Fun With Your Food

Wait. I just need to point out that I blog from the public library because I like to get out of my house to write and currently, there is an old man next to me snoring right now.  WOW, this is both awkward and extremely distracting.

Moving on.

This weekend the austin food bloggers met up for another one of our (in)famous potlucks. I have to say that after going to these potlucks, I’m spoiled. Most people go all out and bring beautiful, complicated and amazing dishes. I’m always slightly intimidated about these things.  Since I almost forgot about the event entirely (BAD TEDDY!), my dish seems less impressive when standing next to others but I loved it.

A watermelon, mango, orange, lychee and avocado salad dusted with a small amount of salt to increase the sweetness of all the fruits and extract their liquids.

Fresh from the fire pizza.  Christian from Austin Food Journal manned the wood burning oven for hours.  I’m not sure how he survived it! But thank you for some of the BEST pizza I’ve ever had- seriously.  Now I apologize to everyone else for mixing up who made what.  Some of my favs follow:

Homemade onion BAGELS with everything schmear!

Lavender macaroons. I don’t normally like either of these things.  I think lavender can taste like soap in dishes and all the macaroons I’ve had are hard and plain gross. One bite of these changed my mind about both.

Husk Cherries (aka ground cherries or cape gooseberry) .  Kristi said she picked these up at a local farmers market simply because she had never seen them before.  They were odd in a great way.  Sweet like a pear or plum with the texture of a tomato. Fun!

It was a great potluck, no?
Back to my normal meals this week!

Teddy

Sharon and I have made a few more lunches together.  Did I mention she’s Korean? Probably not, but that means she knows tons of homemade normal Korean dishes that I’ve never tried.  This was one of them. So I had to research the dish we made because 1) I couldn’t spell the name 2) I had a hard time remembering the name altogether. From what I’ve found, Bibimguksu is basically noodles, veggies, protein and spicy paste (Gochujang).

We chose some oat flour noodles.  To be quite honest, since I smother noodles in different sauces and veggies, I don’t know what they taste like on their own.  I loved them in this dish though!

We both were overzealous while filling our lunch bowls.  I, for one, was STARVING.  We ended up having to upgrade bowls before we added out spicy paste.   It looked so pretty before we plopped them out and mixed them up.  Our veggies were whatever we had on hand. The list included lettuce, carrot, green beans, bean sprouts and some roasted garbanzo beans.

What a great action shot of me adding the Kochujang (I still cannot properly pronounce that word).  I like it spicy and plopped on two heaping spoonfuls. I scarfed this down in about 5 minutes flat while watching True Blood. Sharon and I’s lunches have officially made me a fan of the show and I’m not ashamed to admit it!  I’ve actually caught up and now our lunches have turned to Sunday screenings of the show.

Thanks to Sharon for all the great foodie shots!

Until next time,

Teddy

I don’t come from a “Sunday morning pancake eating” kind of family. In fact the only time I remember eating pancakes as a child was in restaurants like IHOP or Dennys and I rarely chose them over eggs and potatoes. Sure, there were a few times I’d stay the night at friends’ houses and wake up to chocolate chip pancakes but I honestly don’t think I started making pancakes on my own until my late college years (maybe even after college). The first time I tried to make them was a DISASTER.  Each pancake came out wrong: burnt on the outside and raw inside, raw altogether and doughy, you name it and I’ve made that incorrect pancake.  I hear they are supposed to be easy to make, child’s play even. Perhaps to everyone else this will be a pointless post but I’d like to make the time to pat myself on the back for this one.

After 2 years vegan/macrobiotic culinary school I can hold my head high and say “I can make amazing vegan pancakes!” High five to me.  I also can make a million and one other, more complex, dishes but I’m happy with how these turned out.

I used this recipe from the food network site and substituted vegan ingredients for the non vegan ones.  I left out sugar, used slightly watered down coconut milk instead of milk, I used self ground peanut butter and my homemade jam from this post to top the whole dish off.  My favorite pan to cook pancakes in is my cast iron skillet.  It heats evenly on my crappy apt stove and that makes a huge difference. They’re not expensive pans, they have easy clean up and they last a lifetime.

Well, hope they look as pretty as they tasted.

Teddy