Souper Freak

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. And hopefully I’ll remember the next time I’m standing at the meat counter, filled with a mix of Midwestern nostalgia and delusion about my cooking abilities:

No more big hunks of meat!

1. I will under cook it.

2. Then I will mangle it.

3. Then I will over cook it.

4. Then it will be my least favorite thing on my plate.

Not to mention that it’s more expensive, more stressful, and possibly (am I being paranoid?) deadly.

The vision I had was so romantic. Traditional. Practically patriotic! An all-American Sunday dinner centered around a cut of meat.

It was a beautiful plan: homemade apricot-fig-apple-raisin cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, braised collard greens, and a nicely cooked, friendly hunk of pork loin.

(Staged for the photo, it’s sort of convincing, huh??)

I have childhood memories of pork loin, hot on the table at dinner and cold in between slices of bread the next day. I even checked in with the head chef — my mom! She had in fact just made pork loin the evening before, and said it was the most delicious she’d ever made: pork coated in a layer of grated onion, drizzled with oil, and topped with apples. I did exactly as she said: I cooked it for 30 minutes, checked it, added the apples, and popped it back in for another 20 minutes. I told her I don’t have a good meat thermometer, and she told she’d rather I follow my nose: determine doneness not based on the time on the clock or the temperature on the thermometer, but the smell of well-cooked pork emanating from the oven.

What I didn’t account for was that the smell of the onions and garlic sauteing on my stove top would overwhelm any possibility of smell-testing the pork. So when the allotted 50 total minutes of cooking time went by, I decided to override my routine obsessive paranoia that I should cook meat to death before I trust it won’t kill me, and took it out and left it for 10 minutes to rest.

Then the long-awaited carving moment arrived, my still-as-of-then-impressed boyfriend waiting hungrily with his plate ready. And the pork was completely raw inside.

I put the pork back in the oven, but by that point I had already given up on the fantasy that I can cook a meat-centered dinner. We ate the mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and collard greens sans meat, and it was perfectly great. By the time the pork came out of the oven (yes, this time I waited until I could smell it), I cut us each a slice but didn’t even enjoy it. And it wasn’t just my frustration and disappointment about yet another meat-cooking letdown — it was that when it comes down to it, I NEVER like big hunks of meat! Unless it’s a burger completely soaked in ketchup and condiments, or small slices of meat hidden in amongst enough veggies and sauce to make the meat more of a garnish, I really never enjoy the meat part of a meal.

So that’s it! Chicken-apple sausages are one thing….a soup with meat tucked into it — okay, fine. But truly, I always end up having the most success and satisfaction cooking up creative, healthy vegetarian meals. I just need to own that, and put to bed that Midwestern voice inside that tells me I should feel a little guilty that I can’t cook up a hearty meat and potatoes sort of deal. Plus, cooking vegetarian is more affordable, better for the planet, more creative, and ultimately (to me!) more delicious. Read my lips: No more big hunks of meat!

With the beautiful sunny warm weather we’ve had lately in San Francisco (typical for this time of year), you’d hardly know it’s autumn. But with Halloween over and Thanksgiving on its way, fall is definitely here. This has always been my favorite season, and nowadays its when I feel most nostalgic about growing up in Ohio. I miss the crunch of leaves on the streets and the undeniable smell in the air. Thankfully there is the great autumn equalizer: the food! Pumpkin, butternut squash, every kind of apple — and here in San Francisco is the added romance of picking up organic ones at the farmer’s market.

In the spirit of Halloween I’ve cooked up a number of yummy fall dishes since the weekend….

* Pear and kale pizza with a pumpkin-fig-balsamic sauce and caramelized onions *

This one was an original recipe folks!! It all just came together: we used naan for the crust, three kinds of cheese, slices of pear, sauteed kale, patiently caramelized onions…and then the sauce, oh the sauce! Cara and I have long loved the vegan roasted vegetable Amy’s frozen pizza — it doesn’t have any cheese, but it has this amazingly decadent sauce. The sauce we whipped up for this pizza comes close! It’s a mix of canned pumpkin and the deepest, richest, slightly sweet mission fig sauce. I’d attempt to give you the recipe, but the trick to the sauce is a specialty ingredient that I believe is no longer event available! Back when I lived in Berkeley I bought this Mission Fig Syrup from the Big Paw vinegar stand at the Berkeley farmer’s market. It sat on my shelf for years (at least three!) until I figured out what to do with it. Now I know just what to do, but I guess it can only last as long as this small jar does! According to the Big Paw website, you can buy a mission fig vinegar but there is no trace of the syrup. Maybe one day I’ll try to improvise?

* Crab butternut squash mac & cheese *

Let’s be honest: This was more like butternut squash mac & cheese with a dusting of crab — I used a whole pound of pasta, so the measly six ounces of (canned) crab I used gave more of a “hint” of crab. But still not a shabby dish to bring to a Halloween potluck, which is exactly what I did — and the crowd ate it up. The recipe brings broccoli (I used broccolini) and crab and pasta together in a sauce that blends butternut squash, walnuts (ground up to thicken the sauce), a bit of mustard, fresh thyme, and cheese. The recipe calls for just parmesan, but I added some white cheddar and feta too. I can imagine that with fresh crab — and more of it — this would be even more delicious. Alas, I don’t have any pictures of the finished dish — or the costumed friends eating it.

* Breakfast pumpkin quinoa with cranberries and almonds *

I learned something today: Cooking is quinoa is a losing battle at 7am in the morning. First, in my attempt to rinse the quinoa, I poured the tiny grains into a sieve with holes that were obviously too big (not obvious enough to me in the morning, I guess), and poured them straight onto the floor. Then I let the boiling quinoa boil over and then I practically burnt it in the end. I added the spices without even measuring, probably too much canned pumpkin, and forgot about the sugar (later added maple syrup instead — the one good thing I did). I also subbed cinnamon almonds for the pecans the recipe calls for. The result? Meh. I’ll go back to peanut butter toast. But at least I used up some of my leftover canned pumpkin!

(The photo in the original recipe is much prettier than mine):

Happy Halloween!

Cara and I stirred up a big delicious pot of squash, potato, chickpea curry. We followed this recipe, then threw in a bunch of extra spices, some spicy Korean red bean paste, soy sauce, and much more curry paste than called for…and it worked!

I’m a terrible sleeper and have been waking up in the middle of the night — and never falling back to sleep — far too frequently as of late. And even if I make it through the night, I’m almost always woken up before my alarm by my freakishly-loud upstairs neighbors, who apparently find 5:30 am to be the perfect time for a jog across their hardwood floors in heavy-bottomed shoes.

By some stroke of luck (or maybe the Ambien I took last night?) I was deep in sleep until my alarm went off at 6:40 this morning. If I hadn’t set an alarm, I’m positive I would have slept at least another hour or more. But alas, every Wednesday I have an early morning call with the national ACLU team — it’s 10am for them on the east coast, but a bright and early 7am for me. So today I dragged myself groggily out of bed in time for the call — and then it never came! So I decided to take the morning for myself before heading into work a little later today, and use up some of the ingredients in my fridge.

Sometimes I get too ambitious at the farmer’s market over the weekend, buying lots of ingredients in anticipation of having all sorts of time to make home-cooked meals during the week. I forgot I have a couple of evening meetings this week, and suddenly realized there’s no way I’ll use up all the ingredients before they go bad. Panicked at the thought of throwing perfectly good produce away, I thought I’d find a recipe I could make this morning, then store in the freezer for lunches and quick dinners.

My choice? Meatballs! I had some ground turkey chorizo from the farmer’s market that I took out of the freezer this weekend (again, expecting one night this week I’d have the time and energy for more cooking) and a couple of zucchini. I studied up on a bunch of meatball and meatloaf recipes, and put together this concoction using what I have on hand. I don’t normally post original recipes, so consider yourself special!

Before we go there, here is a picture of the pre-cooked meatballs (cooked picture is below):

Dana’s Morning Meatballs

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 pounds Chorizo flavored ground turkey (or other flavored turkey - mine comes from SF Grill at the Divisadero farmer’s market)

3/4 (or a smidge more) panko bread crumbs

2-3 small zucchini, grated and drained

1 small onion, grated

2 cloves garlic, minced

Good dash of ground black pepper

Dash of salt

1 or 2 teaspoons dried parsley

1 beaten egg

Steps:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine all ingredients. Shape into golf ball-sized balls and space evenly on cookie sheet lightly coated with cooking spray. Cook for 30-40 minutes, or until turkey is cooked through.

That last part — “until turkey is cooked through” — that’s not my forte. I get paranoid about whether I’ve cooked poultry through enough. I know the idea is to be able to tell by cutting a meatball in half and examining it for color and texture. I even tasted a bit and got frightened and put it back into the oven. My meatballs have been in the oven for 35 minutes now. I keep pulling them out, cutting one open, and putting it back in! I’ve demolished three meatballs already. Now Chelsea came out and tried one and assured me they are done. So done they must be! And delicious too — the chorizo flavor adds such a nice kick!

Any tips from readers on checking poultry for doneness?

And here they are cooked through! (I hope!)

It’s September! Which means it’s fall, which means it’s time for lots and lots of soup!!

Here’s me kicking off the season:

I have been so busy that I’ve hardly been cooking lately. Not only is work busy with my “real job” — raising money for the ACLU — but I’m also busy raising money for the SAFE California Campaign, which will place an initiative on the 2012 ballot to replace California’s dysfunctional, expensive death penalty system with life without the possibility of parole. 

We (as well as me personally) believe that the continued use of the death penalty is one of the greatest on-going violations of human rights in the United States. The death penalty is discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. It is imposed and carried out arbitrarily. The grave risk of wrongful execution cannot be overlooked. Nationally, 138 people have been released from death row after new evidence proved they were in fact innocent.

In addition, while we have spent literally billions of dollars on the death penalty in the last 30 years, the number of unsolved murder and rapes cases has increased dramatically. 46% of homicides and 56% of rapes remain unsolved every year in California. If passed, this initiative will direct that a portion of the money saved from replacing the death penalty be used to create the SAFE California Fund, a $100 million fund to increase the rate at which murder and rape cases are solved in California.

All of this is to say that it’s going to be a busy next 14 months! (You can help me out here with a small donation so that I can focus on chasing the big ones!) Somehow I’ll carve out some time to stir up some delicious soups.

So back to tonight, here’s the sausage - I substituted chicken andouille sausage for the Portuguese linguica sausage the recipe called for:

As I type this, Tyler and I are drinking wine while a pot of onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, and yellow potatoes simmer on the stove. Soon we’ll add broth, spinach, and the sausage and have a pot of fabulous soup — courtesy of the wonderful Smitten Kitchen blog.

Here’s Tyler hard at work:

Don’t forget the potatoes:

And here’s the end result!

Stay tuned: Later this week I’ll be whipping up a batch of black bean and pumpkin soup topped with roasted pumpkin seeds!

P.S. OMG. We just finished eating the soup. It’s amazing!!!! We ate it alongside a hearty whole wheat bread and delectable aged gouda cheese, with a lot of Tabasco sauce. So good!!

I’ll keep this quick — as quick as it was to make this easy and delicious gourmet dish! Perfect for a quick filling snack or a small lunch or dinner.

Today my sister Cara and I went to the farmer’s market, then spent the afternoon visiting in my kitchen while I whipped up an off-the-cuff cold soba noodles dish to take for lunch this week — complete with a delicious soy/sesame/ginger/garlic dressing, fresh veggies, pan-fried tofu, and homemade tamago (Japanense sweet egg). But that’s not the dish I’m here to describe! After all this chopping and cooking but no eating, we got pretty hungry, and THAT’S what I’m here to tell you about.

I had some olive oil multi-grain tortillas I’ve been meaning to use, and an avocado that’s at that perfect ripeness point. So I decided on some sort of quesadilla, and made it up while I went along. First I put a tortilla in a hot, slightly oiled pan and added a light layer of freshly grated Parmesan cheese (much much less than the huge gobs of cheese you usually find inside a quesadilla). When the cheese melted, I folded over one side of the tortilla and kept it cooking. I had a jar of artichoke hearts in oil, and I tossed a few into the open side of the pan. After they quickly fried up, I sauteed a few basil leaves in the sizzling artichoke oil, and then added the basil and artichokes to the cheesy center of the tortilla. To finish it off, we added a garnish of sliced green onions, slices of avocado and freshly ground pepper. Repeated this, and had one for each of us in less than five minutes.

So easy. So simple. So delicious. So gourmet! Yum.

Last night I planned to just go out with my good friend Kelly (co-owner of the new Yapita organic baby food company) for an early dinner and a few drinks, but surprised myself and kept the night going at a cool party in the Mission with about one (or two or three) too many gin gimlets. Woke up with a pretty bad headache, though I still managed to make it to Pilates this morning and then totally overhauled our kitchen. I did a major deep clean (even pulled the stove out from the wall and cleaned a decade’s worth of grime off from its sides) and reorganized the pantry, the counter tops, the spice collection, and even the cabinet under the sink. Within an hour of cleaning it up, I dirtied it up again making dinner. Both were side dishes, but together they made for a light, summery, but satisfying combination.

The first dish was the zucchini carpaccio salad recipe from the fantastic site, Smitten Kitchen. I don’t have a mandolin slicer, which the recipe suggests for slicing the zucchini paper thin, so I carefully did it by hand — winding up with less-than-perfect-but-perfectly-acceptable zucchini slices. You salt the zucchini, then rinse it twenty minutes later and blot dry. The rest is simple: toss the zucchini with arugula, dress with oil (I used grapeseed) and fresh lemon, then grate a healthy amount of fresh Parmesan on top. It tastes like you’d expect it to — simple but fresh.

The real winner tonight was the summer corn salad from my favorite website, 101 Cookbooks. I really don’t think you could (or at least, would) make a dish with raw corn….but it’s amazing! I bought the corn at Trader Joe’s — just $0.39 each — and it is surprisingly sweet. I made half a recipe of the salad, using just three ears of corn instead of the six called for, and imagine I might be using up the remaining three on another batch of salad in a few days. The corn is the central part of the salad, but the two things that make all the difference are the dressing (just lemon juice, oil, and brown sugar ) and freshly toasted pepita seeds. The recipe actually calls for a mixture of pepita seeds (which are pumpkin seeds) and sunflower seeds, but since I had pepita seeds on hand already I didn’t bother spending extra money to buy sunflower. I’m sure the salad would be even better with the two types of seeds together. Really, this dish is very, very good. I admit I was skeptical — just corn, shallots and seeds? — but now that I’ve tasted it I feel an addiction coming on.

Chelsea and I wound up staying in to watch movies. We watched Blue Valentine first — devastating but beautiful and touching — and now we’re toggling back and forth between Beauty and the Beast, Miss Congeniality, and, now, the show Hoarders. We thought about venturing out for ice cream, but we ended up settling for chocolate almond milk, made with a combination of Nequick and real powdered cocoa (to cut down on the sweet) that I shook with ice cubes in a mason jar. Cold and chocolaty. It did the trick!

Tyler and I just returned last night from a trip to Cleveland for my best friend Holly’s wedding. We were there for six days — six hot, sweltering, sweat-dripping days. Cleveland gets hot in the summer, but this was unusual even for Cleveland. I promised myself (and Tyler) that I’ll never complain again about how cold San Francisco is in the summer. (We’ll see how long I keep that promise…I went for a very chilly walk this morning and found myself almost wishing for just a few rays of that hot Cleveland sun.)

I realized on this trip that it’s no wonder Cleveland has such fantastic bars: drinking is one of the only things you can do comfortably and enthusiastically in Cleveland year-round! It’s too horribly cold and snowy in the winter, and apparently too unbearably hot in summer, to maintain many good habits with any consistency. Good luck running on icy, snowy sidewalks in February (or March, April or even May depending on how long the winter decides to hold on) or even thinking about running in summer — even showering ends dismally if you don’t have air conditioning. By the time you towel off, you’re soaked in so much sweat you need to hop back in.

But snow, heat, rain or sun, Clevelanders can keep up brilliantly with the bar scene! We hit so many great bars on this trip: the Treehouse in Tremont, where a beautifully sculpted tree stretches its limbs across the bar, and where I discovered Leinenkugel Summer Shandy beer with its fresh lemony flavor; the Winking Lizard on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, with a humongous beer list and food menu, where we were offered Great Lakes Brewing Company’s coveted Christmas Ale in celebration of “Christmas in July”; the Tradesman Tavern in Parma (my home town!) with a beautiful wall mural depicting working class heroes AND pierogies; Shooters, Cleveland’s flagship bar on the west bank of the Flats, where we danced and drank the night away after Holly’s wedding….and too many other bars to describe here!

Lots of fun, lots of beer, lots of good Cleveland food….now it’s time for lots of yoga, walks, water and balanced eating. I’m off to a good start — did a bit of each today. When I came home from yoga, I let my pantry inspire me. Within 15 minutes, I had whipped up two mini pizzas made with Trader Joe’s whole wheat flat bread. Since I didn’t have any of the standard pizza ingredients, I had to get creative.

My first concoction involved some thickly sliced portobella mushroom sauteed with (lots of) garlic. I laid the mushrooms atop a flat bread covered with Trader Joe’s roasted eggplant and red pepper spread, then added sliced cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of goat cheese.

My next one was a bit more experimental. I put a good drizzle of spicy srirarcha sauce on the flat bread, then topped it with — ready? — canned anchovies, plus some sliced cherry tomatoes and a generous sprinkle of good ol’ shaker Parmesan cheese.

Then popped both of these in a 425 degree oven for somewhere between 5-10 minutes — until I heard the cheese sizzling and the toppings were warm. Not sure how long you’d have to wait to get a completely crispy “crust” (only the edges of mine had a little crisp).

As I waited for the pizzas to cook, I read up a bit on anchovies. I don’t have much experience with them at all — I’m sure I’ve eaten them before, but I don’t have any distinct memories and I’ve never cooked with them myself. It turns out they’ve been a favorite part of the human diet forever, and they are one of only a limited number of foods that possess “umami,” an entirely unique taste dimension (sweet, bitter, sour, salty….and umami). Read this article for more interesting details and read this article to learn more about umami (it means “yummy” in Japanese!).

And so what did I think? There was definitely a flavor to the anchovy pizza that was delicious — unfortunately, the fish made it so incredibly salty that I had a hard time enjoying that flavor. It was best when I “cut” the salty flavor of that pizza with a bit of the other — putting them together in one bite made for a fabulous flavor! I think I’ll have to search out less salty anchovies or experiment with de-salting them a bit (apparently you can soak them in milk to extract some of the saltiness).

Will I do this again? Absolutely! What an incredibly easy, light and satisfying dinner. There are so many combinations and possibilities to try — just be guided by whatever you find in your pantry!

Today Tyler and I made an awesome discovery: Woo Ri Food Market, a family-owned Korean grocery located on Fillmore between O’Farrell and Geary. I just gushed about how wonderful this place is on Yelp so won’t do that all over again here. But because of this place and its very helpful staff, I have added two new ingredients to my repertoire: gochujang, a red chili paste that’s similar in its spicy-sweetness to Sriracha but with the added nuttiness of fermented soybeans, and perilla leaf, sometimes known as sesame leaf, which Tyler just recognized is essentially the same as shiso leaf, the sort of mint-licorice-tasting garnish that often appears on sushi platters (shiso is indeed the Japanese member of the perilla leaf family). (Also check out this really interesting perilla “sandwich” recipe that we plan to try, but probably with ground turkey instead of ground beef.)

My desire to find a local Korean market came while searching for tonight’s dinner recipe. I first thought about making lasagna noodle roll-ups (but decided it sounded too heavy) and then homemade seitan sausages (will definitely be trying this sometime soon!) but knew as soon as I came upon this Korean Spicy Cold Noodles recipe that this was just the summery dish I was hoping for.

While at Woo Ri Food Market, I saw that they sell gimbap, the vegetarian Korean “sushi” rolls that I’ve come to love from getting them downtown at John’s Snack and Deli (where John’s mom comes in everyday to make the gimbap fresh and where you can apparently get “suicide” kimchi burritos, which I haven’t had but just might have to try). The guys at Woo Ri Food Market told me that their rolls are made fresh everyday according to their grandmother’s recipe.

From there I noticed that they have a whole selection of homemade prepared foods — and I got to try about half a dozen of them. (I think they were eager to reward my enthusiasm.) I tried a delicious smoked fish of some sort, spicy marinated tofu, fresh kimchi, some fabulous seaweed-looking salad, and even some hot and spicy raw octopus. We purchased a little variety of things we’d tried, and were again rewarded when he threw in a serving of spicy hot wings for free. (They were a little crispy for my taste but Tyler will eat ‘em.)

And so tonight with our array of authentic ingredients and Woo Ri compliments, we made spicy cold korean noodles. I mixed up the most important ingredient — the sweet and spicy red sauce — and tossed it with a hefty mountain of chilled cooked noodles. Then we each topped this with a garden variety of carrot, radish, cucumber, romaine lettuce, scallions, and shredded perilla leaves. With this we put a slice of the spicy tofu from Woo Ri.

Delicious? Satisfying? Yes. Unbelievably, lip-numbingly, mouth-murderingly hot? YES. Thank God we had plenty of beer or I think we might have died.  We kept piling on more and more veggies to help absorb some of the heat.

Will we be making this again? Yes, definitely — but I think next time I’ll ignore the recipe’s call for four tablespoons of gochujang and take it down a notch!

Tonight was a very special night in the Souper Freak kitchen, featuring the tofu-browning skills of renowned sous chef Cara Textoris!

Last week, my sister Cara — who left San Francisco about eight months ago to return to our Cleveland hometown — and I made the last-minute decision to fly her out for the Fourth of July holiday. We’ve been basking in the sun, hanging out with friends, eating and drinking for the last few days of this glorious weekend. It’s been amazing — and exhausting!

Today is Cara’s last full day in town, and to make the most of our final hours, Cara, Chelsea (our cousin/sister) and I decided to lay low. We skipped out on a backyard barbecue (sorry friends!) to have some quality family down time. We went to yoga this morning (ok, that part was not exactly down time!), cleaned the house, watched movies, made ice cream sundaes, and cooked a simple, healthy and delicious Sunday dinner.

We kept it simple: veggies and tofu. Cara has been a vegetarian for seven years (for two of those she was vegan) and is an expert tofu-pan-fryer. You can see her perfectly and lightly browned tofu in the background:

We combined the tofu with broccoli, spinach, garlic, fresh ginger, and fresh basil. Cara might win the gold medal for her tofu, but I’m better at chopping the ginger:

We mixed it all together and topped it with an Asian-fusion barbecue sauce I bought at Ikeda’s several months ago. Isn’t Cara doing a great job?

We weren’t patient enough to make brown rice, so made some fast-cooking whole wheat cous-cous instead. And there you have it!

This was light and good, but the best part might have been the salad: spinach, cucumbers, broccoli slaw (from Trader Joe’s), green onions, sprouts, goat cheese, and my favorite new dressing, the light champagne vinaigrette from Trader Joe’s.

Cara sadly flies back to Ohio tomorrow — but I’ll be with her again in just two weeks when Tyler and I go to Cleveland for my best friend’s wedding! And if everything goes according to the plans we’ve been cooking up this weekend, Cara might be back to stay even sooner than we thought…..to be continued!

Tonight I made ravioli “salad” inspired by 101 Cookbooks….again! It’s the third time in about that many weeks. It’s just so delicious and easy! This time I made a couple of tweaks: broccolini instead of asparagus and, for the first time, butternut squash ravioli. It’s the second time making it with ravioli from the Sunday Divisadero farmer’s market — the middle time we made it with ravioli from Trader Joe’s wasn’t hardly as good. If you haven’t made this recipe yet….now is the time!

But that’s not really what I’m here to talk to you about. I’m really here to talk to you about something I really meant to talk to you about last week. And that something is a little company called Cook! SF. What is it you may ask? Well, quoting their website, it’s a service that delivers “real simple meal kits that you prepare in 20 minutes.” Why oh why is the Souperfreak using a meal delivery website? Well, that’s because my awesome sister Cara Textoris bought a Groupon for three free meals from Cook! SF that she donated to me when she moved away to Cleveland. (Thanks Sis! Also, I’m SOOOOO excited that she is headed here in two days to visit for the July 4th weekend. Yayyyyy!!!!)

It works like this: You select meals from their website off of a menu that appears to rotate from week-to-week. They offer everything from meat dishes to fish to vegetarian to lunch time salads to special “detox” dishes. What makes this different from ordering in from any restaurant? It all comes to you raw with a set of directions. Essentially, they are the sous chef (and the menu planner and the grocery shopper and the cooking instructor and the delivery guy) and you are the one who ultimately cooks it and pops it on a plate.

Here’s me opening the box:

Being from Cleveland, I did what any proper Clevelander would do: I ordered the most expensive things on the menu since it was all FREE! The Groupon granted me a choice of three dishes. I chose two (grass-fed, locally-raised) steaks with a pomegranate sauce and root vegetable mash (to feed Tyler and me) and one halibut with a side of stir fried veggies. Ultimately, this was not the most sensible decision seeing as I don’t like big slabs of meat, but again, I’m from Cleveland. I get the most I can for free.

So, what does the Souperfreak think of this service? On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, I would NEVER order this using money from my own pocket. I’ll explain by fleshing out the pros and cons:

The pros: From my experience and assessment, the leading reason to use this service is the crazy convenience. You can cook an impressive, healthy meal using fresh ingredients in 15 minutes FLAT, if not fewer. There is no chopping, there is no measuring, there’s no grocery shopping. Every single ingredient comes pre-measured, pre-chopped and ready to pour into the pan — even the olive oil and chopped onions and splash of wine:

The cooking instructions are easy to follow. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked any meal that was so stress free.

I’ll say another pro is the wide variety of selections — they cater to every taste and preference, from vegetarian to gluten-free to meat-and-potatoes. The ingredients are definitely top quality, as well as being locally sourced and responsibly raised.

The cons: Doing this regularly would cost a fortune!! My three meals plus delivery would have cost over $60 if I’d paid out of pocket. Now maybe if I’d gone to the store to purchase those ingredients, I would have spent a good deal of money — even eating in is expensive! But I don’t typically buy steaks or even fish fillets, and if I’m going to pay that kind of money for dinner I don’t want to have to cook and clean myself. There are so many options for eating out (deliciously) in San Francisco that it’s hard to justify $20 a meal for food you could overcook or otherwise screw up.

Fortunately, I didn’t screw it up — in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a steak before, and I did a great job. I just actually can’t eat more than a few bites of a big slab of beef, so I ended up giving at last half of mine to Tyler. But looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

And here we are with the sauce and onions and side of mashed parsnips, etc:

In the end, I get it for some people: the busy family (or individual) with enough money but not enough time, who wants to make home-cooked meals but needs some help to do it. I can also see it as the supreme healthy-eating luxury: you can sign up for their two week detox program, complete with three square meals and snacks, and know every morsel you’re putting into your body is a step towards better health. Hell, I’d probably sign up for a two-week detox diet if I could afford it. But I won’t be a returning customer. Too rich for my blood, and the meals were satisfyingly easy to prepare, but didn’t blow me away. The one situation in which I could see myself placing an order was if I knew I had dinner guests coming on a night I didn’t have much time to prepare. To know that everything is cut and prepared and all you need to do is follow some simple directions….that’s worth the peace of mind and the extra minutes of chatting with your guests. But beyond that? I’ll stick to shopping and chopping myself!

Today Tyler and I returned from a family vacation in Sheep Ranch, California, population 32. Tyler’s dad’s friend owns the historic Pioneer Hotel and every year Tyler’s dad brings the Georgeson-Schaffer clan together for a week of relaxation — think guitar strumming, porch sitting, drink drinking, croquet playing, and lots of hanging.

And chili! On Friday night, Tyler and I stirred up two chilis, one vegetarian and one with a mix of ground turkey and chicken sausage. Our favored famed photographer, Alex Gurwell, was in residence, so we may have some photos of that dinner coming soon.

Today we returned home, and my brain feeling a bit zapped, so for dinner tonight I relied on my new favorite standby: the DE-LISH sesame seed sauce from the Black Sesame Otsu recipe at the 101 Cookbooks blog, with TJ’s amazing veggie potstickers, pan-fried tofu and broccoli and frozen peas sauteed in a light ginger broth. The first time I made this (last post) it was with cauliflower instead of broccoli. I’d say I prefer the cauliflower, as it’s more of a blank canvas for the ginger broth than the broccoli, which lent an almost-bitter flavor. But it was still really good. This was partly because of an improvement over last time: I did a better job with the tofu, cooking it more quickly (last time I worried about getting every side a little browned, which only ended up drying the tofu out) and tossing it with the broccoli and ginger broth, allowing it to soften up even further. Best part? Got two lunches out of this in addition to a dinner serving each for Tyler and me!

No pics of dinner itself tonight…..too busy enjoying the evening! Chocolate pudding with shredded coconut and almonds is yet to come!