Some like it hot

Not me. I like many things cold. Especially coffee. Not only is cold-brewed delicious but it saves energy too. No plugging in the coffee maker or boiling H2O for a French press. And it sounds sort of sexy to say “Ah yes, well I only cold-brew”. If I were a superhipster I’d brew beer but I hate beer, so I will be a subversive hipster, and cold-brew coffee. Which really makes me an ultra-non-hip-hipster. Sorry, I’ve had hipsters on the brain ever since acting in this
Just to prove how un-hip hip I am, here is the view from my balcony:

See? I don’t live in Eagle Rock. Not a hipster. And surely hipsters don’t drink their coffee from glasses like that, garnished with a cinnamon stick.
Ok, I’ll shut up about the hipsters and tell you about the coffee. What I do is the result of reading and experimenting with recipes from several different sources including Food and Wine Magazine, Pioneer Woman, and Cook’s Illustrated, then adding my own touch of cinnamon. To make what I did, grind up a couple of cups of coffee beans(I used a french roast), add two to four times the number of cups of coffee you ground in water, depending on how strong you like your coffee. So two cups of grounds would be 4-8 cups of water. Stir it up. Add a cinnamon stick. Cover and let sit about 16 hours. Strain through several layers of cheesecloth set in a colander into a container. I strained into my coffee pot. Rinse grounds off cinnamon stick and add to the strained coffee. As the days go by the cinnamon flavor will intensify. Refrigerate. If you brew it stronger, cold-brew makes a terrific Vietnamese iced coffee treat when you add some condensed sweetened milk and almond milk. Ahhhh.
Sip whenever you like. Feel really cool. But not as cool as your cold coffee. Ice cold, baby. Ice, ice baby. Vanilla-oh god stop me now.

voluptuous blini

I am on the fence about buckwheat. Used judiciously, for the good of our tastebuds, it can be quite enjoyable. Used poorly, it is harsh and bitter. I had clipped this recipe for Buckwheat-Cheddar Blini from Food and Wine Magazine.
I was intrigued by the recipe because of the magazine article: Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Cooking. Sophie is Roald Dahl’s granddaughter. Surely some of his macabre sensibility has rubbed off on her and given her food magical powers. And ironically her recipe is made quite low-fat, made with egg whites and skim milk. No butter in sight. How quirky to call it voluptuous. I sense some Roald-ness!
Plus it was inspired by her Norwegian heritage. That makes me think of Vikings which is kind of hot in a Norse sort of way. Voluptuous, hot, macabre Viking grub? I could not resist.
I thought these were alright, and they became even better garnished with a dollop of cottage cheese. The recipe also specifies garnishing with sour cream and salmon but I skipped that because I don’t eat meat and I don’t really care for sour cream by itself.
Were I to make them again I’d up the cheddar content and add a bit of all purpose flour. The texture of straight-up buckwheat is a bit gruff. And gruff is not voluptuous. Not even sexy. It is, however, undeniably Viking-y.