May 10, 2009: Millet "Polenta"

Well, it's happened again. I cooked another amazing recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, thus managing to fill most of my day with non-study activities. I also started watching the show Noah's Arc, a seriously cheesy gay man show from one of those new gay networks. It's kind of growing on me, which just tells you that I have already watched all of the gay entertainment that exists and have had to lower my standards. However, I think Wilson Cruz joins the show at some point, so surely it will get better.



And here are some pictures of food. A super-sweet pink lady apple plus some pb2.










And a veggie sandwich and big handful of almonds to keep me awake while studying...

These almonds are really not fresh, but they had this oddly familiar taste. Like the almond in the middle of a jordan almond. Ew. But kind of good. There is really no place to get decent inexpensive almonds except Trader Joe's. Which will be so close by when I move in with my family next month. I should totally get a job there. Ever since that movie "Go" I have kind of wanted to work in a grocery store, even though my friends who have done it say that it's not really like that. Probably a bad sign that I have aspirations like "work at a grocery store" at this point in my life and education.


Dinner took most of the afternoon, so while things were cooking I took a ton of photos. I made millet and spinach polenta (kind of a misleading name for it -- the millet IS the polenta, and the spinach is more of a flavoring, shredded and mixed into the millet). With sundried tomato pesto, which consists of: almonds, olive oil, sundried tomatoes (plumped up in some hot water), garlic, basil, salt & pepper. Into the blender, and YUM.

Soon I will have to start making up my own recipes so I can actually post them, but as a student of copyright and a supporter of cookbook writers, I have to have some scruples about not stealing the amazing Isa Chandra Moskowitz's recipes and posting them. You can find many of them at the Post Punk Kitchen, or buy Vegan with a Vengeance (and of course the amazing Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World).

After cooking up the millet with veggie broth, spinach, and oregano, I spread it into a baking dish and left it on the stove to cool for maybe an hour and a half. An offset spatula is super useful for stuff like this -- I bought it for frosting cakes, but it's handy anytime you need to smear something or flatten out a sticky mass like this one.













The pesto! Everything that's involved with this is delicious, so it's not too shocking that the finished product is pretty tasty too.













Here's an action shot of the cooled, cut up "polenta" frying up in a bit of olive oil in a nonstick skillet, on medium-high heat. I think next time I'm going to heat it up even hotter to try to sear the outside of this, but cooking like this did get a little bit of a crunch on the edges, after about 3 minutes per side.









Dinner: 2 hunks of polenta, fried up with some pesto on top, alongside the most enormous asparagus I've ever eaten. Seriously, I think this photo doesn't even do justice to the incredible hugeness of this asparagus.









[Not pictured.] After that, my roommate's girlfriend came over and made a really superb salad with avocados, beets, fancy greens, and a simple vinaigrette, so I had to sample a little of that as well, with some crusty rosemary olive bread from the bakery down the street.

I am excited to have hobbies again now that law school will be over. I really feel sometimes like my whole pre-law school life just ended, and I worried that I wouldn't be able to remember who I am when I'm not editing journal articles and reading cases. But it's coming back reasonably clear right now, since I've gotten back to cooking, been going to concerts, catching up with old friends, etc. I think the old me who had way more free time is still in there waiting to get back to having hobbies and talking about stuff other than the bluebook and statutory interpretation. Huzzah!