There Will Be Blood

Things got a bit messy today. It was another rainy day so I had more time on my hands to plan something elaborate. Since it was cold and rainy, soup sounded like a good idea. Soup is actually a good idea most of the time because it is a great hodgepodge dish. You can just throw in a bunch of random shit, blend it, spice it, and it will probably come out pretty good. I started making soup when my room mates and I were doing CSA. We would get random shit like celeriac. Kind of reminds me of the eraser head baby. I hadn't even seen a celery root before and I really had no idea what to do with it. We'd also get a ton of squash that we didn't know what to do with so I got into the habit of making soups out of them.

Anyway, I digress. So it must be the eggplant season or something because the other night there were tons of eggplants everywhere. All three of the normal locations I hit up had a glut of eggplants. Bread is also a pretty common find and it's not just normal white bread. TJ throws out their crazy fancy Ezekiel bread like it's hotcakes. Does that analogy make any sense? Bread freezes well and you can just toast a piece as needed. You can also use all the bread to make bread crumbs. We also find a lot of bagels and despite my Judaic leaning, I'm not too fond of bagels so I usually don't take them. However, I do really enjoy bagel chips and after the success of the home made tortilla chips, I decided to take a few to take a stab at bagel chips.

Shit is fucked up and bullshit

Seriously

After a total of 5 cuts, which resulted in a lot of lost blood, we finally had sliced bagels. Oh yeah here is the basic recipe. I used olive oil instead of butter and added finely chopped garlic and some fresh rosemary. The key we figured out was to cut them thin and to watch them so they don't burn. The thin cutting part is really what led to our mishap. Bread knives ain't nuthin to fucking with. Especially sharp, German bread knives. Maybe it's because we are using a German knife to do Jew-y things. I mean is there really anything Jew-ier than making bagel chips from dumpstered bagels? Maybe if we seasoned them with the tears of Palestinians. 

Add blood for extra iron

Once they were sliced it was pretty easy from there. Just make sure they don't burn.

 

Yeah i burned the first batch cause i wasn't watching.  BIG DEAL

So the reason we made bagel chips was because we decided to make baba ganoush. Apparently eggplants explode if you don't poke holes in them so don't neglect that part. Once it comes out of the oven it gets a little drippy and saggy. 

i really need a better camera

I didn't even bother taking the skin off like the recipe said. I just threw it in the blender with the other ingredients and let the blender do the work. I did chop that green top part off though.

The final part of the lunch was a leek and eggplant soup. I really just used that recipe as a starting point. I didn't have any red pepper so those were out, but I did have a lot of leek type items so I added those. On top of having leeks, I also had a lot of scallions and chives. So instead of the red peppers i used that stuff. Also I didn't have any stock, but I did have a lot of miso paste so I used that instead

HEH   >^..^<

Also didn't have any basil left so I just used more rosemary since we had a ton of it from the other night. I put the scallions and chives in at the same time as the leeks and just followed the recipe the rest of the way and ended up with this

I did take the eggplant skins off this time

Then came the hard part of blending it. One day, when I'm a rich and famous dumpster blogger, I'll have a soup maker. Until then I have this blender I got from Craigslist

You can make a big mess here

A blender is actually a great appliance to get if you're cooking and diving a lot. I use mind to make smoothies all the time.  The trick with blending is to not fill the fucking blender too much. I've learned this the hard way. Also make sure the bottom is screwed the fuck on for fucks sake.

 Now the final step was to reheat some sandwiches I had gotten from Think Coffee a while ago. These premade sandwiches are great. They freeze well and taste great when reheated in the oven. I usually reheat them at 400+ so they heat and defrost quickly and the outside gets nice and crunchy. 

Apples, Brie, and figgy jam

And viola, you have a complete lunch made for a rainy day