Anger Burger

“My chili kicked aaaass.”

That was the text I sent to my friend Fraoigh after informing her that I had successfully constructed the most awesomely kick-ass, junky, nutritionally defunct Nalley’s-style vegetarian chili.  And on the first motherfucking try.  Thanks, in part, to some of you.  Some.

I blame myself.  I didn’t make myself terribly clear when asking for non-vegetable vegetarian chili recipes.  So many great recipe suggestions!  So many good ideas and links filed away for a rainy day.  But they all contained vegetable mass, which, you know.  I like vegetables.  But in my mind it isn’t chili, really.  I want gravy.  I want a big bowl of brown gravy with some texture thrown in as a mockery of mature, adult food. There were many great suggestions that helped me out, but the award for Most Valuable Suggestion goes to Anger Burger commenter Amanda, who all casually mentions throwing in a can of refried beans for thickness. More on that in a minute.

The bad news is that taking photos of brown slop at night in a kitchen with a single overhead lightsource works out exactly like you think it might: not great.

But you can add a heap of cheery yellow cheddar cheese, and things go a little better.

And cheery yellow cornbread, too, what the hell.  As long as we’re only eating yellow and brown foods tonight, let’s get the Coca-Cola and the honey out.

I think there are a few important secrets to this recipe, but the biggest is that you must mix in a can of refried pinto beans.  It alone is what transformed a mediocre pot of strangely healthy-tasting tomatoey chili into rich, thick, almost-fatty chili.  Up until I added the beans I was even considering adding cream to the pot; something, anything to tell my brain that there was fat in the mix.  But the beans, they were the key.

Curiously, I’m not sure about the quantity of whole kidney beans needed.  I swung back and forth between thinking it needed a second can (maybe) and no cans at all (also maybe).  If using just as a chili sauce, I suppose I’d leave the kidney beans out.  If bulking up a pot for hearty eaters, grab the second can.  When in doubt, use a single can, as I did.

I’m sure that some people will be more inclined to making this if it has actual detectable pieces of vegetable in it, and that’s great too, I guess.  But I’m telling you right now that I went out today and bought wieners and buns so we can have chili dogs for dinner tonight, and no one wants to encounter a chunk of zucchini in their chili dog.  No one you want to be friends with, anyway.

Almost-From-a-Can Vegetarian Chili
i definitely think the fake meat portion of this recipe is open for interpretation – if you like Quorn grounds, use those.  if you like Morningstar, use those.  my friend strongly suggested Fantastic Foods taco filling mix, which is even already seasoned (though you’ll still need to add more).  i do advise, however, that whatever you use is finely textured in order to keep the sloppy, saucy spirit of the chili intact.  bear in mind that the TVP is dry when added to the soup and thus bulks up double, so you’ll need more than a single cup of frozen, pre-hydrated products like Quorn grounds.  they usually come in bags of about 12 ounces, and you’ll probably need the whole bag.

1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
¼ cup mild olive oil
1 cup dry TVP (textured vegetable protein, sometimes called TSP, textured soy protein)
1 small (6oz) can tomato paste
1 can (15oz)  plain, unseasoned tomato sauce (see note below)
3 cups beef flavored broth (see note below)
1 Tbsp chili powder / seasoning (see note below)
2 tsp ancho chili powder
1 – 2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 – 3 fresh jalapenos, diced small (optional)
0 – 2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
¾ can refried beans
2 tsp salt, or more to taste)

NOTE: When I say “plain, unseasoned tomato sauce” I mean without Italian-style seasoning, such as oregano or basil.  Most “plain” tomato sauce does have onion and/or garlic in it, and that’s just fine.  Regarding chili powder: I’m not talking straight powdered chili, here.  I’m talking about chili seasoning.  I like Frontier Co-Op bulk “chili seasoning blend” which includes a little oregano, cumin and other spices.  You can use whatever you like, and build up the flavor one teaspoon at a time until your preferred intensity is achieved.  Lastly, there are several brands of fake beef flavor broth, and again I like Frontier Co-Op’s bulk “beef broth” powder because it allows me to control the level of flavoring I want.  If you cannot find vegetarian beef flavored broth, try reading the ingredient list on the Au Jus sauce packets in any grocery store – many of them include no actual beef product.  Seriously.

• In a heavy-bottom soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat until shimmering.  Add the chopped onion and garlic and saute, stirring all the while until the onions are translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes.  Add the TVP (or whatever fake meat grounds you prefer), tomato paste, tomato sauce, beef broth, chili seasoning, ancho chili powder, honey, soy sauce, salt and bring to a simmer.  Turn heat to low and allow to barely simmer and reduce for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

• In a small mixing bowl, mix the 3/4 can of refried beans together with a few ladles full of the hot soup, stirring slowly and carefully so as not to splash hot soup on yourself.  Mix until the beans are a thick but smooth slurry that you can pour back into the soup pot.  For thicker soup, add the entire can.  Taste soup for seasonings and increase the chili powder, ancho chili, salt and honey as needed.

• Add the diced fresh jalapenos, if using (remember: use disposable gloves to chop any spicy chilis so that you don’t give yourself chili eye or nostril later) and the rinsed kidney beans.  Allow the soup to simmer on low for a further 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the chili is as thick as you’d like.

• Serve with fresh chopped onions, shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream.  And cornbread with butter and honey.  And icy-cold soda.

I want to make vegetarian chili, but I have a lot of don’t-wants.

Don’t want:

• Just vegetable soup with big chunks of vegetables in a tomatoey chili-seasoned broth.
• Just bean soup in a tomatoey chili-seasoned broth.
• Brothiness of any kind.
• Lentils.
• Grains.
• Chunks of identifiable tofu.

I want comfort food.  I want medium thick, finely textured, rich, brown chili that I can heap with a mountain of cheddar and chopped onions.  And I want my dad to be able to eat it with me.  So riddle me this: why are all the vegatarian chili recipes in the world just vegetable soup recipes with some chili seasonings?  I suspect that the answer lies in something like textured vegetable protein, which I have never cooked with before.

Someone help a sister out, here.

No.  No.  No.

House hunting is one of my least favorite things ever.  I kind of like moving into a new place, of getting everything settled and learning the way the light moves through the windows at dawn, or how the eaves shake in the wind.  I don’t necessarily want to become familiar with the way the carpet squishes in the toilet dungeon – oh I’m sorry, I mean third bedroom with en suite.

We’ll keep looking.  MEANWHILE!  My mom had a birthday.   An important one, but I guess they all are.

There’s no real explanation, but she wasn’t really feeling her birthday this year.  The winter storm we just experienced was costly for her, having had to hire a professional to come clear her driveway so my stepdad could attempt to get to work and help my grandpa get a massive tree cut up and hauled from his driveway.  I really wish we could have surprised her with an Alaskan cruise or a room full of pug puppies, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way.  So what’s a family to do?  Eat at La Tarasca, for starters.  And then Harbor City dim sum for seconders.

And for dessert we tried Olympia’s new Jewish deli, Kitzel’s, which is a source of great drama for generally Jew-free Olympia.  Not the Jewish part, the skimpy-but-expensive-portions part.

My salted herring plate was $9 and actually too much food for me to eat.  Well, specifically too much salt.  Which is unusual.  I need salt like most people need water.  But the herring is magnificently, astonishingly salty, which is why there’s a heap of underseasoned potato salad and two pickled tomatoes on the plate.

My mom and The Viking shared a pastrami sandwich, which at another $10 wasn’t exactly a deal, but was enough food for them to share as a modest lunch.

I do have to call total and utter bullshit on them for charging $1.50 for a bagel (okay, I’ll let it slide) but $3.50 for a bagel with cream cheese.  TWO DOLLARS FOR CREAM CHEESE.  And!  Just when I sort of calmed down about that, I noticed that a bagel with butter was $2.75!  A dollar fucking twenty five for a pat of butter!  Oh ho, oh man.  That.  That is… ballsy.  And insulting.  The show-down at Yelp gives a good idea of the dramz, but the one thing that really irked me has been taken down: Kitzel’s gave themselves a five star review and then sassed back to every bad reviewer about how their prices and servings were the same¹ as elsewhere in town.

I like the sass, but I’d like it backed up with some substance. And by substance, I mean that I’d like to not spend four dollars on a bagel and a schmear.

¹ They are actually more expensive, but who cares, facts are for meshuggeners.

I was writing a post about my mom’s birthday over the last few days when she told me that Chef, the unnamed woman who cooks on my favorite cooking show of all time, was in a very serious accident.  Needless to say, it derailed my writing thoughts entirely.

At the end of the above video is the following message:

First, I would like to say thank you to all of our viewers for supporting our show.  Today I am afraid I have some very sad news. On January 15th, Chef sustained serious injuries while riding her bicycle in the suburbs of Tokyo. She was rushed to the ICU by helicopter. I certainly understand your worries and concerns. She is now in stable condition, but unfortunately I am unable to give any further information at this time. I would like to apologize in advance for not being able to respond to your messages during this tragic turn of events.

Cooking with Dog is my primary source of Japanese cooking education, as well as being a bi-monthly treat I look forward to with great enthusiasm; to say I am upset about Chef’s accident is an understatement.  I love her.  She is my secret Japanese mom. The careful and economical movements of her hands, the tidy and proficient way she navigates her micro-kitchen, her soft speech, all of it is a great joy to me.  I wish her the speediest of recoveries, and I invite you to do the same.

Alright friends, Stella lost her groove.  And by Stella I mean Sunday.  And by groove I mean that nothing I’ve cooked or baked at my dad’s house has been quite right.  It is always frustrating to try and cook in a strange kitchen, but it’s more frustrating to fail at cooking in a kitchen that isn’t exactly strange – this is my dad’s kitchen!  I cooked here regularly on visits.  And not just that, it is even the photography: it’s impossible.  I have a golden hour in the morning where early light comes through the only kitchen window, and if I miss that hour, everything looks wan and sick.   Turning the overhead light on makes it a thousand times worse.

It’s not a kitchen made for taking haughty bitch photos, that’s for sure.  Which makes me feel like a shitty writer.  Which makes me just eat another bowl of generic discount cereal for dinner.  I NEVER CLAIMED TO KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING.  Stop looking at me.

At Thanksgiving?  I made a pumpkin mousse pie that never set up.  For dinner on New Years Eve I struggled to make the yeasted waffles I regularly and flawlessly cooked for ages, and the result was barely successful.  I resulted to forcing the yeast in warm water, a trick that worked but had dinner two hours late to the table and still didn’t quite taste right.  The next day I made cornbread from a fresh box of corn meal and a fresh can of baking powder, and yet something terrible still happened; the bread was thin and heavy and acted like it contained no leavener at all.  And yet it did, I’m certain of it.  What happened?  I have no clue.

When I came across this post for “custard filled cornbread” at Sweet Amandine, I was overwhelmed with fury.  Stupid cornbread.  Look at her and her weird, good-looking cornbread.  Jerk. I vowed to make it in an effort to avenge myself.  And then there was a storm and I couldn’t get any heavy cream and it had to wait a week.

SO NOW.

It is delightful.  It is cornbread with a layer of cream “custard” on top, and serving it with a large pool of maple syrup underneath turns it into a curious and rich pile of breakfast carbs.  I loved it.  Mike the Viking couldn’t deal with the almost curdy texture of the warm custard, but I think the leftovers will have a texture more like cream cheese.  He’s open to trying it again.  In the meantime he is still muttering about wanting jalapeno cornbread.

I’m not saying the curse has been broken.  But it definitely took a break for a morning.

I think maybe I didn’t emphasize the excitement yesterday when I wrote about the storm.

Mike the Viking went out and took some photos while he robbed the peasants of their larder goods.

No big deal.  Just a couple of power lines and houses and stuff.  Nothing that seven days of freezing rain can’t finish off.

My thoughts exactly.

I’m tired.  I’d say it’s a Crohn’s thing, but I’m at the point where I can’t honestly place the blame on having an autoimmune disease that prohibits my body from absorbing useful nutrients.  It might be more honest to say: I’m winter tired.

Don’t get me wrong, here.  I love winter.  I missed winter.  It had been a handful of years since winter and I had a chance to be intimate, and we’ve been making up for lost time, let me tell you.  But I had imagined something a little more romantic, something log-cabin-hot-cocoa-bear-skin-ruggy, instead of coming into work and finding that someone thought it’d be a good idea to have a vent drilled through the sterilization room during work hours.  For example.

My mom accused me of being unhappy, and I can tell you and her with all sincerity that she is wrong.  I missed the Puget Sound more than I was willing to let on, and each day I slog to work through sideways rain I breathe a sigh of somewhat damp relief.  Weeks are flying by faster than I care to acknowledge, and the internal timeline I’d had for getting back on my financial feet is now a hilarious blip in my review mirror, but you know.  It’s winter.  We hibernate by watching too much TV and eating nachos and telling ourselves that the reason we can’t find a second job is because it’s winter.

And then!

My co-workers and I crawled into work like a cannibal soccer team each morning to see if the power was on (mostly!).  Ice-encased branches ripped from trees with the heart-stopping sound of china breaking.

It’s always heartbreaking to see the damage of an ice storm, and I worry every single minute about my mom out in the forest by herself with just a little generator and spotty cell phone connection, but it’s just so fucking gorgeous, I can’t stand it.

Every blobular twist, each straining and drooping branch; nature simply cannot more clearly put her arm around your shoulder and steer you back toward the electric heater and say “Just one more cup of tea.  You’ll have time to go down to the basement and start the laundry later.”

I was hoping this would be about frying trout, but it ain’t.

It’s about setting the alarm for 5:40 in the morning.

And wearing three pairs of socks at once, one of which is made from possum-fur.  And refusing delicious, hot, wonderful, magical warm coffee because you’re on a goddamn boat in the middle of a lake and you don’t want to be the person who instigates a poop-stop.

Unsurprisingly, much time was spent arguing the relative safety of island-living to ensure safety from the zombpocalypse.

Everyone once and a while we changed bait.  Different colors.  Spinners.  Glow in the dark.  Shrimp scented. Little pieces of earthworms.  Big pieces.  Then we started bargaining with the fish: we’ll take perch instead of trout.  Then we started threatening them: we were going to release¹ but now we’re going to keep you.  Eventually we told the fish we really just wanted hamburgers anyway, so we left.

¹ A lie.

We decided to take it easy.  No parties, despite being invited to one that has a potential for illegal debauchery on a level that I still sort of can’t believe I’m turning down.  NEVERTHELESS.  Easy taking.

So, waffles are in order.  Except, the yeast decided to give me it’s yeasty middle finger.

It’s been two hours, and the batter should be doubled in size and fizzy-gloppy, but it remains smooth and thin and completely unperturbed by my attempts to rouse it.   I’ve resorted to a hot water bath.  If this doesn’t work we’re eating microwave popcorn for dinner.

So, happy New Year, friends.  May your yeast be active.

I understand that for a lot of you these deer are magical forest ballerinas, but at my mom’s house they are thieving seed ninjas.  She even bought this tall feeder box to keep the deer out, but of course the second after I took this photo that deer stood up on it’s hind legs and started cramming it’s eathole full of seed.

My mom is used to this so she immediately went outside and started hollering at them, which did absolutely nothing and I was left clutching my cell phone wondering if I’d have to call a deer mauling into 911.

But they do this almost every day.  She walks out there and they casually saunter off, and five minutes later they wonder around the other side of the property and show back up at the bird feeder.  Merry Christmas, deer assholes!

My sister brought these and despite knowing we’d regret it we all ate one.

They tasted like you think.  Waxy chocolate.  Pure liquid sugar center that instantly chokes you.  Scented blueberry Mr. Sketch marker flavor.  Mmm, tastes like dreary drugstore Christmas.

It’s been six years since I’ve been in Olympia for more than a holiday visit, and the first time in six years that I could hotglue a bunch of shit to packages since I wasn’t shipping the presents in from another state.  God bless hotglue for reals.

Never dismiss the joys of hotgluing stuff to stuff.

This year we cooked absolutely nothing on Christmas day.  We made dips and sliced meats and cheeses and thawed shrimp all on Christmas Eve, and then merely decanted it all to plates for the festivities.  It was plenty of food and no one was trapped in the kitchen making food hot while everyone else enjoyed themselves drinking schnapps and tripping over dogs.

 It only took us nearly four decades as a family to get it sorted out, but we’re on track now.