notable food exploits of the recent past

last week : tea lollipops. sure, it might sound funny, but they were good if you're not a tea purist nazi. the lollipops are really just sugar and water, so i replaced the water with two different teas (for two different flavors of lollipop) : raspberry earl grey and vanilla-peach-apricot from tealuxe. i used about 5-8 grams of each tea and simmered the water after it had steeped, in an attempt for the tea to release more flavor. the universal winner was the raspberry earl grey.

this week : ah, the leftover. rather, in this case, leftover ingredients, and what you can do when walking outside means walking into a blizzard. lunch, the day before the storm, included cheese tortellini (the four-cheese barilla brand, which i quite like) with onions and spinach sauteed with balsamic vinegar and some rather old red wine, halved grape tomatoes, and crumbled goat cheese. it was quite good, actually; i may make it again sometime. dinner on the day of the blizzard, when most people hopped a ride to 44 columbia, was short-grain california rice and onions steamed in homemade chicken broth. mmm. it was a bit bland so i added caramelized onions with sundried tomatoes, which i had been making to use up my onions. that was also quite good. i'm a big fan of this particular brand of rice - the grains are slightly plumper than arborio rice and they're as much fun to eat as shell or wheel shaped pasta.