Kitchen Witchery - And Other Nonsense

Torte report

2010-02-28T18:57:00.005-05:00

Hi, it's Nettle, here for a guest appearance! This weekend, I decided to make a flourless chocolate torte. Since wheat flour and I aren't friends, it makes sense to learn to make a cake-like dessert that doesn't scream "special diet food!" I started here: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateAlmondTorte.html , with a promising-looking recipe, but of course I'm not actually capable of following a recipe. I use recipes as general inspirational guide but for some reason I can't actually do as I'm told. Here's what I actually did:

2 eggs, separated

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup hazelnut meal

1/2 cup chocolate chips

5 tbsps butter

A few big scoops of mascarpone (this is optional)

Melt butter and chocolate together in a double boiler. Beat 1/4 cup sugar into egg yolks and add almond meal and melted chocolate and butter. Set aside. In another bowl, whip the other 1/4 sugar with egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into batter mixture. Pour into pie pan. Dab with mascarpone and swirl in using a sharp knife.

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Cool before serving.

I used hazelnuts instead of almonds because I found that I had just enough hazelnuts on hand for this, and it seemed like a good opportunity to use them up. They have a stronger flavor than almonds - I think this would work just fine with almonds as well, though the taste would be different of course. It reminds me of a Nutella brownie, both in flavor and texture. As usual with nut meal baked goods, it lacks some of the structural integrity you'd get with a grain-based flour and has a slightly mealy texture, but it still holds together well enough to slice and lift out of the pan in neat triangles. It might be better done in a cake or tart pan, but all I had available was a pie plate.

Next time I'm going to try more chocolate - I feel like the hazelnut flavor is a little overwhelming to the chocolate, which is a surprise. I thought it would be the other way around. I think more chocolate would also make it a little denser and gooier, which would be a good thing. The mascarpone was a nice touch but not at all necessary. and it really cries out for some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on top. So, a mostly successful experiment! If anyone else tries this or some variation on it, please let me know what you did and how it came out.

2010-02-26T18:15:00.001-05:00

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Buck's Fizz

Adapted from The Essential Cocktail by Dale DeGroff

Serious Eats, adapted from The Essential Cocktail by Dale DeGroff

By: Paul Clarke

Ingredients:

2 ounces fresh-squeezed orange juice

Splash of gin

Splash of Cherry Heering

3 ounces chilled Champagne

Directions:

Combine orange juice, gin and Cherry Heering in a mixing glass, fill with ice and stir to chill.

Strain into a champagne flute and top with chilled Champagne.

Garnish with a spiral-cut piece of orange peel.

testing NoshBot :)

2010-02-25T15:53:00.002-05:00

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Avgolemono

Lemon-chicken-rice soup that is thickened and made creamy with beaten egg. I wasn't sure I'd like this, but it turns out that it's one of those recipes that is really quick, delicious, and often requested.

This is probably going to be a frustrating recipe for people who like precision, because there are many different variables you can use. I suspect you can cook, if you're reading cooking blogs for fun. ^_^ I trust you to modify the heck out of this to suit your needs.

I've linked to the recipe I learned when I first discovered avgolemono existed. I have modified it for my own purposes for when I didn't have all the things that were called for.

epicurious

By: azzurri

Ingredients:

1 whole fryer chicken, cut up into pieces

-or-

3 chicken breasts

-or-

8 bone-in chicken thighs

the juice of 3 lemons

3 eggs

2 cups of rice

1 to 1 1/2 quarts of chicken broth

1 tsp salt

water

Equipment:

spider or slotted spoon

large pot/dutch oven with lid

measuring cups

knife

cutting board

landing space for chicken to cool/sit after cutting

ladle

whisk

bowl to temper in

Directions:

Remove the skin and excess fat from your chicken bits, and place them in the bottom of your large pot.

Add water until the chicken is covered by at least an inch to an inch and a half of water

Add the salt, and set the pot over high heat until it comes to a boil. When boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and let cook for 40 minutes. Cover, and skim occasionally.

Using the slotted spoon or the spider, remove the chicken to cool, and put the 2 cups of rice in the water. You may need to add more liquid at this time, I would use the chicken broth, perhaps a cup or two.

Check the liquid level on the rice occasionally - you may need to add more broth depending on the rice you use, the humidity of the day, the price of tea in Asia.

When the rice is cooked to your liking (I like mine almost over-done) start disassembling your chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Put the eggs into the tempering bowl and whisk vigorously. When it looks fairly homogeneous and is starting the get some bubbles in it, add the lemon juice and whisk vigorously again.

Using your ladle, slowly drizzle the hot chicken/rice broth into the egg mixture, whisking the whole time. Add two more ladles

Add your bite sized chicken pieces, taste for seasoning and serve

Don't look at me!

2008-11-17T10:38:00.001-05:00

Go look at this instead!

tagged, eh?

2008-11-12T11:39:00.003-05:00

I haven't done much cooking the last couple of months, not the inspired kind, at least. It seems that sculpting and inspired cooking drain the same brain battery, and after I've finished a head, hands, and feet, I really don't care what we eat and could be perfectly happy with chex mix. :p

So, good news, sculpting going well, bad news, nothing to really write about on the food front. I'm already kinda sorta planning menus for the NewYearStravaGanzaWeen that involve no wheat, no dairy, and no fatty or excessively spicy foods that don't keep me in the kitchen all day, but other than that, nothing really going. (Braised short ribs with mashed potatoes and celeriac, a bitter green salad a la Anne Burrell, so far.)

So Nettle tagged me with the "Six Random Things" meme, and hers were terribly interesting. I'm looking forward to Maebius' also. It was neat to go back and read Mahud's six things, too, even though I don't know the fellow. :) I have a problem in that I don't know 6 people well enough to tag them, unfortunately. Nettle and Maebius are the two bloggers I would call upon, so... that's kind of out. I'll do the bits I can, though.

The Six Random Things meme

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I like hands. I think you can read a lot about a person in their hands, and I don't mean palm reading. People don't think about their hands, except when they don't know what to do with them, so it's fun to see the mood of the person inside, behind the social masks.

2. I'm mostly a genuinely happy person. When you get down to it, life is hard, but good. I love my husband, my son, my friends, and they love me back. It really bugs some of the people around me, so I try and keep it in check, but I'm optimistic about the way things are going. Every bad thing is a lesson or a test to help us get better and grow and learn more... even if it isn't. The way I think of it, you can either get angry and bitter about it, or you can learn and grow from it. I like option 2. :)

3. I have 3 cats and 1 dog. The rule of how not to have more cats (for us) is you can have as many cats in the house as there are laps. After that, you stop having the ability to properly care for the animals, and it's not fair to them or you. It's the only thing that saves me from having a menagerie of epic proportions. The only possible exception is that if you live alone. Then you can have 2 cats, so they don't get bored and into mischief during the day.

4. I really REALLY love video games. As far as media goes, books are first, but video games are a crazy close second, followed by podcasts/blogs, radio, and tv. I've been playing Fallout 3 for the last.. week? 2 weeks? and it's honestly phenomenal. I like games that have a pervasive story, and Bethesda Studios are great for that. It's like *being* inside a book. For a while, I'm a ranger in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality whose problems are simple and only have 2 or 3 solutions. What I like about this game so far is that how you choose your solutions changes the story. I'm actively avoiding the ending, because I don't want it to end. :p

5. (I'm stealing this one.) My surname is Irish, and means "the small fierce ones". So my full name means "the noble, bright, small, fierce one." Heh. It always sounds ever so much better that way. Rarrr.

6. I think Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is probably the funniest show evar. Period. End of story. I love it. I hate riding in the car, and I reward myself by saving up the wait waits and putting them on my iPod to play for the ride. I can get through 3 on the way to my mom's, and 2 and a half on the way to my mother-in-law's, and 5 on the way north.

PS - random bonus fact? Horror movies still give me nightmares for weeks. I never grew out of that.

I wish Meme had a blog so I could hear his... Hey, Meme, answer with your random things in the comments!

coughcoughHAAAACKcough

2008-07-10T10:17:00.001-05:00

Summertime cold... I'm not cooking because everything is snot flavored anyway right now. I can not recommend it as a flavor sensation.

Back soon.

Meatstravaganza, day three

2008-07-06T20:36:00.009-05:00

This is the last or second-to-last post of this round of the Meatstravaganza. Here's where we get to the actual cookery part.

Here's my grill/smoker combination. I really like it a whole lot because it's got that little smoker box on the side that looks like a mini-grill, and can be used as one if you need the real estate. There are lots of other smokers/smoking rigs out there, including some spiffy home made ones. They might have very different settings/controls/variables than mine, so your mileage may vary.

This post is going to be a little disorganized, and I might try to summarize it all in the final post in a more polished form, so bear with me. I'm going to lay out my rough method for you, tell you what tools I find absolutely necessary, and show you the pictures along the way.

Here's how I'm going to have it set up. Fire 1 is going to be larger than Fire 2, because it's going to be in the offset smoker box, and I don't have to worry about it applying direct heat to the rib racks. That's also why Fire 2 is set off on the other side of the grill, as far over as I can manage it. I was finding that without the additional fire, I wasn't able to maintain the 200-225 degree Fahrenheit temperature I was going for. The best way I've found to get smoke is to use a smoke box and place it directly into Fire 1. I've tried using another smoke box (and once just a water bath) in Fire 2, but I found it gave too much smoke and/or unnecessary moisture. The metal rack holding the racks of ribs will be on the grill grates, towards the opening from the smoker box into the main grill.

I need to have everything laid out in a helen-logical pattern. So, Here I have -

a kitchen timer, set (for me) to 20 minutes.
the soaking wood chips (Weber firespice mesquite wood chips in this case. They seem to almost shred the wood for good water absorption and smoke production.)
an extra bag of wood chips. (not pictured here.)
a jug of water to soak more wood, and for emergency temperature control.
a smoke box
2 chimney starters, in my case one smaller than the other.
standard charcoal briquettes, and some canola drizzled newspaper for the chimney starters.
source of fire - fireplace matches, lighter, plain old matches
a pair of long welding gloves.
2 pairs of tongs
some nice fluffy kitchen towels
heavy duty aluminum foil
hotel/half sheet/cookie sheet pans
your braising liquid for the end parts - i used apple juice, plus a good pour of Stubbs original and Stubbs spicy bbq sauce, and some apple cider vinegar, too.
eventually, an oven set to 300 degrees.
A fire extinguisher.

Here's my matchsafe, jug of water, chips soaking, one of the tongs sets, and the bag of chips for identification.

Here's the smoke box filled with the soaked wood chips. I tend to get a little water in there too, because I'm sloppy, but be careful - you can warp the box. This is the box that goes directly onto Fire 1.

This is the picture of the end of the smoking follies. When I tried to get photos during the cooking, all you saw was smoke and some vaguely metallic outlines. Every 20 minutes, I come out, check the temperature on the box, add coal, dump the used smoke wood into the fire, and add new soaked smoke wood. I have occasionally tossed a small handful of the soaked wood on Fire 2 with an extra briquette, but I can't tell you if it really helped all that much.

Here's part of the smoking process. The ribs are well placed, there's a little fire down to the left, and the bigger fire off to the right. The smoke blows through the hole in the side of the smoker, and wafts over the meat before escaping out through the chimney. You can control heat and smoke somewhat by how open your chinmey is, and the air vents next to the coals.

Right now, this is the color we're going for. This has been in the smoke for about an hour and a half to two hours. Some recipes require they stay in the smoke for 6-8 hours, but probably because I'm not doing something right, when I do that, they turn out more black and crusty on the outside than the beautiful browny succulence you see here. This is when you get your cookie sheets and tin foil at the ready.

one cookie sheet out, a rib-rack-enclosing sized piece of tin foil on it.
your braising liquid
the other cookie sheet, laid slightly off to the side to receive the wrapped ribs.
big ass tongs, sturdy ones are best
you might need the welding gloves.

My lovely assistant pulling the last rib rack off to the staging area.

There's the bad boy in question. Damn tasty looking, even if I do say so myself! Fold the long sides of the foil up so that they meet in the middle, and roll them down lightly. Roll up the tail end, but open up the other end, and pour in some of your braising liquid. Tilt it back and forth to get good distribution, then seal the open end, and move your rack to the 'done' sheet pan. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you have all your racks swaddled in foil with a glug of the braising liquid.

Move them to a 300 degree fahrenheit oven. Ignore them for at least an hour, then go in, unpeel one end of a rib rack, and use a paper towel to grab a hot bone in the middle of the rack. Wiggle it. Does it pop out of it's socket? they're done, almost overdone. Does it wiggle just a little bit? Done if not real close to done. If the whole chunk of meat wiggles, wrap it back up and ignore it for another hour. By this time, the smells should be making that hard.

When you get the doneness you like, make a V of the foil packets (using your handy welder's gloves) and cut notches in the foil so the juice drains out into a small saucepan. When you've got it from all the rack's you're doing today, set that saucepan to simmer and reduce. It makes a nice glaze for the ribs. Meanwhile, you can start your plating options. Cut them into 2s, 1s, 5s, however you like, pile then back on their tinfoil, and cover with a clean tea towel. When your glaze is done the way you like it, spoon it over the ribs, toss them loosely with your hands, and serve!

This was the only picture I got of the plated ribs because they were instantly devoured when I set them out.

As a serious hobbyist, I think this is the best I've done so far. I'll list the rub, brine, cut of meat, any saucy additions, and any questions you guys might have for me in the next post.

I hope you all sleep well!- I sure as hell will.

Meatstravaganza, day two

2008-07-03T14:23:00.002-05:00

Today's kind of the mellow day for the ribby goodness. It's mostly stage two of the waiting game.

Here they are straight out of the brine, and into Meme's sink for rinsing off. (I promise I washed your sink afterwards, Meme!)

Freshly washed piggy parts. All ready for...

...the rub! Again, one of those I-don't-remember-where-I-read-it things: you want good coverage of the rub, but you don't want to cake it so it looks like you're about to deep fry the sucker. I seem to remember there being a bit about the rub burning off if you have too much.

Here they are all lined up pretty in the bottom of Meme's fridge, where they'll get their pellicle. From the way I understand it, the pellicle is a smoke-loving surface formed by long air drying of the meats.

I'm going to go collapse before people start arriving for the crazy eating and gaming weekend of doom!

Beginnings of Something Wonderful

2008-07-02T23:25:00.000-05:00

Warning to the vegetarians - the next three days will be a meatstravaganza. The next 12 pictures are all of raw porky slabs in varying stages of disassembly! Proceed at your own risk.

This is how I make ribs. It takes 3 days, but it could take 5. I'm sure there are faster ways to do it, but this is working out for me so far.

My pork deconstruction station. Comfy chair? Check. Many paper towels? Check. Garbage and good-but-not-ribs bowls? Check. Makeshift brine bucket, lined with makeshift washed plastic brining bags? Check. Son to play video games to amuse me between cuts? Check. (I'm currently watching him play My Life as King on the Wii.)

Frighteningly sharp knife, freshly honed? Check. Spoon for scraping the fat off? Check. Loins girded for 5 cryovac-ed pork spare rib slabs? Check! Bring on the piggy!

Briney goodness in my makeshift brining tub. It's a new office wastebasket, lined with two new kitchen trashbags that I washed out to remove any chemical residues. I think that if I'm going to do this more often, I'm going to get a Home Depot tub, and some of those giant ziploc bags and use those instead. These have worked well so far, though.

I can't tell you entirely where I'm getting my rib lore and instructions from, because honestly, I can't remember. I've watched Alton Brown's Pork Fiction, read Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman, the forums at the Char Grill website, the BBQ forums, a pdf by the Chatham Artillery BBQ Team, the smoking section in On Food and Cooking, and the smoking/barbecuing/grilling section of every damn cookbook I have. Why am I telling you this? Because somewhere I read that if you brine the ribs, you should not use a lot if any salt in the rub, as it will begin to taste like ham. The ribs the last time I made them had a touch of that telltale flavor, so I used what was left of my Charcuterie-based rub with a little more salt and brown sugar as the brine spices. When I make the new rub tomorrow, I'll quarter the salt in the recipe.

Here's my first slab. Part of the reason I get the cryovac-ed packages is 1) they're usually less expensive 2) I could use the butchery practice 3) there's a lot of meat that isn't part of the ribs that I take off and grind up for all kinds of stuff. The thing on the bottom left is half of the piggy's sternum.

And here's the sternum off! I never understood what the tv chefs meant when they said, "you just let the knife slide along the bone, and the meat will peel away" until now. It was really neat! I'd grab the big hunk of bone, and gently slide the frighteningly sharp knife along it, and the meat would slip back like magic. I still had some trouble finding the joints in the cartelige, and ended up cutting through one or two of them.

The slab divided into the top (skirt?) part with no bones, the ribs themselves, and the little wee tail end that didn't have any bones in it.

There's two membranes on the concave side of the ribs. You only need one. Find an edge, and gently start to peel up.

When you've got a little handle-able bit, grab it and peel the membrane off, hopefully in one piece. I grabbed it with paper towels, as it was slippery as hell.

After you get that off, there are chunks of fat that can come off. I scrape them off with a spoon. I also tend to trim off all the big chunks of fat I can see, because there's plenty in there to keep it lovely and moist without too much on the outside.

Here's what was left of the good stuff after I trimmed the ribs and put them in the brine. I'll grind that up tomorrow and use it for potstickers, I think.

Here's what's left of the not-good stuff. If I were making stock, I'd keep the bones, but I'm not any time soon, so nyah.

By the time I made it through all the slabs and cleaned up, it was pretty late. Here's the bag full of brine and ribby goodness heading off to Meme's fridge. He was kind enough to let me use it while he's away for a couple of days.

That's phase one of the ribtacular meatstravaganza. I'm totally beat, and I'm going to bed!

Here, look at this:

2008-07-01T10:37:00.004-05:00

I hope to have an interesting set of posts over the next couple of days, but for the moment, look at the cute puppy. Awwwww.

life is a...

2008-06-26T19:45:00.003-05:00

here is the jar, and the steamy chocolate in my grandmother's set, actually made for chocolate! i think it used to be hot cocoa, though, not our brewed stuff here.

i'm tilting it so you can see the color, and the relative size of the cup. i accidentally made it too strong: this color is from 1 tsp per 2.5 oz, which is the volume of the cup. when i made it with the correct 1 tsp to 4 oz ratio, the taste was much milder and more pleasant.

sorry about capitalization: typing one handed due to canine and feline infestation.

grrr. photos delayed.

2008-06-26T10:36:00.002-05:00

Kodak autoupdated it's little photo grabber program, and uninstalled my camera. I have to see if I can dig up my disk and if not, wait for Memekins or Dorky to come home and work their magic.

The Cabaret arrived!

2008-06-25T05:25:00.000-05:00

I'm not talking Liza Minelli. I'm talking about the brewed chocolate drink that was on Food Gawker almost two weeks ago. FedEx was kind enough to leave the wee box at my door around four today, and of course I had to test it out immediately. I was thinking of you! I was only thinking of you.

So I made it according to the directions (1 tsp to 4 oz of hot water. Drink, then wait half an hour to see how it affects you before trying any more.) It has a really interesting smell. It kind of smells like molasses, and tastes a little bit like it, too. It's not bitter, as I feared it would be, but it's a definitely *other* taste. If you've ever had Japanese sweets, it's different the way those are. You go in expecting a super sweet filled cookie, and you get sweetened adzuki beans. Not *bad*, just very different.

Because I was being decadent, after I took some pictures of it, and had some initial tastes, I added a smallish dollop of cream. If you're going to sin, you might as well sin boldly, right? It went nicely.

So, my half-hour is up and I'm going to take a nap. Apparently it refreshes and energizes some people, and it relaxes others... I must be one of the relaxers, and boy howdy am I relaxed. I'm just about asleep on my feet, so I'll go be asleep on the couch. I promise I'll post those pretty pictures later..

Food and Health

2008-06-24T13:51:00.006-05:00

Or the post(s) I’ve been avoiding for weeks.

According to medical science (and hell yes Madison Avenue) I’m fat. Not pleasingly plump, not chubby, not zaftig. FUH-hat. Luckily, those nearest and dearest my heart tend to disagree. My husband and I both started putting on weight a couple of years after we got married in a phenomenon known as “happy fat”. We were happy, and we did stuff that made us happy (eating at ethnic restaurants, trying new cuisines, and playing video games) which in combination aren’t the best health-ily speaking. Jobs got busier, activities got restricted due to distance or time constraints, we stopped walking and started taking the car… The things that happen to people in real life.

Why am I prefacing this post (these posts?) with this? To show you I’m not an expert. I’m not a nutritionist; I’m not in a better place than you to tell you what’s going on. I’m just a zaftig schicksa who is loud and opinionated and likes to cook and eat. (Yes, I know schicksa is generally derogatory. I call he for whom I have romantically forsaken all others Dorky, for heaven’s sake.)

Also – feel free to disagree with me. I’m willing to listen and possibly even agree with you if I think your argument makes sense. Part of this is about sorting out internally what I think about food, diet, health, and the myriad combinations thereof, and if it helps you figure out your thoughts and feelings, yay! Tell me about it, I really want to know.

Hmm. As I’m sitting here roughing this bad boy out, it’s looking like this should probably be a multi-post thing, or I’ll have people drooling and frantically clicking away mid-pontification. Bear with me as we carve this baby up.

Diet

There. I said it. This word is bandied about and used so much that I think it has lost most of its original meaning, and now comes with a whole sidecar full of bias. Before we even touch the alternate meanings of the word, let’s go with good ol’ Merriam-Webster’s idea, shall we?

Main Entry: Diet (noun)
Etymology: Middle English diete, from Anglo-French, from Latin diaeta, from Greek diaita,
literally, manner of living, from diaitasthai to lead one's life
Date: 13th century

1 a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed b: habitual nourishment c: the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason d: a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight *going on a diet*
2: something provided or experienced repeatedly *a diet of Broadway shows and nightclubs — Frederick Wyatt*

When you think about diets in relation to animals, you probably think of definition 1a and 1b. When you think about diets in relation to humans, I suspect it’s more 1c and 1d. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word diet has had a sense of restriction associated it from approximately 1440 CE, so there’s a decent amount of history supporting that idea. I mean, you don’t think about a lioness looking back at her flank and exclaiming, “Oh em GEE, I have GOT to lay off the warthog. Look at the size of my ass! Besides, they’re totally full of saturated fats.” In that case, diet simply means the habitual daily intake of sustenance.

In that vein, I have a novel idea. It’s probably been made before, but I don’t recall having heard it put this way, so, here we go:

We’re animals, too.

Omnivorous mammals, specifically.

I know, I know, a totally crazy idea! The critic in my head that I attribute to you, dear reader, is saying a) omg, an evolutionist! b) but humans used to have a 36 year average life span! Hasn’t nutritional and medical science raised the quality and span of life? And c) so you’re saying we should stop cooking food, and eat like the monkeys do?! The short answers are: a) yes b) yes and c) no.

Long answers:
a) An evolutionist! Yeah, there’s pretty much nowhere I can go with that one. It's a fair cop.
b) Nutritional and medical science have done wonders for us, there have been a huge number of incidents where one food will become verboten, bad for you, only to have that reversed years later. There is so much information out there, and a lot of it peer-reviewed, it gets mind boggling for the conscientious eater. What I’ve done is a rough sort of the various mindsets, and picked the one that makes the most sense to me, that I can support with the best evidence, and is consistent. More on that, later.
c) No, no, no, no… There are many different reasons why I’m promoting more awareness of our animal nature, but the whole raw foods and/or ‘back to nature’ thing don’t even enter into them.

If we acknowledge our animal nature, and think about the stuff that happened to our ancestors, the things we want to eat start making a lot of sense. Craving sugar or sweetness is one example of that. To paraphrase Deb Duchon, Nutritional Anthropologist from the Citizen Cane episode of Good Eats: we learn to love sweet at our first meal. Breast milk (and colostrum) are incredibly sweet, and teach us sweet equals love, comfort, protection. It also helps that sweet fruit and vegetables contain small quantities of vitamins and minerals, and is plenty good for us. It makes sense to me that a proto-human that ate a lot of fruit and vegetables would be healthier, probably be better able to carry pregnancies to term, and potentially live longer than their less well fed compatriots.

There are a number of examples I can toss at you, if we extrapolate a little further. Carbohydrates give us long term energy. Proto-humans that ate lots of carbs were able to run farther than the ones who didn’t, and might have avoided being another inch on the lioness’ prodigious posterior. Carb loving monkeys therefore have more chance to reproduce, spreading that preference. Fire loving monkeys found meat that fell on the fire easier to eat, and lions (wolves, predators in general) didn’t like man's red flower. Animal protein is a complete and easy source of amino acids for building strong monkey parts. Bow chicka wow-wow, monkey lovin'! Which leads to monkey babies who like fire and meat and carbs and fruit! (You're welcome for the earworm.)

Besides, if we ate food the way omnivorous animals do, for one thing, I hope there are elimination facilities as widely available as for the animals. Animals poop on the ground. People have special places they poop, to prevent disease, and for social reasons. (Thank zod.) Ever heard of the stories of a person just switching over to a raw diet? Yeah.

I think that’s more than enough for a first go-round, don’t you think? Thanks for hanging in if you made it all the way down here! I'll broach this again some time next week. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogcasting.

Potsticker Noodles

2008-06-19T15:26:00.004-05:00

I'm a little off this week mostly because I'm getting ready for a visit from my parents-in-law. It's always nerve wracking, because my mother-in-law makes Martha Stewart look like a piker. Martha Stewart has a staff of 30 to do what Linda manages to do by herself. (Or with resigned husbandly help.) Her house is spotless, her food is beautiful, and she hardly ever spills stuff down her front because she's flailing wildly to keep the cats off the buffet... unlike certain people who write this blog. It's a wee bit intimidating. So, in response, I'm cleaning like a freak, planning menus, tearing them up, planning menus again, and generally running around like a chicken sans head.

Between the cleaning and the freaking out, I dug out some photos and a recipe I meant to show you guys almost a month ago. I love potstickers (favorite recipe here), but they're really a lot of work the way we do them. We really love them fresh and hot off the griddle, so I end up making them 8 or 9 at a time, put them on the griddle, making the next batch while the first batch is cooking, pass around the finished first batch, lather, rinse, repeat. It can take 2 or 3 hours to get through the entire recipe, but it's cool. I usually set up an electric frying pan in the living room, and commandeer most of the coffee table to process the batches. That way I'm not secluded in the kitchen standing for hours at a time.

I got to thinking about them, and what made up the potstickers. I came up with an idea that almost worked, but I think I know how to make it work the rest of the way. Potsticker Noodles.

The idea was that you get the lovely tastiness of the potsticker insides, and you get the nice wheaty (sorry, my gf guys) bite of the outside without the hours and hours of work. The first batch I made, I was afraid there wouldn't be enough flavor, so I added extra marinade to the noodles after I plated them. This was a mistake. They were plenty flavorful without it. Another mistake I made was that I badly overcooked the ground chicken. I think it was like sawdust, but the guys were kinder in saying, "it was a little dry."

What I was trying to do was to make up for the lack of the beautiful browning that happens on the dumpling wrappers as they cook on the griddle, but in reviewing it, I think I've come up with a fix: saute 1/3 of the cooked noodles in the pan that you cooked the stuffing mix in. I mean, theoretically, it's the same thing. You'll have the golden, brown, delicious, you'll have the lingering flavor of the scallions, meat, and marinade, and by cooking only some of the noodles, you should still maintain the balance in the flavors and textures in the dish. Theoretically, anyway. :)

While we're in theory, you should be able to make this recipe gluten free by using rice noodles and gf soy sauce. Those with other food allergies, beware the egg, cornstarch, and peanut oil.

Enough yakking, more recipe-ing!

Potsticker Noodles
1-2 lbs ground chicken
2 chopped scallions
1 T soy sauce
2 T rice wine (or apple juice or a white grape juice)
1 T garlic, minced
1 egg, beaten
1 T cornstarch
1 T peanut oil (+ a splash or two for the pan)
salt
pepper
1 package of udon, or other thick noodle. (I can get Nasoya Japanese Noodles out here, so that's what I use.)
1-2 c chicken broth.
Sesame seeds for garnish.

Put the soy sauce, rice wine, garlic, egg, cornstarch, and peanut oil into a biggish bowl, and beat the tar out of it. You don't want it to be foamy, but very well mixed.
Add the chicken and most of the scallions. (Leave a little out to sprinkle on top when you plate it.) Toss it so that the liquid and scallions permeate the entire mass.
Start some salted water heating for your noodles.
Heat on medium a large pan, and put a splash of peanut oil it. Swirl it around so that it gets over most of it, and add your chicken. You may end up having to do this in batches if you pan is small. You don't want to completely cover the bottom of the pan, or you won't get the maillard yum on the bottom.
Hopefully, your noodle-pot is boiling, or close to it. Toss the noodles in, and cook them according to the package. What you're trying to do is to roughly have the noodles done and drained by the time the meat is finished.
Turn the meat over a couple of times until the chicken is cooked through. Remove it, cover it with foil and let it rest while you get the noodles ready.
Get 1/3 of your drained noodles, and toss them into the pan you cooked the chicken in. Pour in 1 c of chicken broth, and clamp a lid on.
Toss the 2/3 of the noodles with a couple of drops of peanut oil to help keep them loose and ready to serve. You can cover them with foil and a towel if you like to keep them warm.
Check the noodles. You're looking for the liquid to cook almost completely away, and a beautiful golden brown crust to form on the noodles themselves. If they're not as brown as you like them, stir it up, add the other 1 c of chicken broth, and lid it up again.
Take your browned noodles and toss them with the rest of the noodles.
Add 1/2 - 2/3 of the cooked chicken and scallions, and toss thoroughly.
Divide the noodles into the serving bowls, add the rest of the chicken on top, with the remaining scallions to garnish. You can also add sesame seeds if you like. :)

I'm looking forward to making these again, with the modifications. If you make it before I get a chance to, let me know how they turned out!

P.S. - forgive any format weirdness, please. I'm testing Flock, the new Mozilla browser/publishing/all-in-one program.

Memes!

2008-06-17T11:28:00.003-05:00

Maebius has started the meme wagon (not the Meme wagon, different animal all together) rolling, so here we go!

what books do you read when you're happy?
honestly, pretty much anything. I love to read cookbooks, old cookbooks (thanks again, Tom!), books by cooks (1, 2, 3), science fiction(1, 2, 3 ), fantasy (1, 2, 3), bizarre textbooks that catch my attention (i have one from the 50's about the switch in Chinese culture from rural agrarianism to more western ideals)... I read a lot of lighter stuff because all the hard stuff comes from the real world and the news feeds. :p

what books do you read when you're sad?
Books from my childhood (see below) and soppy, stupid romance novels. They have to be written between 1960 and 1980 or so, thin, cheaply made (the ones that come as a promotion with a product are best) and really ridiculous. They make me laugh and laugh, I have no idea why. Earlier than 1960 and you have kind of heartwarming tales that are too sweet to be funny, and after 1980 they just try so damn hard to be hip and with-it that it's more pathetic than humorous. Historical romances will do in a pinch, but only if they're fairly poorly researched in the history department.

what were your favorite childhood books?
The Secret Garden
The Oxford Book of Children's Verse (I can still recite most of Macavity, by T. S. Eliot)
Old Hasdruble and the Pirates (about halfway down the page)
Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas
The Classic Volland edition Mother Goose
Joey Goes to Sea (this is a different cover)
Arm in Arm (again, different cover)
FireRose
The Blue Sword
Dragonsong
I'm sure there were a ton more I'm forgetting... but I still have or have re-acquired most of those.

what's your i-die-tomorrow meal?
Unlimited fresh crabs (plus mallet, nutcrackers, and forks) drawn butter, fresh Jersey corn and tomatoes, and fluffy garlic-cheese rolls. Iced tea and Lemonade to drink. If I'm really dying tomorrow, beautiful fresh strawberries(some macerated in lemon-sugar-water), clotted AND whipped creams available, and toasted pound cake and angel food cakes. I won't mind the hives if I'm dead! >:)

what's your guilty food pleasure?
There's not much foodily speaking I feel guilty over... Cardboard pizza (supermarket frozen pizza), and those 'firecracker' pickled sausages from convenience stores are probably my most guilty secret.

what's your guilty tv/movie pleasure?
Top Chef. It's a reality tv show.
Occasionally the Martha Stewart show. I don't like the woman, but damn does she have some interesting menu/craft ideas.
Nostalgic kid's anime movies and series, pretty much everything by Studio Ghibli. They all make me cry, and I love them.

NEXT!
(I'll link 'em as I get them!)
Nettle's reply in the comments!

Father’s… Mother’s… Happy birth… er Parents’ Day!

2008-06-16T15:56:00.009-05:00

My mother finally got her tart! Yaaaaay! Before anyone says anything clever, please remember I have a very sharp knife collection, and I know where most of you live.

Mom and Dad (and Whimsy the dog) came up this last weekend for a combined Mother’s Day/Father’s Day/Mom’s birthday celebration that was postponed last month due to fun trips to hospitals and similar frivolous events. I (and Meme who was pressed into service) spent 2 days cooking because I’m completely insane, and honestly, I didn’t want to have the oven fighting the air conditioner when we had company.

I think I have one new recipe for you, but the rest you’ve already seen. I’m committing a cardinal sin by not giving you guys pictures, but I’m trying to dig my way down through the camera-y backlog, and I promise I’ll have pictures on Wednesday.

The menu was as follows:

Pernil
Fork-mashed potatoes
Pan-seared mushrooms
Salad with fried crispy pancetta and blue cheese

Brownies with vanilla ice cream
Fruit tartlets

Okay so a recipe and a half – let me deal with the half first.

Salad with pancetta and blue cheese:
(your_favorite) salad lettuces
3 slices + 2 slices per diner of pancetta (or prosciutto, or bacon in a pinch)
1 wedge blue cheese (or gorgonzola)
Oil and Vinegar (optional)

Get your favorite lettuces together. Keep in mind you probably want to go for the milder in flavor, as the meat and cheese are really providing the punch for this dish. I usually go with a romaine/iceberg/boston mix. Prepare them the way you would for a salad, removing big center ridges, ripping or cutting them into bite sized pieces, washing, and drying. Put in your fridge until you need them.

Fry your pancetta a in a hot skillet (with maybe a touch of oil) until you get the golden, brown, delicious thing. In the case of the pancetta, I found after the browning, I had to nuke them twice for 30 seconds to get them to the crispness I like. You don’t have to do that with prosciutto, in my experience, because it’s cut wafer thin. Crumble(or slice, if it’s leathery) into a bowl.

Slice the blue cheese into ¼ - ½ inch slices. Crumble into a bowl.

Serve forth all the bowls, and let people dress them with the bits as they like. The oil and vinegar is optional, because there’s plenty of punch there already, but I find they add a nice foil for the taste of the cheese and the salt of the meat.

If you’re serving single plates instead of family style, grab a handful of lettuce, and place it into a larger bowl than you’d serve it in. Add a dollop or two of the oil/vinegar, a big pinch each of the meat and cheese. Toss fairly vigorously, so the little speckles are all throughout and your cunning application of the dressing has stuck them to the lettuces. Arrange artfully on your serving plate, and then add a largish pinch of the meat and cheese sprinkled over top. Serve immediately or the sucker will wilt.

My personal favorite meat/cheese combination is pancetta and gorgonzola. The blue cheese is just a little too powerful for my tastes.

I call it a half recipe, because really, it’s a salad with tasty ideas for stuff to put on it. :)

Here’s the recipe for Pernil, which is one of the most requested dishes I have. A lot of that might be because the meat is best used for Cuban sandwiches the day after. I use a modified recipe of the one I found here a million years ago.

Pernil – or how a roast can take 16 hours to prepare
Big (8-10 lb) hunk of pig. I usually do a shoulder or a butt or a picnic shoulder.
Garlic, both pre-chopped from the supermarket and regular.
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher Salt
¼ - ½ c Olive oil
¼ - ½ c Red wine (or cider if you prefer) vinegar
3 T Italian spice mix.
Butter – cut into little slivers, ¼ c?
Aluminum roasting pan + foil

Clean the roast by trimming off excess fat, any skin, silverskin/fell/that silvery striped stuff that’s totally inedible.

Stab the roast. A lot. I usually use a boning knife so the cuts are ½ wide. You don’t want to shred the thing, but you want to give it as much potential for flavor as possible.

Put the roast in a brine. Leave it in for 6-8 hours, then remove and rinse thoroughly. I usually make a slightly weaker brine, then I put the pig in the brine last thing before I go to bed, and leave it overnight. I don’t know if the science behind this is sound, but it seems to work out okay.

Mix together your marinade (which follows) – this depends a lot on how big your chunk of pig, and how much surface it has. I usually make too much, and then if there’s some left over I dump it in the bottom of the roasting pan.

I said garlic both fresh and from a jar. I know this probably horrifies some people, and I’m okay with that. :) Fresh, I usually use about 6-10 medium sized cloves, smashed and chopped roughly. Then I use 10-12 (equivalent) cloves of the jarred stuff, with the oil it comes in. The fresh garlic brings a punch and a sharpish bite, while the jarred stuff has a lot of the gentler supporting garlic flavor that’s really kind of nice. You could roast the garlic and use fresh and roasted combination, I guess.

Mix the oil and vinegar together, add the garlic, and the Italian seasoning. I like to food process or blend the mix so it’s given its absolute all.

Put the roast in the roasting pan, and have aluminum foil to cover nearby. This is going to get messy!

Dump the marinade over the butter slices, which are optional, really. Toss them like you're dressing a salad, then grab a handful and smear it all over the roast. Stick your fingers (and sometimes the butter slivers) into the slits, so the flavory stuff is everywhere. An awful lot of the fat is going to cook out of this, and the butter really does lend a nice flavor to it, but it’s always your choice.

Put the foil on the pan, and try and make it pretty tight around the edges. You can poke one tiny hole in the foil to let some of the steam out, but don’t do more than that! The steam is your friend.

Cook in a 325 degree (Fahrenheit – 162 degree Celcius) for 6 hours.

I said good, not fast.

Remove the foil, and turn the oven up to 375 degrees f (190 degrees c)

Flip the roast over after ½ hour.

After another ½ hour, bring out your golden brown and delicious fall-apart pork roast. There should be a LOT of juice in there now, which you will save for gravy.

Try and pick up the roast to let it rest. I dare ya. Now, try not to let it fall apart too much, and shovel the porky goodness out to sit under foil while you get the gravy in line.

Pour the juices through a fine meshed sieve or colander lined with cheesecloth into your favorite gravy-making pan. This might be controversial, but meh. You can leave the bits in until you have taken out the fat and reduced it a little for a somewhat richer flavor and possible gravy lump removal, but I don’t find that the payoff is worth the slower drip through sieve time. I use cornstarch and water to thicken my gravy because it is fast and gluten free, which is sometimes a problem for my guests.

Pick the roast to bits, it should just fall apart. Remove any bones and obvious blobs of fat or unrecognizable stuff. Dump the gravy on it, or serve it on the side, and get the heck out of the way to prevent trample damage.

This is good stuff. I hope you enjoy it as much as my boys seem to!

… what? The Cuban recipe? Eeeh, Alton Brown already wrote it out. I use my flower pot bottoms rather than fireplace bricks. Have I mentioned those? Well, that’s another post. :)

p.s. - I wrote this post entirely while covered with animals. The animals changed, but never was I animal-less. (2 cats, 1 dog; 1 cat, 1 dog; 2 cats; 1 dog.) I can not recommend balancing your keyboard on the back of a Jack Russell Terrier.

Not gonna do it. Nope.

2008-06-14T00:37:00.004-05:00

I'm going to take a page from Nettle's book and not apologize for not being here for a little bit. :) (Hey, Mr. Nettle! I'm not apologizing for something! *big grin and hug sent in his direction*) We all know stuff happens, and it's been an eventful month. I'll give you some of the highlights, and the things that made me happy, some sad, and the things that I'm hoping to do, and we'll call it square, okay?

Happy : I sent a monstrous care package to my baby cousins for their en-masse birthday party. I come from an Irish Catholic family, so I have many, many cousins, and those cousins have had wee cousin-spawns of their own. This batch has a particularly clever cousiny mom who bunches their birthdays which are spread kind of erratically over the summer into one giant party for the family. This year, Dorky was on call the day before, and I was caught between medical tests and jury duty, so we couldn't go. :( This batch of cousins share our geek gene pretty seriously, and we've been trading favorite anime titles back and forth for a while, so the giant care package was *real* ramen noodles, candy, and crackers from the asian store. I sent some fansubbed anime that our friend Varulv shared with us, and it was all a great hit. It's really nice to be able to share the geekiness with a new generation. :)

Sad : Tastespotting died. It sounds like some copyright or legal stuff, which is a shame, I think. Tastespotting highlighted people's work, and brought them TO the author's site. It never claimed that the recipes or the images were it's own, just that they were inspiring, or funny, or cool. That place was crack for a food obsessional like me. Thanks, Tastespotting, for all the inspiration, and please know you will be missed!

Happy : Jury duty got called off! Heh, I know, I should be pleased to do my civic duty and all that, but it's still nice not to sit in an under-air conditioned jury box and pretend to be paying attention. Especially out here. Traffic violations involving livestock is a common theme.

Sad : sometimes I really miss the city. We met a nice girl from Philadelphia while we were at Lowe's who happens to be attending the local college, and got to thinking about the differences between here and there. The area where we live is very nice, it has beautiful scenery in the low mountains, the people are almost creepily friendly, and it's really quiet... but part of the problem is it's really quiet. Remember all those cousins? I'm pretty used to seeing them probably 8 or 9 times a year 'officially' and occasionally just to get together to shoot the poop. Same with my Mom's big extended family, uncles and aunts and the occasional great aunt thrown in there. I miss my family, and being able to walk to any of a ton of stores, or being only a train or bus ride away from a hojillion more. There isn't any public transit out here, it's way too rural. So, I love where I live, but I miss home, too. Extra points for here: really good thoughtfully-raised pork and produce. Yum.

Happy : I planted 34 petunias, some big spiky thing that didn't have a tag, and some little purply white things that were pretty. I broke out in hives for the rest of the day, but the front of the house looks really nice. :) Kinda goofy, but I think it was $25.00(flowers + soil amendments) well spent. I suspect I'd garden more if the hives weren't involved. Maebius is hopefully bringing us some hops vine cuttings when he comes to visit in (mumblemumble). I am really looking forward to planting that along the big fence 'round back, both for privacy, and for pretty. Dorky and Bearling helped by gathering branches and trash, trimming hedges, and weedwhacking the heck out of the driveway and part of the path before the string trimmer died. Thanks, guys!

Sad : summer. heat, and helen death. My Dad's side of the family has this weird peculiarity - we're super heat sensitive, which drives poor Dorky nuts. My comfort zone is 65-75 degrees fahrenheit. 80 starts to make me sick to my stomach, which luckily seems to go away after a week or so. Dorky likes 85-95 degrees. Ah, a mixed marraige indeed. I end up hiding in dark, cool places for most of the summer, avoiding cooking and even eating because of the heat, and Dorky spends most of the winter holed up next to the warm, bright, fireplace, shivering and murmuring things about moving to some banana republic. So, there may be fewer cooking-related posts for a while. That brings us to...

Stuff I hope to do : I was thinking, there are only so many pasta salads, grilled things, and fruit sorbets you can post about, so I might try for a little mixup while the temperature is in helen melty zones. First, I'll do two or three recipe/menu posts a week, heaven willing and the creek don't rise. Second, I read a TON of food blogs. Seriously, if I miss more than 2 days reading, my reader has 1000+ posts and recipes waiting for me. I think that maybe once a week, I'll share a blog with you guys, and show you my favorite posts. Third, there might be more guest posts, if I can wrangle them. I have a couple of ideas that I'd love to approach people with and see what they think. That's still pretty far back on the list, though. Fourth, even further down the list, I might do a little bloggy housecleaning, and try a new setup. I really like my wallpaper and colors, but I need more room for adding the blogs I read, and pictures and links and bears, oh my.

My Mom and Pop are coming up this weekend for a belated-birthday, Mother's Day, Father's Day thing. I'm going to make that tart again, dammit! I'm hoping it will turn out even better, the kiwis will probably be more ripe, and the strawberry festival is tomorrow, so I'll get some of those from the farmer carts. Yay! Okay, informal poll: real strawberries, you know the ones I'm talking about, the ones where the scent hits your nose before the strawberry is even halfway to your mouth - who is drooling now? *raises hand and reaches for a tissue*

Livescribe test

2008-05-27T14:51:00.002-05:00

Most of you know this already, but I have learning disabilities like you wouldn't believe. I didn't discover them until my kid started having trouble in school, and we went to see a specialist. As he was running down the list of symptoms of ADHD and a couple of other disorders, my Mom turned to me with her mouth hanging open and said, "Oh my God, that's BOTH of you!" It was really a revelation. I always just thought I sucked at school or was a bad person, because no matter what it was I wanted to accomplish, I'd kind of peter out partway through. So, we got some help, some ways to change the school experience for the kid, which was the main goal, and though he's still having some problems, we kind of have a handle on them. We know what to look for, and how to help him.

Luckily for the kid, his learning problems are lighter than my own, and I'm extremely grateful for that. I have, roughly, attention deficit disorder (undifferentiated), short term memory deficiencies, math disabilities, and balance problems, at least according to the tests from 10 years ago. To try and give you an idea (which I find myself doing a lot to try and explain what the hell I'm doing) imagine yourself in this situation:

I set out to clean the living room. I pick up a dish to take it to the kitchen, and when there, I forget I was cleaning the living room because I see the mail on the stove. Fire hazard! I take the mail to the office and start to sort it. There's an official looking letter for me, so I forget I'm sorting mail, and I open it. It's a jury duty notice. I go to my desk to start looking at the dates and filling out the forms. I finish and put them all in an envelope, and go look for a stamp. When I'm at Dorky's desk to swipe a stamp, I see a bill that's about to go past due, so I put down the jury duty envelope, and write out a check. I take the check to the mailbox, and see the newspaper, which I pick up to see if there are any good sales at the grocery store. I put the check on the newel post and I start making a menu based on the sales. I can't remember one of the ingredients for a recipe, so I log in to the internet to look it up. I get distracted by the cute kitty forward that someone emailed me, and I start to read my cooking blogs... Dorky comes home and asks me what I've done all day, and I realize I didn't finish ONE task all day.

It's more like attention *surfeit* disorder. It seems that people have thresholds of input importance that I'm missing. EVERY sensation, EVERY event, EVERY task has the same weight and importance. Delivering a baby is just as important as tying my shoes. Someone eating popcorn in a movie theater drives me nuts, because my ears tell me that the popcorn noise is just as important as the movie. The best way for me to work is alone, or one on one if in a teaching situation, in a small room with just a desk and a computer. It's just not something that the public school systems, or even most private school systems, are built to deal with.

Eeeh, it's hard to explain, but if you're ever around me and I'm cranky when I'm working, I'm probably overwhelmed by sensory input. Why am I going on about all this? Because I got a learning tool that is pretty damn neat. I'm still learning how to deal with it but here's my test page. Click on the arrow in the top right of the page with the scribbles on it to see the page itself. I'm hoping there will be a time when I can streamline these, but right now, you have to go to the Livescribe site to get the images. Click the play button, and the orange button that looks kind of like a sideways speaker is the volume. I sound like I'm twelve. :p

I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row so I can go back to school this fall, but I'm not sure my testing is going to get done in time. I have to have all the LD tests again, and the guy in the area (one of the three left in the state - thanks trial lawyers!) is booked to hell and back. Even though I called in late April, I may not be able to see the guy until October or November of this year, which is after the school year starts.

Anyway, the points of all that is: Livescribe=cool toy. Going back to school=terrifying. I'm off to try more notes! I'll eventually get caught up with posting, thanks for being patient with me.

nngh

2008-05-21T07:26:00.003-05:00

sorry guys, day three of cluster headache of doom. called the quack yesterday, got some new stuff that i'm going to take this morning. the good news is, i looked at what i'm doing wrong, and i should have a couple of posts on tap for things just like this, so we haff learnt frum dis.

also: mom's out of the hospital! yaaaay! she called me yesterday to give me crap, which is a wonderful thing. my family is very "punch you in the arm and run" school of affection. or just hurl insults and "your face" jokes.

a little something to prove that i did actually smoke a giant pork butt. yes, okay, get the jokes out of your system now, kids.

"you know you want me, baby. i'm the pork of your dreams!"

Mini-post

2008-05-19T10:34:00.003-05:00

Not a real post, that would be cruel.

We went and saw Mom in the hospital, and I'm really relieved. She was up and perky and all about giving me and Dad crap, demanding non-hospital coffee, and swiping some of the baked goods I brought for the nurses. Therefore: feeling much better, thank you very much. She'll probably be in there for the rest of this week, because even though she's better, she's not BETTER better yet. :)

I have a ton of pictures that I can upload, now that I found the charger. Of course it was in the shoe box next to my desk with all the art supplies! What was I *thinking*?! :p

There are at least three postsworth of pictures and ideas, but I'm not sure how quickly I'm going to get them out. I have a ton of stuff to do and help Meme with before his trip tomorrow. I haven't forgotten, I will get 'em out, I promise!

The photo? Just a taste of what's to come. :)

No pictures. :(

2008-05-17T06:58:00.003-05:00

Today, I'm schlepping the boys (sans Meme who agreed to puppysit) down to visit Mom in the hospital, so yesterday was a freakout day of preparation. I baked 5 loaves of bread, bought some pears from the farm stand, got baskets to put them in, some new funny pajamas for Ma, and... well... don't laugh at me. I wanted to try it. I churned some butter and made compound butters. Turns out that when you let kitchenaid do the work, it's really quite easy! Get cream. Pour in bowl. Set mixer to stun. Wait. Pour out the liquid. Add a little salt. Taste. Add junk if you're going to add junk. Refrigerate! Pretty simple, no? I wanted to see if there really was a difference between stuff you churn at home and stuff you buy at the supermarkets, and there is, but not a huge one. It's possible if I got the cream from the dairy guy at the farmer's market instead of at the supermarket I would be rhapsodizing now about the beauty of doing it yourself, but it was okay. It had kind of a richer "cream" taste to it than the regular stuff.

So I made honey butter for the cinnamon swirl bread, roasted garlic butter and plain butter for the white bread. I tried to take pictures, but my camera battery croaked, and the charger isn't where I thought it was. This means an epic search, and I just don't have time for it right now. *weep*

Heh, I tried taking a picture with my cellphone, but that booger was nasty pixellated.

Anyway, you might wonder why the heck I baked and bought so much food to take down, and the answer might not be what you're going to expect: I'm going to feed the doctors and nursing staff. I married a doctor, and I remember when he was working in the hospital, it was totally overwhelming for him. There were so many people he had to see, so many cases, and they all required a lot of attention, but the ones that made it in stories home were the ones that had something fun or weird or strange about them. The lady who brings in banana bread for the whole department each time she came for her dialysis. Big Red, the loud, brassy retiree with the flaming dyed hair, dramatic fashion sense, and a generous sense of humor. Farmer Dude, the guy who was 91, fell off his tractor, cracked some ribs and got massive bruising, but only came in to make sure there wasn't anything worse going on. "It don't hurt too much, I just wanted to check wit'cher, Doc."

So what does that mean? It means the ones with the good stories are thought about more, and in a positive light. Therefore, I provide my mother with a story for the hospital people that comes with food, because the poor bastards never get a chance to stop and eat, either. Someone's always crashing or falling or having some terrible thing happen to them. I'm hoping for:"Hey, that nice lady with the pneumonia in the east wing? Her daughter is NUTS. She brought in all this bread and home-made butter and pears from out on the farm... Yeah, she wrote a thank you note to the staff, too! Heh. No, really, she baked it all and churned the butter, and I wouldn't be surprised if she grew the dang pears, too. Tasty food, but what a whacko."

Hope to talk to you guys tomorrow!
with love from your friend,
the Whacko

News and Some Pictures

2008-05-14T19:13:00.009-05:00

Sorry for the quiet, guys. I've got three bits of news for you: I've got a family member in the hospital, I made tuna melts (yum!), and I gots a seeeecret. First, the family member is good being in the hospital, where she'll be well taken care of. It is really hard not to worry too much, but I know that in the hospital, they've got better care, people on call 24/7, and they are trained professionals. Chicken soup can go only so far. So, I've just spent the last two days fretting more than anything. :p We might be going to pester her this weekend, but I haven't told HER that yet.

Second, tuna melts! Makes you very popular with the cats.

Tuna Salad, my version:

1 can of tuna per person eating. (Packed in water, dolphin safe, you know the deal)
1 stalk of celery per person eating.
1/4 medium to smallish onion per person eating.
Mayonnaise
Red wine, malt, or other mildly flavored vinegar.

Open and drain the tuna. If you're feeling reeeeeallly nice, you can decant off some of the tuna water into a sealable container to add to catfood later on.
Chop the celery and onion into medium sized pieces, no larger than 1/2 an inch at most.
Stir the tuna and vegetation to combine.
Add mayonnaise. I usually add 3 or 4 tablespoons, stir like mad, then see if it's wet enough. I like a drier tuna salad than most people, so I start backing off pretty quickly. When it's really close to the consistency you like, add about 1 1/2 t of vinegar per person eating. It adds a little bite that hides nicely in the background and somehow makes the tuna more tuna-ey.
Serve! For melts, add a dollop to toasted english muffins, top with a tomato slice and the cheese of your choice, and then toast the whole mess in a 350 degree (F) oven until melty and delicious.

P.S. A good punitive measure for misbehaving Memes? Anoint them lavishly with your tuna water and/or tuna and watch the cats try to devour him. Very effective for people standing around in your kitchen playing "Bait the Cook".

Here's my secret:

It's not entirely together yet, I have a few more attachments to put on with the help of my lovely assistant, Dorky. It's probably pretty obvious what it is, but let me give a hint or two: home made bacon. Home made smoked sausage. Home made salamis.

bwah hahahahahaaa...

Eeerg.

2008-05-10T20:01:00.004-05:00

Okay, I think it LOOKS pretty, but I was off my game tonight. It was still pretty good, but I overcooked just about *everything*. The pork was a little dry (hence the gravy), the potatoes weren't fluffily fork mashed, and the mushrooms were kind of... chewy. Am I nitpicking? Yes. Yes, I am. But I'm still glad that it wasn't Mom's birthday dinner for real. The idea was supposed to be it was my best effort yet, but I just wasn't feeling it today. I'm lucky I didn't burn anything!

I'mma gonna spend my economic stimulus check on a working probe thermometer, ayup. I killed the one Dorkus gave me for a couple of Christmases ago, the neato one that talked and estimated time until temperature reached and all that. Taking the pork roasts out and stabbing them with a candy thermometer every 15 minutes or so gets a little old. :p

Enough kvetching. Here are some recipes for tonight's dinner.

Brine and potato recipe here, just switch to purple potatoes.

Cute little cucumbery tomato bites here.

Pan Seared Mushrooms:

4 T butter (or more or less, I just carve off 4 medium bits. Bigger than for a piece of toast, probably about a toast and a half.)
1 onion, diced fine
1t - 3T garlic, minced fine. Add it to taste. We like lots of garlic, so I use the whole 3 T. Even if you don't like garlic, try just a touch of it. It will add a little earthy underscore that's nice.
3 generous pinches kosher salt
1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
white wine
chicken broth

Set a pan you like to saute in on a medium high heat.
Put 2 T butter in the pan, and swirl it around until covered.
Toss in your onions, sprinkle one of the pinches of kosher salt over the whole pan, and stir to distribute.
When the onions are starting to get translucent (if they start to brown, turn your heat down to medium) add the garlic, and stir. Let that sit for a minute or two.
Add the mushrooms, another generous pinch of salt, some chicken broth, and some wine. Why no measurements? Because you know how high the sides of your pan are, how deep the mushrooms are in the pan, so on and so forth. I usually add it until I can just start to see the liquid through the stems.
Clamp on a lid, and let them steamy cook until tender. It can take as long as 10-20 minutes. Don't rush this step, trust me. The texture can really suffer. (see above :p )
After you fish out a mushroom and taste it, either put the lid back on to get them more tender, or take the lid off to start to develop the browning and the sauce. If you put the lid back on, check them every 5 minutes until they're the consistency you want. You can add the rest of the butter if you think it needs it (by taste).
Let the liquid start to boil off, and stir the mushrooms every 3 or 4 minutes. Once you get down to a dry bubbling, almost a crackling noise, and the liquid is almost gone, you're going to have to be more vigilant. Stay close to the stove. Start stirring and turning the mushrooms over every 2 minutes. If they're turning a lovely brown on some of the bottom parts, keep going until they get the color you like. If they're not browning, let them go a little bit longer between stirs.
If you like the flavor of the browning more than the prettiness of it, at the last minute, add about 1/3 cup of chicken broth and turn the mushrooms vigorously before turning out onto a dish. That should be enough liquid to carry the browned flavor to all the mushrooms and coat them without leaving you with a puddle of goo in either the pan or the bottom of your serving bowl.
If you like the color of the browning more than the flavor, just turn it out into your serving bowl.
Fish out another mushroom and taste it. Does it need the last pinch of salt? Stir it in if it does.
Serve and accept your accolades!

I like the mushrooms a lot, because they can stand in in lieu of gravy a lot of times, and they're just so darn tasty. Heck, I'd probably just eat them plain on toast and call it lunch!

So there's your birthday menu, Ma! When you're feeling better, let's make a date! I'll try not to overcook the pork. :p

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2008-05-10T14:48:00.005-05:00

For those of you who don't know my mom, she's a pretty opinionated lady. She's also probably one of the best friends I have. For a long time around holidays and birthdays, me and Pop would bug her, "So, what do you want for your birthday?" and she'd say books, or this nice scarf, or something like that, and we'd get 'em. Sometime the next year or the year after, the books or the clothes or the gadgets would be in the bag heading for Goodwill. On one of these trips, Mom had a revelation. I can remember it clearly. It was an almost-summery afternoon, and we'd left all the menfolk at home to go have a good thrift shop and stuff-drop-off. We were going into the Goodwill down by 73 and 38, and she said, "Why am I getting all this stuff, if I'm just giving it away or throwing it out in a year? That's not very bright. This has to change."

So, the next time we asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said, "Get me a pig." Dad and I kind of looked at each other, then looked back at her with a big "What?!" The Heifer International organization gives to people in need livestock and training for the animal's care, feeding, and later the gifting of the first baby animal to another person in need in their community. It's the whole "if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he can eat for a lifetime" idea put into action.

Since then, every year, we try and get Mom animals from Heifer. Ducklings, chicks, rabbits, and even part of a hive of bees have been given in her name.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is Happy Birthday, Mom! A pig is going to a village in southeast Asia in honor of the anniversary of your natal day!

My Poor Mom.

2008-05-09T18:53:00.005-05:00

She just can't seem to catch a break at the moment. :p Her birthday is tomorrow, and she and Dad were going to come up for an epic meal and happy fun time mother's day/birthday thing. When they called me this morning, they were on their way to bed after having spent an entertaining evening in the emergency room. Apparently the stomach virus from hell got her, and she was having dehydration problems and generally just having a sucky Thursday. She never could get the hang of Thursdays. (+10 geek points for naming the reference)

So because I'm an evil evil child, I'm going to make the epic meal anyway, and post the pictures for her to gaze wistfully at. Or to point and laugh and be glad she's not here! ;) I got the recipe for this tart from Cherrapeno, who has desserts to die for. Drooling on the keyboard good.

Here's your birthday 'cake', Ma. It was pretty tasty, but the kiwis were like rocks.

I promise to make it for you, or something comparative, when you are feeling up to it!

Just a quickie

2008-05-09T18:50:00.004-05:00

I have a real post for you that I have yet to process the photos for, but when I was cleaning out the camera, I found this one. Have I told you how much I love to play with my macro settings?

Seriously, how much fun is that?

psst..

2008-05-08T13:14:00.003-05:00

No other posts today, because I'm going out on a date! Dorky and I are going out to dinner and then reinstate our geek cred with Iron Man. See you tomorrow!

Our dishes, and our results.

2008-05-08T08:32:00.009-05:00

Iron Chef: Artichoke Battle continues!

So, our approach was to make the dishes, photograph them, use the Iron Chef points system on comment cards, and give the cards to everyone who ate the stuff, including the cooks. Here are our entries, listed first, then the results!

(the pictures enlarge, feel free to click them)

Insalata di Carciofi e Germogli
-or- Artichoke and Mung Bean Salad -

Overall results were: Taste 7.25 out of 10, Use of Secret Ingredient 4.25 out of 5, Presentation 4.75 out of 5.

The individual results went thusly:
Judge 1: Taste - 8 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4
Judge 2: Taste - 7 Ingredient - 4 Presentation - 5
Judge 3: Taste - 8 Ingredient - 4 Presentation - 5
Judge 4: Taste - 6 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 5

and the comments were:
Taste:
I liked the taste and texture - I took points off for getting some of the "chewy" bits of artichoke.
Good flavor, I prefer more of a crunch.
Mung beans yummy! Dressing yummy! Nice job!
It was a good salad, but it was only a salad. I didn't like the dressing.

Ingredient:
It was a good use of artichoke.
More artichoke, please!
Good, artichoke very front and center.
It was good, it was like a mild peppercorn thing.

Presentation:
Very pretty.
Very well! Good color combination and I really enjoyed the dressing.
Well balanced in colors.
It was well presented, could have been a bit more elaborate.

Capellini alla Puttanesca

Overall results were: Taste 9.5 out of 10, Use of Secret Ingredient 5 out of 5, Presentation 4.13 out of 5.

The individual results went thusly:
Judge 1: Taste - 9 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4
Judge 2: Taste - 10 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4
Judge 3: Taste - 10 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4
Judge 4: Taste - 9 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4.5

and the comments were:
Taste:
Fanf*ckingstastic!
Totally effing awesome.
Great stuff, the artichoke melted in my mouth, the taste had just a little bite to it. -1 point again for finding a chewy artichoke bit.
Very good, strong, melded flavors, and spicy!

Ingredient:
Very clever! Much more savory and yummy than most puttanesca sauces.
The artichoke really added something!
Artichoke pieces were prevalent and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
Great - very present.

Presentation:
It looked great - the shavings of Romano cheese looked mouthwatering, and tasted that way, too!
Well presented.
Yes, well presented.
It could have used a little more garnish, but yes, well presented.

Abecedarian Cake

Overall results were: Taste 8.3 out of 10, Use of Secret Ingredient 4.5 out of 5, Presentation 4.5 out of 5.

The individual results went thusly:
Judge 1: Taste - n/a Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 5
Judge 2: Taste - 8 Ingredient - 3 Presentation - 5
Judge 3: Taste - 9 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4
Judge 4: Taste - 8 Ingredient - 5 Presentation - 4

and the comments were:
Taste:
n/a - wheat allergy - Don't know. If I did, I may be regretting it now!
Like a nice carrot cake.
Tasted like a carrot cake, but was obviously not carrot. Hard to explain, good, but definitely "other."
Very moist and tender. I am personally not a spice cake fan, though.

Ingredient:
Very clever.
It was used, but it could have been any other veggie. The artichoke didn't lend it anything new.
It permeated the cake, original use.
Notable presence, and well integrated into a dessert setting.

Presentation:
Attractive shape with good glazing.
It was very pretty!
The icing and the deep browning were really pretty together!
Looked good - icing looked good - could have had a bit more color.

I'm trying not to add too much personal commentary, because it doesn't matter what *I* thought, only the judges! :) Our entries in Iron Chef Artichoke are now placed!

Welcome to Kitchen(s) Stadium.

2008-05-07T08:48:00.002-05:00

Yep, that's right. An Iron Chef Battle between Team Everthorn*, Nettle's Naturals*, and the Danville Dork Patrol* (with special guest, Kelly!) ultimately judged, I believe, by Varulv, whose website I've mislaid again. Artichokes have been chosen by our own Chairman Varulv, and so artichokes it shall be!

This is probably going to be one of many posts today, all full of chokey goodness.

*okay, so the names are made up, but it sounds good, doesn't it? Feel free to suggest better ones :P

Meme of the Deserts strikes again...

2008-05-06T19:39:00.005-05:00

Or why my cholesterol is 2.4 hojillion. Actually, it's not that bad, and even if it were, this would be worth another couple of points! [Guacamole is very good for your heart! Gooood fat! see? - Meme] Meme's 7 Layer Dip with ground beef, some beany substance, vegetables, and *swoon* home-made guacamole. Also, cheese. Why don't I let him get into the particulars?

[ This is is actually 8 layer dip! Beat that punks! The layers go in this order: Some ground beef seasoned taco-y like. Bean dip, or in this case, refried beans, seasoned, with some salt. Freshly peeled, diced, mashed, lime coated, and seasoned avocados. A layer of sour cream (it could be whatever kind you wanted, you want more healthy use Fat free, this recipe doesn't HAVE to be naughty.) Then a layer of thinly sliced green onion. Next is a layer of chopped black olives. Seeded, drained and diced tomatoes are the next layer. Top it all off with your cheese of choice, I like sharp cheddar and Monterey jack. If you wanted to go completely crazy you could add a thin layer of salsa in there somewhere. 9 layer dip? Madness! (Madness? This is Sparta!)

The dish is meant to rest in the fridge for a while, so the layers can settle and bind a bit, and it's meant to be eaten cold. Some of our diners decided they wanted to microwave it. It came out ok, but if you decide you want to bake yours I'd suggest leaving out the guacamole, cooking it actually creates some really bitter flavors. - Meme]

Seriously, if this showed up on your plate, could you look it in the little beady olive and say no? I think not. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to waddle into the kitchen to write my name on the leftovers! :p [ Tonight we dine in Sans-a-belt pants! - Meme]

Radio silence

2008-05-06T19:32:00.004-05:00

For those of you who have been to my house, this picture will reveal the radio silence of the last couple of days. If you don't see the difference, scroll down a lot more... but don't cheat if you can help it!

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We finally got rid of the evil blue and yellow plaid of +3 to eyebleeding. Mom and Pop are coming up this weekend, and we have to return the super woohoo crazy cool steamer we borrowed from them. So, with the exception of some wallpapery friezes, we got all the paper off the walls. Glee! Now... to address the neon green in the library...

Eggsperiments

2008-05-02T07:34:00.010-05:00

Hah!

Oh stop. You know it was funny.

*cricket cricket*

'Sigh. Moving on, yesterday I read this post over at the Paupered Chef about how to make the perfect boiled egg. Perfect timing, because I have a 'stuffed' egg recipe that I was supposed to test yesterday, but the kitchen cleanathon delayed it. So I'll test the recipe, the Hamine cooking method posted, and the Alton Brown method that Stuart Williams mentioned in the comments. I'll do some kind of comparison thingy here, too.

I thought about trying the method from Gourmet recipe book that Jackie posted, but I can only really see a difference in 1)adding a lid 2)a few more seconds boiling and 3)four to five more minutes standing.

Slow cooker put on high, no eggs yet, no lid, left for 45 minutes: 116.54 degrees Fahrenheit
Slow cooker put on high, no eggs, no lid, left for 1 1/2 hours: ranging between 149 and 158 degrees
Slow cooker put on high, no eggs, with lid, left for 1 1/2 hours: 211 degrees.

1 hour hamine egg. It looks almost identical to Nick Kindlesperger's. The yolk does look cooked, although when you touch it, it's similar to the egg white in texture until it crumbles and breaks.

2 hour hamine egg. It looks like a perfectly cooked egg, but the texture is still a little rubbery.

3 hour hamine egg. D'oh! It looks like the crock pot isn't as even as we first thought. The grey ring around the edge means they're slightly overcooked. I do see a great improvement in texture of the yolk. I don't think of it as creaminess, more of a velvety consistency. Since my methods are in question, I pulled all of them.

Hamine yolk 3 hours, 2 hours, and 1 hour.

Alton Brown method. It's turned out perfect for what I want to do. Yolk cooked through but not dry or sandy, no grey-green ring, whites firm.

So, basically, I can't draw a conclusion. :) My hamine method failed due to user error or equipment failure, and I think I'll try again some time when I know I can get a consistent 154 degrees fahrenheit. I really want to know if the yolks are better in consistency.

No pretty pictures tonight.

2008-05-01T19:43:00.002-05:00

But my kitchen is pretty darn sparkly. I even gutted and reorganized a couple of cabinets! Meme helped. Now all I have to do is dig through my tins and spices and chuck the old ones... heh. Sometime. Maybe next spring.

All my mise stuff should be right at my fingertips tomorrow. Maybe I'll even take a picture of my miniscule kitchen.

Takeaway tacos to the rescue tonight. :) I had a chickeny bacon taco that was darn good. My plan for the rest of the evening is pretend not to be falling asleep on the couch, thank you very much.

Nothing to do with foodage

2008-05-01T10:50:00.003-05:00

but you guys have to go check this guy's photos out. You should read the little blurb about him, too. His photos look like their from movies, and they're really subtly disturbing. Meme said, "Now this is a guy who understands fear." These photos generate for me that proto-fear, the unease where you know things are starting to get a little wiggy, but you can't pinpoint the source yet.

It's really fascinating. Even though the photos are really creepy, I like them, because they're SO GOOD at evoking that feeling. They really are works of art. I think I'm going to order the books.

Dude, you KNOW that chick in the kitchen with all the flowers has done something just mind-bendingly terrible. And not just once, either.

*shiver* Okay, I'm going to go watch some Julia Child or something to shake this off.

Porky Goodness

2008-04-30T17:55:00.003-05:00

On the menu tonight was a pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and an almost-caprese salad. The pork chops were a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that only kind of worked. Basically, you're supposed to rub them in salt, pepper, a touch of oil, then put sugar on the one side to make it brown. You cook it at such a low heat, it wouldn't brown normally, or so the recipe says. It also says that if you have an electric stovetop, you should put the pan on medium high *before* you season the chops, to let the pan heat up... which seared the everloving crap out of my chops. It was okay, I brined them prophylactically, but they were still tougher than I'd like.

It was a day of minor muff ups. The caprese was almost-caprese because I ran out of fresh basil, and didn't realize it until I was serving. I also forgot to add cornstarch or tapioca flour to the potatoes, which would have made the milky sauce a lot more clingy on the potatoes. It was still good, just kind of d'oh. It would have been a lot better. Eeeh, it happens. I should have had better mise en place going. I will tomorrow, after I force(read:bribe) Dorkus to help me clean the hell out of the kitchen.

Busy Day

2008-04-29T19:22:00.010-05:00

This is my favorite distraction. She's totally insane. Pippa J. Mouse the dog is a "shortie" Jack Russell, and the most fun dog evar. I threw the gigantic empty pretzel tub 3.4 billion times while she chased it, growled at it, brought it back, and rolled over it like a barrel. She's slightly hyper, completely crazy, and fits in perfectly.

Meme got me a present!

Well, okay, he got it for himself, but he later saw the joy it gave the dog, cats, and me, and he relinquished it, saying the sound of insane cackling brought joy to his soul. It's a super lazor thermometer tool of doom! So far I have measured the temperature of every wall, ceiling, cooking surface, animal, human, electronic device, appliance, and plumbing fixture in the house. My hands are generally 10 degrees hotter than my arm. The cats are somewhere around 80 degrees on their fur. 102ish on their non-furred, non-ocular parts. Don't ask.

One of the best parts is that the animals go berserk chasing the little lasery dot around, and I can get entire roomsfuls of them moving in unison. I can also (if family members are not paying attention or moving fast enough) get the roomsful of animals to run over just about anything in it's path. Hence the cackling. Seriously, it's hilarious.

I found this really cool paper the last time I was out and about, and Meme had mentioned a physical counterpart to this blog menu. It's one of those black marble notebooks with the pages sewn in that I modified pretty heavily.

Yes, I know the paper is really 70's. Now shut up and get me my nehru jacket.

Finally, dinner tonight. It's not especially pretty because I ran out of Helen before I ran out of cooking. I wish I could say I did the lens flares on purpose, but I didn't. :)

We had fork-mashed potatoes and parsley, roasted chicken that I brined for a couple of hours, and fried apples with a caramel-ish sauce. I was disappointed in how the chicken browned... or didn't brown as the case might be. I use Alton Brown's terra cotta heat capacitor in my oven, and was using his upside-down giant flower pot over the chicken as makeshift earthenware oven technique. He said that if the oven was set at 550 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 20 minutes of cooking, the skin would get brown and crispy, but it didn't. I suspect I did something wrong, but it still tasted darn good!

Brine:
8 oz kosher salt
8 oz sugar
1 quart just-off-the-boil water
1 quart ice and cold water
1 clean kitchen garbage bag(right out of the box, then rinse it thoroughly with water)
1 3-5 lb chicken

Mix salt and sugar together in a pot big enough for 2+ quarts of liquid. Pour in hot water and stir until the salt and sugar dissolve. Add ice water, stir, and wait to cool. When you can put your hand in it without shrieking, put the chicken in the clean garbage bag, then pour the brine in on top of it. Squish all the air out of the garbage bag, and the liquid should totally cover the chicken. (If not, make more brine!) Tie the bag in a knot, and refrigerate for about 1/2 hour per pound of chicken, but no longer than 8 hours.

Roast the chicken by your favorite method. It should be absolutely moist and delicious.

Fork-Mashed Potatoes:
6 red potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes. The closer you get them to the same size, the more even your cooking will be.
Minced parsley
about 2 Tablespoons of butter
salt
water

Put enough salt in the water so that it tastes like sea water, and set it to boil.
Boil the potatoes until when you fish one out of the water, it just splits on the fork. Or, until it tastes done. :)
Drain potatoes, and put them, the parsley, and the butter into a low, flat serving dish.
Gently break apart the potatoes with a fork, stirring occasionally to incorporate the butter and the parsley.
By salting the water and putting the butter in at the very last minute, the potatoes should taste perfectly seasoned, and no one should have to butter or salt them! That way you use less than the diners would left to themselves. Yay, better for your heart!

Fried Apples:
Apples. I think I used 6 or 7. I used eating apples (rather than cooking apples) like red delicious, golden something, and some pale green one that wasn't granny smith.
Sugar, 7 Tablespoons or to taste
Butter, probably around 6 Tablespoons
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Milk, approximately 1/2 cup

Core the apples, and cut them into slices no thicker than about 1/4 an inch. Try for evenness, but it's not too huge a deal. Drop them in acidulated water to stop the browning and to add a little brightness.
Put 2 T butter in the bottom of a high sided frying pan, swirling it around until the bottom is coated. Medium heat is fine.
Load your apples in, draining some of the water off of them, but not all.
Add about 1/2 teaspoon fresh nutmeg, and add cinnamon to taste. I think I used a teaspoon and a half.
Add 4 Tablespoons of sugar, and turn the apples to get the spices and the sugar evenly distributed.
Put a lid on the pan and let it cook until the apples start to look a little floppy and translucent. There should be a lot more liquid in the pan.
Take the lid off, and let the liquid reduce, turning the apples occasionally so that they brown evenly. When the browning starts to really take off quickly and almost all your liquid is gone, remove the apples to your serving tray.
In the pan, add the last 2 T of butter, the last 2 T of sugar, and when the butter is melted, add the 1/2 cup of milk. Stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it bubble down just a little bit. I didn't make a real sauce with it, just a loose kind of au jus. Scrape up all the brown and lovely appley bits off the bottom. Take the pan off the heat.
Sprinkle the apples with 1 T sugar, and 2 T of butter. Stir a couple of times.
Add your pan jus to the apples, tossing to coat.
Accept your accolades. :)

(New) Mexican roots

2008-04-28T18:15:00.009-05:00

My turn to cook tonight, pictures courtesy of Photo Monkey.

Green Chile stew. It's funny, I never really made this New Mexico classic until I moved away from there and started pining for something that was spicy and didn't involve the word "wing".

I don't really have a recipe for this, I just play it by ear each time but the ingredients are the same every time:

Pork stew meat, this time I used a chunk of pork loin, but tougher cuts work too
Yukon Gold potatoes - I leave the skin on, you don't have to.
Baby carrots - about a bag full, I like carrots
1-2 cans white hominy
1 can mild green chile
salt and pepper to taste.

Procedure:

This time I cooked the meat and veggies separately. I think it made a huge difference. The potatoes were just right, not too soft and the meat was nice and tender.

First I brown the pork in batches to make sure it gets a good crustiness. I was pressed for time so I went out and bought a pressure cooker! 6 hours of tenderness rendered in 18 minutes! God bless America, inventor of steam! It was great, I just poured all the browned meat into the pot, covered with enough broth to mostly cover, cooked 18 minutes, ran the cooker under cold water and took the top off. It looked just like a pot after hours of slow cooking.

I chopped the potatoes, put the carrots in straight out of the bag, rough chop on the celery and added the 1 can of chile to a BIG pot of boiling water. I only let it stay on a high boil for about 2 minutes, then I turned it off and just let it sit in the hot water until the pork was done.

After I opened the pork I just put it back on the burner to keep it hot enough to thicken with a plain old corn starch slurry.

Strain the veggies over the sink, add meat and sauce to veggies, and done. It came out really nice, I think using the pressure cooker made a real difference when it came to tenderness and mouth feel this time.

Rich, thick, hearty, and Porky. What more do you want?

COTR Night

2008-04-27T17:38:00.008-05:00

as my mom calls it. That stands for "Clean Out The Refrigerator" and few things do that as well as a pasta salad. It's a lazy dinner, but a tasty one, and that works for me!

It's no so much a recipe as a rough formula.

Meaty protein - roughly 10%. Chicken, beef, pork, game, mystery meats, what have you. In this case, it was 1/2 a leftover andouille link.

Vegetables - 10-20%. Mine were cucumbers that were starting to look sad, a bunch of cherry tomatoes that were getting squishy, black olives, and some baby lettuces that were starting to wilt. I laid a couple of spoonfuls of the pasta on top of the lettuce for looks, and to keep the liquids in the salad from totally soggifying them.

Some sort of flavory goodness - 5-10% Bacon, sharp cheeses, very flavorful leftovers, pickled things, sundried tomatoes, you know, the good stuff. I waffled between feta and this leftover sharp cheddar, but I have a feta-sprout-tomato sandwich that I make for lunches sometimes, so cheddar it was.

Pasta - 65-75%. This pasta was a gluten-free rice fusilli that I slightly overcooked. :/ I like fusilli or rotini generally, because it grabs the sauce and sticks to the fork well.

I let people dress it with whatever dressing they liked (remember, lazy night) and called it dinner. :) The salad is almost completely gone, and now I have nice big places in my fridge to fill up with good stuff. Yay!

Hold your breath...orrrr I guess you could eat some of this.

2008-04-26T22:19:00.004-05:00

I remember reading once someone saying about cigars, "Either everyone does, or no one should," and I think that applies pretty well to garlic, too. If everyone has garlic breath, it's not offensive. Although I can't think of anyone *I* know who would say no to garlic! :)

I can't take credit for this meal, either. This is a photo of my sister-in-law's tomato, garlicky, basilly bruschetta goodness that will give you hope for humanity. Perhaps I overstate a little bit, but it's really just a beautiful taste of summer.

Heh, she was picking it up to drain off some of the tomato juice that inevitably pools in the bottom, and the guys thought she was putting it away. The looks of horror on their faces and shouts of protest were really amusing. The bowl now lies completely empty, even the little bit of juice in the bottom sucked up crunchy toasts.

The toast on the left is a gluten-free rice bread, brushed with good olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, toasted in a low oven for about 20 minutes, and then spread with the tomato loooove. The one on the right is a plain old baguette with the same thing done to it, although the toasting time was much less. I've noticed that the gluten-free breads are much more dense and take longer to toast.

I'm going to head back in to the living room of doom, where there are people threatening to play Rock Band until we can't play through a whole song without falling asleep!

The Old Standby

2008-04-25T20:09:00.009-05:00

I have a cluster headache. How do you know when you have one? You know. Honestly, the really bad ones are right up there with labor pains for me. I've taken all the meds I can take, I'm taking a buttload of analgesics, steroids, and allergy junk, and then I'm going to bed. I still have an entry for you, one of my favorite standby meals. You might say my family are connoisseurs of the stuff.

There's boardwalk pizza, cardboard (frozen) pizza, regular pizza, NY pizza, Chicago pizza, sicilian, home made pizza, then you get to the tomato pies, which are a totally different animal. It's important to have your classifications. :)

Okay, I'm going to bed. I think I played with Photoshop enough to give the drugs time to do their thing. Here's the result of that:

if you look carefully, you'll see one of the indigenous peoples in their crops of parsley. This mighty tribe has been sailing the grease rivers of Unida since the world came out of the oven. They are a proud people, the ferocious Pepperoni Mushroom clan.

"Wagyu" Beef with Bok Choy and Rice

2008-04-24T16:15:00.010-05:00

Okay, so the original recipe is here, and it's really quite different from what I'm able to get out here in the sticks, so I kind of just loosely based dinner off of it, really. There's no way in heck we would be able to afford real wagyu beef, so I got some steaks that were on "we have to sell or use these quick!" sale. Mizuna is unheard of in these here hills, so I punted with bok choy. See previous for the mugi, so it was just plain rice. Many many substitutions, but still a delicious outcome! This one is heartily endorsed by the boys, who even eat the greens without squealing. (Much.)

The sauce is uber tasty, btw.

I made a cranberry-pineapple fruit salad to go with it. Pretty much it's a can-salad, although there are supposed to be pecans in it. Kelz is allergic to some nuts, and rather than risk anaphylaxis, I decided to forgo them.

These are the beautiful chopsticks my brother- and sister-in-law got me. They also got the beautiful bowl that the rice and bok choy are presented in. Cool, eh?

I've been worried about the food shortages, specifically the rice shortage. From what I've heard from CNBC's financial chick in the morning, and what I can glean off the 'net, it's one third investors trying to cash in on grains, one third paranoia, and one third actual problem. The reason why CostCo and Sams are limiting people to 4 20 lb bags of rice per day is that restaurants were buying a year's worth at a time, wiping out the store's supply entirely, to avoid the rising prices. Still, I went out and got a bag, just one, and some tinned products.

My good friends had some very thoughtful and insightful things to say about hunger, humbleness, conservation, and living consciously aware of your actions and the ripples that come from them. Both of them mentioned the wonderful things they're doing to care for the world and the people in it, by living gently. I live less gently, although I try and emulate them, but even I can help in my own small way. With hunger reaching the 100 million more people than ever before, if I can afford a diet coke, I can afford to donate to the UN World Food Programme. They've got an online donations page that you can use credit or paypal to pick which program you want your money to go to. Right now, the programs you can select are:

Where most needed (Preferred fund)
Fill the Cup Campaign
Child Hunger
Kenya Crisis
Southern Africa
Darfur

So I did. If you'd like, I'll invite you to donate to the service via email. The referral service makes us into a 'network', and will show how much we've raised as friends. If not, that's okay, too. :)

Chicken on a Stick

2008-04-23T19:39:00.006-05:00

I was a little overly ambitious tonight, and I tried three new recipes on the same meal. I think I'm cured of that kind of hubris now! :p

We had chicken satay, grilled cabbage salad with bacon and blue cheese vinaigrette, and grilled peaches. They all turned out really well, although I overcooked the chicken just a bit. I was dubious about the grilled cabbage salad, but it was surprisingly delicious! I think next time, I'll shred the cabbage instead of a rough chop, as the pepperiness was a little overwhelming of the other flavors.

I got the recipe for the grilled peaches and cabbage salad from a cute little program called Cookware Deluxe. It's basically a recipe box, meal planner, and shopping list generator in one. I genuinely like it better than all the others I've tried, for a couple of reasons:
1. The interface is clean. It's really easy to read and figure out what goes where.
2. The recipe section has drag-and-drop. So, say you find a really cool Extreme Tots recipe or something, and you want to add it to your personal repertoire. You simply highlight and grab the bits off the webpage, and drag it to the corresponding box in the Cookware window to drop it! No more re-keying.
3. It has a section for the source of the recipe, so I can grab the web address, and drop it in place. That way, I always remember where I found it - or can cite it when I use it. :)

I'm sounding a little like a commercial for it, so I'll stop. It does have some rough points (when you enter a search string, don't hit enter-it'll throw up an error. Use the button with the magnifier icon on it.) but after all the programs I've trialed or received as presents from family members, this one fits *me* the best. It's got a cool trial, so check it out if you're interested.

Now, the cabbage recipe:

Grilled Cabbage with Bacon Blue Cheese Dressing
(slightly modified by me)

Blue Cheese Dressing ----
10 slices crisp bacon - crumbled
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
3 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp dried crushed italian herb blend
1 cup crumbled blue cheese

Grilled Cabbage Salad ----
1/2 head purple cabbage
1/2 head white cabbage
1 purple onion
1 white onion
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp garlic, minced
Fresh cracked pepper
2 cup chopped roasted red pepper

Dressing ----
Make the dressing ahead of time to let the flavors meld.

Whisk vinegar, sugar, and herbs together until the sugar dissolves.
Add the dijon mustard and whisk until smooth.
Drizzle the olive oil in slowly, whisking constantly.
Add bacon and blue cheese, and stir to combine.

Grilled Cabbage Salad ----

Slice the heads of cabbage and onions into 3 thick slices each and arrange on a baking tray with shallow sides.
Mix together the olive oil, soy sauce and garlic.
Drizzle over the cabbage and onion slices and sprinkle with pepper.
Grill over medium hot coals until flavored and slightly tender, about 3 minutes per side.
Remove from grill and shred finely.
Place in a bowl with peppers.
Toss with Blue Cheese Dressing.

I actually let people add the dressing to their own salads, and had more bacon and blue cheese out for them to sprinkle over the top. Also, I forgot the peppers, which was probably just as well, as Meme doesn't like them.

Grilled peaches weren't anything special, just halved peaches that I dipped in simple syrup, then grilled on each side for about 5 minutes. They were good, but not supa-excellent.

Now, I go collapse. :)

psst: I'm a dork. I was playing with my camera's macro setting, and I got this:

Tater tots... to the XTREME!!

2008-04-22T20:32:00.003-05:00

but very very tasty, in a guilty way.

I found the recipe here, I think by way of TasteSpotting. TasteSpotting = crack for foodies. Don't go there unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Kelzor suggested I add hot dogs to the chili, and thus it was so, much to the delight of the diners. I knew it would be good in a chili-dog kind of way, but I was surprised by how darn tasty it was. The jalapenos and sour cream really added something.

Meme told me to.

2008-04-22T20:26:00.002-05:00

And of course I do everything Meme tells me to. :p

Meme suggested that I start taking photos of the dishes I make and make a personal menu. The hope is that when the gang is over, we can hand them the book, and they can say, "Oooh, that looks good" rather than "I dunno, what do you want to make?" So. Stay tuned!

MIT Open Source, I love you.

2008-01-29T17:24:00.003-05:00

I found this, here.

Sculpting is going okay, I could do a lot more. Mom is out of the myriad hospitals and thankfully in reasonable health. The kid is doing okay, so is Dorky. Meme is doing well, too, maybe he'll take the course with me and we'll post here... but being as I haven't even talked to him about it yet, that's speculation only.

New cooking adventure: wheee! :)

the place inside your head

2007-01-03T07:57:00.000-05:00

I have this big long post I'm going to actually get out of the drafts folder sooner or later, but this one decided to assert its dominance.

There is this sweet spot in the weekday mornings where the kid and the husband get off to work, but before the rest of the world really wakes up and starts business for the day that I think may be my favorite time of day. Truthfully, I probably have 87 different favorites, but this one is special. You grab a cup of coffee, possibly the newspaper, and settle in your spot. Sometimes that spot is the kitchen table, paper spread out across the whole thing, coffee cup making little brown circles on the classifieds. Sometimes that spot is parked in front of your computer while you poke through the news channels, your favorite webcomics, the blogs you read. Other times, it's snuggled on your favorite couch/recliner/clawfoot chair with a blanket and warm pets sleeping draped all around you. It doesn't really matter which spot, because the magic happens anyway.

The sounds of the day, of shoulds and oughts, of your carefully planned or completely haphazard schedule for the rest of the day taper off so slowly, you don't even notice it at first. The paper, or book, or mouse lie still in your hand, and you find yourself staring off into the distance, not really looking *at* anything, but the landscape inside your head. All those thoughts stuffed in little boxes and baskets and under the mental rug slowly stir and flutter to life, populating your head with a different, far more comforting kind of noise. It feels somehow dreamy, and almost sacred, and any interruption like a jarring phone or a person walking in unexpectedly can be greeted by embarrassment or a snapped angry comment, the intimacy of enjoying one's own thoughts shattered.

For me, and I have no idea if this happens to anyone else, I go to a place inside my head that I can see, but not summon the stillness of voluntarily. It only can be entered in this dreamy thoughtful state.

It seems to be a house/cafe/bookstore before it opens for the start of business hours. The day is cold and overcast and rainy, making me think of November. The me-I-can-see looks as though I'm a bit younger, my hair is longer, and the lines around her eyes are smooth and calm. Grabbing a cup of coffee from the bar, this me walks into the back room, which is all deep dark woods and giant restaurant windows looking out into the wet autumn world, and she settles in to a corner booth, also wood, and comfortably lined with cushions.

The landscape in this dream world is the wet leaf covered hills of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania hills, the yellowed (but still green in spots) grass covered with specks of dark brown oak and maple leaves that glisten with the rain. The trees have their bark dyed black by the rain, and reach skeletally into the sky in a very evocative way, bleak, poignant, but still somehow deeply and unequivocally hopeful. No creatures stir, because it is a cold and nasty day to be out in the world, but a wonderful one to be warm and safe in your quiet nest.

This sense of gentle well-being seeps in, like the scented steam from the coffee, quietly inhaled and enjoyed, and peace and contentment ripple around you. It's here that those quiet parts of you get fed, I think. The deeply strong parts where you stand tall and pull patience or comfort or the last bit of strength from in the clutch and flurry of the regular day. Brick by slow brick, your defenses repair to the music of your own thoughts and dreams inside your head, let to wander. When complete, you slowly gather yourself together, finding the stray thoughts like beloved children or pets, and call them twittering home.

Leaving this place, on a good day, is almost as gentle as coming to it. The me in the dreamscape picks up her empty coffee mug, sighs with a smile and stretches, then walks back to the bar to tie on an apron and unlock the door for the first employees to arrive. The last I see of this me is pushing through the swinging door to the kitchen as she pulls up her sleeves. The sounds of the world filter in, as do the thoughts and the plans for how the day will run, but now, I reach for them with good heart, the quiet having returned to my soul.

I very much hope that you can find the quiet and gentleness in your day, when you need it. Thanks for taking the time to share in mine.

Testing ...(with hominy)

2006-12-19T13:55:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite soups is pozole. True! Thumbs up to lime and hominy. The smell of cumin and garlic and onions roasted in oil to make the base is the best smell I know of.

Thanksgiving...

2006-11-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

Hullo, friends! Sorry for the radio silence, it's been busy!

Our Thanksgiving was a bit unhappy this year, but the cooking was still fun! Because it was just the three of us, a whole turkey would have been over the top, so what we decided to do instead was a turkey-breast thing with herbs. Pound the turkey breast fillets even flatter, cover them with bacon, panacetta, or prosciutto, chop herbs and spread, then roll and tie and cook! They were good. Not what you'd expect for a turkey dinner, but good. I still made stuffing, because I like it, and mashed potatoes and gravy. I think I'll try it again sometime, this time with panacetta.

Short short short, I know! More later, and hopefully from new and exciting avenues!

Chicken Soup

2006-11-14T09:51:00.000-05:00

It's gotten cold and nasty here. Rainy, occasionally sleety, grey days with a low ceiling of clouds, perfect for a pot of fresh tea, book, cat, blanket and couch session. I love the way the mug feels, and the cat radiating warmth in the little tucked up ball position. It seems so... emo, or something. You expect Morrissey, or that cute Amy Lee girl to show up on your doorstep, soaked to the bone, makeup all runny, shivering and looking like a kicked puppy. Of course you have to bring them in, scrub them down vigorously with fluffy towels, wrap them in blankets, put them next to the radiator, and press a giant warm mug of your home-made chicken soup in their hands.

You don't have a chicken soup recipe? Well, have you come to the right place!

We joke that I learned to cook out of self defense, because my Mom grew up with PA Dutch/German cooking. I made up this recipe when I was 12, and I've been messing with it ever since. Feel free to tweak it to fit your own likes.

Ingredients:
One whole small chicken that you've taken a lot of the skin off of, and the big chunks of fat (has to fit in your dutch oven)
-or-
One chicken thigh (also skinned and most of the fat removed) for each person going to eat, plus one or two for the pot.

Butter (around 2 T) or olive oil
Onions (1 medium for every 4 diners)
Celery (4 ribs for every 4 diners)
Carrots (2-3 full sized for every 4 diners)
Garlic (I like garlic. It's good for colds and makes the house smell good. That caveat given, I'd probably put in 1 heaping tablespoon of the pre-cut jar garlic from the store, or 4 or 5 healthy cloves diced per every 4 diners)
Salt and Pepper.
Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley, Celery seed
Veggies you like in soup, usually peas for me
Either equal parts chicken broth and water until they just cover the chicken/thighs.
A pasta of your choice, or rice, or barley
Fruit juice (like apple or grape) or wine

It's very haphazard I'm afraid, but I trust your cooking skills. Listen, here's how you do it:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Yes, I did really say that for soup.
Get your dutch oven out, start it on the stove top to heat, medium high heat.
Chop your onions, carrots and celery into pieces you think will fit on your spoon easily.
Drop the olive oil/butter into the hot pan, and roll it around so you get good coverage on the bottom. The fat should not be smoking! If it is, take the pot off the burner, turn the heat down, and let the pan cool a bit before you put it back on.
(Also, if you can stand it, for a flavor boost, put 2 strips of bacon down instead of the fat. It adds an interesting backdrop to the soup.)
Drop in your onion/celery/carrots, toss lightly, add a little salt and pepper, then walk away for a few minutes. (just enough time to walk out to the mailbox, sort the mail, and then come back to stir.)
Add the garlic and some of the herbs when the onions because translucent, and stir.
Let them start to juuuust get brown (no burnt garlic!), then add your chicken broth, chicken and the rest of the herbs.
Cover the pot. Put it in the oven. Walk away and do something else for an hour to two hours! (play video games, watch an after school special, do some homework)
Take the pot out of the oven. Using a spider or slotted spoon, fish out the chicken into a strainer set over a bowl to cool. Try and skim off a bunch of the dead floaty herbs, they've given their all and just make for a gum-stabbing experience later. If it seems extra fatty, you can try and take some of that off, too.
(While the chicken is cooling, you can get the salad ready, or get out some ready-to-bake rolls to go with your fabulous soup)
When the chicken is cool, get your hands in there and pull it apart! By this time, you should have a ring of extremely attentive animals at your feet, so make sure not to drop the bones or cartilage. Pull it into bite sized pieces, or cut it once you've pulled it off the bone.
Put the pieced chicken back in the pot, add a cup or so of wine/fruit juice, and your pasta/rice/starch of choice. Cook the starch as though it was in water, boiling the soup if need be.
About 3 minutes before the starch should be done, drop in your veggies. They'll be cooked, trust me! (unless they're a starchy root vegetable, then you put them in when you add the pieced chicken.)
Try and decant into bowls early, as the soup is lightning hot, and likely to stay that way for a while!
The pasta/starch will continue to suck up liquid when you keep it overnight, so I use it as a stew the next day or two, and put some hot sauce in it!

There you have a 12 year old's response to a cold and wintery day. Feel free to tell me ways to improve it, or ways you've changed it!

kitchening a go go

2006-10-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

Due to some family health problems, I've gone back to my childhood home in the suburbs of Philadelphia from my loft rural mountain town in the Appalachians(specifically the Montour Ridge) for an indeterminate amount of time, probably not terribly long, but long enough to set up shop in my mother's kitchen for a while.

I love my new home because it's simply beautiful country, the people are open and friendly, and the first really good school experience my learning disabled son has ever had is happening there, without me having to kick and scream and threaten to sue. I still miss my hometown terribly, and all the benefits being a suburb of a major metropolitan city has. *grin* At one point, I was even comforted by the standstill traffic on the Schyukyll Expressway. I sat there thinking, "Now THIS, THIS is traffic. Not seven cars backed up behind the Sheetz."

It's fascinating how your brain switches over. I had to reset the map in my brain, but all the roads and ways to go showed up on demand after having to look up where the hospital was. "ooooh, *that* hospital. "

I wonder what it is that I am so nostalgic for. I'm here, and still I wish I were here. The coffee-cigarette-familypiledinthekitchen holidays? The way the river smells in the fall? The way this old house smells on the first really cold day? Part of it is simply my parents, because I know I have an unusual relationship with them. I am lucky enough to consider them two of my best friends, as well as being the constant comforts they are.

I will have to reteach myself diabetic cooking for while I'm here. More on that later, going to run around like a chicken sans head for a bit.

Transplanted Post

2006-10-14T07:40:00.000-05:00

The Clermonts have recently decided to try and use the multi-author blogging power of Blogger. This post was the first post on the other system, moved now for your enjoyment... or tolerance, one or the other.

The people behind the characters
By Cliantha, 10/6/2006 6:28 AM (PST) - 18 reads.

World of Warcraft as communication medium. It's an interesting concept, really, and one of the things that my friends and I have been discussing as we start the new guild. The people you gravitate to in-world are often a little different than the people we surround ourselves with in the world outside the box, but that doesn't seem to make them any less *friends*.

As an example, I have a wonderfully good friend who has taught me so much about PvPing, and has always been a calm, thoughtful voice in the fray who I've discovered is about 10 months older than my son. Does that mean I'm immature, or he is mature, or that we are somehow misrepresenting ourselves in dataspace? I think some of the first two, and that the third is slightly inevitable, but not *necessarily* harmful.

I know I'm immature in some ways. Many people compliment me for my "ability to stay young and playful", but I also get spoiled, and throw almost-tantrums at times.

I know that my friend is very mature, as well as very intelligent, and very well-read, which sometimes seems like maturity, too.

And the misrepresentation... well, I can tell you for certain that I'm not an undead warlock with the last name Clermont, in the world outside the box. We are limited to a degree by the game itself on how accurate we can be, but I firmly believe that we don't necessarily *have* to be accurate when we're developing our characters. It's a game. I play Cliantha to get away from the fact that the second floor gutters on the garage need cleaning and probably repair, not to address those things.

That having been said, it is the actions of the people behind the characters that draw us to them, and honesty in that is key. I have been in situations where people think I am something I am not, and it's been difficult to extract myself. I have friends that I adore when they are outside the box, and don't like very much when they're in it. I also know people who, in character, are interesting and people I'd want to meet, but when they speak for themselves, not so much. It's fascinating.

Warcraft has been a way for me to find people who are intelligent, playful, and like role playing games. That's not why I play it, it feels like an added bonus. These people that I've met have turned out to be very, very good friends that I very likely would not have met otherwise, but we have enough in common to feel close to one another.

Which is a reeeeally long winded way to introduce our idea for the OOC weblogs. *grin* What do you do with your friends, in real life? You talk about books, and music, and cooking, and gardening, and computers, and technology, of course! And anything else that comes up in the dancing of the year. That's what we're going to try and start here.

I cook. I love to cook. I have at least 50 cookbooks in the house, and I don't know how many in the boxes I just got from my mom's basement. I love to read about cooking, talk about cooking, and would bore you to tears, probably, given time and inclination. Talk to me :) Tell me your favorite recipes, thoughts about food, and eating, and shopping, and organics... I want to know. I'll tell you some of mine, and I think a good time will be had by all.

So grab a cup of coffee, or tea, or Coke, and poke around. You might find something worth talking about!

Test :)

2006-10-11T06:33:00.000-05:00

more tests, you know the deal.

Kitchen Witchery - And Other Nonsense

Torte report

To

From

Message

Buck's Fizz

Ingredients:

Directions:

testing NoshBot :)

To

From

Message

Avgolemono

Ingredients:

Equipment:

Directions:

Don't look at me!

tagged, eh?

*coughcoughHAAAACKcough*

Meatstravaganza, day three

Meatstravaganza, day two

Beginnings of Something Wonderful

Here, look at this:

life is a...

grrr. photos delayed.

The Cabaret arrived!

Food and Health

Potsticker Noodles

Memes!

Father’s… Mother’s… Happy birth… er Parents’ Day!

Not gonna do it. Nope.

Livescribe test

nngh

Mini-post

No pictures. :(

News and Some Pictures

Eeerg.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My Poor Mom.

Just a quickie

psst..

Our dishes, and our results.

Welcome to Kitchen(s) Stadium.

Meme of the Deserts strikes again...

Radio silence

Eggsperiments

No pretty pictures tonight.

Nothing to do with foodage

Porky Goodness

Busy Day

(New) Mexican roots

COTR Night

Hold your breath...orrrr I guess you could eat some of this.

The Old Standby

"Wagyu" Beef with Bok Choy and Rice

Chicken on a Stick

Tater tots... to the XTREME!!

Meme told me to.

MIT Open Source, I love you.

the place inside your head

Testing ...(with hominy)

Thanksgiving...

Chicken Soup

kitchening a go go

Transplanted Post

Test :)

coughcoughHAAAACKcough