The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: recipe

  • The arroz with the most

    The arroz with the most

    Arroz con leche is a delectable delight, come to save you on your freezing nights. This Mexican rice pudding had my tongue rolling out of my mouth like a fruit roll-up as I would float through the hall after a hovering trail of steam all the way to my mama’s sweet, creamy arroz.

    The soft sweet rice will over stuff you and your friends, leaving plenty of leftovers for you to fiend after at midnight (I wont tell if you don’t) because arroz con leche tastes good hot AND cold, and you’ll want to try it both ways, trust me.

    The name translates to “rice with milk,” which is pretty much all this dish is (two kinds of milk, to be specific), making for an uber-simple recipe that takes less than an hour to prep and cook. This dish is simple and sweet with miles of room for improvisation and improvement. Add raisins, almonds, chocolate, strawberries, bananas, churros, apple slices- these are just a few of the unlimited ideas you could throw in the rice. There are lots of different variations, but without further ado: my mama’s bomb ass bare-bones recipe.

    Here’s what you’ll need:

    Ingredients

1 cup regular long grain ricey rice

3 cups soaking wet water

2 sticks of cinnamon

1 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk

1 12 oz can of evaporated milk

Ground cinnamon to sprinkle on top

    In a big ol’ pot on the stove, add your water and cinnamon and bring to a rolling boil. Once boiling, add your rice and reduce the heat. Let simmer for about ten minutes, or until the water has reduced about half way. At this point, lower the heat a touch more and add in your evaporated and condensed milks, stirring it in and mixing every few minutes until hot. Bada bing, bada boom- rice in your spoon, taste it and you’ll be on the moon. Give it to your lover and they’ll swoon. Dust with cinnamon powder, top it off with whatever you fancy, and chow down!

  • Staff Recipe: Oh No, I Bought Too Many Bananas—Banana Bread

    Staff Recipe: Oh No, I Bought Too Many Bananas—Banana Bread

    A recipe for when you have too many bananas and don’t know what to do with them

    I’ve read enough recipe blogs to know you open a recipe with an autobiography.

    It all began when the plague hit. I panicked and bought too many bananas. This was immediately followed by remembering I don’t even like bananas that much. However, I do love bread, and banana bread works best with bananas just on the brink of going bad. Assuming you were able to gather the energy to wear socks in isolation, here’s a recipe that will knock your socks right off.

    With no further ado, here’s the “Oh No, I Bought Too Many Bananas—Banana Bread” recipe (this yields 2 loaves):

    Ingredients:

    4-6 very ripe bananas, mashed
    2 cups sugar
    2 eggs
    1/2 cup vegetable oil
    3 cups flour
    2 tablespoons baking soda
    2 tablespoons salt

    walnuts or chocolate chips, to personal preference (optional)

    Directions:

    1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease two loaf pans.
    2. In a large bowl, combine bananas, sugar, eggs and oil. It will look lumpy, and that’s OK. There’s bananas in there—there’s only so much you can do.
    3. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking soda. Fold into the banana mixture and combine until no dry ingredients remain.
    4. Add salt and any additional, optional mix-ins, and combine thoroughly.

    5. Bake for an hour or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out mostly clean.

    And you’re done!

  • Staff Recipe: True Sourdough Starter

    Staff Recipe: True Sourdough Starter

    There’s no time like the pandemic to get a start on a starter

    Sourdough starters are a great project for the apocalypse, as yeast and other baking materials are becoming hard to come by. Hopefully you’ve still got that bag of flour sitting in the back corner of your cupboard, because with just a couple minutes of work a day, you’ve got yourself a sour new addition to the family. After day seven, your starter will be ready for use in bread, pancakes, muffins or any other baked good that includes flour and water.

    Ingredients and supplies:

    • Flour
    • Lukewarm water (around 85 degrees Fahrenheit)
    • A scale
    • A mason jar with a lid
    • Patience

    Directions:

    Day 1 – Beginning the starter

    • Weigh your jar empty, without the lid, and write the weight down
    • Add 100 grams of flour to your jar
    • Add 150 grams of lukewarm water to your jar. Mix thoroughly until combined, making sure you don’t leave any clumps
    • Attach lid loosely to the jar (not too tight, or you will make a bread bomb)
    • Wait 24 hours

    Day 2: Feeding the starter

    • Remove starter from your jar until there is 70 grams of the starter remaining (that’s 70 grams added to the original weight of your jar)
    • Add 100 grams of flour
    • Add 100 grams of water
    • Mix thoroughly until combined without clumps
    • Attach loosely fitting lid to jar

    Day Three: Onwards

    • Repeat instructions from day two until you forget for a couple days and accidentally kill it.

    Tips

    • Your starter can range in smell from yeasty “footy-ness” to a nail polish remover or a boozy smell which changes from day-to-day.
    • Adding a little more water or a little more flour will affect the scent and taste of your dough drastically.
    • Excess starter removed during feeding is perfectly safe to eat after being fried in a bit of oil. It makes wonderful fry bread with a bit of a funnel cake consistency.
    • Keep your starter in a warm place. Warm temperatures encourage fermentation, and cold temperatures can kill your starter.
  • Staff Recipe: Awesome Avocado Pasta

    Staff Recipe: Awesome Avocado Pasta

    Pasta, the go-to, easy-to-do meal, but with avocado

    Pasta is the go-to meal when nothing else sounds good. I’m sure many of you have eaten pasta during quarantine—it’s just so convenient. However, it’s nice to finally switch it up a bit after having the same ol’ spaghetti for days on end. A sauce I discovered a while back is an avocado-based sauce. At first I was a bit skeptical, but then I thought “I love avocados and I love pasta, it shouldn’t be that bad.” After looking through and trying out a few recipes online, I got the hang of it and decided to just do it on my own. With a few modifications, I have a great recipe for you to try. It’s simple, fast and delicious.

    Awesome Avocado Pasta recipe:

    Ingredients:

    2 ripe avocados

    1 whole yellow onion

    3 cloves garlic

    2 teaspoons of lemon juice

    1/4 cup of olive oil

    1/2 a box of penne rigate or regular spaghetti (more or less depending on how hungry you are)

    Seasonings:

    Salt

    Pepper

    Oregano

    Basil leaves

    Cayenne pepper (for a little spice)

    Directions:

    1. Dice the onion along with three cloves of garlic.

    2. Grab a medium sized pan, coat it with a tiny amount of olive oil and turn on the burner. Once the pan is hot, add in the diced onion and garlic. Cook until the onion is caramelized. Once caramelized, turn the heat off.

    3. Grab a blender. Slice and open the 2 avocados. Scoop the avocados in the blender, then transfer the cooked onions and garlic from the pan to the blender. Add 1/4 cup of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and blend until the sauce looks smooth and creamy.

    4. Once the sauce is ready, start the pasta. Grab a pot and bring the water to a boil. Add in your pasta and follow the directions on the box.

    5. After the pasta is cooked to your liking, drain and put back in the pot. Take the avocado sauce from the blender and spoon in to the pot of pasta.

    6. Add in spices to taste and stir (remember to taste as you go).

    7. Once it’s seasoned to your liking, get a bowl and enjoy!

  • Vegan Cannabis-Infused Brownie Recipe

    Vegan Cannabis-Infused Brownie Recipe

    Learn how to bake and get baked

    This cannabis-infused brownie recipe uses coconut oil as a butter substitution and base for a vegan cannabis butter.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    Coconut oil is a great replacement for butter and absorbs cannabinoids in the same manner.

    The first step is to make the “cannabutter.”

    Depending on how much marijuana you use, your brownies can have a higher or lower dosage of THC. When making cannabis-infused products, always be cautious of your dosage and measurements.

    Start by decarboxylating the marijuana.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    The decarboxylation process is simple: spread marijuana out on a tray and place it in an oven preheated to 245 degrees for 30 minutes.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty
    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    This is an essential step. Decarboxylation heats up the cannabis flower and allows the body to absorb the cannabinoids, essentially activating the cannabis. This process happens instantly when marijuana is smoked, but when making edibles it must happen slowly to preserve the product and not burn it.

    The next and longest step is to infuse the coconut oil with the decarboxylated marijuana.

    Throw the coconut oil and decarboxylated marijuana in a sauce pan and let it simmer on the lowest heat setting for three hours.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty
    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    Heat on the lowest heat setting ensures your oil will be fully infused and that the baked marijuana will not burn.

    Don’t leave the house or kitchen when you are infusing your oil. Three hours is a long time, but leaving your stove unattended is dangerous and could potentially start a fire.

    After three hours your coconut oil will no longer be clear and will have a deep green color to it.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    The next step is to separate the cannabis-infused oil from the actual cannabis. To do this, use a cheesecloth.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    A regular strainer’s holes are too big and will leave you with little bits of marijuana in your oil. Using cheesecloth on top of a strainer is the best course of action and will ensure your oil is as pure as possible.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    Next, measure out however much oil you need for your brownie recipe.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    It’s important that the coconut oil does not sit out for too long or the oil will become dense and harder to incorporate into the mix. No worries if your oil does set up. Just reheat it.

    As for eggs, almost every brownie recipe out there calls for them, but just like butter, there are some great substitutes you can use. Applesauce is a good substitute, which is what this recipe uses, but you can also use mashed-up bananas or yogurt.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    Finally, mix all of your ingredients together, pour it out into a pan and put it into the oven.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    When your brownies come out of the oven, they may look soft or even underdone, but let them rest in a cool space for 10-15 minutes and they will set. Fresh out of the oven, the coconut oil will be very apparent on the top of the brownies and make them look oily, but as they cool the oil will absorb and become denser.

    • Photo by Rachel Marty

    Again, be careful of your dosage when consuming any cannabis-infused product.

  • Recipe: Toad in the Hole

    Recipe: Toad in the Hole

    By Liam Olson

    Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. It helps you get your day going and keeps you not hungry until lunch. However for some college students, it is hard to make breakfast with the short amount of time to get ready in the mornings. Well here at The Lumberjack, we’ve got you covered with this quick and easy breakfast recipe.

    LORecipe2
    Toad in a hole on a plate. | Photo by Liam Olson

    Ingredients:

    1 egg

    1 slice of bread

    Butter or olive oil

    Garlic salt

    Pepper

    Cumin (optional)

    Shredded cheese (optional)

     

    Steps:

    1. Grease the frying pan with butter or oil on medium heat. Let the oil or butter heat up in the frying pan.
    2. Make a hole in the middle of the slice of bread and eat the circle of bread that you took out.
    3. Place the bread on the frying pan and crack the egg in the center of the bread slice.
    4. Quickly add seasonings to the egg before the egg becomes too cooked.
    5. For a runny yolk, let the egg cook for less time. For a more solid yolk, cook egg for a longer period of time. Make sure the bread does not get burned.
    6. Cook both sides of the egg and bread.
    7. Put cheese on top of bread and let it melt.
    8. Serve and enjoy!
  • Spam Fried Rice

    Spam Fried Rice

    By Curran Daly

    Inspiration from Michael Francisco

    Ingredients:

    2 cups uncooked rice

    2 1/4 cups water

    1 can spam

    1 whole sweet onion

    3 cloves garlic

    1 bottle soy sauce

    ½ of a stick of butter

    4 eggs

    Step One: Cook the rice. For this recipe to work you need day old rice. While you could go buy the rice from a chinese food restaraunt and leave it in your fridge overnight, it’s more fun to cook it yourself. Bring 2 ¼ cups water to a boil with some salt and pepper and olive oil. Once at a boil, pour in your rice, quickly stir, and then cover for 20 minutes. Once your rice is cooked let it cool then lay it out on a tray to dry out overnight.

    Step Two: Cut everything. Before you can start cooking your are going to want to get everything cut and prepared. Take your onion and cut it into small half inch by half inch slices. They don’t have to be uniform but roughly the same size so they cook evenly. Then take your garlic cloves, crush them with the side of your knife, and then mince them until they’re in very small pieces. Open your can of spam and dice the spam into little cubes. You’re also going to want to crack your 4 eggs and beat them until they’re mostly yellow, as if you were making an omelet.

    Step Three: Start cooking all the other things. Melt your butter down in a large pot on medium to low heat, once melted throw in your garlic, stir until browned, but not burnt. Then in the same pot throw in your chopped onion and stir it around. Once the onions are browned you’re going to throw in the spam and cook until every piece has a nice golden brown edge.

    Step Four: Time for the rice. Dump in your rice that has been sitting overnight and mix everything together. Now take the soy sauce and start adding till you get a light brown color, constantly stirring so make sure every piece of rice gets coated. Add salt and pepper to taste, and if you think it needs more soy sauce, add it. Once done, you’re going to push everything to one side of the pot and put your beaten eggs on the side that is empty. Cook them just like scrambled eggs, constantly moving the eggs until golden and fluffy. Then mix it all together.

    Step Five: Enjoy. You could be done here as it is, but the way I was originally taught to make it, would be to add one small mixed bag of peas and carrots and cover it until the peas and carrots thawed.

  • Recipe: Mac-n-Cheese Hot Dogs

    Recipe: Mac-n-Cheese Hot Dogs

    By Curran Daly

    Co-created by Terra Hyke

    Ingredients

    1 carton pasta shells or macaroni

    1 cup – sharp cheddar cheese

    ½ cup – parmesan or any other cheese

    2 tablespoons – butter

    2 tablespoons – all-purpose flour

    2 cups – milk

    1 bag – Limon Hot Cheetos

    1 package  – King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls.

    1 package – bacon

    1 package – Hebrew Nationals all beef hot dogs

    Step One: Make the macaroni and cheese.

    Boil the pasta following directions on package. Strain the pasta and set aside. Heat a large pot on medium and melt butter. Make a roux, stir in flour until smooth and then add milk. Cook until thick then remove from heat and add cheese. Stir until smooth and add the pasta.

    Step Two: Prepare the hot dogs.

    Fill a medium pan with water and place hot dogs in the pan. Bring water to a boil turning the hot dogs occasionally. They are done when they have browned and have become darker. Divide the Sweet rolls into groups of two. Slice in half leaving the connected on the edge like a hot dog bun. Butter and toast in a small pan on low heat.

    Step Three: Prepare the garnishes.

    Open bag of hot cheetos. Let all the air out of the bag and then crush the hot cheetos into little chunks. Cook the bacon to desired doneness.

    Step Four: Assemble the hot dogs.

    Take the bun and place it on a plate. Then place hot dog inside bun. Top with your mac and cheese. Garnish with bacon and crumpled hot cheetos for flavor.

    Step 5: Eat!

  • Recipe: Mac-n-Cheese Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup

    Recipe: Mac-n-Cheese Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup


    Video | Curran Daly & Chelsea Medlock

    Recipe | Curran Daly

    Ingredients

    1 – box Kraft Mac n Cheese

    6 – slices of bacon

    1 – loaf of bread

    1 – Campbell’s tomato soup

    8 – slices of cheese

    ¼ cup – milk

    1 – stick of butter

    Mac-n-Cheese grilled cheese with Tomato soup

    Directions:

    1. Start with the Mac-n-cheese. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil in a medium sauce pan. Once at a rolling boil pour in the pasta and let cook stirring occasionally for seven minutes. Once done drain the pasta and return to pot. Then add and mix ¼ cup milk, 4 tablespoons of butter, and cheese powder mix. Stir and set aside.
    2. Cook the bacon. Open package and cook to desired doneness in a large skillet. Once done put on plate with paper towels to drain fat. Once dry crumble bacon into small pieces.
    3. Make the tomato soup. Put a medium saucepan on high heat. If you want to get fancy you can saute some garlic in butter and add italian seasoning and red pepper flakes. Then pour the Campbell’s tomato soup into the pan and fill the tomato soup can with milk and add as well. Stir to mix and leave to boil. Once boiling stir and cover and move to low heat.
    4. Assemble and cook sandwiches. Put a skillet on low heat and melt 1 pad of butter. Toast one side of two pieces of bread. Begin assembly by putting toasted side of one piece of bread on pan. Then put two pieces of cheese on the bottom, followed by mac-n-cheese, bacon, two more slices of cheese, and the other piece of bread. Flip when bottom piece of bread is golden brown. Remove from heat when cheese is melted and bread is golden brown.
    5. Cut the bread at an angle to make it easy for dipping. Put tomato soup in a bowl, and serve.