Exploration 1: A Day of Veggies & Something I Made Up*
I understand that my excitement within having a complete vegetarian friendly day might get lost in translation. It's just vegetables, right? Right. As I am sure many of you can understand, I love meat. It sounds weird, I know, that I'm in such rigorous pursuit for a diet of mainly vegetables, fruit and starches. I love sandwiches, supreme and pepperoni pizza, pork chops, cheeseburgers, steak, fried chicken - I could go on and on. I really do love eating meat. When I report that I'm doing good on the vegetable streak, I really am excited because this is a journey!
Now that we're all on the same page. Lately I have been doing rather excellent on the all veggie mission. I'll admit that every so often I might dig into the bag of deer jerky that's sitting on the counter. It's not the same as we make it back on the reservation, but it's jerky. Who doesn't love jerky? But just a nibble here and there. And last night I did pop three small pigs-in-a-blanket into my mouth. The girls had them for dinner and I didn't see a point in saving them as they were already left overs from two nights ago and I thought it wasteful to throw them away.
So I ate them.
Looking at the bigger picture, however, I am doing rather excellent. For example, yesterday I fixed myself a beautiful omelet consisting of spinach, cherry tomatoes and provolone cheese. I had it for breakfast with a side of toast with jam and a tangerine.
I don't think I've mentioned in this blog yet, but sometime recently my body decided it wants nothing to do with caffeine, especially coffee. It came at a huge surprise as I was the guy who was always downing three or four cups of coffee and loading up on energy drinks. Within that, occasionally I will take a break (I just get tired of it.) About three weeks ago now, as I staggered around the house to wake up in the early hours of the mornings I got a pot of coffee percolating. I had somewhere around three large cups.
Some 18 hours later I found myself tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. I tried everything and frankly, I couldn't figure out what the hell was the matter. It was a rather busy day and I hadn't napped. Even after feeling fatigued in the late afternoon, after I caught my second breath I just took of running and couldn't stop. I ended up with a little over two hours of sleep and felt like shit the entire next day.
I considered the thought it might have been the coffee, but NOT ME!
About a week later, I helped myself to some coffee my sister brewed. One small cup at 7 a.m. Come 2 p.m., as we sat waiting for an appointment, I held up my hand, "Look."
She looked up to see my hand obviously shaking. "Do you have low blood sugar?" She asked.
"No. It's the coffee. I feel jittery."
Then again, come 11 p.m. when it was time to wind down, I was having trouble sleeping.
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| Ingredient list for breakfast: Eggs, Milk, Tomatoes, Spinach and Cheese |
I wasn't up all night, but I didn't a good night's sleep. So, I've scaled back to black tea on some mornings.
I enjoy knowing how I became a tea drinker and feel like it's a noteworthy story to share. You see, I come from a family of black tea drinkers, but its presence is a living example and reminder of the traumatic history my people, the Shoshone-Paiute Native Americans, suffered. Here's how....
My grandmother's grandma was sent to a boarding school in her youth, a practice common during that time. It was where she'd be taught English and customers acceptable in "proper" American society. She would also be discouraged from speaking her own language, often beated if she were caught doing so.
The school was run by British nuns who enforced their tea-time rituals upon the pupils. In turn, my great-grandma introduced my grandma and her sisters to the idea of "tea-time" as a young girl. She'd yell out the front, "OK girls, tea-time! Come inside," my grandma recalled. Although not as lavish as upper English society, their grandma had green tea waiting with biscuits of some sort.
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| Before the flip |
I come from a family of tea drinkers which I think is odd for the reservation, let alone from American society, but at the same time extraordinarily unique.
I am not stranger to tea. One custom I have adopted since my youth that sets me outside the practices of my family, I come to enjoy it with some milk or cream.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my adopted mom asked for some vegetarian breakfast ideas and after sending her a handful of recipes, I felt behooved to try something outside my eggs and toast, cold cereal or oatmeal - an omelets.
Please note, I've never actually made an omelet. I've had them. I've seen how they are done. But I've never done it. Well, I've never done it successfully. Many a time I have started out with that intention, but due to some mishap it ended up as scrambled eggs with stuff in it.
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| After the flip |
Taking everything I ever watched, I mimicked motions from memory. Everything from the well coated, small skillet to the constant working of the edges with a spatula and even how to train the runny part to the sides to let it cook. An omelet really is constantly in motion. It's like a dance.
When it came time to turn it, I panicked, but only a little. I tried first just to cold the omelet hoping that the inside would cook sufficiently after a few minutes. But when it became apparent that it wasn't going to work and my good-looking breakfast was about to make a left turn to scrambled egg with stuff-ville. I went to plan B. Flipping it.
My house mom in Reno taught me this, as it's how she turned her eggs. I delicate but well timed flip. My heart started to race with the understanding my omelet fit my skillet and my skillet wasn't all that big. Margin for error, not very big. In the past, I have failed a time or two where the flip missed the skillet if not a little, then by a lot. But as it seemed, that was the only way I was going to flip this beauty.
AND HE STICKS IT! (Crowd goes wild!!!!)
I actually did it. Rather perfectly too, may I add. I was very pleased with myself. I was just sad there was no one else up at that time or morning to share my victory with.Not long after breakfast was served.
Then for breakfast, we still had left overs that were getting over stocked in the fridge. Right in front of me, penne pasta from a dish my sister made a couple nights ago. I decided to fry that up with oil and garlic. Simple, but delicious. I may cheated a little as I added a dash of Italian seasoning, pepper and salt just to get it a little boost. For a side, a heaping of salad with that beautiful onion vinaigrette I talked about at the start of this blog.
Come dinner, I wanted to pull out the ingredients to get the black bean chili going. After I opened the fridge, the left overs needed to move. In our small fridge, their plastic containers were taking up too much space. So I reached for the bok choy stir fry and another dish...I can't remember what it was. Before I placed them in the microwave, I realized I didn't want these. I barely enjoyed them the first time.
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| Lunch |
Bleh! .... Compost it is!
While doing the motions required to move that to there and there to here and this to that, I came across the open pack of tortillas from a couple weeks ago when I made the enchiladas. (I still remember them, they were THAT GOOD. If you haven't tried them, go back and do it. You can thank me later.)
If I didn't use the rest of the tortillas they would get hard and go bad. Burritos! That's something I've been wanting to try. And it would be fast.
So that's what I had for dinner, what's even more smitten about it. I completely made up the recipe. I was feeling creative.
I started with getting my steamed rice going. Understanding that not a whole lot would go into these burritos so if I didn't find a way to zest things up, it would be very boring. That's no Bueno.
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| It might not look like it, but this is my rice before it's cooked |
I don't know why cumin. I just notice that a lot of Mexican recipes call for cumin. I have no idea what it does, or what it tastes like or why it's needed, but it's in like everything - so it was going into my rice. Then I let it boil and do it's steaming thing.
I dumped the contents of the black bean can into a sauce pan to heat up. Once upon a time when I lived in Oklahoma, I went through a cooking phase. Something much like I'm doing now. Except then I wasn't blogging about it, I was just doing it and usually had people over to feed or to share with. Including my downstairs neighbor who I was still off and on having food rivals with.
One of the recipes I came across was one containing black beans. It wasn't a dish, but just as a side item. It was simple but I remember it making the beans taste extraordinary. A tad spicy, but wonderfully good. I don't know what happened to that recipe and I only made it once. I really wasn't much into eating black beans back then.
As I stared into the pot of black, shiny lumps I pondered on that recipe. Then I grabbed some cilantro, chili powder, garlic and did things similar to what I could recall while improvising the rest. Toss in a handful of cilantro there, about a tablespoon of chili powder, a dash or two of garlic, and just for fun I split my diced onion. Placing half in the beans to cook with it and leaving the rest raw to spread on top.
When the rice was ready, it was time to eat.
I placed the rice in the center of the tortilla, covered it was some beans, onions, cheese, and salsa. Then dug in. Ideally, I would have liked to have folded my tortilla to make it like a burrito instead of the taco it was. I guess I should have said I made tacos...screw it! They were burritos, they just looked like tacos.
Leave me alone. I know that makes no sense.
There was something missing. But with that, it was still good. I had three before I realized I was full. I'll have the left overs for lunch today. It wasn't a hard dish and I was satisfied that I made my first dish unguided! That is progress if you ask me. I'M STARTING TO LEARN HOW TO NAVIGATE IN THE KITCHEN!
So we'll call it a wrap for today and we'll pick it back up in a couple of days.
If you want to try making the Burrito/Tacos I made up, here's the breakdown. For the record, I give it a 4 on the Tyson Nuggets Scale.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
-1 cup Rice
-Can of Black Beans
-Cilantro
-Cumin
-Chili Powder
-Garlic Powder
-Onion
-Cheese
-Salsa
WHAT YOU DO:
1. Wash your rice and get it ready to boil. (If you're going to attempt my way of steaming rice, one cup rice = one cup water in an appropriate size sauce pan.) Instead of water, substitute with vegetable broth or chicken. Sprinkle somewhere between 1 tsp and 1 tablespoon of cumin, lightly stir. Bring to boil on high heat. Once it starts to visibly boil, cover. Whatever you do, don't peak until 20 minutes as lapsed.
2. Open bean can and dump into sauce pan. Chop up a handful of cilantro, probably about 1-2 cups, throw it in there. Follow it by adding chili powder. This would vary according to your own spicy preference. I did what was probably the equivalent to 1 or 2 teaspoons. It wasn't spicy at all for me. Chop up as much onions as you want. I did about 1/4 of an onion. Then take half and throw it in with the beans. Or don't.
3. Get your beans to boil for a minute or two then turn it off. Let it sit there and chill together while the rice finishes.
4. When done, plop some rice onto your tortilla, followed by a scoop of beans, then put your favorite toppings on it. For example sake, I threw on the remaining onion, cheese, salsa and of course (because it's me) hot sauce.
ENJOY!
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