Sunday Brunch For One - Popover Edition

I woke up craving popovers. I lay in bed and day-dreamed about a tender, custard filled roll with a crispy exterior and an extra savory flavor. Sometimes you just know what you want. 

Popovers are really easy. Easier than muffins, easier than pancakes. And as with anything that puffs up in the oven they just feel really really fancy. 

I put on a kettle to make tea. Because first thing first, right? Then I kissed Mr. Tooth goodbye before he headed out to do his weekend-y things like rock climb with his friends and train his coworkers rascally dog. The morning was mine to do with what I pleased. 

UMAMI TOOTH'S EXTRA SAVORY POPOVERS

Makes 12 large popovers

4 large eggs

1 1/4 Cup flour

1 1/4 Cup milk

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Pinch of nutmeg

Lots and lots of cracked pepper

12 small pats of Butter

Preheat the oven to 425 degree. Put your muffin tin in there to preheat with the oven. 

Mix all ingredients except the butter until well blended. If there are a few lumps that's fine. Let your batter rest on the counter while you drink tea and you call your Mom or something. 

When the oven is preheated remove the muffin tin and add a pat of butter to each muffin cup. Put the tin back in the oven for 2 minutes or so, just long enough for the butter to sizzle and start to brown. Hang up with your Mom when you hear the butter. You will need both hands for the next step. 

Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup fill each cup 2/3 full. Put your muffin tin back in the oven for 25 minutes. Do not open the door. Ever. At all.  Be patient. Sit in front of the oven and watch science (magic?) at work while your popovers puff up and get brown. 

When the timer goes off, pull your popovers out and work quickly with a pair of tongs, setting each one on a wire rack and piercing once or twice with a sharp knife to let the steam out. This will keep them from collapsing. 

Enjoy with some sautéed veggies or just by themselves. I ate mine with green beans sautéed in butter and left over champagne, garnished with almonds and dill. Fancy brunch for one!  

Breakfast At Work

I find myself eating on the job quite a bit. I can't remember the last gig I had where there was a common eating area for employees so the desk in my bay is my buffet table as well. I also can't bring myself to sit down at home to eat before i leave for work. I like my be meals to be leisurely and it's hard to enjoy myself if I'm thinking about traffic or a screening I have later in the day. Once I make it to work all that anxiety melts away and I am able to have a "civilized" breakfast. 

It's actually really nice to be able to graze all day, eating small meals at my desk while I screen footage or peruse the music bins. I like to think of it as multi tasking. 

This morning I'm enjoying raspberries, blackberries, apricots, peaches, homemade granola and kefir. And a mug of black tea of course. 

Do you eat at your desk? Which meals?

Making Peace With Ingredients That Freak Me Out

I am an adventurous eater. I ate escargot when I was 7. The waiters in their crisp white aprons quietly surprised as I tucked into the garlic filled shells, mopping up as much butter as possible with my bread. As a child I ate artichokes and curries with abandon. Sushi? Sure, no problem.

There are a few ingredients that I have never warmed to though. Feta cheese is somewhere in the top five. Something about the funky smell, sharp taste and crumbly texture has always turned me off. I've sheepishly avoided homemade spanikopita at potlucks and sharing Greek salads as a starter when I'm dining out with friends. It's my not-so-secret shame - even I can be a picky eater. 

For the past few years I've been working on my Feta issue (and the related blue cheese issue) by trying to incorporate the stuff into recipes and sometimes submitting to a Mediterranean salad when I go out to a favorite Armenian-Persian restaurant in Glendale with my ever-patient friend, Bex. 

And you know what? It's working. I have modified my palate. By looking closely at the things I don't like about feta (crumbly, funky, sharp) I was able to source some different types of Feta that do appeal to me, specifically those that are partially or all goat milk based which tend to be creamier and more delicately flavored. Problem solved. 

Umami Tooth's Feta Salad

Creamy French Feta - crumbled

Persian cucumbers - roughly chopped

Scallions - chopped

Flat leaf parsley - washed and de-stemmed 

Tapenade -  to taste

Good olive oil - to taste

Mix the ingredients up in a big bowl and eat standing up in front of the window fan because it is hot as heck!

Mud Run 2013

My friend Sarah and I participated in the 20th annual Mud Run at Camp Pendleton on Sunday.

We taped up our oldest running shoes to make them mud-ready and hit the course with a couple thousand other people. As I told Mr. Tooth via text post race, it was 80% hills and 20% mud! I've never been so happy that I made myself do those miserable hill sprints in the weeks leading up to the race. It paid off. I think this race was the perfect reminder that even if my everyday training is tedious or painful it's so worth it in the end. 

Sarah texted me with our results this morning. There were a quite a few bottlenecks on the course so our usual race pace of a 9-10 minute mile was significantly increased. Also, running through mud is so much harder than it looks... So slippery and sticky. I am so in awe of the US Marines who train on this course all the time. 

We celebrated by having a post race beer! Best idea ever! Oorah!
 

Doing Breakfast Right

Mr. Tooth and I went on a much needed getaway a month ago. The freelance life can leave you weary and turned upside down. Am I hungry? Am I tired? What do I do with myself when I'm not working? When we realized we would have an overlapping week off we hit the road and headed north to Paso Robles. 

Paso Robles is the best. Yes, the best. It's a three hour drive from LA and it doesn't require any fancy clothes or a huge budget. Mr. Tooth suggested that we stay at B&B. He's brilliant! Someone else makes us delicious breakfast and we don't have to leave the premises? Sold.

Our Inn Keeper, Amber, was just lovely. Our two days with her were relaxing and very centering. And she made us granola. Home-made granola. I hadn't thought about granola in years. I'm not much of a cold cereal fan. (Except Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and that is for VERY special occasions.) But this granola she made, so coconut-y, so crisp, so not-too-sweet. I was inspired. 

And so I made some for myself today. 

Casa del Tooth is filled with the warm, toasty scent of oats and almonds and of course, coconut. I used this recipe but modified it by using coconut oil and less sugar. I plan to enjoy my granola with some kefir (the Champagne of Dairy hahahahaha) to balance out the sweetness. Viva desayuno!

Weeknight Dinner- Savory Pancakes

I'm experimenting with quick weeknight meals. I usually get home from work by 8pm and I'm famished. Mr. Tooth doesn't cook - he prefers baking which is AOK with me. (Brown butter chocolate chip cookies anyone? This is why I married him.)

I decided to make korean savory pancakes for our Tuesday night dinner. I figured it would be fast and relatively healthy. I had a bunch of random farmers market goodies that I wanted to use up too. 

My recipe made four 8" pancakes, enough to have some leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. 

UMAMI TOOTH'S SAVORY PANCAKES

2 cups shredded, finely diced, or chiffonaded veggies (I used a combo of mushrooms, summer squash, mustard greens and carrots)

1 bunch green onions cut into two inch lengths, whites and greens included. 

1/2 cup kimchi chopped

5 large raw shrimp, chopped

Batter: 2 eggs, 1 cup flour, 1.5 cups water, mixed until smooth. 

Preheat a nonstick skillet over medium heat and add a glug of your favorite neutral oil. 

Mix the veggies and shrimp into the batter and add about 1 1/2 cups to the hot skillet. Spread around until the batter coats the bottom of the pan. Cook each side over medium heat until lightly browned - about 2-3 minutes per side.  Repeat until you have used up your batter. 

So good!

(Bruce wanted the shrimp all to himself)

Running!

I signed up for a 5K back in January with my buddy Brian. I was not a runner. Never had been. I love hiking, walking, spinning, weight lifting... It turns out I really love running. At least the racing part! I tried another 5k and then I was hooked.

I've got a 10K Mudrun in two weeks and a half marathon in August. My goal is to finish the half in under 2.5 hours. 

This new "hobby" allows me to discover new parts of Greater Los Angeles and my own neighborhood. It's really amazing to go at human speed in this car city. I see so much. 

Honeymooning

Mr. Tooth and I have been married for over a year. It has been a glorious and wonderful year-and-change! We finally, FINALLY, went on our honeymoon this past December. To Napa!

My grandparent's took me to Napa for a long weekend when I was 9 years old. Perhaps I realized then that I had a decent sense of smell. I remember it being really fun to name the different things I smelled in each new glass of wine - Strawberries! Cherries! Chocolate! Leather! Dirt! Cat Pee! I was an honest child. Some wine really does have a feline odor... Doesn't mean it isn't delicious though, right?

I hadn't been back to the Napa Valley since that brief visit with the Grands and Mr. Tooth had never been so we decided to trek up there for a week of wine tasting in the red and gold vineyards and some serious snuggling beside an en-suite fireplace. Best. Plan. Ever.

The highlightiest highlight: We had lunch at Bouchon. My love of sunchokes was reaffirmed. I had an earthy, velvety puree to start. Followed by some  raw oysters and a hearts of palm salad with persimmons, almonds and vanilla foam. I may have passed out momentarily from excitement.

We had a dinner at Ad-Hoc. We had a dinner at Auberge de Soleil. We had lunch at a taco truck in Yountville. We had another lunch at Busters BBQ in Calistoga. The sauce was so spicy. So Spicy. We had more oysters at the Oxbow Market. We ate, and ate, and ate, and ate. I could die happy. The wine was pretty good too.

Keshkek vs Harissa

The Atlantic recently published a story about national cuisines that piqued my interest. I am familiar with the great Dulce De Leche Debacle in Argentina and Uruguay because I wrote a paper about it for a food history class I took at UCLA a few years back. But I hadn't given much thought to other common regional foods that might cause conflict. Cultural and Ethnic identity is certainly bound up in the foods we eat, but here in the US we don't see flag burning or diplomatic relations cut off because someone claims that, oh I don't know, Barbecue is original to Texas and not to North Carolina. It's a crazy world out there.

The Life of Umami Tooth - Hashimoto's

 I want to start writing about my everyday life more, even if it doesn't specifically pertain to food or eating, so I thought I would start with this...

About four years ago I was out to dinner at Casa Bianca Pizza Pie in Eagle Rock with Mr. Tooth and my dear friend Bex when I realized I felt funny. Bad Funny. Now, this is not a story about food poisoning. I love Casa Bianca's pizza and it loves me (Order the sausage and olive pizza and an antipasto salad, trust me.) This is a story about my thyroid and it's many wonderful abilities and it's many upsetting deficits. But back to the pizza for a moment...

Here I was, enjoying my favorite sausage pizza, my then-boyfriend-now-husband was chatting merrily with Bex, when I found myself glazing over. I had blurry tunnel vision and my ears were ringing. I wasn't hungry anymore and I was doing all that I could to keep myself upright in my chair as a wave of fatigue swept over me. When I stop eating and talking something is wrong. I usually do both of those things really, really well. Apparently I didn't look too good and my dining companions insisted that I see a doctor as soon as possible. I admitted that I had been feeling unusually foggy and that all of my limbs had been tingling strangely for the past few weeks. I wish I hadn't checked Web MD when I got home. Terrifying stuff.

The next Monday I went in to my wonderful GP who ordered a blood test. Turns out I have Hypothyroidism caused by Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. I was promptly prescribed 50 mcg of Levothyroxine. And so began my journey.

Here is what I have learned:

• A lot of people have thyroid disfunction. It is incredibly common. Especially in women. Ask your family and friends and there is a high likelyhood of at least one other person who has issues with her thyroid. It's really nice to get some new perspectives.
• The symptoms of thyroid disfunction look a lot like other diseases so only a blood test can really tell you what is going on. Insist on getting a test for TSH, Free T3, Free T4 and Thyroid Antibodies.
• Not everyone will have the same combination of symptoms. For instance, I never gained a crazy amount of weight, but I did lose some hair, my skin is dry and I do get terrible brain fog and fatigue when I am not dosed sufficiently.
• Listen to your body. You are your own best advocate in terms of treatment. I am lucky that my GP and Endocrinologist trust me to tell them when I need an increase or decrease in medication based on my symptoms.
• Use a name-brand drug. I learned this the hard way. After three years on a generic my TSH all of a sudden rapidly increased and I got very sick. Levothyroxine is dosed in MICRO grams and generic drug manufacturers can have up to a 5% difference in potency in their product. Chances are good that I got a generic prescription for a few months that was "off."

After four years of treatment with blood tests about five times a year I am now taking 100 mcg of name-brand levothyroxine. I feel great most of the time and I try to listen carefully when my body says something is wrong. I take my medication every day and will have to for the rest of my life. It's a small price to pay for feeling happy and focused.

Plans For The New Year

So, I started running. And then I ran a 5K with my pal Brian. And now... I am signing up to run a half-marathon. Mr. Tooth is on his health kick too, having taken up rock climbing again. All this activity has lead me to think about health food. We eat a relatively balanced diet around here but like most Americans we indulge in fast food sometimes (I mean, In n Out, how can you resist!?). The last few months have been a blur with work and family and I feel like I've been cooking and eating on auto pilot. My plan for 2013 is to really check in and take note of what I am eating and how it makes me feel.