esrosedotblog

We had a "planned" power outage today.

Three hours which stretched to four.

It wasn't too bad but it is amazing how antsy this makes me.

The "what ifs" keep pouring in.

So I sit and meditate. Watch them go by.

They did pretty well on the planned time. Changing a transformer.

We could see the guy on the pole up the street.

Thank goodness for the Kindle and good meditation practice techniques., So it is over and are back in business. Not too bad now that it is over.

One consequence of the late hour was that we went out for fast food. Well, John went. Brought it back. We thought we would try Kentucky Fried Chicken. A bucket.

Not bad but not that great. We had the crusty kind, not the old fashioned. There were biscuits. Gravy which is odd for fried chicken I think.

The bucket doesn't have the original Colonel on it anymore. Sort of a meld between him and the new guy. Not the same.

Anyway, today turned out to be a holiday more or less.

Labels: cooking

One forgets cooking basics at a great risk.

Well, not a great one but still a risk.

Tonight a loud noise from the oven and what should appear but an exploded potato.

A baking potato in which the cook had not cut the requisite little stabs where the steam can escape.

I was in a hurry and going from one thing to another and forgot.

There are three potatoes in this photo. Which one do you think has not been stabbed prior to baking?

Easy, huh?

I had only one and it was all over the oven but not wet and messy. Sort of dry and messy.

No harm done.

A dust pan and brush out once the oven cooled.

Thank the gods for instant mashed. Done and done.

I am just passing it on. For anyone who thinks they know it all, you probably do, but execution can be put to risk by an absent mind.

Eternal vigilance is called for.

Labels: cooking

Today was more normal than yesterday and I could not be happier.

I went to the gym, the standard workout. All cardio on Mondays.

Then to a Meeting.

Home and naps and dog walking and all the rest.

Then, not normal. John is not here for supper. It is the Palm Springs Film Festival and he has seven or eight tickets. So we are on our own for supper.

He is home tomorrow and Thursday but we will be missing him for the other suppers.

It is a good opportunity for me to work down the frozen entrees that I keep for such occasions. Mostly pasta and salad.

I watched another episode of the "new" Sherlock which I am enjoying. They are all 90 minutes and of very high quality. A movie.

I think that they are using the original stories, some of them, as a template for each show and supplying modern details. Or not. I am new to Sherlock. I never was much interested in the past.

Too formulaic. But so far these are not. Quite original it seems.

In the photo we have Benedict Cumberbatch who is the Sherlock receiving an award at the PSFestival for his work in the Alan Turning film. A nice coincidence on the photo opps. Twofer.

You might wonder, or not, why I didn't go to the film fest me being a film fan and all.

I cannot abide the people. My agoraphobia comes right out.

My last attendance was when some woman ahead of me in line wheeled around and asked what my favorite film was. An impossible question to answer. I knew then that my disinterest in small talk was more than that. I didn't want any personal attention at all. A good insight but it ruined my going to the film festival.

I know this sounds silly but not to someone who is a well structured introvert.

Labels: cooking, films, Introvert, vacation

I should report on the CrockPot outcome last night.

Well, "should" is pretty strong.

How about "I will".

OK

I made the suggested recipe for pot roast, it came with the pot. It was pretty good.

Here is what I noticed. Maybe: slow cooking keeps the meat texture meaty and fibrously enjoyable. Definitely: for some reason, the vegetables came out better than I remember in a regular pot. So the meat got done but not at the expense of the vegetables. Is this possible?

Another definite: slow cooking enhances all flavors. Very tasty.

Slow cooking is not easier to clean up but it is no harder.

Slow cooking is fun when you are a neophyte and the whole experience is a novelty.

I do not have a next pot project outlined yet. Maybe the next time chicken comes up on the rotation of my 120 entree schedule. Of course it will do pork and poultry. It might also do lamb. Also veal, if I get over my thing about cooking baby animals.

I want to plop a whole chicken into it and see what happens. I have the recipe. It is pretty simple. I think one bay leaf or something and you just sit the chicken in there. No add ons.

Labels: cooking

At this moment, I have a pot roast cooking in the new CrockPot.

I have found a number of basic recipes. All the ones I first bought, books, are way to complex.

I should have known. That is what sells cookbooks. Complexity.

My experience is that the farther I stray from the basics the more effort is expended for about the same result.

So, I took refuge in the internet and found simple roasting recipes for a variety of meats.

There are also a few simple recipes in the brochure that came with the pot.

I started with one of those. Then I will move on if it is indicated, but I do not think that it will be.

Keep it simple.

I am not supposed to open it up while it is cooking 8 hours. I am supposed to be happy looking down through the glass lid which is totally steamed.

So I am taking it all on faith.

Labels: cooking

In the old days, "eating Chinese" meant a can of La Choy Chow Mein and a can or bag of their dry noodles.

Of course, in these days of sophisticated eating experiences the open a can approach is frowned on if not actually disdained.

I moved on, as we did with restaurants, to other forms of what we now call "Asian" food.

But, when the chips are down, chinese is fucking chinese and there is no way around it. It is the "meat and potatoes" of oriental cuisine.

So, every once in awhile I put aside the dim sung and the advanced egg rolls and just get the three can meal provided by La Choy (a US conglomerate). The same meal that my mother served. My wife served. I served. And still have today.

I carefully follow directions. Cook the chicken and the sauce hard then dump in the vegetables and just warm those up.

Serve the wet parts over rice and accompany with the dry noodles.

I suppose that we could just have the noodles but putting that canned stuff out on a cold plate does not appeal. And I do not, as a rule, do the combining of things like the dries and the wets. This should be done by the diner to suit himself.

I am really just fessing up here. I do buy the Changs products and some of the others as well. All good. But hands down nothing can quite come up to good old Chef La Choy out of a can.

Labels: cooking

I just updated my menu with a few additions and amendments.

I keep a full list of dinner entrees for about 120 days ahead.

No repeats.

I know. I am amazed at this. How did it happen?

Mostly, I added stuff to it and rarely take anything off the list.

I started this a number of years ago mostly because I was sick of trying to remember what I had when and what to plan for the upcoming week. The other thing is that when I was working, I was on the road a lot of the time and didn't have the wherewithal to make up menu items in the moment. I had to buy and plan ahead.

The list started with about 30 items. A kind of balanced menu. Mixed between fish and fowl and blood meats. A small amount of vegetarian meals as a gesture. I have never been able to make a leap to meatless. And I suppose, by now, it is too late to consider it.

I scatter the list with a variety of entrees. It is amazing how many dishes can be made out of chicken or fish. Not something that I am naturally drawn to or at least not in the beginning. Having interesting chicken ideas is a skill that has to be developed. Fish sort of takes care of itself as I consider it obligatory and not of great interest from a pleasure point of view. Of course there are good fish items. Fish sticks for example. But none of them are good for you. I tend to make the plate interesting with the starch that goes along. Exotic rice dishes (out of a box), pastas and so on.

This is how the list has grown. New additions to a staple fish or meat or fowl. If we like something it stays on the list. If not, off. But due to careful curating of the available recipes, I can reduce the failures to near zero.

I do have to admit that a lot of the 120 items come "out of a box". Or prepared. Or whatever euphemism passes for anything not "from scratch".

Part of this is laziness but also I claim to have had a whole lot of experience, when I did actual work, in the food business and so I know that despite the bad press a lot of prepped foods are actually good for us and pretty good tasting. They have to be if they want to sell.

I have wandered far afield from the basic meat and potatoes eating of my childhood. But not so far that I have lost my way.

My criteria is that whatever makes the menu can be setup and finalized between 430 pm and the time we sit down at 530. There are some exceptions. A roast. Maybe a casserole although most have been replaced with pre fab food.

I am not a fine chef nor a gourmet nor is my husband. But we eat well and with great variety.

The whole world of "recipes" incidentally is out of my range. I use a book and am happier for it. The mainstays are Joy of Cooking and the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. My mother used the latter although I have a more current edition. Neither recipe book has fucked up the originals too much and the spirit is the same.

I enjoy cooking because I enjoy eating and it is happy way to spend my time and make a contribution to the household. Tonight is Stouffer Braised Beef, tomorrow B F Chang's Chinese Chicken, then real chicken breast with stuffing from a box. Gravy from an envelope. Salad all the time. Did you know you can buy pre made salads too? I guess I am not as big a chef as I thought.

Labels: cooking

I first started cooking when I was a kid.

8 years old maybe. Both my parents worked. I was a latchkey kid. I was asked to do a lot of things around the house which I don't think kids "these days" are not expected to do but I don't want to start on that and sound like an old codger. I actually have no idea how kids are raised today or how they learn to cook.

It amazes me that kids or anyone else learns to do anything. I am old enough to look back now and marvel at the prodigies of learning I was able to do.

I imagine actually it is the same today. Most of my kids both work and their kids do the work themselves. OK.

Shit.

How did I get off on that? See? It is very easy for old guys to get into this mode and I have made a vow not to do it but this bs rolled out the ends of my fingers so I will leave it in to let you know I am not really as nice a guy as I may have always seemed to you.

I will start again.

I first started when I was a kid. 8 years old maybe. Both my parents worked. I was a latchkey kid.

The first meal I remember preparing was the Saturday night staple. Standard. Hamburgers and beans. I can still taste them. It.

The beans came from a can. Campbell's I think. The hamburger was the one kind we got from the store. I suppose ground scraps of an indeterminate fat content. It was greasy as hell and I know that I would not serve it today. Heart consciousness has ruined my eating at that level.

Anyway, one thing at a time, I picked up learning to cook. Mostly by trial and error.

I graduated to the kind of cooking my mother did. Overboiled frozen vegetables with the most done meat you ever ate. Hard, stringy. It was what we were used to.

We didn't eat eggs bare. So I didn't learn about the intricacies of that until I went to college and worked as a short order "chef". A grill jockey.

There, everything comes off a hot grill. It all gets mixed up. If the eggs taste like burgers so be it. All day breakfasts. You can still get that taste today if you can find the right greasy spoon diner which are rare indeed.

My business partner Alex was a fan of diners and knew every one in every location in every town in suburban NYC and beyond. I thought I was an expert until I started going to that kind of place with him. I continued that research on my own for many years. We go to a restaurant here whose owners are Greek and come from that era. It shows in their close to the edge cuisine. They serve breakfast all day.

I can still fry an egg and do the bacon on the side if called upon but that is no longer even a thought anymore. How have I lived so long?

Where was I?

Eggs.

In all my cooking, then and later, after all my cookbooks. After all the top of the line cooking equipment, the KitchenAids, the convection ovens, the grill in my own house, I have ended up in a conventional cooking situation. A gas range. A microwave. No baking, well except for the non-yeast rise kind, and no fancy food at one end and no equivalent of diner food on the other.

What about eggs?

I read, some years ago, about a woman who had made it to 90 something and they asked her what the secret was.

She said that she had always eaten an egg a day. Bingo. It sounded right to me somehow.

I started doing it.

Now, I eat two eggs ever day. I am richer now and more affluent than that old lady.

I am not afraid of the cholesterol as I have a lucky heart. A fortunate processing system for a range of fats. Low cholesterol.

But I still eat the egg beater kind for lunch, scrambled with ketchup on a sandwich.

Every other morning, I have two hard boiled eggs because hard boiled is easy and also I love to eat them. Laden with salt incidentally. Fuck the blood pressure.

Now, the payoff of all this blather.

In all my years of hard boiled eggs I have never, ever, unraveled the mystery of the hard to peel egg.

I have tried everything.

The plunge into cold water at the end. The easy boil. The rollaroundinyourhand and sneak up on the shell method. All of it.

Nothing worked.

Until a few weeks ago I went to the internet out of frustration and, once more, asked the question. "How to get easy peel boiled eggs".

And for the first time I found someone who said unequivocally that the age of the egg is the most critical factor and that older eggs were better because the shell had some separation as a result of drying through the shell membrane to the egg itself. It made a small space.

What?

I always have striven for the freshest eggs. Even straight out of the chicken when we had the small truck farm.

NO. The oldest.

Extensive research over the last few weeks confirms this. 100%. Unbfuckingbelievable.

I guess that you can learn something after middle age. Something new. A breakthrough.

Never give up.

Labels: cooking

The other day I made banana bread in a fit of nostalgia.

Also because this time of year we get over ripe bananas on a regular basis.

I am not sure why as the temperatures in the house are always at 77-78 winter and summer.

Maybe it is just that the bananas do have to live a very short while in the outside air on the way to Ralphs and even more briefly on the way home.

But it is as cool at Ralphs as our house, cooler!

In any case, in out or all around, the bananas get overripe and it is sad to throw them out.

So, I had a craving for banana bread which cannot be satisfied in the baked section of Ralphs, so I had to raid the baking materials department. I had no baking powder. No shortening which my recipe calls for in the old Better Homes Cookbook.

I had just bought the right size bake pan for another thing baked cake kind of thing, salmon loaf. I have made little hand formed loaves for years and baking them in the cast iron pan but they sometimes slump and it is not really the right thing to use. Even though I am the master of the improvised utensil.

So, I got my ingredients together. I had everything else. And I figured I would try without shortening and use oil.

So far so good.

Some quick breads use it, why not the banana.

I do not have a mixer. That got left in Boston 16 years ago. A KitchenAid which I loved but I had already decided that my retirement would not be marked by cooking or baking. Nothing more complicated than, well, a salmon loaf.

Mix by hand. Two minutes after the slow mix? OK.

I made an effort.

The bread rose well. It has to sit overnight to "settle" so I had the first of it this morning.

It tastes and chews good. The color gets darker from the top to the bottom, the result of raising I think. Also perhaps that I didn't mix it enough. Or perhaps I needed to mash the banana more. Or less. Or was it the shortening?

Hard to tell. Too many variables.

But look at the photo. It is darker toward the bottom of the bread also.

I will get some shortening to see. Or not. I am not sure that there will be any repeat. But in the meantime, a snack for the freezer and occasional eating. I made it so that it will yield two servings straight from the freezer to the microwave (12 seconds) then to the table or mouth.

Labels: cooking

HANDMADE

Is there a more awkward term of current use than "artisanal"?

WTF.

I remember when I first saw this. I think that it was for pizza.

It sounds like a medical condition. "I have an artisanal backache".

No. It is the newest, buzziest name for stuff that isn't made by a machine. Well, not 100%.

Somehow this is supposed to denote quality.

To tell you the truth, I have always been a bit dubious about the quality of the term "home made" too.

If something is truly home made then it is made by people in their homes (which artisanal is not because it is made on a commercial scale just not a big big commercial scale).

Home made suggests tasty but I can tell you that I have had a lot of not tasty home made food.

In fact, today, I won't have it. I don't go to pot luck suppers and I don't want to be around anything that came from a bake sale or the like.

Another thing. Home made means dirty hands, house animals, weird or toxic ingredients or god knows what.

Part of my bias is that I grew up in the food business and so I know that, for the most part, commercial food products are safer to eat and often a lot better tasting, certainly more consistent than home made stuff.

I suppose some things are safe. Home made fudge for example. It is pretty hard to fuck up colored and flavored decrystallized sugar. And the heat kills any of the bacteria.

And so on.

Let me get back to artisanal. This morning a NYTimes article about artisanal chocolates.

I had to look it up.

Wickipedia:

The adjective "artisanal" is sometimes used in describing hand-processing in what is usually viewed as an industrial process, such as in the phrase artisanal mining. Thus, "artisinal" is sometimes used in marketing and advertising as a buzz word to describe or imply some relation with the crafting of handmade food products, such as bread, beverages or cheese. Many of these have traditionally been handmade, rural or pastoral goods but are also now commonly made on a larger scale with automated mechanization in factories and other industrial areas.

In other words, double talk. Bullshit. Someplace in the commercial manufacture of these chocolates, one or more people put their hands on them.

Let me take you on a field trip to the old Schraffts or Brigham's candy factories in Boston. Little, poorly paid old ladies with dust caps on, sit along a conveyor belt and dip ingredients into liquid chocolate. Artisans.

How about the artisanal cheese? Ethnic hirsute guys twisting cheese cloths as the curd dumps into a mold. Artisans.

Sausages. Someone stuffs a casing with ground up meat and spice. Artisans.

Maybe the deal is that the little old lady or the hairy guy or the sausage stuffer can be viewed as more of an artisan if she or he gets to make a decision in the making of the product.

I can tell you that in the chocolate factory they could tell which little old lady did what chocolate by the tell tale swirl on the top. So the personal touch. They were all artisans being paid as little old ladies on a candy line.

In the article the writer talks about dribbling a little sea salt on a chocolate covered caramel block. That makes the thing artisinal.

Uh-huh. (smirk)

Here are some more artisans in action.

Labels: bullshit, cooking, food

BLENDSHIP

The obsolete "spices" really talks to another issue. The use of seasoning blends instead of going to basics. Why buy McCormick's "Italian Seasoning" when I could mix my own oregano, basil and whatever else is in the mix?

Are you kidding?

I don't even want to look at what is in the mixes.

I may have done my own blending at one time but those days are over.

Not only do I use the blends already mentioned but I am a total sucker for McCormick's meat mixes. There are some smoked flavor things, a hamburger blend, a Montreal steak and or chicken mixes.

I have maybe seven or eight of these standing by.

I notice that they have "rubs" in the same blends. A line extension.

This is going a bit far although I have used their marinade blends to good effect.I don't know what ingredients are in any of these items. Perhaps some are, gasp, artificial like the smokes.

I think that, as in a lot of areas, the taste discrimination many of us have, ages out.

Mine has.

Also true is that by using the preset blends I have reset my flavor preferences to the mean.

Labels: cooking

THE SPICE OF LIFE

The other day, I realized that my chili powder was a year off date.

I looked at some of the other items on the little shelf John built for me over the stove.

Ditto the Madras Curry Powder, the Old Bay Fish Seasoning, the Herbes de Provence and the pepper corns (so old I couldn't read the date).

How could this happen? How did I not notice?

Probably because I don't use much of this stuff very often. Curry every two months on the dinner menu cycle. No chili powder these days as most of the latin food I get is pre-spiced. Yes. Sorry. The fish seasoning? Basically a disappointment. I use the herbes or, to be honest, Mrs. Dash the salt replacement spice. Traditional. A 20 year tradition I think.

It is not a big deal but a small one nevertheless.

I am a big date checker when I buy shit. Not so much once it is in the house.

How old are your spices?

When we cleaned my mother's house out she had spices from so long ago there were no dates. Old logo A&P brands.

People in the "olden days" were oblivious to stuff like that. She even kept the oleo out of the refrigerator so it was spreadable. Eeeek. But it didn't make any difference. Oleo is oleo. Not much can happen to it. Butter would never stand for it.

Ingredients.

I know there are more superannuated things lurking around. Gotta keep my eyes open for them.

Labels: cooking

IT'S A GAS

No movie today.

The new gas range (not a stove) arrived just after 7AM. I was at a Meeting and came home to it fully installed.

It appears to be a lot more solid and even formidable than when it was sitting fireless in the showroom.

Everything works at the push of a button. Warm. Bake. Broil. Clean.

I tried it all except the cleaning part.

There are five burners. One in the middle where the space used to be.

John has bought a shelf to put over the back of the range. It doesn't have a flat surface.

The best part is the grills. They are not enamel. Rough iron which can char and not worry about showing burn.

The rest of the day was given over to some meetings with people and just playing around.

Our stove is white. Same thing though.

Labels: appliances, cooking, kitchen

NOT MUCH TODAY

I went and got the eye drops I will need for the right eye cataract procedure. Or is it an operation? Or is their some other name.

They were reputed to be very expensive but not too bad. 45 copay for two of them and 5 copay for the other (prednisone generic).

I got obsessive with the pharmacist over whether I could overdo it or not. She told me that the ingredients were not dangerous in any way. The clerk who was a lot smarter and knew her customer told me to get over it and not worry about too much, not enough and so on.

I could see I was doing my boring in thing and quit. It is just fear getting a workout. "They are not dangerous".

I had a couple of meetings and loafed. There are some days I can do that, huh?

So much loafing there was no time for a movie.

I am doing OK with the election so far and do not feel the need to talk over the obvious disparity between solid Democrat proposals and GOP air balls.

I think that they have Romney nailed with the Swiss bank account thing. Whether nefarious or not. There is nothing ambiguous about it. The reason people have money in Switzerland is tax avoidance. Period. That is what I believe along with a lot of other people. Whether it is true or not is beside the point.

Thought for the day.

Hot turkey sandwiches for dinner. Yo ho.

Mine will have 9 grain bread, oven warmed turkey not the wave, nice jelly cranberry sauce and fake gravy. But the idea is the same.

Oh, I wouldn't have the mash either, raw vegetables instead.

Labels: cooking, health, medicine, Re-election of Barack Obama, Romney

NOSEY

We each got a throat cold last week. Not much, in the scheme of things.

But starting yesterday, as the throat got better, the nose started getting clogged.

What is this?

Today, it is clogged and runny.

Rhinovirus.

Good name.

The old rule is that a cold lasts 7 days if you do nothing about it. If you take medications, it will be over in a week.

Is this two infections? 7 days each? Fuck.

Stay tuned.

Actually, it isn't that bad. I used to get colds that kicked my ass. Now they are slightly uncomfortable and that's it.

I think all those years of traveling in closed up airplanes to various venues in different countries gave me a lot of antibody protection.

I don't get colds very often. I can't remember the last one. But the unopened Robitussin is about to age out.

So that is enough complaining. If I stay busy, I forget about it.

Time to make the chicken salad for dinner.

This is the recipe which is a combo chicken and waldorf. Apples, raisins, nuts and chicken. Chicken Waldorf Salad or Waldorf Salad with Chicken.

Good either way.

Labels: cooking, health

S.O.S.

I revived an old dish tonight. Chipped beef in cream sauce, served on toast. Better known to all ex-military as "shit on shingle".

Our version tonight was a bit more elegant than the army version. The toast was 9 grain and the entree was the Stouffer's variety.

It was great.

The army version uses a browner sauce and, in some cases, use a ground beef. That truly looks like shit on a shingle.

In the United States, this dish is more prone to breakfast than to other meals. And, it used to be available at every diner.

I think that I am correct in assigning it to the category of "depression food". Dishes that were made with ingredients that stretched them. In this case, the sauce and the toast.

My mother had it a lot. For dinner. My Dad scarfed it up. I was a bit tentative. But now, I am there. I like it a lot. Somehow I think that this sauce we had might be different from my Mom's.

Chipped beef is sliced beef, thin, that has been salted and air dried and will keep forever. It is still available in stores but less than in the past and more in New England than out here.

I like it a lot.

We will have it again.

Labels: cooking, food

LOAFER

Today's meal is salmon loaf.

This is a dish from my childhood. Canned salmon. I have tried to update it with fresh salmon but it doesn't cut it. You need the strong, fishy taste of the canned.

The recipe comes from the same place too. Well almost.

The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that my mother had is not the same as mine but it is not the first "new" Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook which was so radically changed it pissed people off and they would not buy it. Word got around, the reviews were bad and so they took it back.

I have the new "new" Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook which is much closer to my Mom's and is mostly updated for things like microwaving and freezing. My mother froze nothing. Well, some ice cream and ice cubes in a little freezer compartment on the top of her refrigerator.

The thing about the salmon loaf is that it is depression food. Reminiscent of a time when economy took over the kitchen. Stretched proteins and all that. But all of these foods from the first depression era are what we now consider to be "comfort foods". Macaroni and cheese. All the other stretchers.

I will use a "sauce" that my mother used. Cream of Mushroom or Cream of Celery soup. Probably the mushroom. Celery is too strong.

This from the can with only half the recommended milk.

I am working on the "breadth" of my cooking. Or preparation. I have found some very good prepped foods that we like. Maybe I will write about that more as I get into it more.

Labels: cooking

TRADITION

I went and got my holiday fruit stollen today.

They don't do it right.

It is puffy. But it has the fruit.

Since I ordered it ahead I stipulated powdered sugar which they find preposterous. No icing?

No.

I haven't had the kind I grew up with for a few years.

My dad brought an A&P stollen home every christmas. Actually as many as he could get from the day-old.

Then they were gone along with A&P.

When I was first married and had the wherewithal, I made a pretty good copy of stollen. It was braided which most are not.

But I gave up baked goods along with cholesterol and butter and the stollen went into eclipse.

Ever since, it has been a sort of sad version of the original until just a few years ago, a guest came for the holiday and brought the exactly correct stollen which he got in a Jewish bakery! Cross cultural.

In Long Beach. A long way to go to get a stollen.

We have invited the friend back repeatedly and once he forgot the stollen and then the bakery was gone.

Eventually everything passes. Even stollen.

I suppose that, if I wanted it badly enough, I could make it again. But as much as I relish it, I do not like it that much.

So I will do with the puffy stuff. If I let it sit a day it will stale a bit and get appropriately dry. But it is only a gesture.

Stollen. Powdered sugar.

Here is the real thing. Close up. Made in Europe. Too far to go.

Labels: cooking, holidays

POTHEAD

When I moved out here, I invested in several pieces of non-stick utensils. Pots. A roasting pan.

Almost every problem this writer describes has happened to me.

How Not to Wreck a Nonstick Pan

From what I can gather, not only has all this happened to me out of ignorance on my part but also because of the original decision to go to a non-stick pot.

I got good ones. Anolon. Thick aluminum bodies, conduction. Coated with non-stick polymer, bad.

I have also done some things wrong (no tempering, use spray oil which makes a residue) but I have also done some things good (no metal stirring, no dishwasher and so on).

Net net, I got about what she says, five years, life out of them.

When the second pot gave out recently, I just went to the default position that I knew a long time ago. Stainless clad aluminium (thick). It is what I had in Boston. It is what I still have for "clean" sautee pans. By "clean" I mean that the iron skillets, that I use more than anything, put iron into all foods and don't interact well with others. Eggs. Some herby things.

Stainless clad aluminum is not cheap, especially the right kind. But it is indestructible (although they now recommend no dishwasher for them either to maintain the very smoothly machined interior). And if they are used correctly, sticking is not a problem. Besides, who ever cooked something in a pot that had to released out stick free. Usually it is just burger and such that get cooked first before other ingredients (onions, chili, beans, tomatoes) get thrown in.

The cost is offset by the frequent replacement of non-stick cookery items.

I am about to go for another, bigger pot this time. The surface of the non-stick is failing. Pock marks. A little rust. There must be some iron in that "aluminum" core.

That will leave the roasting pan as the only non-stick item. I don't use it much. Turkey breast. I do all other smaller roasts right in the iron skillet. Yeah. I know. I should have a rack. Not really. Try it.

I blamed the sticky roasting pan on John all these years. He washes. But it is the spray oil that interacts with the non-stick. I can live with it.

Labels: cooking

STICK TO YOUR RIBS FOOD

It is winter so I am making some beef stew.

I will make three meals of it and then, probably, that will be enough.

It was 75 today and I went to the pool and lay in the sun for twenty minutes.

A paradox?

Somehow, no.

The winter feeling comes upon me anyhow. Weather or not.

I use a spice mix and then vary it. I found precut celery and onion today. They just say to boil it. I have it softening in oil right now.

They don't mention celery.

You can't have a stew without celery.

There are carrots and potatoes to go in the last half hour and then peas for the final five.

I may thicken it a bit.

Not really serious cooking but more serious than I am usually up to these days.

The last few weeks I have added to the menu. I found a good curry recipe so I could eat chutney as I wrote. I got a slice leg of lamb today. No ribs, too fat.

I am going to have chicken ala king. Also clam chowder.

These are also kind of cold weather foods.

So the idea here is that cold weather foods have nothing to do with the cold weather. It is in the position of sun somehow. We are heliotropic. The sun moves south, the culinary tastes changes, yens return from long ago when we lived in cold country and the menu changes come out.

Labels: cooking, seasons