軒窓下静聴

This recipe is one of those on a whim recipes that just came about from cleaning out the fridge. I had all the ingredients in my kitchen, put them together and even shared my dish on Facebook and Instagram last week. It went well and I decided to put it into the recipe collection. I originally made this without any oil, using water to stir fry my vegetables. I simply forget that you can do that with great tasting results and will do it more often from now on. You could also use veggie broth for extra flavor if you like. In this recipe you’ll have the option to either use oil or the water as you like. Since then I’ve been buying the ingredients to make this because it’s just that good. I love basil and this stir fry is really all about the basil! I’m lucky enough to live in So Cal and have access to fresh basil year round. I use two cups in this recipe but feel free to add more if you like! I hope you’re able to find it readily available too. As for the other vegetables, you can mix them up using whatever you like. That’s what I love about stir-fry’s is that they are so versatile. Try using different colored bell peppers, zucchini, bean sprouts, broccoli or carrots adding or replacing anything you don’t care for…pretty much anything will work here.

Lately, I’ve been buying tofu labeled either Sproutofu from Wildwood or High Protein from Trader Joe’s. Both are high protein and super firm. I find these do not need to be pressed making them a bit easier to work with in that you can skip the pressing process. They are so dense that there is no room for water to collect. Simply open your package, cut as desired and cook. It takes on the flavors surrounding it very well and has a nice tender texture. If you can find these in your local store, I highly recommend giving them a try. If you can’t find these then you will still want to press your tofu for this recipe to release as much water as possible.

Waking up the next morning and poking my head outside the house, I saw Fabrizia Lanza of Case Vecchie, where she runs the Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school, sitting in the courtyard, offering me coffee. After breathing in the fresh air, with the warm sunshine hitting my skin, and realizing that I had escaped the stress of airport (and a whole bunch of other things, too) I almost wanted to cry because I was so happy to be in Sicily, which I sometimes think of as just a whole ‘nother planet.

I don’t know what it is about Sicily that I’m so attracted to. There’s a certain savage, forgotten beauty there. It’s Italian, but so different from anywhere else in Italy. And old traditions are still very much alive here, many unaffected by modern times. After downing three well-merited cups of excellent, strong Italian coffee, Fabrizia took us to visit some producers near her house.

Francesco Di Gèsu took us on a walk through fields of wheat, lentils, and chickpeas. It had just rained, which was probably the last rain for four months, which we slogged through, our shoes encrusted with a remarkably tenacious mixture of damp earth, grass, and hay.

Francesco grows ancient varieties of wheat, which local bread bakers use. So much of what still exists in Sicily are oldways of growing and producing, creating things, bringing products to the local bakery, or salumeria (for meats), for customers. Or locals coming by to pick up orders on their own, the connections going back for generations.


I’ve never seen lentils growing, each little pod yielded just one or two little pulses. Fabrizia told me that they used to dry the branches, hit them with sticks, toss the bundles of dried lentil sticks high in the air with pitchforks, then collect the lentils that fell off. So even though they’ve modernized the techniques a little bit since then, next time you eat lentil soup, or green lentil salad, make sure you eat each and every lentil!

And curiously, I’d only seen green chickpeas (growing, above) on food blogs, whose flavor is a bit reminiscent of peas, and they’re great eaten raw.

Ok, I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m not just a fan, I’m in love. With Harry Potter that is. No, no. Not with the character himself, with the books. The whole Potter universe Rowling created had me in its claws the very minute I heard my first sentence of “The Philosopher’s Stone” (and yes I know that’s the British title and some expressions in the original version are just so weird but man, I wouldn’t have it any other way!).

Yes, heard. Because I didn’t actually read the first few chapters by myself. It was fall, probably around early October, when my aunt and uncle took me and my cousin on a weekend trip to a small youth hostel somewhere in the mountains. While the first night was dominated by the dog of her friend who had joined us peeing on everything, my aunt had to find a way to entertain my cousin and me for the rest of the trip – because the weather was simply dreary and we were starting to make, ahem, nonsense. (Like wanting to make coffee for everyone in the hostel and just leaving the pot of milk on the stove. Unattended. On high.)


Well, it just so happened that my aunt had taken the first Harry Potter book (and also the only one available in German at that time) with her to read to us. And as soon as she opened with “Mr und Mrs. Dursley im Ligusterweg Nummer 4 waren stolz darauf, ganz und gar normal zu sein, sehr stolz sogar.” (Which translates to “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” in the original version) I was hooked. This world, this fantastic and entirely magical world had reeled me in. I think to me the most fascinating thing about the books to this day is the fact that this wizarding world is so seamlessly integrated into our world it becomes almost real.


Now, back to our trip. Since there wasn’t much else to do with all the rain and fog going on my aunt just kept on reading to us. And when my cousin got bored I continued reading by myself. I just couldn’t stop! And my aunt, she was the sweetest. You know, this was the time people still had very huge cell phones and hers was constantly blinking in this green hue. Now if you’re not acquainted with Harry you should know that green flashes are a very dangerous thing in his world. And my aunt got up in the middle of the night to hide her phone because she was scared we’d wake up and freak out.

Now, so much for my love letter to Rowling’s work. There’s also a love letter to pie. This right here, stuffed with the most delicious pumpkin filling and nicely spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Just like Harry and his best friend Ron shared on their first journey to Hogwarts. Only they wouldn’t call them pumpkin pie cookies but pumpkin pasties. And theirs were probably a lot bigger than those cuties right here. But it’s the inspiration that counts.

I am a procrastinator. It is possibly my worst quality, but one that I haven’t bothered to change because, quite frankly, it works pretty well for me most of the time. In school, some of my best papers were written the night before the paper was due. On the rare instances where I started work on an essay early, I would usually scrap the entire thing the evening before the due date and start fresh. This led me to believe that procrastination leads to inspiration.

“I work better under pressure,” I often tell myself (and others). And while I’m waiting for the pressure/inspiration to strike, I get to do all the fun things I want to do, like catch up on my DVR queue and go to brunch and decorate my new office.

But then there are moments when the harsh reality of procrastination comes crashing down around me, as was the case with these churros. Don’t get me wrong, the recipe is totally sound. But the entire production was absolute chaos. My first thought as I scanned the room when all the churros had been fried was “This kitchen will never be clean again. Ever.” And I’m fairly certain this could have been avoided if I had planned a little in advance, rather than just jumping in on Sunday morning hong thai travel.

I also didn’t plan well for the photos. I had a vague idea that I wanted to use these sweet retro glasses I got at the Columbus Summer Flea a few months back, that parchment paper cones would fit perfectly inside, and that my straight-as-an-arrow churros would just gently rest in there and fan out. A desperate fantasy hong thai travel , I soon realized

Traditionally, models are stick straight and skinny. But in the world of food photography, thin is not in. I need some food with some curves. A plum with a badonkadonk. A fat slice of pie. These churros do not fit that bill. And since I procrastinated, I didn’t have time for another casting call, or even a new set design. This yellow bowl for the chocolate sauce? Gross.

The good news is, despite all the chaos caused by my procrastination, I still walked away with an awesome, greasy bag of churros, which I took shared with my family while we played Bolivia, which my mom railed against for being a socialist card game. And the good news for you is that you get this recipe, despite the whack-attack photos. I’m not saying I’m a genius or anything, but substituting coconut milk for heavy cream in the dipping sauce hong thai travel ? I a little bit love me.

It is hardly necessary to plead, in extenuation of those many faults which any impartial reader will discover in the following pages, the impossibility of discussing events which are unfolding themselves around us, in the same detached spirit as if we were dealing with past history. The greater part of this volume has been written in haste, and no one is more alive to its shortcomings than the author himself Miramar Travel.

 are a small matter, and will be easily forgiven. It has not been the aim to produce a work of literary merit, but solely to present a certain view of public affairs. It is to be hoped that actual errors of fact are rare. Inconsistencies however—or apparent inconsistencies—cannot be altogether avoided, even by careful revision. But the greatest difficulty of all is to keep a true sense of proportion.

In Part I.—The Causes of War—an attempt has been made to state, very briefly, why it has hitherto proved impossible to eliminate the appeal to arms from human affairs; to set out the main incidents which occurred at the opening of the present European struggle; to explain the immediate occasions, as {x} well as the more permanent and deep-seated causes, of this conflict; to consider some of the most glaring miscalculations which have arisen out of misunderstanding between nations .

In Part II.—The Spirit of German Policy—an attempt has been made to understand the ambitions of our chief antagonist, and to trace the manner in which these ambitions have been fostered, forced, and corrupted by a priesthood of learned men. The relations which exist between this Pedantocracy and the Bureaucracy, the Army, the Rulers, and the People of Germany have been examined .