2 can chili + sexy green beans

It seems like every time I step into the kitchen to fix a quick bite to eat, I end up looking around an hour later and wondering how I got 3 pots of food cooking and another dish in the oven.
I decided it was time to clean out the fridge, since most of the veggies I cooked on Saturday had chicken broth in them -- and I didn't want to poison myself with old chicken broth (I'm not as brave as some people ;)). I also grabbed some leeks and red bell peppers and green beans left over from market day and decided to cook them as well. Now the only thing left to use up is my last bunch of collard greens. I have some chicken sausage to eat with those... maybe for lunch tomorrow!

On with the show... here are some pics of my latest food creations:

I sauteed some yummy leeks with fresh garlic in a mix of olive and grapeseed oil with a little smidgen of butter. The smell was fantastic! I let these cook for about 8 minutes, long enough for the leeks to start browning.

Then I tossed in some fresh green beans and let them sizzle on top of the bed of sauteed leeks and garlic. The recipe called for fresh dill as well, but I don't keep dill on hand. (I may stock up on that and several other herbs, now that I've discovered the convenient herb bins at my neighborhood food co-op.)

The finished product:

A fresh green side with some crunch and plenty of flavor, which I ended up eating alongside couscous and hummus for lunch and dinner throughout the week.

I also wanted to use up some 'chicken breakfast sausage links' that I bought at Trader Joe's. I was quite disappointed in these things and won't be buying them again -- they taste exactly like bologna, and have an unappealing pink-ish color that doesn't improve when you cook them. I would recommend sticking with Trader Joe's own branded sausage and stay away from these -- they were produced by some other company, but are sold right next to the TJ stuff.

I decided to make some chili with the links, so I could try to cover up their bologna-like taste with strong flavors like chipotle powder and cilantro. After chopping them up in my measly little 1 cup food processor (yeah, I need to invest in a real cuisinart one of these days), I attempted to brown the sausage in the oil that was left in the pan from my green bean dish. No luck -- I think this 'sausage' is impervious to browning, burning, or any other strategy for improving its texture/flavor/appearance. It's one of the sketchiest things I've ever brought home from TJ's.

After "cooking" the sausage for a few minutes with no apparent results, I tossed in a can of rotel and a can of black beans, hence my "2 can chili":


I suppose it wasn't a total disaster, given the quality of my starting ingredients. But the second half of this chili is still in a container on the bottom shelf of my fridge, 4 days later, and I have no plans to eat it. :P I should toss it out in the morning. The taste wasn't too bad, but the sodium content made me feel like a balloon. I don't eat a lot of salt :P

One last photo, just because I love the color of fresh roasted bell pepper (hot out of the toaster oven!). I ate these along with my green beans and couscous and hummus, etc.:

The real culinary highlight of my week came after a quick visit to the Golden Grocer, a coop-esque 'natural foods market' that just happens to be the closest grocery store to my apartment. I'll save that adventure for a post tomorrow, along with my first impressions of my classes this semester. Suffice it to say I will either find enlightenment or go crazy, after 14-16 weeks of examining the human condition from so many different angles.

By way of closing, here are photos of my assistant chef helping me sort through the ingredients:

Deadlines, schmedlines

So I have learned a lot about myself in the past couple of days. And even more about NSF bureaucracy, which they have successfully ported over to their online incarnation via FastLane. Or perhaps the issue lies with our local research office, which expects/demands to review everything before we submit it to Washington. Suffice it to say, one needs more than a week to prepare an NSF proposal, regardless of the readiness of the proposal narrative itself.

Mostly what I've learned is that I'm tired of packaging myself and my research to try and sell it to anonymous strangers. I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the semester concentrating on my classes -- all of which, for the first time in the history of the universe, happen to correspond to some element of my project. I'm *craving* the opportunity to add new theoretical pieces to the picture, and some of the works I'm reading this semester promise to help me do that. After tomorrow, I'll be done with proposals until April-ish when the Wenner-Gren returns. Then I'll have a frantic 36-hour period to revise and resubmit it, if the experiences of my elder-peers over the past 2 years tells me anything.

I *do* have to prepare a proposal to defend before the faculty committee this semester. I plan to use my abortive NSF attempt as the starting point. I have already outlined a lot of great improvements to incorporate -- tightening the links between theory and methods, and explaining the 'broader impacts' of my research. Right now I'm working on an altogether different grant that basically focuses only on the broader impacts of my research, and how it applies to development. It's interesting to approach my project from this perspective -- I hadn't realized before just how "applied" my anthropology may be. Hmm...

I should get back to writing. It will be nice to take a break from all of this proposing for a while, and return to "just" coursework for a few weeks.

Some productive deadlines I'm setting for myself over the weekend: update my CV and create a 'professional website' version, outline the first week of my do-it-yourself readings course, and identify suitable inauguration festivities for myself and interested parties. Also, blog about my new year's resolutions and why this year they may actually stick.

Granola!

I have decided to return to blogging. Apparently I have too much free time on my hands, considering I can't seem to keep up with my work regardless of how much time I spend on it. So why not spend a bit less, and channel some of that energy into this instead?

My other great time sink: cooking. So I will probably focus on my culinary experiments here. Today's post: homemade granola! I just made my first batch of granola at home (excluding a prior batch I made at Kati's). It's maple- and cinnamon-flavored and delicious.

The bulk of the oats are "quick" oats, the thinner, smaller variety that you typically get in oatmeal canisters. There are also some thick oats tossed in to provide more crunch...

In addition to oats, I added chopped pecans, slivered almonds, shredded coconut, and pepitas. For sweetness, I poured in some maple syrup (nectar of the gods!) and added a dash of cinnamon.

I plan to add my fresh new granola to yogurt, also sweetened by maple syrup, for a quick breakfast on all these mornings when I'll have to wake up early (8 am) to get to campus for classes. Like tomorrow. On that note, I should get to bed!