citrusbasil

Living with the Land

I cannot tell you how many times I have been on this ride. I've honestly lost count. It's always amazing to see how much the vegetables have grown over time, and children in the seats behind me cooing at the bananas and the infamous nine pound lemons pictured above.

There's so many herbs rotating around in their containers. Basil, rosemary, mint, and more! I feel like a kid in a candy store when the boat enters that section.

There's spiraling columns of lettuce, and planes of it. One side is young and newly planted, the other is older and growing. In the herb room, there's a combination of the lettuce nutrient-film technique with the fish farming. The fish are in a tank below the lettuce, and both work together to supply nutrients to each other.

Tomato trees are usually pointed at in awe by people on the boat.

I really do need to start my own little garden, and plant some herbs too.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie from the Garden Grill

My mother and I often venture to Epcot, and when we go inside The Land, we always pass by the Garden Grill restaurant inside. I've always been curious to try it out, having ridden the Living with the Land boat ride and gazing at all the fresh vegetables growing in the greenhouse. We finally decided one day to go there for a nice lunch. As soon as you head up the ramp, you are rotating: the restaurant actually rotates around slowly, letting the diners view scenes from the boat ride. Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale visit everyone, and I got a few photos with them while we ate. The food was amazing, fresh from the garden, organic and environmentally-friendly. Food was served family-style, so we got a taste of everything. For desert was a strawberry-rhubarb pie. I had never had one before, and it was quite delicious!

Some awkward pictures of me with the characters thank you for your time.

Of cookbooks and tortilla chips

College life has been busy, and I haven’t done much cooking in a while, sadly. I did, however, discover that my campus’s library has a nice collection of cookbooks. So far I’ve checked out:

Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook
Julia Child and Jacques Pepin’s Cooking at Home
Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

I also went to Barnes & Noble and found one of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks ten minutes before the store closed. Hurrah!

I’ve been learning so much from reading all these cookbooks and watching the Cooking Channel. I’ve also been watching documentaries on Julia Child (I love Netflix ever so much). The other night I was watching a clip of her making omelets, grabbed my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and decided to give it a try at 8pm. I had never cooked nor eaten an omelet before, and, following Julia’s instructions, I successfully made my first omelet! I was a plain omelet with butter, but it was still delicious.

Speaking of Julia, for my literature class I had to do a presentation on my favorite author. I picked her for my presentation, and someone else in the class did his on the chef who wrote Momofuku! Everyone else in class but me and him did theirs on Dr. Seuss or some teen novelist. I was happy to see another person do a cookbook author!

I decided on impulse the other night to make fried tortilla chips. I cooked a little batch and earned an eyebrow-raise from my mother (“Why are you playing with oil at 10pm?”), sprinkled them with salt and let my family taste them. They are so much better than store-bought tortilla chips, and fun to make. :)

Oh Julia.

I remember after watching Julie & Julia I wandered around Barnes & Noble and came across this amazing book. To this day I am still reading it, pouring over the delicious recipes (and reading it in Julia’s voice, it’s hard not to). I’ve been learning so much from her. The first recipe I tried from this book was scrambled eggs. It was my first time making and eating them too, and I was nervous, but in the end they were the most delicious scrambled eggs I had ever had in my life, and my mother loved them. Thank you Julia! <3

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1
I remember after watching Julie & Julia I wandered around Barnes & Noble and came across this amazing book. To this day I am still reading it, pouring over the delicious recipes (and reading it in Julia’s voice, it’s hard not to). I’ve been learning so much from her. The first recipe I tried from this book was scrambled eggs. It was my first time making and eating them too, and I was nervous, but in the end they were the most delicious scrambled eggs I had ever had in my life, and my mother loved them. Thank you Julia! <3

Curried Chickpeas

I found this recipe while watching the Cooking Channel. There’s a show on there called Everyday Exotic, and the host made this wonderful chickpea dish with curry. I never had chickpeas before, so this sounded intriguing.

The combination of garlic, carrots, onions, tomatoes, curry and chickpeas was divine. The vegetables were in a wonderful broth of chicken stock and white wine, and my father had two bowls! The sugar adds a sweetness to the chickpeas, and it is a warm, simple dish to make.

Cous Cous alla Panzanella

I was lurking on the Cooking Channel’s blog for recipes and discovered an amazing recipe for couscous! The recipe is from David Rocco, who has a show on there (David Rocco’s Dolce Vita); I reccomend you check it out. Couscous is my favorite food on this planet. I feel in love with it when I went to Disney’s Tusker House restaurant in Animal Kingdom. They had at least five different kinds of couscous: pearl couscous, couscous salad, and more. Since then I’ve been in love with couscous, and this simple recipe seemed perfect to me.

The recipe calls for no cooking whatsoever (which confused my mom, since she is used to cooking the couscous). Instead, it says the let the couscous soak up all of the juices in a bowl,and it will puff up and absorb all the flavors. I chopped up the tomatoes and poured all of the juices in, then opened the box of couscous and let it marinade in all the liquids. The dry couscous was swimming in a pool of tomato juice, lemon juice and olive oil, and for a moment I was doubtful that the couscous would really soak up *all* of that liquid, but I continued on.I chopped up the red onion (and didn’t cry! hurray), the red and yellow peppers and the cherry tomatoes, and teared the basil leaves into the bowl. After seasoning it with salt and pepper I mixed the concoction together. I wrapped the entire bowl in saran wrap and placed it in the fridge. The recipe says that it takes three hours for the flavors to soak in, but it was already 8 pm so I let it sit overnight.

The next day I walked up to the fridge, took out the bowl of couscous salad, peeled off the saran wrap and gasped. The once-drowning couscous was puffed up and it had indeed absorbed all of the liquids! The vegetables looked bright and fresh, and I couldn’t wait to dig in. The salad was colorful and refreshing! It is now my favorite couscous recipe to date. My dad cooked some ribs to serve alongside it, which were also delicious.