Thug Kitchen’s RCB Burrito (shameless content ripoff)

I’m sure you’ve heard of Thug Kitchen right? I mean, the home of hilarity such as:

Or…

Anyways, shockingly to me it turns out it’s actually a food blog as well as site of such helpful dick-cancer avoiding tips. So I gave it’s RCB Burrito recipe a try, and holy mother of fuck. Let me tell you, I haven’t liked anything I’ve made in 3 months and as soon as I popped this in the oven I was in ecstasy. Then I ate it and I can report with absolute certainty that I “grubbed like a fucking champ”. You can click the link for the original recipe, but I changed mine a bit to adjust for things like not liking quite so many chickpeas, cauliflower instead of brocolli, spices, and more burrito (I nearly doubled the original recipe).

THUG KITCHEN BURRITO

(makes about 8-10 burritos)

Filling:

1.5 cups of cooked chickpeas  (1-15 ounce cans, drained)

1.5 large yellow onions

2 red or yellow bell peppers

1 large crown of cauliflower

6-8 cloves of garlic

2 lime

Spice Blend:

1/3 c. olive oil

1/4 c. Tamari (or other soy sauce-like thing)

1 tbsp. chili powder

2.5 teaspoon ground cumin

2.5 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon ground coriander (or more cumin)

Heavy pinch black pepper and cayenne pepper to taste

Other Fillings (optional):

Ripe avocados

arugula

sour cream + salsa + sriracha to taste

whole wheat + corn tortillas (your preference)

cilantro, chopped

Heat the oven to 430 degrees. Chop up the onion, bell pepper, and cauliflower to about thumbnail size or a little larger. Finely chop garlic, but save it for later. Place all the chopped up veggies in a large bowl with the cooked chickpeas. Mix the spice blend all together (I whisked mine together), and pour over the veggies then mix until everything is coated.

Put all of that on two large rimmed baking sheets (you could possibly fit it on one, but I liked giving the veggies room to roast properly) greased with coconut oil if you have it and bake for 20 minutes. Then take it out, add garlic, mix and put it back in for another 15-20 minutes, keep a close eye at the end so you don’t end up with charred, rock hard chickpeas, everything else is meant to burn a bit. Squeeze the juice of a lime and a half over the pan and stir the roasted chickpeas and veggies. Squeeze the remaining half of lime with a pinch of salt over your sliced avocado right before constructing your burrito. Heat up tortillas lightly in the residual oven heat, then throw burrito together. Grub like a champ.

Notes on an Earth Day

Well, today was a day OF NOTE for REASONS related to AGING and perhaps CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE SUN.

An interesting day or two. Friends sat on me and made me celebrate it with burritos, beer, and gifts of cake, flowers and jars of basalmic pickles (because my friends are boss). Hoorah for all those awesome motherf**kers!

All day I’ve been clamored with the feeling of sentimentality. Perhaps because in previous years birthdays have been the marker for showing me that my world and the way I live in it is getting better and better. This year, while that is still true, I think the goodness of my world has become an accepted standard to such a degree that is beginning to suffer the “banalization” that many aspects, pleasures, and interactions of my life have begun to have. Like I said, it is not in any way a bad life, nor a less than worthy one, I think I have been surviving the system I’m laboring in (school, etc.) that I’ve forgotten not to get repetitive. I’ve not changed radically this past year as I have in the years before, though the shift I underwent was so radical in nature that it is no surprise that a year wherein which I dated the first worthy man in ages, worked a gorgeous roasting summer in California in my first real job in my field, moved into a house of amazing mad scientists, worked on a brilliant project with my favorite researcher, and  got my dream post-graduation job that starts immediately after college feels like “maintaining status quo”. Or perhaps I am really become a silly old stoic if that list alone doesn’t make me weep and shout with joy.

Guh.

Let’s be honest though, it’s just been too long since I’ve spent a week under the sun and sky. Too long have I been living through computers, leashed to them by the requirement of schooling and my own ego. Most distinctive to me is that none of my old tricks for “staying sane” work anymore. I used to go for long urban hikes or midnight bike rides or find a new dive bar, but now I feel I’ve been here so long I’ve seen it all. Nothing feels like an adventure anymore, and the pile of responsibilities keeps me from seeking further and farther adventures without getting nervous and fearful of falling behind even more.

Soon though I will be gone from this world of cities and people and schoolwork. My brain, hopefully, will have the space to explore itself and all its ridiculous quirks and remember it’s thirsts. So many things I’ve turned off my desire for, for they drive me mad until I am so stir-crazy I find myself standing on the street in my pajamas in the middle of the night sucked into a pure demented emotion of GO with no direction for it. Those things will flood back to me and envigor my passions anew. Passion, foolishness, desires! Come back to me! Make me a driven idiot once again! I need mistakes and mis-turns and the kind of laughter that can only come from covering up the crying. I demand it!

With that my lovelies, I bid you good night and adieu from this young old buck. Keep demanding.

-J

Whoa!

AUGH. I am the worst blogger in the world. Perhaps it is because very very VERY quickly do I get tired of computers. So. Fucking. Much. Perhaps it is more because I will always prefer telling stories to an audience that gasps, laughs, and scowls in response to whatever misguided tasks I set my muddled mind to. Regardless, time to make a foray into this once again!

Mostly my new found enthusiasm is because a massive, strange, crazy chapter in my life is FINALLY getting close to ending. I’m graduating in 2 months after too many years in the collegiate system and damn glad for the fact. Though, in a surprising state of affairs, it’s ending on an excellent, satisfactory note despite my eagerness to get out. And despite the time, costs, and a few “waste of my time” classes, much of what I wanted to accomplished was in fact accomplished and my brain is quite prepared to handle a unique suite of resource management issues or has the capability to learn the specifics of how to do so etc. etc. Hoo-motherfucking-rah.

Most of all however, and mind the gush here, I’ve gained truly through no merit of my own a wonderful host of cohorts and community that have somehow magically dropped into my life to make it much more excellent. Especially just at the moments when my feet begin to drag or I spend a little too much time holed up in my room. The people in my life are choice y’all. Grade A.

The universe has also been boss enough that as I close this crazed, messy chapter of my academic life and re-join the world of working adults with all it’s own messes, I get to take all this good stuff (and bad, let’s be honest) that is my life onward. Mainly because my first adventure out of college is just down the road from my stomping grounds, but also because I have the irrational hope that my adoration for my life as it is and the possibilities it holds that makes the future seem scary and worth writing about, even in this small way, will somehow keep it going up and up. Who knows what another revolution of the sun and all the stresses of being a bum in my mid-20s will change about it. I understand this is a quintessential “GAH I’m 20-something and don’t know! Oooh life is SCARY” expression, but come on, we all know we think that all the time in varying degrees regardless of our age. We just dress it up in other ways. In addition I want, naively, to attempt to have a sense of clarity about my life and myself that has only ever occurred when I take a step back to look at it in 3rd person; as if I’m writing out a character’s plot instead of just sitting inside my head going “but how do I feeeeel” in some misanthropic pity fest.

Oh, and I need a place to put all my recipes. That too! Woo.

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