Fridge Tea

No posts from me lately mostly because I've just not been eating much this past week or so. Hard to blog about eating when you're dumb and don't eat. Don't do that. Don't be like me. Do as I say, not as I do.

And given my emotional and practical stupidity, here's a non-food post about fridge-brewed tea. I have a system for this that involves old peanut butter and applesauce jars. I recycle a lot of jars. 

Fridge Tea

- Cold water

- Teabags

- Clean Jars

Basically the rule of thumb is 1:1, one teabag to one cup of water. A pint jar is obviously two cups and a quart jar is four cups. I usually make stronger tea, so 3 teabags in a pint jar, 6 in a quart jar. Your preference.

Fill the jars up, throw the tea in and leave in your fridge over night. Tea does go bad, so don't leave it in there more than a few days. That's why I like to make small jars like this because I don't have to worry about an entire pitcher going rancid. Also, I'm so obviously hipster it fucking hurts.

You can sweeten it with whatever, but obviously, if you're going to be authentic about this, you're going to have to suck it up and make simple syrup. Simple syrup is a sugar-to-water ratio of 2:1; heat the sugar with the water over high heat until you make syrup. You can store it separately to use in your tea.

Sriracha-Lime Salad Dressing

I know. Stop it. Don't you eat anything that isn't coated in three inches of Sriracha, Holly?

The thing is when I'm stuck on a flavor combination, I try to figure it out. There's a combo here of Sriracha, lime and sugar that you've noticed has been the theme for the last three entries. I'll probably move on to something else eventually, but I'm trying to knock this out. It's how I work. I get obsessed with something until I feel like I've adequately worked it out and then I move on to a new problem. 

Ok, so salad. Eat to Live Joel Fuhrman says you should eat salad every day. Per ounce, nothing is really more nutritious for you than greens. I buy that. But salad dressing is kinda gross. There are only a few kinds I actually enjoy, most of them made by Paul Newman. And there are no Sriracha salad dressings, so I mean, really, what's the point. So I invented one!

Sriracha-Lime Dressing

- 2 tbs. Sriracha

- 2 tbs. lime juice

- 2 tbs. white sugar

- 1 tbs. minced garlic

- 1 tsp-1tbs. olive oil (I don't really even know if this is necessary. Err on your fat preferences.)

- 2 pinches black pepper

- 1 pinch of salt

Shake it up in a jar.

Stupid-fast Sriracha Peanut Noodles

I received two special requests in the last two weeks. The first asked for something that could be packed in a lunch box. The second asked for something that could incorporate leftovers. Well today's you're lucky efficient (vegan-friendly) day.

This recipe will use leftover pasta. I don't care what pasta. Obviously, I recommend whole wheat pasta over white. But do you care what pasta? No. Probably not. You just have that leftover tupperware of pasta and you're like fuck what do I do with this?

Ok, so this is basically a variation of the peanut sauce recipe I use on everything. Except it's different. It's more Sriracha-y and it requires no immersion blender. You can make this sauce in literally two minutes with a fork. It'll yield a much smaller amount (enough for a small jar) that you can stash in at work to eat over leftover pasta.

Sriracha Peanut Noodle Sauce

(Adapted from here)

- 1/2 cup of peanut butter 

- 3 tbs. of Sriracha

- 1 tsp. minced garlic (or powdered)

- 1 tsp. powdered ginger

- 1 tsp. black pepper

- 1 tbs. sesame oil

- 2 tbs. lime juice 

- 1 tbs. sugar

- 3 tbs. hot water

This is some rich, thick sauce.  It's slightly tangier (because of the lime) than my crack sauce recipe. If you like cold sesame noodles and sriracha, you will like this. If you don't, well, you're shit out of luck, pal.

Sriracha Lime Stir-Fry Sauce (with Tofu)

God, is there any foodstuff more perfect than Sriracha sauce? No. No there is not. 

I've been messing around with stir-fry recipes that rely on Sriracha for their flavor. I finished one today and I'm simply calling it Sriracha Lime Stirfry Sauce. Below you'll see most of the basic ingredients behind a lot of Thai-inspired recipes I'be been researching.

 

I've tried a lot of them this past week and came to the conclusion most people blogging about Thai food in English are 1) have some crazy access to foods I do not have, 2) have really weird ideas of what tastes good, and 3) apparently have unlimited time and money on their hands. No. This will not do.

This recipe is stupid easy. And I'm going to show you how to make it even stupid easier. You'll need a jar.

Sriracha Lime Stirfry Sauce

- 3 tablespoons of soy sauce

- 3 tablespoons of brown sugar

- 2 tablespoons of lime juice (the bottled stuff is fine)

- 1 tablespoon of garlic powder

- 1 (OR MORE) tablespoons of Sriracha sauce

Got it? Great. Dump it all in your jar and shake that shit up. 

Now, you need tofu. Extra-firm is always best for stir-fry. Regular firmness is not firm enough to withstand the trials of being stirred. Cut the tofu into pieces. I recommend little triangles but don't be afraid to go fucking nuts and use cubes. Or rectangles. Or pentagons. See if I care how you waste your time with this endeavor. 

Ok, now before dumping the sauce in, saute the tofu in a little sesame oil (or any oil will do). Just enough so it gets a bit crisp around the edges.

Then dump the sauce in, like so:

When you are done, plate it and the extra sauce over some rice (or quinoa if you're paying attention). 

You could always make a lot of this sauce and keep it in that jar and put it in your fridge. I imagine it'll keep for about at least a week or so.

Instant Berry Sorbet (No Ice Cream Maker Required)

Most people don't own an ice cream maker. Most people don't need an ice cream maker.  Most people don't need ice cream. What they need is some sorbet.


Sorbet is a good way to incorporate high-fiber fruit into your diet, especially berries. Unless you are picking your own, frozen berries are the way to go. "Fresh" berries that sit on the shelf off-season are nutritional garbage and a huge waste of money. Meanwhile, frozen berries are frozen hours after being picked and thus lose very little of their nutrient content. Lots of antioxidants and lots of fiber. And more importantly, they're cheaper. For less than $2, I can buy a 12 oz. bag of blackberries. I think a fresh half-pint of blackberries costs something ridiculous like $5. Rich people are crazy.

Ok, so to make blackberry sorbet (or strawberry sorbet or blueberry sorbet or OMG MIXEDBERRY SORBET), you need the following:

Berry Sorbet

12oz bag of frozen berries
1/2 cup of greek (or whatever you prefer) yogurt
1/4 - 1/2 cup sweetener (Sugar, Honey, Agave Syrup, Splenda, Stevia, whatever)
1/4 cup hot water

Dump the hot water, yogurt and sweetener into your food processor or blender. Blend until well processed. Then add the berries. Pulse blend. Not too much, or you'll have a smoothie. Which I know is totally the worst thing ever.

You're done when it looks like sorbet.

Whipped Coconut Cream

Whipped cream is delicious. It's pretty easy to buy the crap in the can, but at $2 for what amounts to like maybe a cup of actual product, it's not cost-effective (at least not the way I eat whipped cream because come on, that shit is ambrosia). So you want to make it at home to get the bigger bang for your buck (and avoid whatever preservatives and stabilizer crap they put in there).Traditional whipped heavy cream, however, sucks because 1) no one ever just has  a carton of heavy cream just sitting around and 2) it's dairy and sometimes dairy just doesn't sit right with some people. 

So what about whipped cream you can make with a 99-cent can of coconut milk? Oh yeah. Possible.

So next time you go grocery shopping, stick a can or two of full-fat coconut milk in the fridge. Forget about them.

Then when you want whipped cream, you can say, "Oh yeah! I have coconut milk in the fridge. Hellz yeah. Good job, self. Way to listen to Holly. She's so smart and nice and full of good ideas."

So for this recipe you need a can of coconut milk and your choice of sweetener. Today I'm using honey, but you could just as easily swap it out for sugar. Note: though this is plant-based, this stuff is not low-fat. Coconut cream is still cream. 

Whipped Coconut Cream

1 can of chilled coconut milk (hugely important this be chilled because science)

2 tablespoons of honey (or sugar)

The first step is to separate the cream from the water. To do this, just open the can and drain out the liquid into a separate container. You can drink that stuff. Let me tell you: it tastes exactly like coconut water. 

So what remains now is the cream. As you can see, it's thick, fatty, fatty stuff. 

So then we whip it and the honey on your mixer's highest setting for about 10 minutes. If I had a fancy-ass stand mixer, I could leave this sit and go do something more important, but since I don't, I stood there and read about the effect of porn consumption on men on my phone. Oh your mother didn't read about porn while she was cooking for you growing up? THAT'S BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE SMART PHONES BACK THEN.

Eventually it'll whip into whipped cream. You should know what whipped cream looks like but if you don't, here's a weirdly angelic shot of what it looks like sitting with its majestic halo atop some blackerry sorbet.

Frozen Greek Yogurt

So frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt is sort of healthy. Kinda? I mean, it's better than eating a pint of heavy cream and egg yolks, sure, but it's still not really doing anything for you. A normal 1/2 cup serving of Pinkberry with no toppings weighs in at about 120 calories--virtually all of it carbohydrates that your body can't really distinguish from sugar anyway. And there's almost nothing in it nutritionally except a smidge of calcium. And me being the white-trash wunderkin, I can't understand how people throw away $5 on fancy coffee drinks let alone this shit. At least coffee is a drug.

And as my friends like telling  me, I am known for saying, "Hey, I can make that better at home" a lot. I'm kind of a dick about it. Mostly because I hate when people throw money away on stupid things but also because I can make that at home. Cheaper. And better for you.

How am I going to do it? Chobani. We're basically just going to take a container of Chobani and dump the entire thing into my ice cream maker. (Ok, you know how I said earlier this week I don't own any fancy kitchen crap? I lied. I have an ice cream maker. I have this one, specifically. It's pretty awesome because I make this recipe a lot. Maybe once a day in the summer time.)

Frozen Greek Yogurt

32 oz container of plain Greek Yogurt (fat-free or low-fat, doesn't matter)

1/4 cup sugar (optional)

1 tbs. vanilla extract (optional)

If you're using my ice cream maker, you just place the frozen ice cream chamber (what the hell is it called?) into your ice cream maker, dump the yogurt and other crap in and let it transmogrify. It'll look like this after about 20 minutes.

Then you can put stuff in it. Any stuff. Here I put in some stewed blackberries. Nom.

No fat and a cup of this stuff weighs in at maybe 200 calories and 24 grams of protein (OR HALF OF MY RECOMMENDED PROTEIN ALLOWANCE NEED FOR THE DAY, PEOPLE. FUCKING VEGETARIAN POWERHOUSE, HERE.)