Addicted to the blender

For the past 2 weeks, I have been completely addicted to my blender. I have used it every day. Many times, 2 or 3 times a day. I have gone through over 7 litres of orange juice and 5 kg of fruit. I love making fruit smoothies. It's a slurpee made from fruit. 100% pure fruit, healthy, and amazingly delicious! I don't have to go to Bubble Tease, No Name Cafe, or Jamba Juice anymore!!!

Here's how I make mine. It takes less than 5 min. and they're amazing!

The set-up.
Blender, banana, frozen fruit, ice, orange juice,
and my oversized mug (~750 mL)

Step 1: Banana
It adds a nice flavour and it's healthy!

Step 2: Frozen fruit
Frozen fruit gives the smoothie a nice icy texture. A variety of frozen fruit are usually available in grocery stores. Use whatever you want. Experiment. Use fresh fruit if you don't have frozen fruit.

Step 3: Ice
Makes it a bit more icy. This step is optional. I've been doing this recently to reduce the amount of frozen fruit needed as I'm running low.

Step 4: Juice
I use orange juice. You can substitute for apple, pineapple, mango, cranberry, or whatever your heart desires. I use enough to mostly cover the ingredients. The juice is needed to make it drink-like and also so that it can blend properly.

Step 5: Pulse
There are a lot of solids in the mixture. The pulse (P on the dial) spins the blades quickly for a short period of time to pulverize the solids and then allow them to settle back down onto the blade so that the blades don't run dry. I pulse for maybe a half dozen times until most of the big chunks have been broken down.

Step 6: Blend
I blend for about 10-15 seconds on the highest setting. The mixture should be sloshing around quite freely. If it gets stuck and the blades seem to be spinning without blending anything and the contents aren't moving around well, it's b/c there's an air bubble and you need more liquid.

The (blurry) result
I make the perfect amount every time :)

Yummy!
It disappears very fast.

When I ran out frozen fruit, I used fresh fruit. When I ran out of fresh fruit, I started making Kool-Aid slushees (Ice Blue Kool-Aid + ice). Fortunately when the Kool-Aid ran out, I had gotten more frozen fruit and orange juice :)


On Elsa's suggestion, I tried making a red bean drink with the blender. Ordinarily, you have to boil the red beans for like 2-3 hours (maybe more) until they become soft, so it's not something you can just do on a whim (like if you want red bean at midnight).

The idea here is to grind up the red beans so they cook faster. I blended the beans with a bit of water and it was kinda weird. Beans were just flying everywhere inside the jar. Then I boiled it in a pot for maybe 10-15 min. and added sugar. Added ice to cool it down (not supposed to put boiling water in the blender, at least my instruction manual said so) and re-blended to make an icy (I prefer red bean cold).

About to blend

It was kinda frothy after blending and not so icy as most of the ice melted

It was decent, not amazing. I prefer red beans in their whole form as opposed to their blended form. Plus, I think I over cooked the red beans a bit, so it was kinda mushy. My next experiment is to make a pot of red bean and blending just the liquid + ice and then adding the beans to the mix. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Best Idea EVER

Many years ago there was some guy. That guy had a vision. He took two of the world's great foods, tacos and salad, and combined them to make one of the most tastiest meals ever.. the taco salad. My friends, tonight I had a similar vision. I took two more of the world's great foods, spaghetti and sandwiches, and combined them. I have to admit I didn't expect much, but the result was surprisingly tasty. And so, I would like to present to you.. THE SPAGHETTI SANDWICH!!! (da da daaaaaaaaa)

Beersteak Fajitas!

Hey folks. I made myself some fajitas the other night for dinner. They were tasty! I was all pro about it too, marinading the steak beforehand, slicing up some onions and red pepper, grating some cheese. Don't be surprised if you see me on iron chef pretty soon. Anyways, I documented the procedure with photos for your viewing pleasure.


The ingredients for the marinade: Beer, spicy death sauce, and a tiny bit of oil.


I had a minor crisis when trying to open the beer can... the tab broke off!! Not good at all. It was almost a major tragedy, but fortunately I was able to macguyver my way in.


This is what the marinade looked like. Kinda brown and gross looking, but whatever. I wasn't worried.


I dumped the steaks in the marinade and left them to soak in the fridge for several hours.


Several hours later I grilled the steaks on the BBQ. Hooray for BBQ's!


I fried up some onions and red peppers and I put a bit of the leftover marinade in for good measure. Let me tell you, if you've never fried up onions in beer and hot sauce before, it smells AMAZING! Combined with the smell of steak wafting in from the balcony I was like whoa man.... whoa.

And then my camera battery died, so unfortunately I don't have a picture of the finished product. I assure you though that it was quite tasty looking. I think I've discovered that I like cooking, especially with beer! ;)

Beer & Cheese Soup

Today I came home from work and for some reason I had a desire to make some beer & cheese soup. I've only actually had it once or twice before, but I always remember it being tasty. I also enjoy the fact that it has beer in it. After a quick recipe search in google, I discovered that I already had most of the ingredients! Hooray! I used a variation of this recipe. Some ingredients I didn't have, so I substituted others. Also, I'm not a big fan of measuring, so I kind of eyeballed some stuff.


The first thing to do was to saute some onions and celery. I'm not 100% sure on what saute means. I think it means to fry up whatever it is you are sauteing in oil or margerine or whatever, so that's what I did.


I didn't have any celery, so I used half of a hot pepper that I had in the fridge.


The next step was to add some flour and garlic salt and some other spices to the mix. Garlic salt I could understand, but I was kinda doubtful about the flour. I've never heard of flour going into a soup before, and it seemed like I was supposed to add a lot, but I thought what the hey, I'll try it. What else am I going to use my flour for anyways?


This is what things looked like after I added the flour and garlic salt. My doubts at this time were increasing. If anything I thought I was going to have a messy pot to clean up afterwards.


Next was to add some chicken stock and the cheese. The recipe called for 8 oz of cheese. I wasn't too sure how much this was, so I just grated half a brick. You can never have too much cheese, that's what I say.


It was starting to look like soup, but it there were still some pretty big clumps of stuff in the bottom. It was kinda like melty cheese-flour porridge with yellow chicken liquid on top.


The final ingredient: a can of beer.


This is what it looked like after adding the beer. It got all foamy and wierd looking. At this point I was like "oh crap.. I've wasted a beer" Things eventually settled down though and after a few minutes of boiling the foam and the melty cheese flour clumps went away and it actually looked like soup.


The finished product. It was actually not bad. The first few spoonfuls were pretty tasty, but after awhile I realized it was a bit heavy on something. I'm thinking either garlic salt or flour or both. It was pretty filling too, I was stuffed after the one bowl. I have some leftover, and I'm hoping it will taste even better in a day or two. I think that's how it usually works with soup type things. If not then I'll just add more beer when I reheat it. Can't go wrong there ;)

Shake Shake Shake

I unpacked my blender last weekend. In honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to attempt to make the ultimate milkshake. I haven't made a lot of milkshakes, and I've only really used a blender a handful of times, so I wasn't too confident in my shake making abilities. It turned out alright though. Here is a visual record of the event:

The first ingredient: Milk, a vital component of any milkshake.


The second incredient: Ice Cream, Chocolate Ice Cream


The third ingredient: Oreo cookies. (I would have used more, but there were only 3 left)


The secret ingredient: It's a secret ;)


View from the top: Pre-blending


View from the top: Post-blending


The milkshake turned out alright. It was pretty tasty, however it was a bit too liquidy. I think next time less milk and more ice cream. I'll let you know how it goes.

Chicken Noodle Soup... from scratch!

 
I love chicken noodle soup, but not the shit from a can. I mean like the stuff you get in a restaurant. I figured, how hard could it be to make it from scratch? Plus, it should be pretty healthy. Well, the answer is: pretty easy and pretty healthy. My first shot was about 2 weeks ago and I made it again last weekend.

Basically I just throw in 3 chicken breasts, onions, carrots, celery, and a couple black peppercorns into say 4L of water. Cook for like 2+ hours. Cut/rip up the chicken in the pot itself so as to not lose any precious juice. Throw in the noodles and simmer until done.

I cheated the first time and threw in a bouillon cube, though I'm not sure if cheating is the right word b/c I'm not convinced that it made it taste better, just gave it a little more colouring.

The second time, I added in more of the Italian herbs (from a shaker thingy), olive oil (mentioned in most recipes, but I just didn't have it the first time), and potatoes (inspired by my favourite Korean dish). The potatoes were definitely a nice touch. I love that the soup is so hardy. It's totally a meal in itself. More chewing than sipping and I almost needed a fork.

My next goal is to make my own noodles, then it'll be completely from scratch!

Eggs, it's what's not for lunch

I decided on Sunday that I wanted to boil some eggs for making egg salad, adding to a chicken Caesar salad, etc. I put six eggs into a pot of boiling water and waited. I asked my mom how long I should wait and she said four minutes (if this sounds horribly off please forgive her, as I have, as she was deliriously ill and registering a .10% cough syrup level in her system). After four minutes I took one egg out and conducted the highly scientific egg doneness test of spinning it on the counter. RPMs seemed high enough so I called the eggs done.

I left them to cool until 10:30 pm that night when I retrieved one for making my sandwich. I cracked the egg on the counter while thinking of how much I really enjoy peeling the egg shell off of the cooked egg. This one was coming off rather messy though in chips, rather than the large pieces I am accustomed to. The egg itself felt weird and rubbery. While attempting to peel off one particularly difficult shard I broke the egg open and discovered that the yolk was runny. I figured that all the eggs were probably in the same state.

It was getting late, I wanted to go to bed, and I had french running through my head as a result of some cramming for my speaking test today. I did not want to boil another pot of water to attempt to re-cook the remaining five eggs. I did however really want an egg salad sandwich for lunch and quite frankly didn't have anything else to take. So I took the pot, filled it with water, put the eggs back in, and popped them in the microwave.

Now I know eggs and microwaves don't really go together well. If you're doing eggs in the mikey you usually need a special dish, a certain method. I figured that because the eggs would be floating in the bath of hot water that they would not be at risk for exploding and blowing the door off. Well I was right about that part at least.

After some time in the microwave I removed the eggs, dumped out the water and poured cold water over top. Feeling rather impatient (and that is a characteristic I will fully own up to) I decided to crack one open. Crack. Peel. BOOM!

Like the bomb diffuser who had mistakenly cut the wrong wire, I apparently removed the wrong area of shell at the wrong time, which literally resulted in me having egg on my face. And on the window. And the cupboards. Possibly the neighbour's mailbox.

I blinked a few times and thanked my lucky stars that I did not lose an eye. I think my first thoughts were "shit these are new contacts, I better not have egg embedded in them".

I examined what was left of the egg, it looked salvageable. Dumped it into a bowl. And then I decided to try another egg. This one didn't explode but it oozed a brown liquid from the centre. The yolk was burnt and it smelled horrendously. It looked like a Fear Factor challenge. I tried another egg, same thing. I cracked them all open and then tossed them. I gagged my way through making a veggie sandwich. I could not get that smell and the image of the brown ooze out of my head. I may never be able to look at another egg without feeling a wave of nausea.

So needless to say, I don't think I can move out of my mother's nest until I learn how to boil an egg without it blowing up in my face.

Next time I do something profoundly intelligent I think I'll post about that. I must redeem myself.

Originally published March 27-06 on ajillstory