iPod Touch: cookbook in your pocket!

Linda and I have had iPod Touches for almost a year and like most other people with the Touch or an iPhone, we’re nuts about the applications available. We’ve found that 1) some apps are definitely better than others, 2) not all free apps are useless, particularly the ones that can be used offline, and 3) there are no useful recipe book apps available, or at least not ones I’m willing to take a chance on.

Like many people, we’ve tried to consolidate our recipes somewhere that works for us. We have some go-to cookbooks (I strongly recommend Clueless in the Kitchen and The Clueless Vegetarian) but for the most part we find our recipes online. The search function has become at once a really useful tool and one that sends me off in all directions.

Speaking of off in all directions … ok, iPod Touch and no app that works for us. In the end we decided to make use of the built-in Notes app, the 3.0 OS’s cut/copy/paste function and the new search function, which isn’t just for songs. Here’s what we do:

1. Find a recipe on our desktop computers (one you already have or something online)
2. Copy it to an email
3. Email it to ourselves
4. Open the email on our iPods
5. Copy the contents
6. Paste them into a new note
7. Edit at will
8. Save the note (the name of the recipe, if you’ve put it at the top, becomes the note’s name)

Best part? You can use the search function not just for the name of your recipe but any word in it. Have eggplant (god, why?) in more than one recipe? They’ll both show.

Given that we don’t have a printer — and my laptop has seen enough close calls with liquids — having a portable, customized, and fully searchable recipe book rocks.

Natalie Portman on “Eating Animals”

I must read this book. As someone who has asthma, I’m disturbed by “…the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, [and] the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals….”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalie-portman/jonathan-safran-foers-iea_b_334407.html

Organic chocolate chips

Just glanced at our tag cloud and noticed that “organic” and “chocolate” are the largest words.

Recently found Cocoa Camino organic chocolate chips at Fresh & Wild and also saw some at Essence of Life Organics in Kensington.

Hm, maybe I’ll go have some now…

Don’t give up!

Saw this on Twitter today (thanks, @archelina).

Didn’t he try Indian? Jamaican? Mexican? Lebanese? There are lots of dishes that don’t contain vegetables or if they do, the vegetables are often cooked and mixed in with something else (so he probably wouldn’t notice them as much). Even my finickiest friend likes Indian.

It’s true, it can be hard to find something on the menu when you’re eating out in a small town in the middle of nowhere (read: Northern Ontario). And bacon does smell great. But this article annoyed me. I think he gave up too soon.

Drawing your own line

I think everyone draws their own line regarding consumption of animal products.

I still wear leather shoes because I haven’t found anything yet as durable, well-fitting, light, and available. As a concession, I wear my shoes into the ground (literally) and don’t own very many pairs.

I eat cheese that contains rennet if I’m eating out. When I’m faced with a choice between an iceberg lettuce side salad or cheese tortellini, the choice is clear for me.

Same goes for non-organic eggs and dairy. I prefer to buy organic, but when I eat out there’s often no real option.

The lines I draw change over time, perhaps due to how long I’ve been vegetarian (approx seven years). For example, I used to tolerate fish sauce in Thai food or chicken broth in soup, but no more. They now make me feel physically ill.

Where do you draw your line?

Neighbourhood fruit

Neighborhood Fruit, a group in San Francisco, is helping people find and share fruit from trees in their neighbourhood via a website. They’ve even created a handy map of fruit trees on public land.

Although I’d prefer a way for people to exchange fruit directly (instead of via Fruitfillment), this seems like a great way not to waste fruit. I spent last year watching apples from the tree in my apartment backyard just fall to the ground, only to be half-eaten by squirrels.

Anyone know of a service like this in Toronto? Anyone want to start one?

New food experience: Green garlic

We recently started up our service from Front Door Organics again. We now receive a box of organic vegetables and fruit to our door every two weeks. Well worth the money and it forces you to try new items. They’re also very nice to deal with. They even included a free 100 mg chocolate bar from Cocoa Camino as a welcome back gift!

One of the items in the latest ‘Fresh Box’ was green garlic. It looks like a giant green onion but smells like garlic. Apparently it’s just garlic that’s not fully mature. I’ve enjoyed using it so far in Asian-influenced dishes when you don’t necessarily want the garlic taste to take over the dish.

Would love to hear how you’ve used green garlic in your cooking.

Z-Teca: update

Yesterday, Linda found the burrito bowl, which I ordered the first time we were there, to be very soupy and way too onion-y. She wonders if this is a take-out vs eat-in thing.

Undercooked onions: acceptable or no?

No. No, they are not. No.

Here is what I have learned: there is no way you can simmer/boil/microwave your way to cooked onions once everything is mixed together. This doesn’t just apply to curries — I made some veggie cabbage rolls one time (following the recipe, naturally, for I knew not then what I know now) and YEECH the onions stood out as creepy, crunchy little things in an otherwise nice dish. Yes, creepy. I don’t know why. And they look kind of ugly, too, when they’re not even translucent. I don’t think I’ve got the stove temperature wrong; I don’t think I’m yanking them off the heat earlier than indicated. So: whenever I see a recipe that seems to come up short on timing, or doesn’t say something like ‘translucent’ or ‘golden’ I add time, myself. Furthering my winging-it ways.

Here’s the thing, though: one of my favourite Indian food recipe sites calls for you to just dump chopped-up onions right into the pot along with everything else. Look! It’s in a recipe for Yellow Daal. You’re messing with my newly arrived-at worldview, Jag!

The only thing that makes me think this might work is that you leave it for 1.5 hours. Will I try the recipe? I don’t know. Do I want to invest about 2 hours in something that might have creepy, ugly little onion bits in it?

Leslie St Loblaws

May I just say that the customer service at the Leslie and Lakeshore Loblaws is fantastic these days? I may? Thank you. We actually go out of our way to shop there, versus our local Loblaws which seems to have decimated stock at the best of times, and we did even before they got particularly helpful. Linda was squinting at a wall of canned goods and a sales person actually asked her if she wanted help. Really. Someone also offered to bag our groceries (this is one of the ones where the cashier doesn’t do it).

I must add that their natural/organic food section (which also contains natural cleaning products, toiletries, etc.) has really bulked up. It’s great. We spent a lot of time there, particularly in front of the cold section, and apparently we were conferring and staring enough that a guy came buy and asked Linda some questions about one product. She looked all smart, see.