Recently, I’ve been thinking about how my love of all things cow/beef/chicken/lamb/pork has a negative impact. Picked up a couple books like Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”… Watched “Food, Inc.”… Bought Joel Salatin’s “Folks, This Ain’t Normal.”

The conclusion mostly being: IT’S A MINEFIELD OUT THERE. Everything is over-processed and over-labeled and over-lobbied to the point where you can’t get anything without secretly picking up pesticides, chemicals, and e-coli along the way as well. Oh, and if you do want grass-fed, organic, natural food? Better fork up, because that shit is expensive. Why? Because the government chooses to subsidize McD’s $1 menu instead of a natural, Monsanto-free zucchini in the produce aisle.

I do realize the irony of this “healthy” preachiness as I love greasy tacos which are probably made from greasy cheap meat, I revel in the animal-stylenss of In-N-Out, and no one, NO ONE loves Korean BBQ more than me. But because I love those things and I choose to eat them all the time, it just provides me with more of a reason to want the meat that I’m eating to be raised humanely and not be slaughtered covered in its own feces. If I didn’t enjoy meat and eat it so much, I might not care about how it’s processed and ends up as the glorious Umami burger on my plate.

Like Anthony Bourdain says, ““PETA doesn’t want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don’t want any animals to die-ever-and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don’t want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them  less delicious.” And we don’t want less delicious.

Just learned from my roommate about Meatless Mondays. It’s a social movement where people pick one day of the week to not eat meat to improve overall health and decrease the negative impact one has on the environment from the pollution created by processing meat.

“Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel.”

I have to ease into this no-meat thing though, so I haven’t gone the hard-core dairy-free, egg-free route yet, but maybe after I get used to not having so much animal flesh on a daily basis, I can eke in the no-cheese, no egg thing in there, too. Baby steps.

So.. Here are three recipes for a partial Meatless Monday from breakfast to lunch.. to … lunch again, I guess. I like eating grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, but that’s just me. All of these recipes were inspired by my mom’s gift of a freshly-baked loaf of wheat bran bread.

Breakfast: French Toast with Blueberry Compote

Blueberry Compote:
2 1/2 cups frozen blueberries
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water

In a small saucepan over medium heat, cook 1 1/2 cups blueberries, sugar, and water until the berries burst, about 8 minutes, while stirring constantly. Pour in remaining cup of blueberries and cook for ten more minutes until mixture coats the spoon. Serve warm. Keep refrigerated up to 3-4 days. Leftover blueberry compote is really good on top of some Greek yogurt for breakfast, too. :)

Toast:
2 slices of day-old multi-grain bread (mine was about 3/4 inch thick)
2 eggs
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
splash vanilla extract

Whisk eggs, milk, spices, and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl until fully incorporated. Pour into a pie pan. Place bread into pie pan one slice at a time, leave about 2 minutes on each side until the egg mixture is completely soaked up by the bread.

Heat a medium sized skillet over medium-low heat and coat bottom lightly with canola or vegetable oil. Place bread in the pan and cook about 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown.

Serve with powdered sugar and blueberry compote!

If you’re too lazy to make the blueberry compote, I love pouring agave nectar on top of my pancakes/waffles/french toast.

Lunch: Egg Salad Sandwich

I don’t really understand the hate that egg salad gets… I mean, yeah, if we’re talking old-school deli style where the salad is dripping mayo and seeping through the Wonder Bread, but it’s eggy and full of crunch veggies, what’s not to love?

This is just an idea for Meatless Monday. I don’t have the actual recipe for the egg salad, but here’s a good, healthy one:

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001575.html

Dinner/Second Lunch(?): Caramelized onion, Havarti, Avocado Grilled Cheese

This is probably the heaviest, least healthy recipe of the three…

My roommate decided to caramelize onions and buy Havarti cheese…. YUMMMMM.

Caramelized Onions:

3 yellow onions
Balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
olive oil

Slice the roots off of the onions and slice lengthwise to desired thickness.
Coat the bottom of a wide, heavy saute pan with olive oil and heat on medium-high until oil is fluid and moving. Add the onions and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. If the onions start browning (aka burning) too quickly, reduce the heat to medium or medium low.
After fifteen minutes, sprinkle with some sugar to help the caramelization process. Feel free to add salt and pepper to taste.
Keep a careful watch to let the onions brown and add more oil if necessary if they seem like they’re going to burn. Stir as the onions brown but not too often or they won’t get that nice, caramelized color to them. Cook for 30 more minutes, scraping the pan down and add a little balsamic vinegar to give it more flavor until the onions are richly browned.

Grilled Cheese:
2 servings

1 tablespoon butter
4 slices bread
4 slices Havarti cheese
Caramelized onions
1 avocado

Slice avocado lengthwise and set aside.

Heat medium saute pan over medium-low heat. Spread butter onto one side of each slice of bread (I only used a little butter for each side to try to ease up on fattiness or you can even just toast the bread or stick it through a panini press with no butter to make it healthier) and place butter-side down in pan. Place one slice of cheese on each slice of bread. Place hearty serving of onions on one slice of bread and top with the other slice of bread and cheese. Grill until lightly browned and flip and cook until the cheese is melted.

Remove from heat, stuff with sliced avocados, and then stuff into your face! Mmmmmmm.

Happy Meatless Monday!

//

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False! It’s January (almost February. Um, holy crap, when did that happen) and I can’t work 10+ hours a day, cut myself off from caffeine, exercise regularly, make home-cooked meals, have a fun social calendar, go home on weekends to spend time with my family, have a vibrant spiritual life, pass the CPA exam, wake up early to get cute for work, sleep 8 hours a night, and edit my blog away to my heart’s content.

Apparently, you can’t have it all. I don’t think I can have even 2-3 of those things.

What you can have is a coffee addiction, work, and eke in a taco fix occasionally.

Grungy, legit taco trucks in seedy neighborhoods with al pastor that melts in your mouth and hot sauce like an a-bomb explosion.

El Chato (Olympic & La Brea)

asada & lengua

Spontaneous midnight taco fix after gorging ourselves on cheese fondue and copious bottles of wine and screaming that we hate our lives.

Don’t hate our lives that anymore at this point. It’s the magic of the taco.

Tacos Leo (Venice & La Brea)

al pastor. with effing PINEAPPLE.

hey there, al pastor man. move closer to downtown.

There’s something comforting about standing in the freezing cold under fluorescent taco truck lights, stuffing my face with $1 al pastor tacos.

tripa, asada, lengua. dry :( the al pastor is the star of the show at Tacos Leo.

Endless salsa bar. With avocado salsa.

Yes, I did just say avocado.

If Liz could read this post, I like to think she’d say, “I WANT TO GO TO THERE.” And now, I’m going to go fix myself a sandwich with extra bread.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 23,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I haven’t been very good about blogging this year, especially these past few months after starting work and studying for the CPA, but hopefully I can make more time for it in 2012. This summary made me feel all warm and fuzzy at the end of 2011 :)

I had no idea there were visitors from every continent! Would never have imagined people from South America, Australia, and Europe popping in. 23,000 views! That’s probably a daily hit count for some of big bloggers with dedicated followings, but considering when I first started blogging, getting ten hits (mostly from my roommates and my mom) was squeal-inducing, that number is truly amazing to me.

A very special thanks to the food-porn voyeurs of the Internet.

More posts to come in 2012. I have a special project coming up soon in January.

Happy New Year!

Checked out the new Currywurst place on Fairfax with the only two people I know who’ve tried the real thing in Germany (Budapest alums.) If you don’t know what currywurst is, click here. It’s basically German street food where they toss sliced up sausages in a curry ketchup sauce.

Compared to the Berlin Currywurst in Silverlake which we tried like… 5 months ago, the verdict was:

1. Currywurst has better curry ketchup sauce. Their veal & pork bockwurst was derrrricious!

2. Currywurst has AMAZING fries. So deliciously crispy and so potato-ey at the same time. HOW DO THEY DO IT?!

Currywurst

3. And the garlic mayo. Lots of garlic. Wow.

4. Berlin Currywurst gives better bread to soak up the curry ketchup sauce. I prefer the peasant bread over the overly soft roll that they had at Currywurst.

5. Berlin Currywurst is better on the heat factor. I got the “hot” at Currywurst even though the girl at the front told me it was pretty spicy and made her mouth burn. Tasted like a mild to me. WHERE IS MAH SPICY? Next time I might just ask them to put more spicy powder on it.

Not that I know what I’m even talking about since I’ve never tried legit currywurst from Europe, but yay for street food! Even if it costs $10 here. Currywurst is pretty filling for $10 though because of the fries and the bread. We were a sad bunch, couldn’t finish two orders of fries between the three of us.

Something that both places need to work on… Getting a liquor license! Some hefewiezens por favor.

Settled for Bionade instead.

For some additional de-stressing, I also baked some cookies. Yeah, cookies. Yeah, I always bake cookies, so what.

Did you know that Trader Joe’s carries Pure Bourbon Vanilla Extract? Because I didn’t.

I know it’s Halloween, and I should be baking something orange and pumpkin-filled (I’m totes craving some good pumpkin bread by the way) and all harvest-y but when do I ever care about baking things in relation to season or festivity?

The answer is never.

I made white chocolate and cranberry cookies.  Cookies solve all my problems. Try it. Studying on a Friday night got you down? Cookie.

Work stressing you out? Cookie.

Pants getting too tight? Coo-…. Just eat it. Whatever.

Got a holiday party coming up and need to buy a dress soon? IMMA JUST EAT THESE COOKIES, WHATEVS. Nbd.

White chocolate + cranberries = Christmas colors. Is it Christmas yet??

It was 85 degrees today. But I can’t wait for them to decorate The Grove with that huge tree and tons of Christmas lights! I want to drink hot chocolate! I want to go ice-skating at Pershing Square! I want to wear my red and white mittens! I want Christmas ham! I want prime rib!!! I want Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars!!!

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon bourbon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white chocolate chips
3/4 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and brandy. Combine the flour and baking soda; stir into the sugar mixture. Mix in the white chocolate chips and cranberries. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. For best results, take them out while they are still doughy. Allow cookies to cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

(Note. I should’ve let these sit in the fridge overnight so they would be more chewy. But some people like soft cookies I guess. I, on the other hand, like crispy and chewy. I’d probably do it over with melted butter.)

Those days are long, long gone.

Woke up this morning feeling haggardly.

Opened my CPA book and wanted to shoot myself in the foot.

Girl’s gotta eat.

I opened my fridge to a barren, whitewalled tundra. I see green onions. Anchovies. Eggs. Yogurt. Cheese. Jam. Fifty persimmons. Luckily, at least got some dumplings in the freezer. I really need to buy some freaking groceries.

I kind of just eye-balled everything. Mandoo-guk is pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make. This is just one serving. Man, cooking for one is sad sometimes.

Mandoo-guk (Korean dumpling soup)

Dried kelp (dasima) about 1 leaf(?)
5 big dried anchovies
1 stalk of green onion
1 egg
1-2 teaspoons soy sauce to taste
3-6 dumplings (I used 3 huge kimchi mandoo)

In a pot over medium heat, lightly saute the anchovies for about a minute. Add about 3-4 cups of water and bring to a high boil over medium high heat. Once the water is at a high boil, lower the heat to medium-low, add the dasima and soy sauce, and boil for about twenty minutes to make the broth.

While the broth is cooking, diagonally slice the green onion. Separate the egg yolk from the egg white and beat both. Over medium-low heat, pan fry the separated eggs like a thin omelette. Slice thinly and put aside.

After the broth has been cooked, remove the anchovies and dasima and throw away and bring broth to a rolling boil. Add dumplings and boil until fully cooked, about 3-5 minutes depending on what kind of dumplings you use. Just use the instructions on the package. Add the green onions 1 minute before the dumplings are done. Serve topped with the eggs.

EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY!

You can always add garlic, rice cakes, seaweed, sesame seeds, pepper, etc. but since this is all that I have, poor man’s version of mandoo guk. I miss my mom’s cooking. She makes it look so easy.