citizen of the planet

Over the past few days, with time off I’ve been taking the time to cook some interesting breakfasts.  I hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a really long while so I was starting to run out of supplies.  When I looked in the cupboard I found that I still had a box of pancake mix.   I wasn’t in the mood to do pancakes so I decided to mod the ratios to makes some crepes.  I upped the milk and eggs to make for a thinner and runnier batter.  I was trying to figure out what I wanted for some filler.  I checked the fridge and found that I had a few teaspoons blackberry jam left over in a jar.  I decided to dump that in a pan, add some water, and reduce it a little bit to make a syrup of sorts.  So, I cooked up the crepes, spread some blackberry syrup in top and folded them twice.  The result was very tasty.  At that point I decided to redo it for the next morning.

Today, I made the batter even runnier and added a little bit of vegetable oil.  When I looked in the cupboard, I saw a jar of nutella and a can of condensed milk.  I warmed the nutella in the microwave, and opened up the condensed milk.  I cooked up the crepes, spread a little nutella and condensed milk inside, and folded them once.  After cooking three, I plated them nicely, then drizzled the nutella and condensed milk on top.  This was the result:

Yes, they were certainly tasty.  Perhaps the only quibble is that they were a little bit on the sweet side.  Someone on Twitter suggested that I use semi-sweet chocolate instead.  That would have been ideal, right?  However, warming up some nutella was just convenient.  I’m really proud of piecing this one together.  I have some leftover condensed milk crepes in the fridge.  I plan on eating them in a few days.  Two days of crepes in a row is slightly excessive; three is just decadent.

You know, as I was writing last night’s post I was passing in and out of consciousness.  OK, so maybe that’s making things sounds much more dire than they actually were.  I was just really tired and actually had difficulty just completing the entry.  At the bar, by the third Strongbow Erika was telling me that I had the sleepy eye thing going on.  Yeah, I’ve actually noticed that before.  It seems that when I have alcohol I tend to just look fatigued.  I don’t go Asian red, but I just look like I haven’t slept in 36 hours.  I guess it’s true though: I really was tired.  And walking over to Yonge and Bloor after a long night out probably didn’t help me out either.

Anyway, in yesterday’s post I meant to post pictures of the foie gras poutine as well as the remnants of the Belgian chocolate fondue that we shared. Unfortunately, my sleep baked mind just couldn’t manage that.  So here they are.  Yes, they were both awesome and tasty.

Lately, just due to my schedule and my change in eating habits I haven’t really had much of a chance to cook or bake some good comfort food.  Often, by the time I get home I’m lacking the caloric buffer or just the time to put in the effort.  Anyway, last time I went to the grocery store, I decided to buy some stewing beef.  I was determined to make a stew of some sort sooner rather than later.  I just needed the time.  Well, after having the meat sitting in the fridge, mocking me for not getting around to using it, I finally decided to make today the day.

Just like I did in September I made a batch of caldereta from a sauce mix.  I didn’t have any of the traditional veggies for it, so I just used what I had in my fridge and freezer.  I even did the whole sauteed garlic and onion thing even though it wasn’t required.  Anyway, after a great deal of tweaking this is what I ended up with.

It looks great, doesn’t it?  It tasted awesome.  I added a good deal of pepper so it had a nice kick to it.  Yes, even though the sauce was packet based, I adjusted it enough to make it my own.  The plus side is that I now have a couple of meals on reserve for the next few days whenever I feel too lazy to cook.  Awesome!

This banner was an interesting one to create.  The original picture was taken by me back in November 2007.  While visiting relatives in Phoenix suburb they decided that it would a good thing for us to have a look at the Grand Canyon.  So, we spend a couple of hours travelling north and eventually made it to the South Rim.  I don’t recall why I didn’t have a camera on me at the time, so I ended up shooting some pictures with my cell phone.  Here’s the picture:

So, first of all you’ll notice how the colours are quite different.  The original looks kind of washed out, no?  Well, the colours in the canyon were amazing, but not quite vivid–at least, not like what I saw in Sedona.  For the banner, I cropped the image, then changed the white balance to tend toward cooler hues.  I then cranked the saturation way up, making the colours more vivid.  I then made the red hues a lot stronger.  Lastly, I turned down the brightness a notch while raising the contrast level.  The banner above is the end result.  Big difference, no?