Orange You Glad?

Please don't delete me from your google reader just because I made an "orange" joke. I promise to make it up to you by the end of this entry.

I come from a very citrus-y family. My grandpa came to California from Texas to work at the Limoneira farm in Santa Paula, which is now one of the world's main suppliers of citrus fruits. Growing up, my grandparents always had several orange trees on their property. I remember my grandma always made orange juice popsicles for my sister and I to enjoy after school. (Orange juice mixed with white Karo syrup, that is). I learned to drive a tractor doing figure eights around lemon and lime trees. I can honestly say that my family has never ever paid for an orange at a supermarket.  Have I proven my point?

imagine me... a real tractor... and some citrus trees!

We at the Roady household have a humble dwarf navel orange tree/bush thing. It's not like the giant huge trees my grandparents had, but it still produces more fruit than a family can eat. So, other than eating one every morning with breakfast, we need to find some creative ways to use these things. They are starting to get ripe and delicious!

And what goes better with orange than.... Sriracha!?

source: theoatmeal.com

PS, click that link ^up there ^ for an LOL.

Sriracha Orange Shrimp
for 4

Ingredients

• 2 lbs raw, peeled, tail-on shrimp, thawed if frozen
• 1 tbsp EVOO
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• zest of 1 large orange
• juice of 3 oranges (about 3/4 c.)
• as much sriracha as you can handle (start with 1 tbsp, add as you wish)
• slurry: 1 tbsp corn starch mixed with 2 tbsp cold water

Instructions

• Heat EVOO in a saute pan over medium high heat
• Add garlic and stir around for a few moments until garlic is softened and super aromatic
• Toss in shrimp and stir fry for 3-4 minutes or until turning pink
• Add OJ, zest, and sriracha and reduce heat to medium low

• Simmer for 2-3 minutes, or until sauce it hot hot hot and shrimp is thoroughly cooked

• Add slurry to orange juice sauce and very quickly whisk in! Any pause at this step will result in corn starch globs and that is effin gross. 

• Stir well. Sauce will thicken up in moments.

The sriracha makes the sauce a nice bright orange color. You do eat with your eyes first . . .

On the side, I quickly stir fried snow peas, snap peas, broccolini, baby bok choy and portabellas in garlic and a touch of oil.

Also, I had some leftover brown rice from my black bean and brown rice burgers that I spruced up with fresh diced green onion and sesame seeds.

Winner winner spicy orange sriracha shrimp dinner!

This recipe would be equally excellent with tofu or chicken. 

Orange you glad you didn't de-follow me?

When I Grow Up

Like most kids, I went through a lot of phases as a kid trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Unlike most kids however, my phases were cyclical and actually practical (I never wanted to be a fireman or president). At an early age, like elementary school, I remember wanting to be an architect.

I wanted to build big pretty fancy houses for my family and me to live in. I don't know where that urge came from, but I watched a LOT of Bob Villa as a kid, so I blame him.

I don't know when I got over Bob Villa wanting to be an architect (the first time) but I started watching more Food Network. The Food Network was awesome in the 90's (it launched in 1993) because there weren't stupid competitions or reality shows or show downs. Sorry Bobby Flay, you're kinda a butt head.

"heyyyyy"

Anyway, the Food Network had shows like Two Hot Tamales, Ready Set Cook, Two Fat Ladies, Malto Mario, Sarah Molton, and The Dessert Show (with Mrs. Fields herself!). I watched all these shows and LOVED them. Yes, I watched a lot of TV as a kid. Whatever.

Anyway, I decided that I wanted to be a chef, too. In middle school/early high school I seriously looked into the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and became obsessed with their admittance process. I cooked dinner for my family as a high schooler, though I didn't really invent or create. I just made the things my mom would make, like stir fry or pizza or sloppy joe's. Fancy stuff.

Other than the Food Network, I think my Grandma had a lot of influence on my desire to be in the kitchen. When I was a kid she was always cooking southern classics like biscuits, bacon, chicken fried steak, gravy, peach cobbler (MY ALL TIME FAVORITE) and other things that contributed to my childhood obesity. Luckily I do not cook like that or eat like that (neither does she! she is the queen of vegetable soup!)  or I would weigh 375 pounds, easy.

this is what my grandma's cobbler was like, sugary, doughy, sticky sweet. i almost licked my computer finding an image.

If I would have stuck with it, I could have beaten Rachael Ray to the punch. But, around 10th grade I decided I wanted to be an architect again.

I think this switch was motivated by money. I wanted to be fricking rich, so I picked a top profession that didn't involve medical school, law school, or business school. (Life is funny sometimes).

I took it super serious this time, cause college was just around the corner. I took physics instead of easy science in high school. I interned with an architect and visited clients, drew CAD plans, and helped remodel kitchens. I went to Cal Poly's architecture summer workshop for four weeks during the summer before senior year. This was awesome because I got college credit. I had a GREAT time at what I later called "Architecture Camp". I made some great friends and made even greater memories. In the end I designed a house and got to build a model, too. I built a small home for my grandma and grandpa. It was bright yellow and had a tin roof. There was a room for my grandma to paint and a workshop for my grandpa to tinker around and build things. There were big windows and a hypothetical floor made from recycled materials. The model hit the trash a couple years ago. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of it. I have pictures of all the other projects, like this one of a covered pool structure. This one was cool because we were given a site orientation and had to make sure there was sun at certain hours and shade at other hours over a lap pool.

I made a lot of other ugly shit, too. But you won't be seeing that.

So I applied to Cal Poly with early decision priority. I ONLY applied to Cal Poly. It was the 2nd best school in the nation (next to Harvard) for architecture, and the only place I wanted to go. If I didn't get in then I would do community college in San Luis Obispo until I could transfer. Luckily, I got in.

However, one year into the program, I loathed architecture. I hated having no free time, not being skilled at drawing, not having a passion for building, and not being creative like my peers. I threw in the towel during my first quarter of second year. I had no clue what I wanted to do, but I knew that it wasn't architecture. I wanted to remodel kitchens and build houses, not sketch and create emotive spaces, or build experiential bull crap in CAD software. Not. into. it.

So I switched to a major that I knew little no nothing about. I figured one thing I liked about my arch classes was making the poster presentations using InDesign, and I knew I could keep doing design and layout in Graphic Communication. So I switched and took the intro class. It was about printing. Wait, what? There are DOTS on this paper? NO shit. Totally love printing. Still do!

dots!

Unfortunately, printing is not quite a booming industry. And I don't always want to work in production or manufacturing. But I'm young and I can change that now, so I am. And that's why I'm going to school for my MBA - so I can work in more industries than just printing and I can have the basis to be an effective upper level manager in whatever industry I wind up in. Let's just hope I don't rewrite this blog in one year from a culinary school.  :)

Back in the Saddle Again

Greetings Earthlings!

Today started like this:

About damn time. That's right, It's back to Weight Watchers with me. I had huge success with WW in middle school, and again after the freshman 15. And I'm bacccckkkkkk. Between sixth and seventh grade I lost about thirty pounds. Thirty pounds!  Most sixth graders only weigh thirty pounds, right? (I have a really hard time judging kids' ages...)

After my first year of college (read: binge drinking, cafeteria, no mommy) I lost twenty pounds over summer. The only problem was I wasn't done growing and maturing so my habits didn't stick. I didn't know what it meant to cook for myself or what healthy living meant. I really didn't know how crucial fueling your body right and exercising is to your longevity.

My philosophy is that we were given this one body and we only have one lifetime to treat it right. Don't get me wrong, I have done many many terrible things to my body (including starving it with diet root beer and carrot sticks then binging on cookies the next day for an entire summer in high school).  I still occasionally do terrible things to my body like eating processed food and drinking too much diet coke. However I now have the maturity and sensibility to understand that when I eat pure, whole foods I feel better! When I exercise, my head is in the right place and I sleep better at night.

My goals are to relearn healthy habits, especially in terms of portion control. I don't think I will ever look at food purely as fuel... I see cooking and food presentation as an art, really. My relationship with food is a little abnormal, and I know I have room for improvement. I already have healthy food habits and decent exercise habits, but it's time to hone in on them, put my nose to the grindstone and drop the extra pounds I'm carrying around. I dug through old family pics this morning to find some of me at my chunkiest in the last ten years. Trust me, some were a lot worse, but so much that I refused to even look twice at them.

Don't mind Leah, my sister, in the right picture. She must have been in a Posh Spice phase. Ps my momma is a lifetime weight watcher and she looks nothing like this anymore. She's svelte and buff as shit these days (she's my inspiration!). These pics are circa 2004/2005, right in the midst of the freshman 15. I don't want to go back there.

Remember when I mentioned mascarpone cheese the other day? Let me follow through with a promise! Now you're probably thinking, HOLD IT THERE SISTER, I thought you were on a diet?! The great thing about WW (weight watchers) is that nothing is "off-limits", you just have to budget for it. And my dad took care of all the leftovers for me, so really, the best tip is to have a human garbage disposal in your home to eliminate any temptations for overeating. 

Ginger and Fig Mascarpone with Puff Pastry

adapted from Fig and Gingered Mascarpone Napoleons, Gourmet, 2001

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. Mascarpone cheese
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp candied ginger, diced
• 1 large or 2 small fresh figs, stems removed and chopped 
• Puff pastry cookies
• Pretty fig, sliced for topping cookies

Directions

• Mix together mascarpone, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla, candied ginger and chopped figs

• Chill in fridge for 20-30 minutes at least
• When ready, dollop 1-2 tbsp of cream on top of cookie and a slice or two of fig, like below

If you stopped reading this a bit ago because you don't like figs, I understand. Texture is gross. Replace figs in the recipe with nectarines, peaches, plums, strawberries, or mango. Also the sugar could be easily replaced with agave or honey to taste if you are watching your sugar intake. It's probably a better choice anyway!

That's what I love about cooking. You can never be wrong. If it tastes good to you, then it's good.

Here's something that's never good:

The number of bruises on my body. 

Moving totally wrecked me. Always does. Gotta stop moving so much. Good thing unemployment is so low-impact. (Bitter).

 And on that note, Monster.com awaits me. 

Blog One.

I have a lot of anxiety about writing my first blog post. To be honest, I have a lot of anxiety about a lot of different things, some even more trivial than the content of my first blog post. I suppose a reader could assume my propensity for trivial anxiety by simply reading this blog's title: Recipes for a Quarterlife. I'm at one of those points in life where you need to make some serious decisions. This particular juncture happens to be right at my quarterlife (assuming I make it to 100, minus a few months, though really I'd prefer to make it all the way to 100 if I happen to make it to 99 and some change).

It's not as dramatic as this quarterlife. Not even close.

At this point, I need to really decide what it is I want to do with my life, or at least which highway I'm merging on to next. I'm starting business school this fall, moving to my hometown, and performing a hard restart on all systems.  I don't know where I'm going to end up, but I suppose that's part of the fun and I will just need to let go of that anxiety here and now. Easier said than done.

Though my life is undoubtedly changing professionally and socially, there are two things I know about myself that are not changing. Those are my love of food and fitness. (Most likely not in a clinically recommended ratio!) My therapy is standing in the kitchen and cooking an extensive meal that nonetheless leaves a giant pile of dishes. Exercise takes a very close second to the satisfaction of cooking and sharing a healthy home cooked meal. Finishing a thorough and challenging workout is an accomplishment that cannot be taken away (unlike overcooking chicken).

And that's what this blog is all about: sharing my favorite recipes, my kitchen and culinary adventures with you, whoever you may be. My foodscapades might be sprinkled with workouts, or with whining, or with ranting, or with annoying recaps of my day. Or none of the above. They might be ugly cell phone shots of my cat, a rough draft of a term paper, or a simple list (I do love lists). Let's just play it by ear.