Algorithmic Recipies

Grilled/baked/airfried veggy / protein
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Stir fried veggies / fruit / protein
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Soy sauce / other savory sauces (magi, bragg's liquuid aminos, anchovy sauces like nouc mam; Worcestershire)
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Spices/seasonings
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Starch base of your choice (rice, pasta noodles, mashed potatoes, fries, etc.)


This'll serve you and everyone you love well.

Play with rinds and peels too--orange, banana, mango all have edible skins so clean those thoroughly, chop and cook as appropriate.

Tastes like French Colonialism!

Slice of Brie cheese + Club Cracker topped with Sriracha.

Thunky Pancakes: a very southeastern culinary jam

 Thick+chunky pancake batter = thunky

Made this in the DC region with my friend, Danny makes this an southeast of southeast Michigan culinary adventure.

I'm forgetting the exact ingredients now--highlights included using:
+ create a mix of almond meal, flax seed, walnuts, and some other substance to form the
+ a touch of vanilla, cinnamon, and all spice
+ possibly soy or almond milk and water

This made an incredibly substantive mix which literally would "thunk" on the pan. One pancake is so dense it makes a satisfying breakfast in itself.

Ready to flip!

We'd later top it with a smoothie of blueberries, apple, and other fruits. Plus either ice cream or yogurt.

Not pictured: we literally sketched out our plans before topping the pancakes

Mine (blueberry-banana-apple-spinach center mass, apple-banana blend radiating, topped with ice cream & almonds + apple slice)


For our first trial, Danny went all out with the blended fruits, same ingredients, hearty proportions.

Sourcing a pie

I asked my friend where the rest of the ingredients came from:

"I love when my food is largely locally sourced but other than the fruit that pie sadly wasn't.  The berries were from the UP.  Flour was organic King Arthur. Sugar and butter were from the grocery store as was the lemon juice."

In the U.S., the state of Michigan ranks second in agricultural diversity only to the state of California. It’s possible that the sugar came from beets, and beets are a substantial crop here in Michigan. It’s possible the butter could have come from Michigan as well. The salt-might have come from Detroit—an ocean once covered the state and though few people know it, salt mining remains an active industry in Detroit. And while I don’t know where King Arthur flour comes from (perhaps Kansas?), Michigan also grows varieties of wheat suitable for pastries and cakes.

Aside from the lemon (which likely comes from the state of Florida), Michigan has the ability to provide most of what we need for a pie made from rather local ingredients. Though there are people passionate about getting good food that supports their local communities, it’s a challenge even for us to know where it all comes from.

Salt could have come from Detroit:

http://detroitsalt.com/

http://www.mortonsalt.com/our-company/our-locations

http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2001184,00.html

Flour--maybe from Kansas? King Arthur Flour

...

I wound up adapting (and finishing!) this to introduce myself as a strategist for ISMOTION's educational programs--go read it there!!! http://ismotion.co/introducing-ian-with-ingredients-for-adventure/

EDIT: Had to change the link as the company website changed and we lost all the embedded links and many of the images too. :-( On the bright side, I remember one link: if sound could uniformly represent taste for everyone, I'm pretty sure it the pie would sound like the song embedded.

"Wasabi is not hot, if..."

I just tried a piece of chili cherry dark chocolate, and a Japanese co-worker who didn't like hot flavors, and thus the chocolate because it had hot chilies in it said:

"Wasabi is not hot."

 We were surprised, as he certainly had wasabi before.  We asked him to clarify.


"if chili is defined as hot, wasabi is a different sensation."

I asked if it's because of the way wasabi attacks the senses, and he affirmed the distinction.  I've then concluded this:

Wasabi is not hot, it's malicious.

Sweet summer pies & a snippet of scientific inquiry!

This summer's been filled with memorable and very heartening pies indeed!

First: A generous gesture of kindness 
Blueberry Pie at a technical conference
Kindness in the form of an Amish blueberry pie gifted to me by a duo of Kansas professors.  We shared a dorm at Alfred State College in upstate New York for a technical conference on sustainability in higher education.  As I've written elsewhere, most people I know of suit up to power network, I treat it like a sport.  But the people there savored the good conversations that arose from the event and over meals sourced from the campus and nearby farms.  It must have been the most humane sustainability conference I've ever attended (I even titled a new viola tune of mine and wrote an essay called "emotive mechanics" thanks to the experience).

While the pie was way too sugary, diabetes by the first bite, the story and trip made it worthwhile: they bought the pie from a stand on the side of a country road run by two Amish girls, had a slice during the conference (no one had utensils available) and gave it to me before they departed for the airport.  For me, the pie reaffirms the value of a personable story.

Second: Wondrous pie
Huckleberry Pie--the finest pie I've had yet & a taste of curiosity

If sound could represent taste, I'm pretty sure it would be akin to the joys heard in this song (if you're a synasthesiac--where you taste sounds, let me know if it's a good approximation).

Just the right sweetness from the berries and sensible use of sugar, with a crispy salted crust and topped with delectable crumbles made a wonderful counterpoint in texture and taste.  Best of all, made by a friend to enjoy at the end of an excellent meal with her family!

Huckleberries are new to me--I thought they'd be a fruit of the South thanks to Samuel Clemens' (AKA Mark Twain's) book Huckleberry Finn, and the accent of Huckleberry Hound, the cartoon.  My friend picked these fresh from a farm in the Upper Peninsula (before freezing them for safe keeping).  Even her father was curious about their origin and distinguishing features.  We speculated that blueberries were a commercialized agricultural cultivar of the huckleberry.  Our reasoning:

1) blueberries tend to be larger,
and
2) huckleberries tend to be sweeter.

To substantiate that line of thought, the best fruit I've ever had was from foraging a wild strawberry native to Michigan before a storm in May at the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Environmental Interpretive Center (even captured the moment in shaky video!).  If you've seen them (or watched the video) commercial strawberries are huge, and frequently nearly flavorless.

After consultation with whatever scientific consensus I could find through an un-scholarly and brief google search, I learned that our joint hypothesis was incorrect.  Huckleberries are a different species altogether, and their ranges differ too (I'm guessing we ate the fruits of Vaccinium membranaceum).

In any case, the findings have no bearing on how much I enjoyed sharing the pie and evening with everyone at a table in Traverse City.

Hotel Cuisine: Ironed toast? Hardboiled egg.

In the Windy City's downtown, everything's expensive. That's why I got groceries as soon as I arrived to make my own meals.  Chicago's notorious for charging steep prices.  So too are their hotels.  On my first day at the AWMA conference, I decided to partake in the breakfast buffet at the Hyatt.  During a luxurious meal, I thought to myself "how wonderful that this conference includes breakfast!"  And then I was approached by a waiter with a $26 bill.

So, the plan for the week: get groceries, cook my own food--in the hotel!

Edit (commentary from the video):
I've accomplished hardboiled and poached eggs.

Eggs were microwaved for about 4 minutes. The orange had no effect on the flavor. I had concerns about sparking, so I added orange peels to the mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrY0aC...
The concerns about sparks came from rusty memory having read this: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/...

I didn't have time to do the toast the next day. I don't adapt to professional conference schedules as quickly as I hope sometimes...