This week in food

Ever since my trip to Freshia I've been on a big stir fry kick.  I've been cooking nearly every meal I eat and this post is a random mix of what I've been eating

I dig Kimchi and these dumpling are freaking awesome I bought 4 bags on sale $1.50 a piece for around 30 dumplings.  Maybe next week I'll try and make my own Kimchi from scratch

Kimchi Dumplings, bean sprouts, Brussell spouts, miso soup and green tea

I like to cook the dumpling by boiling them in my rice cooker underneath my Vegis steaming above.  I don't steam my bean sprouts but I do run them under hot tap water before eating 

More Dumplings with steamed Vegis :baby bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, carrots and bean sprouts

I'd never bought these mushrooms before and they have now become my very favorite.  

onion, enoki mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, romaine, tofu, ghost pepper, 

This has become the norm about about 5 days a week either and I can eat it for either breakfast lunch or dinner.  When I stir fry I cook with water

Zucchini, carrots, romaine, bean sprouts, tofu, shiitake, enoki, serano, ghost pepper,

  I use extremely hot pepper's and then add hot sauce and ponzu after cooking. When the vegetables are all gone I am left with an amazing firey broth that is one of the spiceyest things I have ever eaten.  It makes me salivate just thinking about it.

At least once a day I eat an Avocado. Usually I just mash it up add some Habanero hot sauce and call it guacamole.  

Lentils, steamed romaine, and raw onions topped with siiracha  and ponzu

Bean sprouts, zucchini yellow squash, carrots, and serano

Siitake, Baby Bok choy, carrots, served on Quinoa

My first time ever using yeast (besides brewing beer)  I came up with my own recipe for the crust: Whole wheat flour, water, yeast.  Pretty fancy huh?  I topped the Pizza with Tomato carrots, serano, garlic, onion and basil. The pizza was good but totally needed some avocado

I had some extra dough left over so I made the same pizza, but this time I did it right

I added a full avocado plus an additional 5 cloves of raw garlic. I like the taste and smell of cooked garlic but I prefer it's flavor raw.  I feel that its important to have both together.  By the way this pizza is only about 8 inches  wide and has over 10 cloves of garlic 3 large serano peppers, a giant avocado on it and of course I drenched it in hot sauce.

A snack while watching football.  I sliced up a sweet potato cooked it the oven and served it with Habanero ketchup and bean sprouts

: Whole wheat bread, 1 full large Avocado, bean sprouts, cherry peppers, onion, tomato, horseradish mustard. Served with Sweet potato chips and roasted serano peppers. Bourbon barbecue sauce on the side and a bowl of steamed vegi's. Oh yeah a beer and a glass of vino to wash it down

My sister wanted to make sure I had some Vegan  treats to eat on X-mas, so she made me some dark chocolate maple peanut butter balls.  These were pretty freaking decadent and paired nicely with some Bourbon.  Thanks sis

As I was leaving Freshia this crap caught my eye.  (who resist marketing power of Popeye)  cost $.25 Calories 390.  He's strong to the finish cause he eats his : Deep fried ramen with little chunks of rock candy and a hint of Cinnamon. Thank you Popeye

Playing with Yeast again.  This morning I mixed some whole wheat flour, yeast, water, cinnamon and sugar. I rolled it out real thin on my pizza stone and threw it in the oven.  It was good snack and tasted great with my morning coffee.

An nyoung ha seh yo "Freshia" my spoils from the Korean Grocery store

2 packages Tomatoes, beer, seaweed, 4 bags Kim chi dumplings, 6 Fuji organic apples, 3 lbs baby bok choy, 2 bags sprouts, serano's, shiitakes Korean soba, vegi buns, random weird mushrooms, bean paste, pomegranate, radishes, avocado's, mini cucumbers, Popeye fried crap, pickled cucumber mix, spicy bean sprouts

total $37.95

Day 1

$.99

Tasted pretty good almost pastry like.  It needed another hot sauce or another food with some spice to compliment it

Pickled stuff  $1.99

Totally yum.  Cucumber radishes Jalepeno and some kind of melon super spicy with a good mix of sweet and sour from the vinegar.

Spicy sprouts

I love me some bean sprouts.  These really were not that spicy  but tasted pretty good especially when washed down with "The sound of Vitality"

More to come as I devour

The Next Level of Heat

"Naga Jolokia" (Ghost Pepper)

After my post from a few weeks ago a Disc golfing buddy of mine from San Diego sent a few home grown ghost peppers.  I have wanted to try them for some time now and was excited to get a hold of some seeds so that I may grow my own

I wasn't sure just how strong the pepper would be.  I diced it up very finely as I would a habanero and extracted the seeds so that I could plant them later.  On a normal pizza I would add about three times as much habanero.  I thought this would be about right since the ghost pepper is supposedly 3 to 4 times as hot.

Whole wheat dough, ghost pepper, bourbon barbecue sauce, onion, cilantro, green pepper, garlic (1.5 bulbs worth), carrots.

Avocado and bean sprouts added after cooking.

It payed off to go conservative with the ghost pepper.  I was definitely aware of it's heat in almost every bite.  The fat in the avocado and the water in the sprouts both worked well to neutralize the spice.  This was my first time adding bean sprouts to the mix and as I ate each slice i kept adding more of them.  I was very pleased with my dinner and will most likely make a very similar pizza in the next day or two but with twice the amount of ghost pepper.

Just because I'm cooking with the hottest pepper known to man doesn't mean it couldn't use a little more. 4 types of hot sauce were needed to make it perfect.

Spicy toast

My body requires a lot of calories to get me going.  Each morning I try to fuel up on anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 calories for breakfast.  I try to have 3 or 4 different types of fruit.  The main food for I consume is toast, usually from some sort of spouted whole grain bread.  I go through about 3 loafs of bread a week and eat somewhere between 8 and 16 slices in the morning.  I switch off between toast with jelly or Cinnamon and sugar. 

For the past few weeks I have been using different varieties of hot pepper jelly.  They never quite live of the their name sake so I decided to step it up a bit but adding some Habanero hot sauce to the mix. I feel like a fool for not figuring this out before.  Hot sauce on toast has now become a permanent. addition to my breakfast.  On the far right of this pic you can also my Aero press which makes a better cup of coffee than any french press I have ever used and doesn't let any of the grains through the screen.

Bonus breakfast Stir fry.

about once a week I make a breakfast stir fry.  On this particular day I was cleaning out my fridge to make room for new produce I ended up throwing about 10 different in the wok.

That same day I finished different varieties of peanut butter over 1,000 calories worth right before my run.  When I got home I ate a ridiculous amount of pretzels with 7 types of mustard and beer of course.

Pizza so nice I made it twice

My plan for dinner was pretty much the usual Whole wheat Pizza.  I had a bunch of vegis in my fridge that I was also thinking about stir-frying.  I stopped by Trader Joe's on my way from the gym to pick up some bread peanut butter, whole wheat dough and tempeh.  Some dude was telling me about there tempeh at the sauna and I thought it might make a nice pizza topping.  Trader Joe's was out of Whole wheat dough so I settled for Garlic Herb.

$1.69

Tempeh is precooked.  You can eat it straight from package it has nice taste (a little) a interesting texture.  

Garlic herb dough, Bourbon barbecue sauce, tempeh, cilantro, kale, romaine lettuce, and avocado

The pizza was pretty good but left room for improvement. I was only halfway through my glass/bottle of wine.

I still had 1/2 a package of dough left so I decided to make another one.  This time I put about twice as much sauce, I cut the tempeh thinner and I added the kale and romaine for the last 5 minutes of baking.  Sadly I didn't have anymore avocado's left

Yum

When left over become even better that the original meal

I rarely eat spaghetti .  (This may sound strange with me being Pastafarian and all.) It had been about 8 months since the last time I had some noodles and red sauce.  Last night I had the hankering.  I wanted nothing fancy just noodles and sauce.  I decdided to cook up some whole wheat noodles ( 100% seitan) with a jar of Classico olive sauce washed down with one Large glass of wine.

Dinner was good and provided exactly what I needed (plenty of calories and a good buzz)

Tonight I had a bunch of noodles left over from yesterday I decided to mix them up in the wok with some Garlic chives, onion, aspargus, kale, collards, yellow squash, and carrots washed down with a bit of Sake

I barley cooked the greens and they couldn't have tasted better. Dinner was quick easy and delicious.

Ghost Pepper Sauce and the Quest for the Perfect Chip

Yesterday I made my Monthly trip to Cost Plus to replenish my stock of Sontava hot sauce.  (I'm currently up to about 2 bottles a week.)  While there I noticed they had a new sauce made by Dave's Gourmet (who is famous for its Dave's Insanity hot sauce) Made with Ghost peppers "the hottest pepper in the world.  I had seen this sauce before online but never pulled the trigger.  It cost $6.99 (cheaper than online with coupon) and there was no way I could say no.  I had to spend $30 so I could use my 10 off 30 coupon the rest of my items include 5 bottles of Sontava, 1 bottle of Sriracha and 3 Dark chocolate candy bars.

Dave's Ghost Pepper Sauce

I have spiceir sauces in my collection (Mad Dog Revenge 1,000,000 Scoville units , Satans blood 800,000 Scoville units) but they are made from Habanero extract and simply provide heat not flavor.  This would be my first time trying the Ghost Pepper and I was to excited to see what it taste like

You don't look so tough to me.  I just found out I have a friend in San Diego who grows his own.  He told me that he would send me a couple very soon. I can't wait to have the real thing and I also plan to use the seeds to plant my own

 Peppers are rated by Scoville Units.  This chart will give you an Idea of what were dealing with.

Now that I got a new sauce to try I neede somthing to put on.  Lucky for me there was a farmers market going on right outside the doors of Cost Plus.  So I set forth to construct the perfect chip.

The first 2 ingredients are Basil and Garlic How could I resist

Pita Chips

Sauce and spreads are good but eventually you need something to put them on. This will work just fine.

I bought these the other day at the $.99 store and hadn't really tried them out yet

The final of ingredient 

Behold the Perfect Chip.

The Ghost pepper Sauce turned out to have a pretty nice flavor.  At first I thought it might be one of the sauces that you need either an eye dropper or a toothpick to apply but with the aid of the avocado and the oil in the garlic spread to  help neutralize it's intensity I was able to use it rather liberally. this was just the orderve and it was time make something for dinner 

I rolled out what little dough I had left from my Pizza the other night.  My Vegi drawer in the fridge was pretty empty so I decided to change things up a little bit.  I added a few spoonfuls of Bourbon Barbecue sauce, cilantro, asparagus and onion., topped with an  Avocado and washed down with some Double Arrogant Bastard Ale.  Once again I used the ghost pepper sauce  it was accompaniment to the barbecue pizza.  When I cook pizza I usually choose 3 hot sauces from my pantry to go with it, 1 jalapeño based, 1 habanero based, and 1 cayenne based.  From now on I may have to use 4.  Dave's Ghost Pepper sauce gets my thumbs up as a decent sauce on a scale of 1 to 10 for flavor I give it a 7 for heat it gets an 8.  Sontava (my current favorite) gets a 9 for flavor and a 6 for heat.