Neon Noodles Cafae

02/03/2024

https://afroculinaria.com/

In honor of black history month, let me share

Exploring Culinary Traditions of Africa, African America and the African Diaspora

12/14/2023

12/14/2023

Always liked this story.

12/12/2023

Today is "Ask me Anything" day.

Ask me anything that you've always wanted to know.

Ask me anything you want an opinion on.

Ask me anything you want an infodump on.

Go ahead, ask.

12/07/2023

So I'm making chicken stock and minestrone for chef school tomorrow...

I was looking at the recipe and found it called for a mirepoix, or carrots, celery and onion, but that there was no mention of peppers in there at all...well that will not do for my taste buds, and so I'll be adding peppers into the mirepoix.

Going down the list of ingredients...cabbage...but it says I can add in other leafy greens...and I have some spinach that needs something done with it before it goes bad...so in the spinach goes into the ingredients.

It says garlic...but you know what? I REALLY like garlic confit, so I'm just going to make garlic confit tonight. and sub that out.

And it says caballini beans--white kidney beans--but I have these dry garbanzo beans that are just hanging out here...I'll soak them overnight and sub them out.

And, you know, since I'm making garlic confit already and minestrone is a soup, I may as well make some focaccia bread to go with it...the dough is currently rising.

And since I'll have about 3x as much chicken stock as the recipe ACTUALLY calls for, instead of freezing it, let me just triple the recipe...because I know that I've promised out "a taste" to several people, and my cooking rarely stays around long enough for leftovers...I stopped by the grocery store and grabbed a few more ingredients.

Adventures in cooking.

12/07/2023

Weekly update: I've been working on completing the weekly lessons and food labs for culinary school.

I'm required to take certain pics each week to turn in to be graded, showing the steps. I haven't done anything fancy yet, but nonetheless here are some of my pics from the first 3 weeks.

The first set is glazed carrots, the second set is pommes puree (potato puree), and the third set is fabricating a chicken.

Tomorrow is chicken stock and minestrone.

11/16/2023

Weekly update:

I began course work at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Art Food Entrepreneurship Program this week.

This includes some cooking skills-- Knife skills, sauces, stocks, the scientific differences between taste and flavor... things that I already know but absolutely needed a refresher on.

So here we go on this journey.

But wait, what's a journey without a side quest? 💥

In Knife Monopoly there are no journeys without side quests.

The side quest at this part of the journey is a permaculture class taught by Shades of Green Permaculture so that I learn to plan the food forest that is the basis of the Secret Garden and the Neon Noodles Cafae.

Can't be just planting things all w***y nilly and hope they grow. I have an acre of ground to begin planting in the spring, one layer at a time...

11/13/2023

Steps this week:
Permaculture class at 10.
Tuesday night: Beekeeping class.
Wednesday: Begin Chef school.
In the mix, research companion plants to what is already present in the yard

11/11/2023

Today, 11/11, in Knife Monopoly , the Sugartit Portal opens, and stays open until 1/11.

What does that mean? Well, we're not sure exactly.

I'm *hoping* that this means that the ideas have had enough time to process in my brain that I can get them out.

I'm *hoping* that soon I'll have diagrams and sketches to work from in order to create the Secret Garden in the spring.

But whatever does happen, be sure to know that we're collecting the data from it for the games 😁