Meyer lemon muffins, sorta.

1. Discover lemon muffin recipe in the newspaper. Get really excited about it.

2. Go shopping hungry; buy shit-ton of produce. The farmers market people in Culver City are apparently too plebian to offer Meyer lemons. The Beverly Hills market always has stuff like this (but also tons of bleached-blonde bitches with strollers). Luckily, Trader Joe's provides.

3. At cooking time, discover that you don't actually have a muffin tin. Rather than take boyfriend's suggestion that you go out and buy one, silly, decide to do it as a loaf. You do have a loaf pan!

4. Gather the goodies:


5. Empty out your only mixing bowl, which you use to put fruit and tomatoes in.



6. Put the dry ingredients into it.



7. Chop two of your three lemons into "one-inch pieces." Since it was all going into the food processor anyway, I decided to redefine inch to "whatever size was easiest for me."



8. Dump into tiny food processor and whirl until "finely chopped."



9. At this point, boyfriend will point out that he could help, rather than [implicit part of the statement] constantly having his attempts to read Wonkette interrupted by your going back to his computer all the time to look at the recipe. So he helps by beating the eggs and combining them with milk and chunky lemon soup.



Please note that while the recipe says you should put the butter in with that stuff, that assumes, incorrectly in my case, that you own two bowls bigger than a cereal bowl. The butter would not fit. Therefore, it proceeded separately to the next step...

10. ...which was to make a well in the middle of the dry stuff and mix in the wet stuff. They suggested that you don't need to mix it that much, but as your boyfriend will point out, you have to be sure that the dry stuff gets completely mixed. Glass bowls are good for this.



11. Dump it all in the loaf pan! Ignore your instinct that says it'll spill over the top! It doesn't, but your boyfriend will point out that "it's gonna rise like a motherfucka."



12. Sprinkle refined sugar on top, but if you're doing a loaf, you don't need nearly as much as they call for. Then sprinkle on cinnamon.



A note on the cinnamon: they call for Ceylon cinnamon. That's subtly different and probably more expensive than the normal cinnamon we all put in our pumpkin pies. I live KINDA near Surfas, but if I can't be bothered getting a muffin tin from the grocery store two blocks away, I certainly can't be bothered to actually get into my car and drive somewhere. It probably does taste better with lemons, and I look forward to the time when I break down and buy some.

13. The final step is cutting your third and final lemon into "paper-thin slices", then cutting those slices in half. Again, I used a generous definition of paper-thin, though I did try my best. We can't all be Bone. The recipe doesn't call for sprinkling more sugar on top, but I tried it, just to see if it would help the lemons caramelize.



14. Pull dinner out of oven; replace with loaf pan into oven. Take turns with boyfriend licking remaining batter off spoon. You are both almost thirty. It tastes divine.

15. To nobody's surprise, the muffin loaf is not nearly done after the 20 minutes the muffins called for. It will take more like an hour. Periodically, stick head in oven and insert a clean knife into the center to check for doneness. Lick knives.

16. Loaf is done when boyfriend says it's starting to look a little too brown around the edges. Miraculously, the middle seems to be cooked. Endure deserved teasing from boyfriend about reluctance to buy muffin tins.



17. Feed muffin loaf to friend who just returned from trip to Europe. She has no complaints. Mwahahahaha!

P.S. I have discovered that I hate Blogger's default interface.

brown rice with the goods

I try to prepare foods, on my days off, that I can bring to work for healthier choices as meals.

The ingredients:



4 cups of organic vegetable broth
2 cups of brown rice
1 shallot (I sometimes buy shallots when I feel I'll waste half an onion)
4 stalks of celery
4 large mushrooms
bag of snap peas
grapeseed oil

not pictured:
carrots and chicken breasts

Bring the vegetable broth to a boil, add the brown rice and return to a boil, then turn temperature down and simmer till the rice is fully cooked, fluff.

Add a tablespoon of grapeseed oil, or so, to a frying pan. I do not use no stick, so the little bit of oil is helpful. Keep the temperature low. Add sliced shallots, mushrooms and diced celery to the oil and cook on low till they are softened. Add rice. Usually at this point I add a raw egg, but unfortunately I opened my fridge and realized I used my last egg the other day. Unfortunate because it adds a nice texture and some protein. A good dose of my favourite China Lily soya sauce.

I bake chicken breasts in large quantity. Today I baked six with my cheat seasonings, Souvlaki seasoning from the Victoria Epicure company.

Raw carrots on the side, and I'm ready to eat.. except that I don't often feel like eating after cooking large quantities of food for some reason, so I'll eat later.




(I cannot promise quality photos until I purchase my new camera, since I have unfortunately damaged the screen of this camera. )

my story

I'm quite excited about being a part of this West Coast Cooking Blog, and I must admit it's making me feel inspired to start using salmon and wild mushrooms and seaweed and all sort of amazing foods that can be found along the west coast.

I'm mellybrelly, otherwise known as Melanie. I'm Canadian, born and bred. I live on Vancouver Island, but enjoy spending some of my time on the smaller Island, especially Texada Island. Okay, enough links.

Cooking became so much more enjoyable to me when I started creating my "cooking with Melanie" posts in my online journal. I try to eat as naturally as possible, I avoid as many processed foods as I can, and I also try to stay away from preservatives and hormones. In my day to day eating, I avoid wheat, dairy, refined sugar and chemicals. I also love eating wheat, dairy and sugar, so it's quite the balancing act. I tend to cook in large portions because I love bringing left-overs for my meals at work. This all changes when I'm cooking for other people.

I am lucky to live in a community that has farmer's market twice a week, the stores sell milk from local suppliers, there are local farms to buy fruits and vegetables, and of course food can be found at the shore, if you are willing to work for it. Fishermen sell their catch at the wharf, and many farms provide hormone free meats. I think the thing I'm most grateful for is the fact that organic foods are as common as non-organic foods in my grocery store, and for comparable (and sometimes better) prices.

I should mention I'm a fan of 'slow foods', and I recently made the decision to ditch my microwave.

I'm working on my first food post at this moment, nothing too exciting, just what I'm preparing for some meals for this coming work week.

Welcome!

Welcome!

This blog is meant to be a lighthearted look at cooking with me and some of my friends who are also enthusiastic amateur chefs. I named it the West Coast Cooking Blog because we live all up and down the West Coast -- I'm in LA, Liddybird is in the Bay Area, and mellybrelly is from gorgeous Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. It's also because, in my poorly informed opinion, one of the great advantages of living on the West Coast is access to a wide variety of interesting, sometimes exotic fresh food. Every time I go to a farmers market, I want to drop my plans for the day and start pursuing elaborate cooking projects. Then I want to share my missteps and successes with the world. Thus, this blog was born.


As you'll see, one of my big food interests is produce. I spend a lot of time at farmers markets. Since I'm usually too lazy to go to Ralphs, I often end up eating locally. And I love taking advantage of whatever gorgeous new fruit or veggie is just coming into season -- strawberries and fava beans right now (mid-March)! Another theme you may notice is at least token attempts to keep things healthy; all three of us have been on diets, and mine left me with a healthy distrust of too much butter. And while I'm a vegetarian, mellybrelly and Liddybird aren't, and I'm hoping Liddybird will be kind enough to share some of her pork-tastic authentic Chinese recipes with us.

This blog will be updated whenever we feel like cooking; we're all busy girls, but I figure I'll have the time and the goods once a week or so. I may repost something old from my personal blog just to get things started. Or maybe I'll get off my butt and make those lemon muffins. Thanks for stopping by.