We're foragers now!!!!

We're not really foragers. Well... at least we're not urban foragers in the sense that Andre in The League was a forager:

A few weeks ago I played Hodown! Throwdown! Showdown! with Pluff Mud Panic. If you're my mother, you probably read that last sentence and said "Wait... WHAT, Alison?!" I played in a frisbee tournament in Asheville with my club coed team. We arrived at the fields on Saturday morning at 6:45am because our first game was at 8am and life is brutal. No one should have to be functioning at that hour, especially me, especially me exercising. Anyway - here we are, warming up on some artificial turf fields and VIOLA! There's a bag of veggies in the middle of the fields! THREE eggplants and one large, white bell pepper in an Ingles bag**.

**for those of you who don't know, Ingles is the local grocer in Western, NC. They make popular products such as Laura Lynn Sport Drink. If you like gatorade, you'll LOVE sport drink.

This is my team Pluff Mud Panic. Pluff Mud is a poopy brown quick sand found in Charleston area. My team is from Charleston. If you get caught in poopy brown quick sand, you may start to panic. Thus, our team name. We're mostly all friends with each other now. 

No one claimed this bag during our three games so I urban foraged the hell out of that bag. B and I make a combined negative amount of money. This income becomes more negative during summer months. When filling out forms that say things like "what is your household income?" there isn't an option for how little we make because the number starts at zero**.

**Oh you're our friend and you're tired of hearing how poor one or both of us is?! WELL WE'RE TIRED OF BEING POOR. Love you. Please keep being our friend. One day we'll have incomes and go on beautiful adventures with you. XO. <3 Alison

Who WOULDN'T forage this? easiest forage ever.

I decided to make these eggplants into a delicious, spicy gnocchi thing. I already blogged a similar recipe to this one. Sorry. I'm honestly thinking about maybe changing this blog to "Clearing out the bunker: Adventures in creative freezer and cupboard eating" since most of what we've been eating has been in an effort to clear out the freezer and cupboards. We'll see.

Here is the list of ingredients: 

1 medium sized foraged eggplant (if it's not foraged, it doesn't count. Look it up)

1 lemon

Salt

Pepper

1 Shallot

1 clove of garlic

Red pepper flakes

1/2 red onion

1 tbsp tomato paste

Wine

Tomatos

Maybe some diced, canned tomatoes?

Bread is good

Can't have bread without butter!

Let's start by roasting the eggplant! Look at that fat, foraged, f**k (fork). That thing is beautiful. So free. So tasty. Peel and dice the eggplant. Cut it into pieces that are a little bigger than a die. 

Cut the lemon in half and get ready to squeeze it. This picture seems unnecessary. 

Coat the eggplant in olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. Also you could let the eggplant sit out a while before you do this. Eggplants are super moist (worst word ever) and if you put them in a colander and let them drain for an hour+, that should help get some of the moisture out.

Let's take this moment to acknowledge the amount of salt we have in our kitchen. Top shelf - grinder sea salt and large tube of sea salt; bottom shelf - 2 large boxes of morton's salt and a new salt grinder. 

 B is super salty.

Lay the eggplant out on a cookie sheet and roast at 425 or so until they're brown and delicious looking like in this picture. I have no idea how long this was. It may have been around 30 minutes?

Then chop up the 1/2 red onion, add some olive oil, throw it in a blender or food processor with the roasted eggplant and press FRAPPE. 

Next, you'll want to get a spatula out to scrape up the eggplant and such. This part is rough because you'll have top open the anxiety drawer. This drawer has lots of utensils such as tongs, plastic tongs, can openers, wine openers. You may be thinking "but Alison, why are you saying all of these utensils in the plural as if you have mutiples of each?!" Because we have multiples of everything. Rather than contributing to the house, I just doubled everything B already had. My b.

B likes to open and shake the anxiety drawer to give me anxiety. He's a dream.

This is what the eggplant looks like. Honestly, feel free to stop here and eat it with chips. It's delicious. Alternatively, you may continue to make a sauce.

 Dice up them shallots.

Eat some eggplant with chips.

Put the shallots, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil in a pan and stir around in the heat until they're a little translucent. In the words of my uncle, "let them mate".

Add some tomato paste and freeze the rest in dollops un the freezer. Then you can use them later. #momtips

Then add some wine and reduce it. WHAT DOES REDUCE MEAN?! Stir it around until it's all buddy buddy together. That's what that means.

Add the eggplant. Oh shit. Look at that! Delicious. What does this sauce need though? More tomatoes. What do we have in the cupboard? Some TJ's diced and fire roasted tomatoes and one large, plump juice tomato. 

 So I diced up the tomato and also added the fire roasted tomatoes.

We ate it with gnocchi because we're fancy AF.

We're so fancy we even left the cheese grater ON THE TABLE,

This was delicious. At some point I added red pepper flakes. It made it spicy. That was probably done before the reduction. Oh boy. I'm getting hungry just writing this post! You know... the other day I was trying to find a lemon chicken orzo soup recipe and I kept finding obnoxious blogs where all they did was ramble and never provide a recipe. That's so annoying. Who does that?

My computer wanted me to add this picture of Colby to the blog. What a savage.

Delicious Level: 5/5 It's just so delicious when you EARN your food by foraging it.

Difficulty: I think it's easy but I also just finished the wine I used for reduction.

Lessons Learned: I still haven't finished my dissertation. I really should do that. I find that creative writing helps me to reset my desire to write my dissertation. Or something. 

Here's to eatin' good and FORAGING local! Cheers and uff-da!

Mitch's Sweet Potato and Salad

Welcome to 2016! Fresh, local, healthy foods?! Eating nutritious meals?! Exercising regularly?! New year, new me! In 2016 I've made a resolution to stop attending school as a student (i.e. I'm going to graduate and GTFO). This has nothing to do with this blog, my diet or anything else. I just want to be held accountable so I'm putting it on the internet. Everything on the internet is true.

This recipe is inspired by a menu item at Mitch's Tavern; a staple in the Raleigh/ NCSU community and a very special place to me and my friends. It's where I spent my 21st birthday. It's where we threw Mike his graduation party (most people who go to school for 10 years are called doctors, Mike). It's where Cam met me for a beer to celebrate finishing my last class of my academic career. It's where we started celebrating Jandy's wedding. It's where all reunions begin. We sit at the copper top.

Mike reserving the copper top by laying across it and whispering sweet nothings to it.

I love Mitch's because their food is reasonably priced and delicious, the beers are local and tasty, and the service is impeccable (shout out to Stephanie). Enough about Mitch's! I'm getting verklempt.

On their menu is a sweet potato and side salad that is delicious and nutritious! I recreate something similar to their sweet potato and bring it to work most days of the week because I find it makes me happy and full. When possible, it's good to pair it with a side salad so you can have the whole sweet and savory thing going on. Furthermore, this is a super cheap meal to make once you have all the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Sweet potato:

Sweet potatoes

Milk (or whatever)

Butter (duh)

Nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, anything that smells like it should go in your thanksgiving dessert

Honey

Trader Joes Omega Trek Mix (see below)

"Oh my!" indeed!

Salad:

I mean this is really up to you. I think a salad is whatever you want on top of lettuce. Nick once told me my salad was "stretching the boundaries of what defines a salad." But I think he just hate me 'cause he aint me. For my salad (which photographs great for all you foodstagrammers out there), I used the following:

Red leaf lettuce

Cherry tomatoes

Mozzarella 

Parmesan

Olive oil/vinegar/salt/pepper

ALRIGHT, Y'ALL!

My mom grows all sorts of veggies. I took the photos for this post over the summer (only took me 6 months to write it) and the ingredients I used were mostly from my mom's garden. I am a poor graduate student so I was trying to spend as little money on food as possible. I believe the sweet potatoes were from her garden (it is in NC after all) and the lettuce and tomatoes definitely were. I could have gotten my cheese from the amish here in PA but it seems they don't understand how real life works because who can afford to pay $9 for a small block of cheddar?! Get real. Get electricity, zippers, and real.

Ok really here's the recipe:

Boil water in a small pot

Peel and cut the sweet potato into large chunks and put them into the boiling water.  In this case it looks like I probably cut them into quarters. It really doesn't matter.

Cook the sweet potatoes until you can stab them easily with a fork. Then drain the water, throw in the appropriate amount of butter (you do you, but remember: swimsuit season is just around the corner), milk (I use half and half because I don't have milk and, well, swimsuit season is just around the corner), nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and whatever other spices you decided on. Make sure you do all of this while the potatoes are still hot. This way the butter (seriously though, no judgement on the amount of butter) can melt and you can mash up them taters real good.

Once I get it to this point, I put it in a tupperware, wait for it to cool and refrigerate it until the next day when I eat it for lunch. Alternatively, you can eat it then. To serve it and give it that "I don't know what", add honey and the Omega Trek Mix. If you like sweet potatoes, you'll LOVE this recipe!

It really looks so much prettier in this pic than it does in my old tupperware containers. That's probably why Al always looks at me like I'm crazy when I eat this for lunch in front of him. He actually looks disappointed in me when I eat this in his office - which is weekly. Sorry, buddy.

On to the salad!

For this salad, I made somewhat of a caprese salad kinda. It's good. I picked a bunch of tomatoes from my mom's garden. Alternatively, since it's currently January, you could go to the grocery store and buy some tomatoes that have been shipped across the country. I went to the store in NC and asked where the tomatoes were. The woman working glared at me and condescendingly said "there's a draught." WELL SORRRRRY! (but really, sorry to my CA homies). Alternatively to the previous alternative, you could eat something more in season since this is a local food blog. I put brussels sprouts, black bean and corn salsa, and some pepper jack cheese on my salad (this would be the salad Nick does not qualify as a salad - but like I said, the food that lies with lettuce, shall henceforth be known as salad).  

K. Here's the recipe:

Wash the lettuce. My mom once called me high maintenance because I made fun of her when I found a worm on my salad. I was eating the salad, but apparently I was also high maintenance for pointing it out. Life is confusing. 

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half. This will allow them to soak up the vinaigrette and be more stab-able when you're eating the salad

Note the subtle hints of stab-ability in these tomatoes

If you got lil mozzarella ballz like I did, I'd cut those in half or quarters as well. This will make your ballz go further and allow you more cheese per bite. I swear if I turn lactose intolerant one day, I will have no idea what to do with my life. I've had multiple roommates admit to eating more cheese because they live with me. Like that's MY problem. As if.

Vinaigrette is: 1 part balsamic vinegar, 1 part olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. I'd add a pinch of sugar as well. It's grandma's secret but she doesn't understand the internet so it's cool if I tell you here.

You know how salad works, throw it all together and pour a glass of wine. Viola!

  

This meal is so good - I literally cannot even right now.

Well there it is. My sweet potato recipe ($6 trek mix + $6 of sweet potatoes could feed me for two weeks at work), and a salad recipe. I think the nuts from the trail mix and the nutrients from the sweet potatoes help me to stay awake through the afternoon. You know when that 2:30 feeling hits, have a sweet potato. Just don't eat it in front of a Ron Swanson-like co-worker if you're concerned about judgement. 

Delicious Level: 4/5 (lezzbehonest - it's no steak dinner but it's super delicious)

Difficulty: This is so easy Maebe can make it

Lessons Learned: Just please. Finish your dissertation, Alison. Stop writing in your ridiculous food blog. Get out of PA. You don't belong here. Your clothes are too colorful and you still haven't figured out that you have to clear your car off and warm it up before you can drive it in the winter. It's been 4 years. You should have learned that by now. Tammy even knows and she's from Hawaii.

Here's to eatin' good and eatin' local! Cheers and uff-da!