A Small Dose of Things I Learned

-We get NESN!

-Fingernails grow about three times faster as toenails

-The places where bats hibernate are called “hibernacula”

-Sugoi means incredible in Japanese

-SPF 15 blocks 95% of the sun’s rays and SPF 30 blocks 97% of the sun’s rays

-There’s such a thing as funeral college.

-Hailstones are loaded with bacteria called P. syringae, which causes water to freeze at warmer than normal temperatures. The bacteria uses hail to damage the cell walls of plants so it can eat the inside.

-An aggregation of whale sharks is called an “afuera,” which means “outside” in Spanish.

-To attract females, male alligators use their lungs to produce an infrasound that causes the male to vibrate, creating waves in the water just above his back.

-Wild hamsters exist, but there are only 800 or so left in France.

-Sprouts hold bacteria in their seeds.

-Olives and acai are “drupes,” or pitted fruits.

-In some species of lemur, males and females have different fur colors.

-A “gore” is a plot of land (usually a triangle) that, thanks to surveying error, is not part of any town.

-When kiwis were first imported to the U.S., they were called Chinese gooseberries. They didn’t become popular until they were renamed “kiwis.”

-Alzheimer’s patients tend to be more active at night and sleep during the day, a phenomenon known as “sundown.”

-When worker ants (of the species Pachycondyla chinensis) come across food that’s too big for them to carry alone, they go back to their nest, pickup another worker ant in their jaws and carry it to the oversized prize. The ant drops its helper next to the food and the two ants carry it back to the nest together.

-There’s a fruit called “dragon fruit.”

-The Nova Scotia Association of Architects celebrates National Beaver Day on the last Friday in February.

-Blind people can use echolocation to "see."

Crispy Chickpeas with Spinach and Italian Sausage

Pete isn’t a bean-lover. He is a bacon-lover. Well, guess what we discovered…when you dry chickpeas really well and then sauté them, they kinda taste like bacon.

(Adapted from The Minimalist)

2 cans of chickpeas, rinsed, drained and diligently patted dry with paper towels

1 lb. spinach

4 oz. Italian sausage, diced and de-cased

¼ cup sherry

¼ cup olive oil

1. In a large skillet, heat 3 tbsp. of olive oil over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the chickpeas.

2. Reduce the heat a tad (to medium-low) and cook, stirring the chickpeas and shaking the pan occasionally, until the chickpeas start to brown (approximately 10 minutes).

3. Add the sausage and cook for 5-8 minutes, until the chickpeas are crisp.

4. Remove the chickpeas and sausage from the pan and set aside.

5. Add the remaining olive oil to the skillet. When it’s hot, add the spinach and sherry.

6. Cook the spinach until it’s fully wilted and the liquid has evaporated.

7. Dump the chickpeas and sausage back in the skillet. Stir to combine. Serve. 

Ricotta-Stuffed Tomatoes

You know what really bugs/annoys/perturbs/irks me? Better yet, ya know what really gets my goat? When people don’t respond to an email until they have time to write a friggin’ book. I, quite frankly, would rather hear from you in small increments than in your semi-annual tome. And so I must confess: I’ve been procrastinating posting because I haven’t had time to do it properly. I am sorry. Screw proper-ness. Here’s a recipe:

(Adapted from Vegetarian Times)

4-8 large tomatoes

2 eggs

1 cup low-fat ricotta cheese

1 cup corn kernels

2 medium zucchini, 1 diced and 1 sliced into very thin slivers

Nino’s pesto (I just realized that I didn’t measure this. I’m guessing ¼ cup. Click here for the recipe.)

1. Preheat oven to 350° and spray a baking dish with olive oil.

2. Slice the tops off the tomatoes and scoop out the pulp, but don’t be too diligent about scooping—you want it to be a tomato, not a tomato-like vessel.

3. Combine the eggs and ricotta in a medium bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the corn, diced zucchini and pesto. Stir to combine.

4. Stuff the tomatoes with the ricotta mixture and top with zucchini slices. You will most likely have more stuffing and zucchini slices than you can fit in the tomatoes. Place the stuffed tomatoes and the extra stuffing in the baking dish. Top the extra stuffing with the leftover zucchini slices.

5. Bake for 45 minutes, until the filling is puffed up and slightly browned.

Things I Learned: 5/2/11 (The vacation edition)

-In World War I, the British and Germans had an unspoken breakfast treaty.

-Navigating by response (ie. doing what your GPS tells you to do) can cause one’s hippocampus to atrophy.

-Saltwater crocodiles kill their prey using a death roll.

-King crabs are moving into Antarctic waters.

-Hopewell Township, NJ is proposing a law that would limit conjugal visits between backyard chickens and roosters to 10 days a year and no more than 5 consecutive days.

-260 million years ago, there was a saber-toothed animal that only ate plants.

-Three to five million years ago, a giant rabbit species lived on the island of Minorca. It couldn’t hop and, because of its short ears, probably couldn’t hear very well.

-This is awesome.

-Henry Ford and Thomas Edison invented the charcoal briquette.

-The Imperfectionists is a real downer of a book.

-Honeybees can detect pesticides in pollen.

-An invasivore is someone who eats invasive species.

-Bubblegum flavor is a combination of vanilla, wintergreen, peppermint and cassia.

-McDonalds in Hong Kong offers a wedding package.

-Hag fish can die in their own slime.

-The penis of the Queen conch is so long and unprotected that crabs often eat it. It grows back.

-“The Imperfectionists” is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad book.

-CO2 takes up more volume than O2 in our lungs.

-Each state in India celebrates the New Year on a different day.

-There’s a tribe in Africa that steals kills from lions.

-Soldiers guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier in Athens wear traditional attire, including skirts with 400 pleats to mark the 400 years of Turkish rule.

-The Dutch partake of “inter course,” a break between courses of a meal.

-The Swiss were the first to come up with a word for homesickness.

-Santorini, Greece used to be a ring-shaped island with a massive 1,000 + meter tall volcano (surrounded by water) in the middle. A long time ago, the volcano erupted and sank into the sea. The eruption was so big that the lava has been found in Iceland and ash has been found in the soil under the California redwoods.

-The eruption caused a tsunami that covered Crete (wiping out the Minoans), caused the Red Sea to part and caused the plagues…supposedly, the sky was dark for 2 days.

-A hippo’s mouth is half a meter wide.

-Steig Larson’s trilogy is the perfect antidote to “The Imperfectionists.”

-One month after the Olympic games (which were for free Greek men only), Greek women (virgins only) competed in the Heraea games. The women raced 160 meters in short one-shouldered dresses.

-In the ancient Olympics, men who cheated had their names and offense carved on a plaque below a statue of Zeus. Competitors spat on the plaques as they entered the arena.

-Cheaters always “met with an accident” on their way home from the Games.

-Winners of the ancient Olympic games got free food for life.

-When the winners returned to their hometown, they drove right through the town’s barricades because, if a town had an Olympic champion, the townspeople no longer needed a barricade to protect them.

-In ancient times, the motto of Kotor, Montenegro was “What belongs to others, we don’t want. What’s ours’ we’ll never give up.”

-Albarino is a yummy white wine.

-Croatians invented the ballpoint pen and the cravat.

-Continental Airlines SUCKS.

-A coypu is a web-footed rodent.

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread (in a bread machine)

I didn’t realize how much I missed cinnamon raisin bread until I found this recipe—and starting salivating. I’ve always liked cinnamon raisin bread, but it’s not like it was ever a staple in my diet. But, when yummy bread is a rarity, the mere possibility of its existence is exciting. And when yummy bread itself is exciting, yummy bread with juicy little flavor explosions (ie. raisins) in it becomes downright drool-worthy.

This is very close to the real thing (and by “real” I mean glutinous) although we may add a bit more cinnamon next time.

(Adapted from “125 Best Gluten-Free Bread Machine Recipes”)

1 ¾ cup brown rice flour

½ cup potato starch

¼ cup tapioca starch

½ cup granulated sugar

1 tbsp. xanthan gum

1 ½ tsp. instant yeast

1 ¼ tsp. salt

1 tbsp. ground cinnamon

1 ¾ cup raisins

1 cup skim milk

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

2 tsp. cider vinegar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

1. Combine dry ingredients (brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, sugar, xanthan gum, yeast, salt, cinnamon and raisins) in a large bowl. Mix well.

2. Add milk, oil and cider vinegar to the bread machine baking pan. Add eggs and egg whites.

3. Select the “Dough Cycle” on your bread machine and gradually add the dry ingredients to the baking pan. (The recipe says to add the dry ingredients once the paddle starts turning, but we have a couple issues with this method. First, our bread machine has a 15-20 minute warming period, which means that the eggs, milk, oil and vinegar would start to bake a little before the dry ingredients went in. And second, if the paddle starts turning without any dry ingredients, it splashes the wet ingredients everywhere, which is rather messy.)

4. Once the bread machine starts mixing, run a spatula down the sides of the baking pan to make sure no flour gets stuck in the corners.

5. Optional: When the bread machine stops mixing, remove the kneading blade. This will maximize the prettiness of your loaf. If you don’t care how friggin’ pretty your bread is, leave the blade in.

6. Let the dough cycle finish and then turn off the bread machine.

7. Select the “Bake Cycle” and set the time to 60 minutes and the temperature to 350°.

8. When the bake cycle finishes, remove the bread and enjoy!

Lentil Salad With Grapes, Mint and Other Yummy Stuff

I don’t have much to say about this dish other than it’s really truly awesomely delicious.

(Adapted from Vegetarian Times)

1 cup green lentils

2 cups water

3 tbsp. olive oil

2 leeks (white and light green parts only), thinly sliced

2 tbsp. sherry vinegar

2 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 cups red grapes, halved

¼ cup chopped pistachios

3 tbsp. finely chopped mint

¼ cup crumbled feta cheese

baby spinach

1. Add the water and lentils to a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. Drain.

2. In a small nonstick skillet, toast the chopped pistachios over medium heat for 5-8 minutes. Set aside.

3. In a large nonstick skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook, stirring, until they’re tender and translucent (7-9 minutes). Remove from heat.

4. Add the mustard and sherry vinegar to the leeks. Stir.

5. Add the lentils, grapes, toasted pistachios and mint to the skillet. Stir to combine.

6. Serve atop baby spinach. Top each serving with feta.

Crispy Fish with Tomato-Basil Sauce and Things I Learned: 3/18/11

We made this dish with a new (to us) fish—Pangasius—a farm-raised river catfish from Asia. According to Seafood Watch, Pangasius is a “good alternative” when U.S.-farmed catfish (a “best choice”) is not available. It was delicious.

(Adapted from Everyday with Rachael Ray)

4 tbsp. (maybe more) olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 large shallot, chopped

1 pint grape tomatoes, halved

a handful of fresh basil leaves, torn (or do what we did and gasp toss in some dried basil)

2/3 cup cornmeal

¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese

coarse black pepper (a few cranks of the pepper grinder)

½ cup balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp. brown sugar

1 lb. Pangasius fillets (or other sustainable white fish)

*Remember: There’s a Seafood Watch app for the iphone and it’s free.

1. Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat.

2. Add garlic and shallot and cook, stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes and basil and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes start to break down (about 10 minutes).

4. While the tomatoes cook, combine the cornmeal, parm and black pepper in a shallow dish. Dunk the fish in the cornmeal mixture, coating both sides.

5. Remove the tomato mixture from the skillet and set aside.

6. Add 2 tbsp. (or more) of olive oil to the skillet and turn the heat up to medium-high.

7. Place the fish in the skillet and cook, turning once, until it’s crisp and slightly browned (8-10 minutes total).

8. While the fish cooks, combine the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and then simmer until it reduces to a syrupy consistency.

9. Top the fish with the tomato sauce and drizzle with balsamic glaze.

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And now, the things I learned:

-Until recently, it was illegal to sell a motorcycle on a Sunday in New Jersey.

-Five hundred years ago every flatfish was called a butt.

-The fish we now call halibut was only eaten on holy days so it was called a holy butt (tee hee), which was eventually changed to halibut.

-Polar bears can run 100 meters in 9 seconds (the current human world record, held by Usain Bolt, is 9.58 seconds).

-Peaches and nectarines sometimes grow on the same tree.

-Flamingos occasionally “suffer” from reverse migration (a neurological mess-up that makes the bird fly in the exact opposite direction from its intended destination). And so, in November, when flamingos should be leaving Kazakhstan for Iran, some fly to Siberia instead.

-Lakes in the Andes freeze while flamingos are wading. Most of the flamingos wait for the ice to thaw, but a few try to yank their legs out of the ice.

-Scientists use rump size to determine a bird’s body condition.

-A woman named Tabitha Babbitt invented the circular saw and a woman named Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper.

-There’s a salamander called a snot otter.

-Some people get a prolactin rush when they listen to sad music. Some people don’t. The people that get the prolactin rush tend to like sad music. Those who don’t tend to find sad music depressing. (If you must know, I find sad music depressing.)

-A male hawk is called a tercel.

-“Meteorology” means “high in the sky” in Greek.

-In the Middle Ages, people were suspicious of bakers. If a baker didn’t deliver the exact weight he’d promised a customer, he’d be punished. To save himself from what was probably some sort of horrendous punishment, a baker asked to deliver 12 loaves would deliver 13…hence “a baker’s dozen.”

-Humans (males and females) can have up to six nipples.