Brandon Eats

Bad Food, Part II

It really does take a crack on the head or a knife in the gut to make me pay attention.

So, I made this terrible quiche. It wasn't the first gluten-free baking that I've done, but it does symbolize all of the kitchen disasters that  I've been having lately.

Fear has crept into my cooking. Or is it despair? A who-cares-what-I-make attitude that sums up the spoiled, gluten-free brat I've become? Or fear + despair - attention = crap food?

That freakin' quiche up there. All of it's creamy custard made out of backyard eggs and milk fresh from the cow (not mine, someone else's) was absorbed by the stupid, yet tasty gluten-free crust. Oh, but wait. First this happened.

Every recipe I scanned for advice said to use a tart pan. ALL OF THEM. I'd never used a tart pan before when making quiche, but I had one and figured I'd give it a whirl. Wrong. The hateful gluten-free crust was too soft, and you can see (kind of — I quicky grabbed my phone, and I think it was steamed up from the ridiculously hot temperatures in the kitchen that other day) what happens when quiche liquid melts big, gaping holes in a crust in a tart pan with a removable bottom.

So much for quiche lorraine. The ingredients were now gone, gone to the trash when I tossed the whole thing away. I could have scraped the bacon and onions out, maybe added a little cheese and a new custard mixture, right? No. Not at all. The crust somehow dissolved during the time that I took my picture, called in the dogs to clean the floor, and snatched up the tart-pan-with-the-removable-bottom. Besides, who wanted quiche lorraine anyway?

Me.

(more after the jump)

Bad Food, Part I

Terrible quiche is a tragic thing. I blame it on my stomach.

Going gluten-free hasn't been easy. I have no plansto make this a blog about gluten-free food, although suddenly that's exactly what my meals are all about. I've always eaten everything, and abstinence is not my forte.

When I quit smoking in grad school, it wasn't primarily for health reasons. (♪♫ la la la ♫♪ . . . stick with me) In fact, it probably would have been better for my mental stability to have continued to smoke. The problem was that I had this terrible headache. That lasted for five months. This was a mother of a headache — it was the Grendel's mother of a headache. It was there when I woke up, insistently tapping on the wrong side of my skull, and then slowly and with increasing fury, it would pound away behind my eyes, trying to escape in the hopes that it could punch me a few times from the outside, too.

By 8 p.m., the most I could do was lie on the floor of my awful one-room hovel in Charlottesville and moan quietly. I was told that if I stopped smoking and drinking coffee, the headache would go away. I thought dropping out of grad school might be more effective, but the doctor insisted that I humor him.

So I did, because I was desperate. And my headache went away. I waited for it to come back so that I could start smoking again, but it was gone, baby, gone. Which kind of pissed me off.I almost lost my mind without a cigarette — it wasn't one-day-at-a-time but five-minutes-at-a-time. For weeks. When the headache made a brief reappearance, I'd decided that because quitting smoking was so insanely hard, I wasn't ever going to do it again. I still don't smoke, although every once in a while, sweet friends, I still want a cigarette.

(more after the jump)

Pizza Party at the Lamplighter

An invitation to a great event!

The Big Lebowski Urban Achievers have teamed up with and Pizza Tonight and Lamplighter Roasting Company to present an epic pizza party to celebrate reproductive freedom. Join us on April 3rd in celebrating access to crucial funding and support.

A $25 ticket gets you a fresh green salad, a rustic wood-fired pizza of your choice from our specially selected Pizza Tonight menu and a gourmet dessert. The menu will include vegan, vegetarian and meat options. Stay tuned to the blog for a sneak peak at the menu and more!

ALL profits go to the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project who seek to further reproductive justice by providing practical and financial support for abortion services in Virginia and surrounding communities. RRFP strives to be a resource to the community by engaging in grassroots advocacy for the full spectrum of reproductive rights.

Tickets are limited to 50, so follow this link to get yours now!

 

Maybe Magical Meals?

Desperate, desperate nights. Nights when dinner seems impossible but everyone's hungry. Half the family wants to go out and the other half thinks that it's a crazy idea. Rifling through the cupboards and rummaging through the freezer. Can you make dinner out of frozen corn and that jar of black bean garlic sauce you bought at the Asian market? No? Are you sure?

This seems to be every night at our house, especially since I went back to work. I kept thinking that I would magically figure out how to work AND provide my family with meals and clean clothes but I still haven't gotten the hang of it. Pete Wells, editor of the New York Times Dining section wrote a wonderful piece about a similar inability to magically make meals happen every, single night at home.

I can't believe it's true — I love to cook but I don't want to cook because I'm too tired.

More after the jump

The Shifting Sands of Memory

I have no idea what this is. I mean, I know it's chicken and that it looks really delicious.

A Plum By Any Other Name

On our trip last summer, we all ate buckets of lovely Reine-Claudes, little green plums that tasted like they'd been bathed in honey (above you'll see a bowl of Reine-Claudes along with yellow mirabelles). I searched around when I got home but I couldn't find any here in the US, until I realized that Reine-Claudes are actually greengages. This isn't particularly helpful, because if you live outside of England and don't have a grandmother with a farm that's been in her family for generations with a lot of heirloom fruit trees, you still can't find them anywhere. At least in Virginia.

You can find preserves, however. One jar is outrageously expensive but what do you expect? YOU CAN'T FIND GREENGAGES ANYWHERE. 

As you can see above, the preserves I brought back from France are dangerously low and have, in fact, been hidden away from children at this point. I will continue to eat them in secret, topping butter-soaked slices of thick toast, until every last remnant has been scraped away. And when I buy my next jar, the key, I think, is to never let anyone else know I have it.