Not Every Adventure is a Success

I have an obsessive attraction to Japanese food. Lately my favourite dish is broiled or grilled miso eggplant, so when I came home today with a purple eggplant under my arm, I knew just what I wanted to do with it.

What is miso? Miso is basically a paste made from fermented soybeans. A few weeks ago I bought a package of miso soup mix which included 8 packages of miso paste and 8 packages of tofu cubes, seaweed, and green onion. I didn't like the miso soup but thought maybe I could salvage it and use the paste with this eggplant. I took a real risk with this because I couldn't find any recipes that didn't involve making the paste on your own. I looked at a few recipes to see the process that was used.

I started by slicing the eggplant in rounds about half an inch thick. I read in one recipe that Japanese eggplant has a thinner skin, and if you choose to use American eggplant it is best to score the outside. I then soaked the eggplant rounds in water. 

Eggplant floats so I had to improvise a bit!

In the meantime I squeezed out 5 little packages of miso paste. It is quite bitter and the dish should be sweet so I added a teaspoon of sugar and about half a teaspoon of ginger powder (I like to use ingredients that I have on hand).

After soaking the eggplant for 10 minutes, I then patted the rounds dry and arranged them on an oiled baking sheet and brushed them with a bit of oil. With the oven tray at the top rack, I broiled the eggplant for about 8 minutes until the rounds became slightly browned. I took them out and spread my doctored miso paste on the top of the rounds. I placed them back in the oven for another 8 minutes until they became soft. The smell was delicious and they looked amazing!

Unfortunately the taste was not so amazing... I had only used half the eggplant rounds so instead of giving up I decided to sprinkle the rest of the rounds with soy sauce and honey and baked them at 350F for about 10 minutes.

From here I have 2 options. I can try to make miso eggplant from scratch another time, or leave it to my favourite Japanese restaurants to prepare perfectly. At this point I haven't decided which I will opt for.

Adventures involve taking risks, trying new things, and hoping for a positive outcome. As the title of this week's Adventure in Domestication states, "not every adventure is a success." To be an adventurer you accept the possibility that not everything will work out perfectly, because if everything worked out all the time, it wouldn't be an adventure at all!

Apples Apples Everywhere

I want to start out this week's entry with a correction to a previous blog post. In this post I mentioned the Gap's Recycle Your Blues program and wrote that if you "Like" their facebook page, The Gap will give you an additional 10% discount on top of the 30% that they give for recycling your old jeans. Unfortunately the additional 10% off is only available in the US. I apologize for this misinformation!

On to new and exciting things...

This week's Adventure in Domestication is a crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, perfectly sweetened, fall treat. I had the opportunity to go apple picking at an orchard outside of the city and I came home with about 25 apples of different varieties. As you may already know, I live on my own, and can't eat 25 apples before they go bad! I did some research online about different recipes that call for apples. I have never been a fan of baked apples and apple pies and cobblers so I wanted to try something a little different.

One recipe that really caught my eye was this one for Apple Latkes. This recipe called for ingredients that I already have in my home, it seemed pretty easy, and promised to be delicious.

I would be lying if I told you this adventure wasn't challenging, and I realized the benefit of certain kitchen tools like food processors and egg beaters...and whisks.

I started out by peeling the apples with a potato peeler. I prepared a bowl with cold water and some lemon juice for the apples so that they wouldn't begin to brown.

 

When the apples were peeled I cut out the core and grated them with the only grater I own. It has smaller holes than a standard grater, which meant more work for me but the end result was more what I was looking for than if I had used a standard grater. When my mom makes potato latkes for Channukah she purees the potato rather than grating it, so the consistency of my apples actually came out a lot like the way my mom does it, which I love. I added the lemon juice and sugar to the apple mixture and set it aside.

I washed, cracked, and separated 2 eggs with ease. But here is where it got challenging. The recipe says, "in separate bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form; beat in remaining sugar until stiff peaks form." To me, this implies that you own an egg beater...or a whisk...I seem to own neither of these so I settled with a good old trusty fork and started beating the egg whites. 10 minutes later they started to get a bit foamy but they weren't forming any type of 'peaks'. 

20 minutes later I was still working away at the foam, but still no peaks. I decided to add the sugar even though the egg white hadn't formed soft peaks and continued to beat.With a tired arm I looked online for tips for beating egg whites. Following the advice, I added a splash of lemon juice to the foam and kept trying to make it work. I even tried using 2 fork to beat the egg whites but another 10 minutes passed and although the egg had fluffed up quite a bit, it wasn't forming the peaks that the recipe called for. I considered giving up and eating the apple mixture as apple sauce but I questioned how important the consistency of the eggs really was and decided to use it as is!

I beat the egg yolks (soooo much easier than the whites), added the flour and cinnamon, and folded in my sad excuse for egg whites.

I heated a large pan with canola oil and fried up the latkes. But

instead of just frying them like the recipe calls for, I decided to once again incorporate in my mom's way of making potato latkes. I fried them on both sides until the outside was golden brown, and then I baked them slowly at 350 degrees until the insides were no longer overly soft.

The end result was delicious and I am happy that I was able to use some of the apples in an original way.

Now what to do with the rest of them?

No Flyers Please

Happy Thanksgiving to you! I will be celebrating this lovely Thanksgiving long weekend by cleaning up my apartment a bit. The last few weeks have been busy and although I am sad to admit it, the cleanliness and tidiness of my home has suffered...how undomestic of me!

The best thing about cleaning up your neglected living space is how much more organized and welcoming it feels. I always find that when my apartment is cluttered it makes everything harder to find and I feel stressed by the overwhelming amount of things that need to be done. A cluttered home = a cluttered mind. And that is a scientifically proven mathematical equation. Sure I could try to shove all that clean laundry that is sitting in a pile on my desk into my closet and dresser drawers. Sure I could pick up all those flyers I never looked at and throw them in a bag to be recycled. Sure I could probably even take the recycling downstairs. But I prefer to do one step at a time here people.

Here is a cool initiative from The Gap that may help you clean out your closet a bit.

It's called Recycle Your Blues. Until October 20th you can take in your overly worn, never worn, or worn-once-but-spilled-paint-on-them jeans and get 30% off a new pair (that you will hopefully be a bit more careful with next time, please). And if you "Like" it on facebook they will give you another 10% off! Not bad, not bad at all. That's all fine and dandy but what's going to happen with those jeans? They will recycled and turned into cotton insulation and donated to disadvantaged communities.

"The Gap and Cotton Incorporated collected more than 270,000 pairs of jeans last March for their first denim drive. The donated jeans were converted into insulation for 500 homes in need, and for projects including Hurricane rebuilding efforts".

As for those flyers that obnoxiously pollute my front hallway everyday, I am putting up a No Flyers sign.

Do you have ways you reduce the clutter in your home?

giving birds homes

How about a quick friend's foible to start the weekend up early.

I have a friend who fancies himself a pie baker,
With minimal attention given to the spice shaker.
The cleansing effects were second to none,
He went home to figure out what he had done.
What we thought was cinnamon in his blueberry pie,
Was spicy cayenne pepper...it was worth a try.

This week's Adventure in Domestication happened during breakfast. I love having eggs for breakfast. They are a great source of protein, they're filling, inexpensive, and delicious. On any other day I would have something boring like cereal or oatmeal or toast with jam. Maybe if I had some extra time I would cook up an egg and eat it with toast. If I was really lucky and had a lot of time maybe I would cut up some vegetables and make an omelet or some turkey bacon. Today I had class at 10, with a bit of extra time but not a ton. I didn't want a heavy breakfast like oatmeal and I find cereal doesn't get me through until lunch.

A friend recently posted about this website Gina's Skinny Recipes. I am especially interested in any of the recipes that are healthier variations of my favourite foods, particularly those that incorporate vegetables into otherwise vegetable-less meals.

As a kid my dad would sometimes make 'Birds in a Nest'. It is a piece of bread, buttered, with a hole cut out in the centre. You crack an egg into the hole and give the bird a home...in your stomach. This recipe is a variation on Birds in a Nest where instead of a piece of bread with a hole in the middle, you use large rings of bell peppers and eat as is or put it on toast! How amazing does that sound!?

Here is a LINK to this recipe but I will summarize it here.

I have never done this before but I decided to rinse the shells of the eggs before cracking. I did this for a few reasons. First, Salmonella may be on the outside of the shell and the contents might slide along the outside of the shell before hitting the pan. Most people check egg cartons by touching and looking at each egg to make sure no eggs are cracked, so a variety of other bacteria could be on the shell of the eggs from other consumer's hands. And also, because I like the yolk to be runny, the entire egg will not be fully cooked. Take from that what you will, I will be rinsing my eggs from now on.

 

I melted margarine in a pan and let the pan heat up. Just as the recipe suggests, I cooked the red bell pepper rings for about a minute before adding the eggs.

I cracked the eggs into the centre of the pepper rings. Because I like my egg yolk to be runny but my egg whites to be cooked, I turned the heat down to low and covered the the pan with a baking sheet. I find this helps to keep the heat in and cook the white without overcooking the yolk.

When the egg white was cooked and almost at a consistency that I was happy with, I flipped the pepper and egg over and let it sit for only a few seconds to allow any runny egg white to cook a bit more. It's very time sensitive because if you leave it for too long, the egg yolk with start to cook and won't be runny.

I ate one pepper ring on a piece of toast and the other on its own.

I like it more on the toast because it soaked up the runny egg yolk.

I'll admit that Gina's breakfast looked a lot better than mine but I was happy with the results and would definitely make this again for breakfast. It didn't take long and with a glass of milk you are getting all 4 food groups and lots of great energy to start off your day.

If you have any great tips on cooking eggs I would love to hear them. Eggs are the most fragile of foods and I just love to give birds homes.

thrust into domestication

Welcome to my blog Adventures in Domestication. See my About Me section for more information on why I started this blog and what it means to me to be tapping into my inner domestic goddess.

I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta with an excellent cook for a mother. Like a lot of young girls, I would help my mom to cut up vegetables, brown ground beef, beat eggs, and even lick the spatula while a cake was in the oven. Although I took an interest in cooking and baking, I have never been very good at either.

Let me share some memorable cooking and baking screw ups with you:

Foible #1: I once made Black Bottom Cupcakes and forgot to put sugar in the batter, but managed to make the icing perfectly sweet...unfortunately not sweet enough to make the cupcake part edible.


Foible #2: I tried to help my parents out by putting frozen stuffed chicken breasts and french fries in the oven for dinner one night when they were running late. I was so proud that I timed the meal out perfectly by adding the french fries 20 minutes after the chicken. Somehow I managed to set the oven to 150F rather than 150C and by the time my parents got home to see how helpful it was, the chicken was still frozen and sitting in the oven slowly thawing rather than baking.


I've had many more events like this and for awhile it really prevented me from cooking for myself, let alone anyone else, but, I have come to realize that everyone has made mistakes like this. In fact, I encourage you to send your stories in to me and I can feature them on my blog.


In September 2009 I moved to Toronto and was forced into cooking for myself. In the last year I have gone out to restaurants for lunch and dinner far too many times. As I slowly began to cook more meals for myself and other people, hallelujah! they actually turned out and I was complimented on my cooking. This school year I have made it my goal to cook for myself more often, take lunch to school everyday, to incorporate vegetables into as many meals as possible, and to be more creative! So far it has worked and I want to share my ideas and time and money saving tips with you.

Who are you? Whether you are a 20 something woman also new to living on her own and thrust into having to cook for herself like I am, or a 60 year old man going through a divorce who has also never really cooked for himself, or someone in between. Whoever you are I hope you will find something interesting in this blog and send me stories and feedback.

BRIANNE