, we will annually alter our some of the techniques that we employ in an effort to kick-start the garden. This year, for example, we chose not to use compostable paper to minimize weed growth as in the previous two years. Though it did result in an aesthetically pleasing appearance for the garden, the digging in the dirt that comes with hand weeding, is something I enjoy and the mulch necessary (in addition to a few well-placed stones) hold the paper down did not seem to benefit the soil.

There were far fewer weeds this spring due, I think, to the mulch employed
the previous spring to hold down the rolled garden paper. (5/24/15)

As I turned over the surface level dirt with a pitchfork, beautiful brown soil 
was revealed. (6/2/15)

A well-timed rain the evening prior, made the task of weeding and turning over 
the ground much easier. (6/2/15)

Two bags of the compost we earned over the winter thanks to our 
participation in community composting added some valuable nutrients to 
the dirt. (6/2/15)

The crops were rotated this year, with the tomatoes moving front-and-center, 
peppers to the left and squash to the back. Cucumbers were moved to an 
alternate location elsewhere in the backyard. (6/6/15)

Apparently Epsom Salts are good for plants and not just old
people in bath tubs, a misconception I had previously held. (6/6/15)

Read to GROW--ugh! (6/6/15)

While the rabbit clan living under our shed won't eat tomatoes or peppers, 
they do seem to enjoy Brussels sprouts; thus, the "cage." (6/11/15)

The cage came first--one evening after work--and my wife
planted the Brussels sprout plants a few days later. (6/11/15)

With the plants safely in the ground, and with local precipitation plentiful of late, all that's left to to sit back and see how things develop!

Continuing Our Composting Campaign

Something old for something new (-ish). (3/15/14)

Things change. As you get oder, I've learned, things change more quickly than one can imagine. The reminder of this truth I came across this week had to do with the evolution of our home composting here in River City. Long an advocate for sustainability, it was my wife who prompted me, along with our sons, to erect an outdoor composting pit made of chicken wire and metal posts behind our shed nearly ten years ago.

The original pit in action.
(11/21/2009)

Six falls later (and numerous leaves) later in August 2005, we took another step, adding a raised plastic cube composting bin in our backyard, primarily for kitchen waste. This second pit, a Deluxe Pyramid Composter,  became our primary receptacle for eggshells, fruit/vegetable skins and rinds, and compostable coffee filters, while we continued to use the larger original one for leaves and grass clippings. Along the way, we experimented with coir fillers and compostable bags with varying degrees of success. (FYI: not all bags which are said to decompose in a reasonable amount of time do--more often than not they seem just to muck of the pitchfork teeth when attempts to turn the pit are made.)

Now, after maintaining a five-year, two-composter status quo (in the intervening years I also installed a rainwater barrel to our house's gutter system), we have taken another step in our journey toward a measure of sustainability. (Recognize that the "we" is used in the most royal of senses--my wife does the thinking and I do the leg work--well, most of it.)  Three weeks ago my wife and I took another step toward more sensible sustainability ... by joining Community Composting in Rochester, New York.

Into the Deluxe Pyramid Composter.
(9/1/2012)

The way it works is very simple: we save our kitchen waste, or scraps, (the amount of which actually increases due to their ability to compost more complex materials than we can in our backyard) in a green plastic container and leave it our on the stoop each collection day. One of the systemic benefits of living in the city, all regular garbage, including standard recyclables are picked up on the same schedule as our little green bin.. With this past Thursday collection, we also experienced our first swap with Community Composting--they collected our green bin, left us a clean one and left a similarly sized white bin with compost for our use. This is just one possible outcome, the receipt of compost for personal gardening, with another possibility being the donation of the compost generated to community gardens and neighborhood associations.

There is a fee involved, but for those who do elect to participate, there is the satisfaction of contributing to a reduction in the loop of food to waste to food. Given the volume of leaves and clippings our small city tad somehow generates, our participation in Community Composting is not a replacement for the other things we have done in the past, but is just another way we can refine the process so it works best (or easiest) for us.

Hobo Cookin': Chick Pea Salad

The hobbins are in order, now, lets' get to making that dry combo!

Rather than "calling in" vittles from some "bull cook," appearing a "dino" or "dynamiter", "catting in" on another's camp or eating "bullets," I've elected to take the path of a connoisseur "chronicker" and put my tools to use. The easiest way to make this happen is to "shackle- up" a "dry combo," that way, only a "gunboat" or "tomato can" is necessary at worst--no "sizzler" required. Being that I'm a vegetarian, not  a "belly robber," as some would suggest, I'll have no need for "block scrapings" just easy recipes and basic "hoppins". That is the plan at any rate.

Said without the hobo slang courtesy of the Original Hobo Nickel Society's "Dictionary of Old Hobo Slang", once again I'm trying my hand at cooking more around the house. Of course, as my skills are pretty limited (or at the very least deteriorated), I am also starting small. How small? Can-of-chick-peas-label-recipe small!

As a vegetarian, my diet is chock full of legumes. In any week I consume between 2-3 cans of Goya Chick Peas, not including hummus. This meaty little legume goes with nearly anything from salad to soup to (as I most often eat them) simply dumped from the can, rinsed and served in a cereal bowl.

During various Epicurean explorations I've sampled and enjoyed a number of Indian and Greek dishes which include the chick pea as a key ingredient, but, other than as additions to traditional leafy salads, have failed to develop a broader repertoire of use. While not exactly creative or daring, I resolved this week to expand my chick pea palette but making the Chick Pea Salad which has frequently appeared in the cans of my preferred brand of garbanzo beans, Goya.

Look at me: I CAN chop up red bell pepper, cucumber and red onion all by myself!

Add some garlic powder, oregano, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and...

Presto--Chick Pea Salad!

Though the completed recipe was meant to serve six(!), it only served one, moi. But it did so three times, and served as a main lunch dish served on a bed of greens the first and second times around. Easily packed into two separate Tupperware type containers, and transported in my official Green Lantern lunch bag, it was a very filling and tasty meal. The flavor was tad bland immediately after preparing, but after adding the recommended "Salt and pepper to taste," it was a pleasant meal (and snack).

 As teased on the label there are indeed more Goya recipes available online, and many of them appear to be as easy to prepare as the Chick Pea Salad.

Poetry Snack: A Chinese Garden of Serenity

While in undergraduate school I took quite a few poetry courses, all dealing with analysis. Unfortunately, I am one of those folks who can appreciate poetry in a variety of forms, but find it difficult to put pen-to-paper myself. I do, however, find some joy in writing brief observations of the natural world and the work of Robert Bly (among others) has given me some hope that the narrative paragraph can be a form of poetry.

I recently unearthed a copy of the book A Chinese Garden of Serenity which is a collection of epigrams, or meaningful sayings, from the Ming Dynasty called 'Discourses on Vegetable Roots.' (As I recall, I found it among the stacks of books at a used book store in Virgina Beach during a March trip to visit my brother-in-law about four years ago.) These works are translated by Chao Tze-chiang. I hope that you will find the line and lyric as poetic as I have:

The attitude of people towards me may be warm or cold, but I respond neither gladly nor resentfully; the tastes of the world may be savory or insipid, but I react neither happily nor disgustedly. If one does not fall into the trap of the mundane, one knows the way of living in, and escaping from, the world.

The "answer" to happiness (I think) suggested in the preceding epigram is to neither run or over indulge in life but to experience the moments as they come. Along the same lines is the following excerpt:

Walking along a narrow path, one should lave a margin; tasting rich delicacies, on should share a morsel. These are the happiest ways of dealing with the world.

Published as a hardcover volume in 1959 by Peter Pauper Press, this book is no longer for sale on-line via standard booksellers, though I suppose a rare bookseller might have a copy hiding within the stacks. If you're interested in reading more, you could try there or I would suggest a good used book store, which happens to be where I bought this slim edition for $3.00! If you're a "real live" acquaintance of mine, I'd be happy to lend it to you, too. :)

Adventures in Whole Foods Cooking: Recipe 3

I m so pleased that this dish offers a little more color variety...
how many green whole foods dishes can one make/eat?
Only a few more days until Anne and I hit the road for a short respite in the Adirondacks, so I decided to prepare something from the The Whole Foods Market® Cookbook: A Guide to Natural Foods with 350 Recipes for dinner this evening. In the interest of mixing it up, and having gone the chicken and pasta routes already, I chose to attempt the Spring Couscous with Asparagus and Orange for our meal this evening.

I once again went to the market (now a daily trip it seems) for some fresh ingredients (scallions, red bell pepper, asparagus) and it occurred to me that it is much more expensive to eat in a healthy manner than it is to eat in an expedient one. Another $20 dollars alter (I also needed orange juice, some spices and couscous) and I was ready to head home and begin preparations. With my wife at work I like to try to get things as close to "done"as possible so as to surprise her when she gets home--a "trick" which is getting harder and harder to accomplish!


A few new igrediants including Mandarin orange slices... I'm curious as to how this will taste as I've never been a fan of "mixed" dishes--you know, fruits with "hot dishes" and such.

Sauteing might just be my new favorite way to prepare food!

Wallah... all done and ready to eat!
This one turned out to be fairly successful though I have some challenges selecting the appropriately sized bowl for certain ingredients and feel like I'm generating wa-a-a-y more dishes to wash then necessary. I am, however, definitely learning new things with each attempt. Only 348 347 more recipes left to attempt!

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!