Tag: cooking

Categories
Living in Society

Pesto Pasta Bowl with a Dash of Artificial Intelligence

Ingredients for a pesto pasta bowl.

We can’t help but be appalled by the news story about a young man who died of a drug overdose after his interaction with ChatGPT about his dosage.

ChatGPT started coaching Sam on how to take drugs, recover from them and plan further binges. It gave him specific doses of illegal substances, and in one chat, it wrote, “Hell yes—let’s go full trippy mode.” (A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT for drug advice. He died from an overdose, Lester Black and Stephen Council, SFGate, Jan. 5, 2026).

What’s that got to do with me asking the same artificial intelligence portal for advice about fixing dinner? More than a little.

I’m a beginning user of ChatGPT. When I asked the machine how I could get more protein in a simple pesto pasta dinner, I didn’t think twice about its recommendation of a half cup of cannellini beans, a serving of green beans, white miso and nutritional yeast. All four were on hand and I grew the green beans myself. I made the dish. After dinner I reported a bitter taste to the meal, which I attributed to the nutritional yeast. AI was in robust agreement and added, “That’s what experienced chefs do. Figure out what causes taste.” Stop stroking me, I thought to myself.

Earlier in my less than a year interaction with the machine, it asked me, “Do you prefer this tone?” It meant tone of voice in our interactions. After I asked what pronouns the machine preferred (you/it), this seemed like a natural follow up. I said okay and have had that tone in front of me ever since. I like it because it generates a fake phraseology which helps me remember ai is not my friend but a machine. In reading the article, Sam did not appear to have such division in his experience.

OpenAI, the parent of ChatGPT, uses what’s called a “large language model” to work its magic. Basically, it is a machine learning model that can comprehend and generate human language. Okay, that’s what the machine does. Here is the rub:

Steven Adler, a former OpenAI safety researcher, said that even now, years into the AI boom, the large language models behind chatbots are still “weird and alien” to the people who make them. Unlike coding an app, building a LLM “is much more like growing a biological entity,” Adler said. “You can prod it and shove it with a stick to like, move it in certain directions, but you can’t ever be — at least not yet — you can’t be like, ‘Oh, this is the reason why it broke.’” (A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT for drug advice. He died from an overdose, Lester Black and Stephen Council, SFGate, Jan. 5, 2026).

Are we getting into a Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home scenario? Here is the plot, in case you missed it. Or maybe the HAL 9000 as in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is concerning the makers of artificial intelligence have it going, but can’t control it. In Sam’s case, ai told him it couldn’t talk about drug use at first. Eventually Sam won the machine over to his personal detriment.

I can fix my pesto pasta bowl so it is less bitter next time. Once a young man’s life is gone, there is no next chance to improve. I predict ai will become very popular because it took the machine four seconds to generate a meal change that would add more protein yet fall in the domain of Italian cuisine. It knew about the issues with nutritional yeast, yet recommended it anyway. In before-ai life, I would be paging through cookbooks for an hour to get the same result. Maybe we should throw on the brakes… and I don’t mean the mechanical devices used on the first Model-T Fords.

In a society where humans have less and less in-person contact, it seems normal we would seek out a machine that speaks to us in a tone of voice we recognize and accept. What is not normal is the suspension of skepticism about the machine’s interaction with us. I learned to watch out or you’ll get a bitter pasta bowl.

Pesto Pasta Bowl, Jan. 5, 2026.
Categories
Creative Life

A Year in Coffee Mugs

Coffee in my reading chair.

I drink a lot of coffee. At least one cup per day, mostly one pot per day. Each morning I usually post one picture of my daily cup on social media with a saying for the day. It makes a collection.

Coffee mugs of 2025.
Mug used while not at home.
Categories
Kitchen Garden

Cooking Miscellany

Last fresh kale of the 2025 garden.

When gleaning the garden I picked a number of green cayenne peppers. Not wanting to mix them with the red ones, I ground them into a fine powder and have been using it in lieu of hot sauce on Mexican-style dishes. It is an unexpected treat.

While making tacos on our Taco Tuesday, I used the last of the fresh kale from the refrigerator. We almost made it to 2026. Now we turn to the freezer for leafy green vegetables. There is plenty for household use.

We make tofu stir fry on rice as a main course. I have been experimenting with pureed garlic. It is made with extra virgin olive oil and garden garlic. In stir fry, it mixes with the water used as a cooking medium and forms a tasty sauce. I will be pureeing more garlic as we use up the initial batches.

It’s almost time for another pot of barley-lentil vegetable soup. I will raid the freezer for ingredients, including grated zucchini and summer squash, diced celery, prepared pumpkin, and collards. A warm bowl of soup is appreciated this time of year.

I cleaned off my writing table because I spilled a giant cup of coffee on it. The damage was minimal but the drop cloth that protects it got wet and is draped over the car to dry. I found a bottle of furniture cleaner and treated the surface. Nothing says you are ready for what’s next like a clean writing surface.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Kitchen in Late Autumn

Coffee mug made by Alea when we worked together at the orchard.

I will spend my two Friday afternoon work blocks getting ready for the arrival of our child. Mainly, that means cooking. Great Northern beans soaked overnight and are heading for a traditional bean soup made with carrots, onion, celery, and bay leaves cooked in homemade vegetable broth. There will also be homemade cornbread. I am debating whether to make applesauce cake or pumpkin bread for dessert. We’ll see what happens. It goes without saying, supper will be completely vegan.

Ever since the fire ran them out of their apartment building, first to temporary quarters and then to a new rental in a western suburb, our home became a storage depot for stuff not needed now, but was worth keeping. More storage items are enroute as I type these words. I created a storage platform with the loft bed I made for their college dormitory. It serves.

This is a tribal time. We don’t spend time together at the end of year holidays, so this is what we do. Have a bean soup supper two weeks before Christmas Day. Life is good.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Eating Alone – Quinoa

Quinoa from the pantry.

My spouse’s trip to her sister’s home extended into a third week. A typical behavior when I’m home alone is going through the pantry to see what new ideas I can experiment with while my mate is gone. I found we have a LOT of quinoa. Some I bought on discount at the home, farm and auto supply company before the pandemic, and the two boxes came from mail order. I decided to cook a quart of it in vegetable broth and see where things went.

Quinoa bowl ingredients, including less than half the prepared quinoa.

I discovered a quart of uncooked quinoa makes a GIGANTIC amount of cooked. I tried some after cooking the batch and found it quite good by itself. It’s a nice change from other grains. I did research about using it and came upon the quinoa bowl. There will be a lot of those during the next week to ten days.

The premise is basic: use a base of cooked quinoa and mix it with other things. First up was a Mexican-style quinoa bowl. I used quinoa, canned black beans, homemade salsa, onion, and bell pepper. The vegetables were raw, and everything else cold. I put the ingredients in a bowl and mixed, and voilà: dinner is served. It hardly made a dent in the quinoa. As far as taste goes, I rate it 8 of 10.

Quinoa bowl.

These are going to be quick, simple, inexpensive, and tasty meals. Now the search for other inspiration begins.

Categories
Living in Society

Eating Alone – Mac and Cheese

Home made mac and cheese.

My way of cooking macaroni and cheese changed. After some unsatisfying experiments with making it vegan, I now use cheese and butter when I am home alone for dinner. It is on the menu only one or two times per year, so I want it to be satisfying and memorable when I prepare it. I took inspiration for my most recent iteration from Massimo Bottura’s Kitchen Quarantine series during the coronavirus pandemic. Bottura layered the ingredients in a baking dish and I had an Aha! moment.

I have been a mixer. That is, the sauce, noodles, and other ingredients are placed in a bowl and mixed together, then moved to a baking dish and topped with something before baking. Bottura taught me to layer instead, which had never occurred to me. It could be life-changing. Here is what I did.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and greased a baking dish. Next I made a béchamel sauce with four tablespoons each of butter and flour. These two ingredients make a roux, which is cooked a couple of minutes. Milk is added with constant stirring until medium thickness, or it coats the back of a spoon. I embellished the simple sauce by grating some nutmeg into it.

Boiled pasta was ready to go. Either cook it for the dish, or use leftovers. This time, I emptied partial containers of different kinds of dry pasta until I had two cups and cooked until al dente. My thinking is the pasta should be similarly sized, yet that is a personal preference. There are no rules.

Get the cheese ready. This can be anything the cook wants. I like a sharp cheese and used four ounces of white extra sharp cheddar, half a cup of feta, and four tablespoons of grated Parmesan. I had thought to use Gruyère and bought four ounces made in Wisconsin for the project, but it didn’t pass the taste test. If it were Swiss Gruyère, it would.

Next is the layering. A thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the baking dish to cover. Next the pasta spread evenly. Distribute the chunks of feta evenly, followed by the cheddar. The rest of the sauce goes on top, and then into the oven for 30 minutes.

At thirty minutes see where we are. I pulled the dish out and sprinkled the Parmesan on top. I turned the oven up to 400 degrees and let it bake until the crust began to turn brown. The result is in the photograph. Based on the taste, I am now a layer guy.

Mac and cheese is an old dish. In Medieval times it was pasta layered with cheese and baked, not unlike what I did. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, English and European cooks began using a béchamel sauce mixed with cheese (a.k.a. Mornay sauce), and mixing it with the pasta before baking. Let’s not even talk about those Kraft mac and cheese boxes that originated in the 1930s (Mixers, not baked).

My native impulses had me arrive at a rustic-style product that was the antithesis of processed food. If I learned anything by being a part of the local food movement, it is that this kind of dish is what I want.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Simply Cooking

No-name dinner on Thursday night.

It began with opening the refrigerator and looking inside. I felt like cooking dinner for myself on Thursday night, yet wanted something different. I had a vague idea about cooking a frozen black bean burger and putting a sauce on it. I saw the half-used jar of tomato purée and a couple of tablespoons of sour cream on the top shelf. There was a partly used onion and bell pepper. Our kitchen always has plenty of garlic. I had just ground some cayenne peppers in the green state right before first frost. “I can make a dish out of that,” I said to myself.

Next came the mixing. I poured about a cup of tomatoes into a measuring cup, then scraped the remaining sour cream out of the container and added it. As the kids say, “Mixy, mixy.” It seemed too thin so I got out a jar of vegetable broth with miso paste and arrowroot dissolved in it, shook it up and added about a half cup. Finally, I added a scant teaspoon of cayenne pepper flakes and gave it a final stir.

I got out two frying pans, the smaller for the black bean burger and the larger for the sauce. Coating the bottom of each with extra virgin olive oil, I put the heat on. It takes about 10 minutes to cook the burger so I got the sauce going by sauteing the onion, bell pepper, and a diced jalapeño pepper until softened. Garlic next and as it cooked, it didn’t look like enough vegetables. I got a bag of mixed vegetables from the freezer and added a generous handful. I cooked the veg until everything was heated through and done. I added some powdered cayenne pepper to make sure the heat was at the right level.

Once the vegetables were ready, I poured on the sauce and cooked long enough to heat it through and let the arrowroot do its thickening work. There was some reduction yet that wasn’t the main feature of my cookery. I tasted it, and adjusted seasoning.

To serve, I put a spoonful of sauce on the bottom of a small bowl with the burger on top. I poured the rest of the sauce over it and garnished with sliced green onions. Not too much heat, and the plate stayed warm until it was eaten. This is what no-recipe cooking can look like.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Getting a Pumpkin

The pumpkin I bought at Kroul Farms on Saturday.

It has been a couple of years since I froze pumpkin for smoothies so Saturday I went to Kroul Farms which specializes in growing pumpkins. They have orange pumpkins and specialty pumpkins: a lot of them.

Specialty pumpkins at Kroul Farms.
More specialty pumpkins and a little pie pumpkin.

I took mine home for seven dollars and on Sunday I processed it.

First, cut it in half and remove the seeds.

This pumpkin yielded a cup and a half of seeds for roasting.

Cup and a half of pumpkin seeds.

Both halves went into a 400 degree oven and baked about 90 minutes until tender. The timing varies depending upon size of pumpkin and quality of the oven.

Baked pumpkin.

I let them continue cooking on the counter. Next I skinned them and put the flesh of both halves into a large bowl. The use for this pumpkin is smoothies. Since it will go into a blender, I only did a rough mash using a potato masher. The flesh was too wet for smoothies, so I used my conical strainer to drain it. It extracted 4-5 cups of liquid which will go into soup.

Straining the pumpkin flesh.

I cleaned the baking pans and then used an ice cream scoop to make portions on a piece of parchment paper lining the pans. They went into the freezer. Once thoroughly frozen, they go into a Ziploc freezer bag for storage.

Frozen portions of cooked pumpkin.

And that’s how I spent part of my weekend.

Roasted pumpkin seeds.
Categories
Living in Society

Eating Alone – Mexican Fare

Home Made Tacos

When my spouse is away, I haul a small boombox upstairs and crank the volume up. I find myself digging out old compact disks and audio cassette tapes, listening to Iowa Public Radio more, and tuning into the local classical music station. Classical music is more interesting on the radio than in other media because of the announcer. While I wouldn’t call it “going wild,” it’s as wild as I get regarding music these days.

How I prepare Mexican food is different when she is away. When cooking for two I avoid use of ingredients that contain capsaicin, a.k.a. 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide. According to Wikipedia:

Capsaicin is an active component of chili peppers, which are plants belonging to the genus Capsicum. It is a potent irritant for mammals, including humans, for which it produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact. Capsaicin and several related amides (capsaicinoids) are produced as secondary metabolites by chili peppers, likely as deterrents against eating by mammals and against the growth of fungi. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, highly pungent (i.e., spicy) crystalline solid.

It’s hot. Lots of people don’t care for it or are allergic to it, including family members.

When we are together I get my spice by adding hot sauce as a condiment. When I cook and dine alone, I’m free to add it while cooking. Mexican fare is flexible in preparation so the lack of heat while cooking has not been an issue. My process for using chili peppers continues to change. I wrote about the basics in 2019:

The recipe for hot sauce evolved over time from one Juan San Miguel explained in 1977 when we both garrisoned in Mainz, Germany. Those were days before a four-foot section of assorted hot sauces became standard in supermarkets.

I lost contact with him yet the recipe persists. It is a rare day when there is no hot sauce in the ice box.

We carried the condiment in plastic milk jugs and put it on our army rations while on maneuvers in the Fulda Gap. It made our eyes water and changed regular food into edible fire. We laughed a lot in that peace-time army… and ate sandwiches of bread and hot sauce. I continue to make it mostly the way Juan taught me. (Meditation on Hot Sauce, Oct. 20, 2019, Paul Deaton).

This week included making hot pepper paste, dehydrating Cayenne peppers for red chili flakes, blending jars of powdered hot peppers from the pantry to use in shakers, and using a fresh jalapeno when making enchiladas. I found less is more: reducing the number of preparations to just a few that will be used. October is the month to do this as hot peppers are the most abundant late harvesting vegetable. Getting all this kitchen work done while she is gone is a plus. Even I had to wear a KN-95 face mask while mixing the powdered hot peppers. I should be wearing a pair of surgical gloves yet don’t and my hands sting for several hours after preparing fresh chilies. I know I’m alive.

A typical difference when I am eating alone is taco filling. The main recipe I use is a blend of black beans, kale, onions, garlic, bell peppers, tomato sauce and Mexican oregano. When cooking alone, instead of tomato sauce, I make a sauce of dried guajillo chilies. These chilies are not that hot but when allergic to capsaicin, any amount is too much.

Enchiladas are in the refrigerator waiting to bake for dinner. Tuesday is for tacos when I’ll use fresh chilies. I am not a heat nut, yet have a more developed use of chilies grown in the garden than most Iowans. The use of chilies characterizes my kitchen-garden.

Categories
Living in Society

Eating Alone – Convenience Store Food

Photo by Robert Nagy on Pexels.com

While returning from my sister-in-law’s home I stopped at the Casey’s convenience store in Colfax. Visits to Casey’s are my nod to Iowa corporatism. They sell stuff that is convenient. My usual purchases are lottery tickets, gasoline, coffee, salted snacks, and something from their warming/display ovens. Back in the day I used to buy a slice of their famous pizza to serve as a meal, yet I gave that up. Once in a while I buy a bottle of Yoo-Hoo Chocolate Drink as a throwback to when I lived in South Georgia. Tuesday I needed a lottery ticket, gasoline, and something to substitute for a missed dinner. I bought a fancy version of Tater Tots from the oven. It served.

I spend most of the time in the car alone. I do the majority of in-the-store shopping although trips to get groceries are outnumbered by trips to Casey’s to gamble. I spend about $24 per month on Powerball tickets. I usually don’t buy anything else when I want a lottery ticket. Iowa gambling is another concession to corporatism, this one run by the state through The Iowa Lottery Authority.

I ritualized my ticket purchases, taking into consideration what ticket I buy — always only one “Powerball, no extras,” the people who sell me the ticket, and the path I drive to run errands beginning with a stop at Casey’s. I don’t need to gamble. I enjoy the ritual. It’s kind of like going to church would be, only no one is telling me how to live my life. One day I asked about the prominent checkout display of small alcoholic drinks for a fixed price. They said most of their sales come in the morning when people are on their way to work.

I eat convenience store food alone. Sometimes parked in the Casey’s lot, and sometimes while driving. Rarely do I eat it outside the car. I enjoy it while it lasts. I understand most of what I buy is not good nutrition. “Everything in moderation, including moderation,” Oscar Wilde reportedly said. My main weakness for convenience store food is when I’m making a long trip.

As my recent use of the calorie counter app My Fitness Pal revealed, everything we put in our mouths adds calories. By being cognizant of caloric content, I have been successful in meeting the first half of my weight loss goal. The main change inside the convenience store is walking out immediately after buying a lottery ticket without a food purchase. I won’t be buying that Tater Tot item again now that my curiosity is sated.

I still drink one or two servings of Coca-Cola per year. I’ll likely get that at a convenience store.