Pocky

This isn't about baking, but it is about things that someone, somewhere baked at one point.
It has gained a cult following, especially among japanophiles, a term I just made up for those people who love all things Japanese, at least in the modern sense: anime/manga, reading things right-to-left, etc. This doesn't really include classical japanese things like kimonos, samurai, etc, although they're a part of the background culture. I don't mean to demean them; I enjoy some webcomics that read right-to-left, took karate for two years, and am the proud owner of a kimono. I'm also a fan of Miyazaki films (like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, for instance), which I know doesn't make me a true believer.
Anyway, Pocky is the candy-coated biscuit stick of choice for many.

Pocky!

This is how eating pocky makes me feel:

Picture by Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half

 I would have taken my own picture of me eating pocky and looking blissfully happy, but I don't have a fancy enough setup here to get a good background and I also can't make hearts appear in my eyes. Yet.

Pocky was an escape for me sophomore year, and I carried that into junior year (the first half, at least, which was spent in England with a homesick roommate; I didn't really need it the second half). I kept a box in my desk drawer, or a drawer near wherever I did homework most often, and would take study breaks that consisted simply of slowly crunching away at a stick of pocky and pointedly not thinking about anything except the stick of pocky. You might say it was like meditation.
Oddly, with my much harder and more stressful class load this past semester, I didn't need to take hardly any pocky moments. I blame the roommates, since I don't have one anymore.

After a casual google search for pocky, I found a site that has a quiz for what kind of pocky you are.
I'm green tea pocky. I've never even heard of it, but now I want some.The strangest pocky I'd heard of until now is panda pocky, a box of which is in my room. It's like cookies and cream.

The box is so cute!

Panda pocky has a dark stick and is slightly shorter than the original pocky.

Anyway, here's the quiz, if you're interested: blogthings.com
Very Asia has an interesting pocky info page, and someone appears to have made a list of all the pocky flavors they could find on amazon.
I'm slightly pissed off by the "men's pocky," which is just dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate, the darker the better, and resent the implication that women don't like dark chocolate. My mom and I are the dark chocolate eaters in my family; my dad hates it because it's so bitter and my brother won't touch the stuff. 
In spite of kind of being angry at Glico, the company that makes Pocky, I'm intrigued by green tea, coconut, hazelnut, and any of the dessert/mousse types. I'm not much for fruit-flavored chocolate things. The only exception I make to this is chocolate oranges, sold around Christmas.

I recommend that you, yes, you, go to your local grocery store (closest or cheapest, whichever), find the "asian food" aisle, and get a small box of chocolate pocky. The box will be red. Don't get the strawberry kind unless you know you like strawberry-flavored chocolate-ish stuff.
Take this box home and slowly eat one stick, from the chocolate covered end up, in small nibbles. Focus on the crunching. Take your time. Breathe in and out slowly. Ponder the texture, and the flavor.
Mmm.

Nirvana

Oat Crepes

I stole the idea of Oat crêpes from Well Fed, Flat Broke, but the execution is fully mine. You see, Emily's recipe calls for 1/4 c butter and FOUR EGGS. I don't have any eggs right now, and that's a lot of cornstarch eggs to be dealing with. So I took my usual recipe of flour, 1 egg, some milk, and a buncha salt and adapted it to oats.
Unfortunately, oats absorb a lot more water than flour, so I ended up needing tons of milk after I started making them. I've adapted the recipe slightly, but please adapt it further to your needs.

Ingredients

1 c quick oats
1 1/2 c milk (at least)
1 tbsp cornstarch/1 egg
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt (at least)

Procedure

Put your dry ingredients in the blender. I put my cornstarch in, but you don't have to if you've already mixed up your "egg".

My blender is from the 70's, I think. Possibly the 50's. I got it at a yard sale.

 Blender that up. Shoving the oats gently down towards the blade with a spatula will keep things going.

Once the oats are all smooth, add your wet ingredients: milk, oil, egg/"egg".

Blender that up as well. Remember that the oats will absorb a lot of the milk, so don't add more oats until after it's sat in the fridge for at least half an hour. You WANT it to be really soupy.

Let sit in the fridge for half an hour or so. Then give it another go on the blender and add milk or oats as needed. Go small on the oats, though.
Then grease a pan and heat it on medium until it's pretty hot. Otherwise, your first crepe will be a pale, oily thing.
Pour about 1/4 c of batter into a small skillet and tilt gently in a swirl to get batter in a nice, thin circle. This should not be stressful.

Ignore the crepe until the edges pull up from the pan (or turn golden brown if they're too thick to pull away) and the surface is mostly cooked through. Flip gently.
Very gently, with oat crepes. They're a bit floppier than flour crepes, and take a while longer to cook, so don't rush things like I did.

Below is what a nice crepe looks like. Your pan is all warmed up and heating evenly, and you've destroyed enough crepes to be patient.

The second side to cook will always be spotty and paler than the first's nice, golden brown. Don't let this bother you. These are not like american pancakes. If it really, really bothers you, get a crepe maker or something.

Fill or top your crepe with whatever you want: peanut butter, jam, whipped cream, nutella, greek yogurt, fresh fruit, all of the above, whatever. All are good. Combinations are great. I'll do cream cheese and jam sometimes, peanut butter and jam, greek yogurt and jam, etc. I guess you could use butter, but crepes are thin and a little greasy, so they don't really need it.
I always put the goodies on the inside and fold the crepe into thirds around the filling, but some do a tight roll, some do halves, and some fold the crepe into thirds and put the goodies on the outside. Whatever strikes your fancy.

Fancy fancy crepe with greek yogurt and fresh raspberries from the community garden down the road.

I make crepes almost every Tuesday, usually in the evening, but that's because I love them so much. It's a very relaxing thing for me to do, especially since I usually have a lot due on Wednesday. It's a study break, a time to focus on nothing except the gentle swirl of the batter in the pan and the sizzle of cooking crepe. It's an exercise in patience, which I desperately need during heavy study times.
Also, be warned that this will make far too many crepes to eat by yourself (as will most recipes that claim to make 8. I think they want you to use a big pan or something). Invite your friends to share, or eat them for most of your meals for the rest of the week.

Successful Bread

Bread sponges are officially the best thing ever.

This light, fluffy bread was made with a sponge.

I found this post about how to make delicious bread from a sponge on Well Fed, Flat Broke quite a while ago and have been wanting to try it since I saved a blob of dough from the slightly unsuccessful if still delicious whole grain "Healthy Bread" from a while ago.
Just to clarify, a sponge here has nothing to do with cleaning and everything to do with letting yeast ferment overnight before putting it in dough. It's a lot like sourdough starter, but with store-bought yeast instead of sourdough starter.
I halved the recipe for my purposes, but it's an easy halving to do as long as you know that 1 tablespoon equals three teaspoons, or have a 1/2 tbsp measure. I'd never heard of one before, but my housemates have one. I love it so much.
Anyway, that was leading up to me telling you that I won't be posting the recipe, although I did take copious pictures. It's Emily's recipe with no changes, so go there and check it out.

It all starts with milk, flour, and yeast, and a blob of dough if you saved some from the last time you made bread.

I'm not sure why the sponge needs to be covered with plastic wrap and a towel; maybe for insulation?

Fermenting happened!

The sponge was all gloopy even after I added the yeast/water/sugar mix. I used agave, actually, and it worked great.

The dough seemed dry, but it really wasn't.

I kept stirring the dough, then pressed it into the bowl for a prettier picture.

This is the dough after kneading. I used about 3/4 c flour while kneading, then made a ball and used a little melted butter but mostly olive oil to grease the bowl.

The dough rises really well in hot, humid weather.

The dough is pretty easy to work with; just smoosh it into a smooth log and plop it into a greased pan.

I forgot to take a risen picture of the dough, so I snapped one about five minutes into the baking time. It rose about another two inches in the oven.

Ta da! I rolled my dough into a loaf. I don't recommend this method.

Isn't it gorgeous? Other than the way it falls apart because I rolled it up and it didn't mesh.

My doughs always collapse and go dense. This was super successful, and I highly recommend the method, even though you have to plan ahead.

Peanut Butter Cups

While walking through walmart with my housemates A and S the other day (we're classy broads), I developed a strong craving for peanut butter cups. I didn't have my wallet at the time, though, and I don't really have the money for it anyway.
I compromised and made some later.

Step one: make sure you have baking cups.
Step two: google peanut butter cup recipes and get a general idea of how to make them.
Step three: microwave a handful (larger than the one shown) of chocolate chips for about 15 s and stir until they melt together.

You WILL need more chocolate than this.

Step four: glob some of the chocolate onto the bottom of the baking cup. Smooth it around until it covers the bottom and comes up the sides a little.

Step five: mix a spoonful of peanut butter with a spoonful of brown sugar and a sprinkle of salt.

Step six: microwave the peanut butter for about 10 s; stir and microwave at 5-10 s intervals until the mixture is smooth but not melty.
Step seven: glob a spoonful of peanut butter onto the chocolate in the baking cup. Make sure to get it as much in the middle as possible. Smooth gently.

Step eight: carefully glob the rest of the chocolate onto the peanut butter. If there's not enough, repeat step three with more before you glob. Smooth carefully over the peanut butter, all the way to the edges.

Step nine: place in refrigerator because it's a million degrees outside and you're impatient.
Step ten: set back out on counter to soften slightly before eating because you hate really hard chocolate candies.

Step eleven: devour.

Om nom nom.

Vegan Lentil "Meatloaf"

It occurred to me recently that I haven't had meatloaf in over three years. We ate it a lot when I was younger because it was cheap, easy, quick, fed a lot of people, and everyone in the house would eat it. This is crucial when you have two small children and have an assisted living home in your house. But when my parents changed jobs, Mom became allergic to beef, and my brother became pickier than ever, meatloaf fell to the side. Turkey and lamb didn't cut it for my brother, and buffalo is too expensive. A few years later, I became vegetarian, rendering the point moot for me.
Unfortunately, I started craving a protein-and-vegetable-filled loaf. My only real requirement was that it involve ketchup. Also, it needed to use ingredients I actually have, which does not include cheese. Annoyingly, this limited me to vegan recipes that are specifically called "vegan" because all the "vegetarian" ones use about a pound of cheese. Which I don't have.

I found this recipe on Eat, Live, Run and adapted it to my ingredients. All I really did was use almonds instead of walnuts and add ketchup to the mix. I'm not adverse to trying other recipes, but this one was so successful that I'd rather not until I run out of  panko bread crumbs and need to find a recipe that doesn't need them. Oatmeal might do the trick, though.

Vegan Lentil Loaf

Ingredients

1 c lentils
3 c water
1 cube vegetable bouillon
1 large onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 large carrot, grated
4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 c chopped almonds, toasted
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 cornstarch egg (or flax or real; 1 tbsp cornstarch in 3 tbsp water)
1 c breadcrumbs
1/3 c ketchup
Topping
2 tbsp ketchup
1/2 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp maple syrup
1 tsp bbq sauce

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Bring water to a boil and add lentils. Don't add the bouillon until the lentils are pretty soft (about 20 min).

Dice onion and celery, add to a medium skillet with olive oil and saute until celery is tender.

Grate the carrot finely and mince garlic. Stir the lentils and onion/celery skillet from time to time.

When the celery is tender, add carrots and garlic. It will look horrifyingly fluorescent, but it's okay. Stir it around from time to time.

 Chop almonds pretty small.

Toast almonds. Do not do anything else except give the skillet a stir every now and then or you will burn your almonds. I'm serious. Don't even get your breadcrumbs ready and take a picture of them. Don't stir your skillet of fluorescent vegetables. Don't do it.

Add the almonds to the skillet after picking out the burnt bits. Give it a stir.
Add the salt, herbs, and pepper. Stir in very well; it will be very salty, herby, and peppery. Transfer to a large bowl.

Make and add your egg. If you use a real egg, beat it slightly before adding it. Stir well, or your breadcrumbs will get all soggy. Make sure your lentils are tender. If not, wait until they are before adding breadcrumbs.

Add breadcrumbs and stir.
Drain any excess water out of the lentils.

Add lentils and stir. It will want to form a segregated lump, but don't stand for that. Stir and squash the resistance out of those lentils until it's all mixed together.
Taste it. Decide that it needs ketchup.

Add ketchup, stir well. Press into a greased loaf tin, or 9" pie tin, or a muffin tin. Or something.

Mix ketchup, bbq suace, vinegar, and maple syrup together. Trust me on this. I hate bbq sauce, but it turned out quite nicely.

Pour and spread ketchup mixture over the loaf.

Bake for 40 minutes or so, until the edges pull away from the side of the tin.

Eat with vegetables, and probably a grain. Although, if you use whole grain bread for your crumbs, it might be okay.

It doesn't really taste like meatloaf. It doesn't really feel like meatloaf. However, it's close enough for me.