Acetarium

Have you seen this lucha?

Have you seen this man with a Gnu?

Have you seen these pies?

If yes, then we all know where you were last night.

You need another shot of Wild Turkey to fix your hangover problem.

This morning, we both woke up with strange dreams. I was trying to save Mako from a big grizzly bear. I ended up being chased by it and had to cling onto a string hanging from a sky and swing. I called for help but Mako was busy reading. I fell from the string and the bear’s paw became something that resembled a garlic crusher. I woke up with a really hot head.

Mako’s dream involved Bernie sleeping in the hallway.

***
I made stuffing. Making stuffing is like making bread pudding — it’s just a salty version of bread pudding.

I often discover left-over rice in our rice cooker days after we make it — I open the cooker to make new rice, *suprise!*, smell, and usually somehow try to rescue it.

Yesterday was one of these days. I decided to make some fried rice with bok choy, napa, mango, carrots, onions, and garlic, sour and spicy egg drop soup, and tofu/TVP dumplings.

I didn’t have the dumpling wrappers, so I made it from scratch for the first time. It’s pretty easy but I should get a different kind of flour next time as the wrappers were pretty sweet when I made them with 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 bread flour, 1% salt, 42% water.

This is what my counter looked like in the middle of cooking:

I tend to like thicker dumpling wrappers, so I made them much thicker than the normal wrappers I get at a Japanese supermarket. Mako makes great sour and spicy egg drop soup, so he made that dish. At the end, this is what our food looked like:

Cooking is fun!

I found a recipe for soaking tofu in miso. I wrapped a block of tofu in cheese cloth and covered it in half red and half white miso paste for 3 days in a fridge. My mother said that I should mix miso with sugar, sake, and mirin, so I’ll try that next time.

People in Japan seem to eat it as a snack while drinking sake/beer but eating it alone is a bit hard as it is super salty. I prefer to eat it by spreading it on a piece of bread.

It does become very creamy and I think it makes a nice vegan “cheese” option.

I made vegetarian meat pie. I looked up 3-4 normal and vegetarian meat pie recipes and combined them. It was pretty good.

P.S. I can’t remember exactly what I put in but this is what I remember:

1. Soak 2-3 cups of Textured Vegetable Protein in tomato juice from canned tomatoes and shiitake juice from reconstituting shiitake mushrooms.

2. Sauté 1 onion, 3 garlic cloves, 1 carrot, and 1 zucchini for 5-10 minutes.

3. Add TVP from 1 to the mixture in 2 and sauté more.

4. Add 2 TBSP each of Bulldog Vegetable and Fruit Sauce and of ketchup. Add salt and pepper.

5. (Optional) Add 2 TBSP heavy cream or sour cream.

6. Fill the pie crust with the mixture and cover with another pie crust. (Optional) Add cheese before covering.

7. Bake at 350-400F until the top becomes light brown.

I had it with salad and buttercup squash soup.