Food Trucks at ASU

A few weeks ago I came across an article in one of the many newsletters I am sent as a member of the ASU community.  This item caught my attention because it was advertising that some food trucks would be set up within walking distance of my office on Wednesdays at mid day.

I've gone three weeks in a row and have tried two different trucks. The first two weeks I went to the truck Q Up Barbeque.  I had their pulled pork, brisket, and southwest slaw.  The meat was well-done, but I've had BBQ I've liked more. I'll give this one another shot after I've gone through the other trucks.

The truck I tried today was LunchaLibre. The sweet tea and other drinks served in canning jars and Mexican wrestling masks was the initial draw.  My lunch choice was the Pothead Quesadilla.  Wow it was good!  It was a flour tortilla filled with roasted potatoes, spinach, pico de gallo, and jack cheese.  I washed it down with a jar of cinnamon black tea.

When I stopped by the table with the ASU folks at it I let them know what a great idea it was to bring the trucks in and let them set up once a week.  From what I heard the event will go through the end of the semester and be back in the spring.  Sounds good to me!  Looks like I have my Wednesday lunch spot for the foreseeable future.

The Return of Old Pumpkin Guts

As Halloween approaches I start counting the days before I pick up a pumpkin.  Not that I can carve anything that looks good since I am so terrible at anything artlike I only do this so I can roast the seeds. Yes, they are cheaper to just buy at the store, but there is not much fun in that.  This year's pumpkin had a good amount of seeds so I will have some treats for a few days.

I only salt my seeds, nothing fancy here. Good stuff.  As tradition dictates I did this while listening to The Great Old Pumpkin as podcasted on Escapepod.

Last weekend I made a batch of giardinera. This is the second time I've made this.  I didn't take any notes when I made it last time (of course) so I don't know the exact amount of things I used then to see what was different between batches. Leading up to making this I tried to find the pickling spice I used last time, but no luck there so I ended up using the same pickling spice as when I made dill pickles earlier this year.  I wasn't sure how it would work out here since I've never had giardinera made with cloves and cinnamon and some of the other random things. The last time I made this I thought the cauliflower tasted a little weird from the pickling spice since commercial giardinera doesn't use pickling spices, and that is what I am used to eating.

To make the giardinera I dissolved about a half tablespoon of sugar, 3 tablespoons of salt, and 2 tablespoons of pickling spices in about 4 cups of hot water.  I poured this over the cut up vegetables (a smallish head of cauliflower, a few carrots, a few stalks of celery, several cloves of garlic, and some peeled pearl onions).  I steeped the vegetables for a few minutes and then added an equal volume of white vinegar.  After it all cooled I packed it up into jars and stored them in my refrigerator.  This weekend I tried some after the jars had set for a week. Turns out the spices give the vegetables flavor beyond just salt and vinegar. Imagine that. Success! What I made follows a recipe I got from a guy named Skip who ran a website called northend dot com many many years ago.

Fall Break

I didn't need to do any cooking this weekend.  On Saturday I was invited to a kid's birthday party, complete with a bounce house.  The Greek food was excellent and so was the company. My favorite is the pastitsio.  I could eat this weekly, too bad it looks like a pain to make.  Since the family cooked enough for a large army I might get my chance to eat pastitsio for most of this week based on the size of the plate I was sent home with.

For a change of pace here, I took pictures of some flowers in the neighborhood where I live.  I like the colors of these flowers.  This morning I watched the bees buzzing around doing their thing and I also saw some butterflies.  It is hard for me to see the display on my phone in sunlight so these pictures aren't the greatest, and too bad the camera on my phone does not appear to have zoom.

Can you spot the butterfly?

The other big event that happened this weekend was my copy of Godzilla vs. Megalon showed up.  Oh, wow, how bad you are! This movie is so awful, it's great. I only watched the version dubbed in English.  Soon I will get around to watching it in Japanese with English subtitles.  This was definitely one of my favorites as a kid and I'm glad it is now available on DVD.  And you should watch this because everyone needs to listen to the Jet Jaguar song.

Punch, punch, punch!

Purple Cauliflower Eater

Things are still pretty busy here so I opted for some quick meals this weekend.  Saturday I made tacos, tamales, and beans.  I cheated on most of those.  My neighborhood Whole Foods carries some Arizona made frozen tamales (Tucson Tamale Company).  I'd prefer tamales with pork rather than these vegetarian offerings, but they are pretty good.  I've had a couple of varieties, one was cheese and green chiles (Green Corn Tamale) and the other was black beans, corn, and cheese (Madison).  The Madison has been my favorite so far.  Normally I would serve tacos with Amy's traditional refried beans, but while shopping I discovered the Whole Foods brand ranchero beans.  Amy's have the absolute best canned refried beans, other brands just make me say yuck.  I have to say the ranchero beans were pretty darn tasty,  Amy's now has some competition for my bean dollars.  As tasty as they were my search still continues for a replacement for Campbell's chunky chili beef. I am pretty sure the last time I ate it was in the early 90s but I still think about it.  Most likely it is one of those things that you remember as being better than it really was.  The chili beef was one of those things that got me through college, other than ramen.

It had been quite a while since I made trofie with potato, green beans, and pesto so I made that my Sunday dinner.  That would make a one-pot dinner but I decided to make a separate side.  Purple cauliflower has crept into the store recently so I bought a head.  Never having it before I didn't know what to expect.  Yeah, it tastes like white cauliflower. It just looks weird on the plate.  After cooking it for a few minutes in water I wonder if the liquid could be used to dye Easter eggs.  I tossed the cooked cauliflower into a pan with olive oil, garlic, and onions.  This side is eaten at room temperature and I topped it with some basil.  (Thanks to The Italian Country Table for this recipe).

The temperatures are finally starting to drop here.  I will declare it officially fall now because I saw a large display of pumpkins in the store. I sense pumpkin seeds in the near future.

Food Bites

Fall is here in theory so my mind begins to turn from stone fruit to hard fruit like apples and pears. My mom swears by Cortland apples to make apple pie.  At some point I will take a stab at apple pie but not this weekend. Recently I've tried a couple of Arizona grown apples recently. One was organic red delicious apple.  Since it didn't actually look like a red delicious apple I bought it to see what it would taste like. I should admit that I hate red delicious apples. I seem to remember liking them when I was kid and thinking about it now I can't figure out why.  They taste weird, not like an apple should. Anyway the red delicious apple I bought actually was sweet and had flavor. Whoa! It must have been an heirloom variety or something.

I also picked up a few small bunches of Arizona grown concord grapes.  These were also grown locally in the area of New York I grew up in.  I called them squeeze grapes when I was a kid and thinking about it I can't remember when the last time I had them.  With this recent batch I thought they were kind of a pain to eat, but had fun doing it.

In the last couple of years I've had several things grown in Arizona that I had no idea could even grow here.  Wonder what else grows around this state that I don't know about.