Another Tasty Recipe

As promised, here's the recipe a couple residents and I made for an Iron Chef competition. Bear in mind that I have no idea of the proportions, so you're free to interpret it as you will, and substitute accordingly. It's a pretty basic dish that can clearly be changed based on your tastes and ingredients on hand.

Portuguese-Inspired Rice Patties

Patty Mixture

1-1 1/2 cups of rice, sticky or sushi preferred
1-2 onions, diced
1 lb. mushrooms, chopped finely
salt, pepper, garlic and thyme to taste
grated cheese (we used cheddar, but any kind would work)

Blackberry Sauce

1 carton blackberries
garlic to taste
water

Boil the rice until cooked. While the rice is cooking, sautee the onions and mushrooms together with oil and spices. Mix rice and mushroom mixture together in a large bowl with cheese. The resulting mixture should stick together well. Form mixture into small balls and fry in a pan with oil until brown. Tip: use plastic wrap to form balls, as it makes the step much cleaner and easier.

Create the blackberry reduction by cooking down the blackberries, garlic, and water in a pot until smooth.

When finished, drizzle blackberry sauce onto patties and serve.

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This can be done in many ways, using any kind of ingredients you want. We used onions and mushrooms, but any other vegetable (or meat) would do nicely as well. The foundational ingredients are the rice and cheese (and the cheese can be varied as well), so after that, it's up to you!

Nutcases

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
- Kurt Vonnegut

I don't know if you watched the last Democratic debate tonight, but while it rehashed many of the same sticking points each candidate has with one another, and went over the nuances of the health care packages of both ad nauseam, it was good to see them talk yet again. And once more, in my opinion, Obama comes off as the reasoned and gracious debater, if a bit rough around the edges, while Clinton's scathing sarcasm and pointed remarks about Obama did more to damage her image than his.

So be on the lookout next Tuesday, because if Hillary doesn't win Ohio and Texas, it could be over for her....

Creamy Vegan Rice Pudding

Sounds like it would be really weird/bad, but it's incredibly fast and good! The soymilk still makes it creamy, but it feels a lot lighter than rice pudding normally is. All in all, tasty as a dessert, snack, or dare I say, breakfast?

Next I'll post my resident's winning recipe for these awesome rice patty blackberry things. I need to come up with a better name, but they were darn tasty and won us the house's Iron Chef competition. :)

Vegan Rice Pudding

2 cups water
1 cup Arborio rice (or any rice really)
3 cups vanilla soy milk
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch salt
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
(I also added raisins)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Bring the water to a boil in a medium sized, heavy, ovenproof saucepan. Add the rice, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes, until rice is nearly cooked. In a large bowl, whisk the soymilk, sugar, and salt. When the rice is cooked and still hot, add the soymilk mixture and cinnamon stick. Cover, place in the oven and cook for 45 minutes. Rehydrate the raisins (optional ingredient) by pouring boiling water over them, and let sit for 5 minutes. Drain.

Remove from the oven, uncover, and remove the cinnamon stick. Stir in the vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and raisins. Pudding will be slightly liquidy; the liquid will continue to absorb into the rice and thicken as the pudding cools. Dust with cinnamon and nutmeg, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I <3 PostSecret

99

It is officially 99 days until I graduate! It's a mixed bag, because I'm realizing more and more how much I want to graduate, but I'm still not totally ready for the change. I guess the Heinz School will be my buffer period. :)

In other news, I fell in love with a new art form: hot glass. Today was the first day of my glass-blowing class, and it was incredibly fun. I'm looking forward to my next classes, and actually getting to make something (which won't happen for several weeks).

I also saw Across the Universe last night, a.k.a. one of the best movies I've seen in a while. They really GOT The Beatles, and the cast performed the songs so well. The arrangements of the songs were also great. Plus, Jim Sturgess is just hot.

All in all, rather random. But yay!

Improv Everywhere

I recently stumbled upon this awesome organization (thank you Angela!) and find it one of the most refreshing things I've seen in a while. A group of people getting together to do something outrageous and random, to make strangers laugh (or get angry, or puzzle them, depending). I particularly like the No Pants mission.

After seeing what they've done, I really want to participate. I think it would be a ton of fun, and it totally fits me, because I love doing random things that connect people. However, I also tend to be one with some inhibitions to overcome in order to do things like this, and subsequently don't do it enough. So being involved in a mission with a lot of other people doing the same thing would help break them.