Final Supper

So we've come to the end of the year and our Final Supper. It's been a good semester... I was very excited for this project because of the vast selection of delicious foods in season. Now I understand why spring has historically been an exciting time - the cold season passing away, and a bounty of fruits and veggies fit for a queen! The season was urging us to celebrate, and celebrate we did - with a delicious feast! I decided to make a pasta dish with asparagus and broccoli. It only requires three steps!

Spring Vegetable Angel Hair w/ Lemon Cream Sauce

Ingredients:
- 2 cups broccoli florets (about 1/4 cup of this came from our garden)

- 2 cups asparagus (one stalk came from our garden)

- 1/4 cup salted butter
- 8 oz angel hair pasta
- 6 oz cream cheese, cubed
- 1 cup milk
- 3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp peppter
- 1 Tbsp grated lemon peel

Preparation:
1. Put water for pasta on to boil. For amount of water, see package instructions.
2. Chop broccoli florets and asparagus into bite-sized pieces.
3. Cut cream cheese into cubes and place in bowl near stove to soften.
4. Using a cheese grater, grate 1 Tbsp of lemon peel.

5. If not already grated, grate parmesan cheese.

Instructions:
1. Place butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Saute broccoli and asparagus for about 9 minutes or until they are crisp but tender. Remove from heat and add lemon peel. When pasta water is boiling, cook angel hair according to package directions (generally about 3 minutes).


2. Over medium heat, add milk and cream cheese to a small saucepan. Stir continuously until there are no chunks of cream cheese left. Stir in parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Cook a few minutes longer, until the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat.



3. Drain angel hair and put into a large serving bowl. Add veggies and sauce and toss together until all ingredients are equally distributed. Serve as soon as possible.

Green Media - Lunch Project

For the lunch project in Green Media, I decided to try to be as brief as possible with my post to practice for the recipe card making we are going to be doing for our library exhibit. The recipe I chose was for Zuppa Toscana, a soup that my whole family loves and normally purchases at Olive Garden. I know how to make it now, so once I learn how to make those amazing breadsticks, we'll never have to go to Olive Garden again! Here's the recipe, and beware: it's a little bit spicy!

Zuppa Toscana

Ingredients:

5 links uncooked spicy Italian sausage
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups chicken broth
2 potatoes, halved and sliced (with skin)
3 cups kale, sliced into bite-size pieces
1 cup chard, sliced into bite-size pieces
1/3 cup heavy cream
dash of red pepper flakes

Instructions:

1. Slice open sausage links. Put olive oil in pan. Empty sausage meat into the pan. Saute until no pink is left.
2. Drain oil. Add onions and saute for 4 minutes. Add pepper flakes and garlic and saute for another 2 minutes.
3. Add chicken broth and potatoes and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Lower heat slightly and add cream and kale. Cook until kale wilts. Serve.

That's it! Four easy steps and you're done. Now I'm going to post pictures of the soup-making process, so you can see for yourself how easy it is!

Green Media - Breakfast Project

It's Spring again, and with it brings a new semester and a new class: Green Media. The focus of this class is to make media about making local and seasonal food. Our first project, logically, is the breakfast project. This was a sort of warm-up project, so the goal was simply to make some breakfast food, enjoy it with the class, and make media about it.
I decided to make bagels. My favorite part of cooking is knowing I have the power to create things that are generally thought of as store-bought-only. Bagels are a mysterious entity and no one that I know has ever made them from scratch, so I wanted to give it a try. I usually avoid recipes that call for yeast because the rising times seem so daunting, but when I just went for it, it really wasn't so bad. Here is how I made the bagels...

Step One: Find a recipe
My original goal was to make basil bagels because I own a beautiful basil plant named Darlene that I've raised from seed and wanted to use her leaves in my food. Here are my search results:
Google Search: "basil bagels recipe"
Scanning down the list, I saw a lot of "tomato basil" recipes. Not only did I not have any tomatoes on hand, I didn't want to use tomatoes for another reason: they're not in season. This is how I figured out what was in season in the bay area:
California Availability Guide
This guide was a link I found on our professor, David Silver's, blog syllabus for our class. However, another way to find the same information would be to Google Search: "California seasonality chart".
Anyways, after I Googled "basil bagels recipe", I scanned down the list and found what I thought would be a recipe for basil bagels. It was the seventh on the list and was titled "Basil Bagels Recipe | Tastespotting". As you can see, when you click on the link it brings you to a simple picture of some bagels and not much else. Because I had no other choice, I clicked on the photograph, which linked me to this page: "Basic Bagel Recipe | Better With Butter". After reading over it for a bit, I gathered that this is a blog of someone new to bread-making just like I am. This recipe was for plain bagels, but I decided to use it anyways as a good first bagel recipe.

Step Two: The Ingredients List
I had to scroll down a bit to find the ingredients list, but it's the first thing I like to look at on a recipe to determine how expensive my cooking endeavor will be. Here are the ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg white
- 1 potato, peeled and quartered
- 1 packet of active dry yeast
- 4 cups of high-gluten or bread flour
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar (divided)
- 1/2 tablespoon of salt

Everything looks pretty basic. You can find all of these items at the store. However, there are a few things I want to point out:
1. This recipe calls for 2 eggs and an egg white. This means that you need to start with three eggs, but the last one needs to be separated. To separate an egg, follow the instructions in this "How To Separate Egg Whites" video.
2. This recipe calls for a peeled and quartered potato. This means the potato needs to have its skin removed using either a peeler or a knife. Quartering a potato simply means cutting it into four equal-sized chunks.
3. This recipe calls for one packet of active dry yeast. You can buy these packets at the store, but if you have yeast in bulk or in a jar, you will need to know how much to measure out. A packet of yeast generally contains 2 1/2 teaspoons, so this is how much you will use for this recipe.
4. This recipe calls for high-gluten or bread flour. Most people who cook have all-purpose flour already in their kitchens. However, this kind of flour will not produce desirable results when making bagels (in other words, they wont be chewy). Make sure to get bread or high-gluten flour, which can be found near the all-purpose flour in the grocery store.
5. This recipe notes that you will need 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar (divided). This simply means that you will use a part of that amount of sugar during one step during the baking process, and the rest of that amount during another part of the baking process. Pay attention to the instructions in the recipe whenever it talks about this ingredient (sugar) to make sure you are using the right amount for each step.

Step Three: Preparing The Batter For Mixing
This section is important because most recipes do not explain how to mix, they simply list the ingredients to add and hope you know what you're doing. I'm going to be much more detailed because I think it will make everyone's results turn out much better.
The first thing to do is boil a pan of water big enough to fit your potato. Once the water is boiling (that is, once bubbles are constantly rolling to the top of the water), carefully add the peeled and quartered potato. Leave it in there for 15 minutes, making sure the water doesn't spill out of the pan. If it begins to boil over, turn down the heat a little bit.
After 15 minutes, throw away the potato and, using a wet measuring cup pour 2/3 cup of the pan's water into a glass. Put this glass into the freezer for about 10 minutes.
MEANWHILE...
While the glass is chilling in the freezer, get a large bowl. Using a dry measuring cup and a spoon, spoon flour into the measuring cup. Do not dip the measuring cup directly into the flour, as this will pack the flour and you will end up adding too much to your bagels. Instead, lightly spoon the flour into the cup and add 4 cups to the bowl. Add a half tablespoon of sugar and a half tablespoon of salt and mix lightly with your hands.
Test the water in the freezer with your hands. The temperature should feel similar to that of a hot tub or hot bath. Or, if you have a thermometer, it should be 110 degrees or less. Add the 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast to the cooled potato water, give it a quick stir, and allow it to sit for about 5 minutes. You will know it's ready when you see a slight foam begin to form at the top of the glass.

Step Four: Mixing The Dough Together
Now use a dry spoon to make a well in the middle of the flour mixture. Dig out the center of the flour until you can see the bottom of the bowl. Now add the 2 eggs and an egg white, the yeast/water mixture, and 1/4 cup of vegetable oil into the well you just made in the flour. Using your hand, gently squeeze the wet mixture into the flour mixture until everything is incorporated into a dough.

Step Five: Kneading The Dough & Letting It Rise
At this point, get out a cutting board and throw about a tablespoon of flour across the surface. Then grab the dough and place it on the cutting board. Then you must knead it for 10-15 minutes. Here is a video showing you how to knead dough:
"How To Knead Dough"
You can tell the dough has been kneaded sufficiently when you poke your finger into it and the indentation stays there.
Next, place the dough on a greased cookie sheet. To grease a cookie sheet, take a paper towel and dip it into shortening or butter. Using the paper towel, smear the shortening or butter over the surface of a cookie sheet, making sure to cover all of it. Place the dough onto the greased cookie sheet and cover it with a damp towel. Now it is time to let the dough rest and rise. It is best to let it rise in a place that is around 85 degrees. I let mine rise sitting on the stove over a preheating oven. It will take from 60-90 minutes for the dough to rise to 1 1/2 times its original size.

Step Six: Shaping The Dough Into O's
Once this occurs, remove the towel and divide the dough into 12 equal portions. You can simply estimate. My method was to divide the dough in half, then in half again, and then each of those halves into three parts.
Take each piece of dough and roll it into a ball with your palms. Then, stick your finger through the middle, and swing it around on your finger to form a bagel shape. Here is a video to assist you with that:
Shape Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
Place each bagel onto another greased cookie sheet, or simply rinse off and re-grease the cookie sheet you used to let the dough rise. Cover the bagels with a damp towel and let them rise for another 20 minutes.

Step Seven: Boiling The Bagels
Boil a wide and medium deep pan of water with 1 tablespoon of sugar added. While the water is heating, preheat the oven to 450F. Once the water is boiling, use a slotted spoon to lower each bagel into the boiling water. Boil for 1 minute 30 seconds and then use the slotted spoon to tip and flip each bagel so that the other side can be boiled for another 1 minute and 30 seconds. Remove each bagel from the boiling water and place it on either a wire rack or a cookie sheet to drain.

Step Eight: Baking The Bagels
Once all of the bagels have been boiled and drained, place them together on a greased cookie sheet and bake for around 15 minutes. You want the surface of them to be golden brown. Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and turn the oven off. Let the bagels cool to room temperature before trying to remove them from the cookie sheet. Congratulations! You have just made your own tasty homemade bagels! Store in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator for the longest shelf life!

Cook A Delicious Meal For The Fiesta!

Our last assignment for ESF was to cook a delicious meal from local, seasonal ingredients and document it. It was awesome to be challenged in this way and I took some time doing research, looking through cookbooks, and going to farmer's markets before I decided what I was going to make.

Let's start from the beginning. I have Italian neighbors. They are awesome people and one day we began to talk about food. I was new to the city and wanted to know their recommendation for the best Italian in the city. I had moved from Reno, Nevada and was excited about all the choices of cuisine in San Francisco. I didn't expect their response of "North Beach is crap, all crap." I had gone to North Beach for my birthday, in fact, and enjoyed it very much. Regardless, they are the Italian ones, so I suppose I trust their opinion. The conversation eventually turned to their favorite Italian dish. Paolo, who is originally from Genoa, Italy, told me his favorite dish was gnocchi with pesto sauce. Gnocchi was something that I'd only recently heard of via one of my vegan cookbooks and I'd been wanting to try out a recipe. "Excellent!" I said. "I shall make you gnocchi with pesto!"
"It wont be as good," Paolo plainly stated.
Slightly offended, I asked him what he meant. Apparently, Genoa is famous for their particular strain of basil, and thus any pesto made from American basil would simply not be as good. After that conversation, I got slightly discouraged regarding gnocchi-making, and eventually forgot about it.
Getting back to the assignment, it occurred to me that gnocchi would be an excellent recipe to make for the class. I went to two farmers markets: the one at USF and the one on Divisadero and Grove.



At the USF market, I bought:
- 1 garlic



- 2 baking potatoes (the last four!)



- 1 artichoke (for one dollar!!)


At the Divisadero market...






I purchased....


- 2 bunches of basil (the last two!)

- 1 bunch of carrots (so sweet!!)

Then I headed home to start the work!


First the potatoes had to be baked for 1 hour in the oven.


Then they had to be placed in ice water so I could peel them while they were still hot! It kinda hurt...


Then I put the potatoes into the food processor with some non-local turmeric. I looked around for local turmeric, but just couldn't find any.
As a side note, I only put the potatoes in the food processor because my masher was broken. I think the food processor was the downfall of my gnocchi. I'll tell you why in a second...


Then I put the mashed potatoes into a mixture of flour and salt. The flour was from Rainbow Grocery and locally milled. The salt I got from my neighbor because my roommate moved out and well...it was her salt. Very funny how you take these things for granted. Anyways, I didn't have any salt, so I decided to do the old-fashioned thing and walk upstairs to ask my neighbor Jamal if he had any salt. I was very lucky because he had this crazy black-colored salt that he got from Rainbow. He said it was stronger than normal salt, so I adjusted to taste. I believe the salt was local because I called Rainbow and they said most of their sea salts were, but I'm not certain.


I mixed it all together and it was incredibly sticky. Because the next step was rolling it out, I had to add a TON of flour in order to prevent it from sticking in huge gooey gobs to my hands and counter (which I cleaned with antibacterial kitchen cleaner before using!). As far as what went wrong, my guess is that the food processing of the potatoes broke up the potato cells too much and released too much water into the mixture. Anyways, rolled out the dough and cut it into pieces. I placed the pieces on a cookie sheet to freeze them. This was the most time consuming part of making this recipe.



While the gnocchi were freezing, I decided to make the pesto. The first step was to roast the pine nuts. I got the pine nuts from Lucky, and I believe they were made in China and distributed out of Southern California. Not very local, but pesto without pine nuts doesn't sound too tasty, especially since the recipe was vegan and would not contain parmesan cheese for extra flavor.


Then I ground the pine nuts, garlic, and salt together in the food processor.


And added basil and olive oil.


I put the pesto in the refrigerator to chill and began to boil water for the gnocchi. I took the frozen gnocchi and dropped them a few at a time into the boiling water and scooped them out to drain when they began to float on the top of the water. I put the cooked gnocchi into a serving dish and tossed it with the chilled pesto. It wasn't as great as I wanted it to be, but people seemed to like it, so I guess that's all that matters!


Trash Produced:
- 1 small plastic bag which contained the pine nuts (so very regrettable...)

I could have made this recipe producing no trash by buying ridiculously expensive pine nuts, but I just didn't have the budget for it at the time.

Anyways, that's my last post for ESF! It's been an amazing year!
Thanks everyone!

Haight Project

On our trip to the Haight, we visited two very different restaurants: Zazie and McDonald's. The way we decided to eat at these places seemed innocent enough. Like most things in ESF, the decision was made during a casual conversation thrown in between an intense literary analysis of our reading of the week. David was telling us that we had some extra money in our class fund due to a mistake with the Castro dinner, and suggested that we go somewhere nicer for dinner. Almost everyone was immediately on board, though we decided to drop by McDonald's for dessert to honor our original up plan. Someone said we should go to Zazie, and we felt that because of Zazie's dedication to seasonal, local, and human dishes, it would be an appropriate last field trip for the class.

Zazie is located in Cole Valley. Cole Valley is filled with cute (if not somewhat yuppy) shops and restaurants, overpriced health stores, and classic San Francisco architecture. The average person on the street is usually dressed in nice clothing, whether hip or classy, is carrying some sort of attractive bag to carry their belongings, and looks somewhat intellectual. These are the sort of people who shower everyday, are on successful career paths, and care about their health. Because of their decent salaries, they can buy health food from the overpriced health stores and have leisure time to exercise and read. These are the people who are eating at Zazie. These are the people who can afford to eat cows who were raised with an ocean view and seventeen dollar plates of pasta. Walk down a couple of blocks and you get to McDonald's.
The people hanging around Haight and Stanyan are colored with the grime of the street. They look unhealthy and most likely are if they are eating at McDonald's. McDonald's is so cheap that you can get a whole cheeseburger with change you find on the street. The cows that went into the burgers at McDonald's didn't have an ocean view, but that never comes to mind. Nothing at McDonald's really looks anything like an animal, as Michael Pollan mentioned in The Omnivore's Dilemma. However, the food's appearance isn't the only reason you never think about the cow's view. Consider these two lifestyles:

1. Your family doesn't have a lot of money. You spend your money where you can get the most for your dollar. You can't afford college and have to work long hours, after which you go relax with friends or go to sleep. You don't have much leisure time to spend participating in outdoor activities or reading about healthy lifestyles.

2. You were raised by a family who is well-off. You go out to dinner on occasion to try new things. You go to college where you are constantly questioned about your views and forced to examine them. You have some leisure time and spend some of it in the school gym.

In our country, the poor people are the overweight ones. They spend most of their time working, which in a natural world would keep them in shape because the "work" that exists in the natural world is that of survival: catching, hunting, growing, collecting your own food. We've created office jobs and grocery stores which take us completely out of that cycle and it's killing us. Unless we have the money to buy "whole" foods, we are going to buy what we can afford. Unless we have time and money to exercise, we are going to be sedentary because we do not need to move in order to survive. We have become the equivalent to the great dane living in a tiny studio in New York whose owner is always out of town. We need health articles to tell us the sun gives us vitamins. We are living an artificial and inefficient lifestyle.
In my opinion, it's strange and unnatural that someone with less money can afford to eat a fattening and inhumanely produced cheeseburger from McDonald's, but cannot afford to buy the ingredients for a nutritious home-cooked meal made from local ingredients. Local ingredients take less gas to get to us, and yet because of the way the food industry is structured in this country, it is more expensive. Real food costs more than unnaturally produced food. Maybe this seems natural. Real food is, of course, more desirable, and thus more expensive. However, my question is: Why does fake food exist in the first place and how can we get rid of it? How can we reclaim our mammal-ness?

Chinatown Project

Eating San Francisco's Chinatown field trip was unique among the class outings we've gone on so far for several reasons. First, it was held on a Saturday. That means we were taken out of the class mindset and were in weekend mode. Second, this field trip was conducted during the morning, which puts us in a different state of mind. Personally, I know I felt much more relaxed and adventurous, and the beautiful weather of the day only added to my positivity. Then again, I can be somewhat of a morning person.
Our first stop was the Tin How Temple. It was amazing and you would have missed it if you didn't know it was there. We went into a tiny entrance and then climbed several flights of stairs to a room with ornate decorations everywhere. The interesting thing about this temple was the way the desk was set up because it made it look like some sort of business. They were selling bracelets and incense for prayers, and people in the temple were lighting paper sculptures on fire and fanning the smoke into the room. It was incredibly smoky inside, despite the large patio that was open to the air. Looking down from the patio was exciting. I felt like I was in a secret lair, looking over people who had no idea I was up there or how I got there. Nick got his fortune told at the temple, though I must admit I was rather unimpressed. Excitement was building as Nick used the special flame to light the incense, stuck them into the container, and kneeled before it. However, when it came time for the fortune to be told and I saw the women walking toward Nick, I was expecting her to read his palm or sit down with him or something. Instead, she gave him a typed piece of paper with various generalized predictions on them. The most interesting one was when it described pregnancies as being successful, which is something most college kids do not want to hear. Regardless of the disappointing fortune-telling session, it was an overall good experience to see the temple. It was cool to watch the women expertly folding the paper into little boats and definitely a new experience to see real people practicing Asian religions. I feel very under-exposed to Asian history and culture, which could be because I'm from Reno, Nevada, or because American schools like to focus on America and Europe and say they are teaching world history.
The next place we went on our field trip was New Asia, a restaurant specializing in dim sum. Dim sum was really the main reason for the trip, and I think most of the people in class were skeptical of this mystery food. Stephanie hinted that the Yelp reviews were not so pleasant and, in my curiosity, I asked her what the review had said. She told me rat droppings had been found in the food. I thought it was gross, but decided I would eat it anyways because I was feeling adventurous and in a good mood --- like I said, morning person. We got to the restaurant and I was immediately reminded of my home town. I am from Reno, Nevada. Most people know, or think they know, a little bit about Reno, but some things might not be so obvious if you're not from the area. Reno has a lot of breakfast restaurants that are basically diners, but smoking is allowed inside and there are slot machines just outside the dining area and keno sheets at your table. As a child, my parents always told me that gambling was bad and they never gambled, but we always played the keno game whenever we went to these restaurants. We would never bet money of course, but we would circle the numbers we thought would win and then wait excitedly for the screen to tell us how many we got right. Anyways, walking in to the dim sum restaurant immediately brought me back to my childhood of keno games at these diners. Everything about the place was similar to these restaurants: maroon chairs, chaotic waiters, loudspeaker annoucements, TVs left and right. The only difference was the food. And man, was it different. Reno doesn't have much diversity in either its food or its people, so growing up I'd never tried a lot of different types of food. Italian-American, Mexican-American, Chinese-American. I recognized the potstickers at least. Well, I recognized the chicken feet as well, but for different reasons than I recognized the potstickers, if you know what I mean.



The toenailed version looks a little bit too much like the restaurant version in my opinion...



Anyways, I was excited to go to dim sum because I'd never experienced anything like it before. I was even ready to eat some rat droppings! The most exotic dishes I tried were the chicken feet and the cow stomach. Both tasted alright, but the textures were not something I'd jump to revisit. The chicken feet looked too much like what they were and I wasn't entirely comfortable eating something that was made mostly of bone. That actually reminds me of The Omnivore's Dilemma when the author is talking about chicken nuggets and how they've separated chicken we eat from the animal it comes from. Am I just a product of that culture? Do I not want to know what I'm really eating? I didn't think so, but the way I felt about the chicken feet made me question that. Of course, I generally eat a mostly vegetarian and often vegan diet, so I've never been a big fan of meat. In addition, I have this irrational fear of dead things that stems from a traumatic childhood incident, but that's a different story. Anyways, I asked Ashton if she would take some of the edible part of the chicken feet off the bone for me so I wouldn't have to deal with the extreme chicken-ness of the dish, and tried the meat. It was alright. The flavor was good, but the texture reminded me of the skin of the chicken that you get on a barbecued leg or thigh, which I suppose is pretty much what it was. I'm not a big fan of that texture, so I don't think I'd want to order that again. The cow stomach also had a nice taste, but the texture was like that of fat. I absolutely hate that kind of texture, so I didn't really like the stomach and had trouble swallowing it. It's funny, I love the texture of squid which is similarly chewy, but the stomach was hard to stomach. (haha) The rest of the dishes were pretty similar to each other: lots of little steamed dumplings filled with pork or shrimp. It was weird to eat such a salty breakfast. I'm not sure if it's just me, but I generally eat things that are on the sweet side for breakfast like cereal, fruit, rice with sugar, etc. All that salt in the morning made me feel a bit sick afterwards... It was a great experience though.
After we ate, it was time to go to the fortune cookie factory!! It's funny because Americans (or at least the ones I know) get so excited about fortune cookies, and you never see them anywhere but Chinese restaurants. However, in China these cookies don't really exist. They were invented in America, though their origin is debated between three different stories.



The first is that Chinese immigrant David Jung (founder of Hong Kong Noodle Company) created the cookie for poor people. He would put an uplifting note in the cookie to give them hope. David Jung lived in Los Angeles at the time.
The second is that a Japanese immigrant Makoto Hagiwara (designer of the Japanese Tea Gardens in GGP) created the cookie with thank-you notes inside to thank people who had supported him when he was fired from his job for being Japanese.
The third is that they were modeled after mooncakes which were used in the 13th and 14th centuries in China to pass messages to organize an uprising against the Mongols. The mooncakes were normally filled with lotus paste, but the people left out the paste and filled them with secret messages.

After the fortune cookie factory, we were pretty much done with our field trip. It had left us with a lot to think about. Personally, I was still excited about fortune cookies. I researched them to find out their history and see if there was a way to make them at home. I also figured out how those women were folding the cookies so quickly! Although I haven't had the chance to make these yet, I found a recipe that looks pretty promising, so I'm going to post it here!

Fortune Cookies

Ingredients:
2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 teaspoons water

Directions:
1. Write fortunes on pieces of paper that are 3 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 2 9-X-13 inch baking sheets.

2. In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg white, vanilla extract, almond extract and vegetable oil until frothy, but not stiff.

3. Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a separate bowl. Stir the water into the flour mixture.

4. Add the flour into the egg white mixture and stir until you have a smooth batter. The batter should not be runny, but should drop easily off a wooden spoon.
Note: if you want to dye the fortune cookies, add the food coloring at this point, stirring it into the batter. For example, I used 1/2 teaspoon green food coloring to make green fortune cookies.

5. Place level tablespoons of batter onto the cookie sheet, spacing them at least 3 inches apart. Gently tilt the baking sheet back and forth and from side to side so that each tablespoon of batter forms into a circle 4 inches in diameter.

6. Bake until the outer 1/2-inch of each cookie turns golden brown and they are easy to remove from the baking sheet with a spatula (14 - 15 minutes).

7. Working quickly, remove the cookie with a spatula and flip it over in your hand. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie. To form the fortune cookie shape, fold the cookie in half, then gently pull the edges downward over the rim of a glass, wooden spoon or the edge of a muffin tin. Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin so that it keeps its shape. Continue with the rest of the cookies.

Another good site to look at is here. It tells you some insider's tricks for how to make the cookies well. Good luck! Post pictures if you end up making them! I will make them eventually, I promise... Just as soon as I get the chance to take a breath!

Make A Delicious Meal and Document It!

It was the part of Eating San Francisco that I had been waiting for all semester - the part where we get to cook! Cooking is one of my favorite things to do, especially when the recipes are vegan. Vegan cooking is challenging and it feels good to feed people, have them compliment the flavor, and then tell them that what they are eating is vegan. Many people have either had bad experiences with vegan food or have an illogical fear of vegan food and think it will taste "healthy" or flavorless. To prove them wrong feels good on its own, but what's even better is to show them that delicious food can indeed be made without supporting the corrupted meat, egg, and dairy industries. Sometimes it can be a pain to avoid these products because they are so engrained in our restaurants, recipes, and thought about food. However, learning to cook vegan food takes away the need for animal products, which never hurts.

When we were assigned to make a delicious meal and eat it, my friend Jessie and I looked at each other and knew we had to make it together. Jessie and I have been friends since middle school, when we met on the Little League field where our younger brothers were playing baseball. Lately, however, we had been seeing far too little of each other, and cooking was the perfect activity to do together to play a little catch up. Jessie and I had recently gotten lunch together at a place called Twilight Cafe near campus, and since then Jessie had been craving falafel like crazy. It was meant to be: falafel was the dish we were destined to make.
We decided to invite our boyfriends over and cook for them to share the love. I was apprehensive because falafel is generally a fried food and large amounts of oil near flames frighten me. Luckily, both of our boyfriends are EMTs, so I felt pretty safe. We started by putting some chickpeas in my food processor with parsley, onions, garlic, and some spices.



Parsley! (Super flattering picture, I know!)



Here's what it looked like once we blended it all together!



We then shaped them into little falafel cookies!



And fried them in a big scary pan of oil!



Then put them on a towel to drain...



To wrap it all up, we put tomatoes, lettuce, and tahini sauce in a pita and added our fried creation! Here's how delicious it looked!



But nothing's complete without good friends!