Mirth Abounds

I am not even going to read what's behind this Houston Chronicle headline this evening:
FDA sets safe level for melamine in infant formula

I do know it's because this week "someone" has admitted US manufacturers are putting melamine in certain foods sold here but the only canned goods I buy are tomatoes and creamed corn (twice a year for Cowboy Cornbread) and I just don't wanna know that it's been deemed acceptable in them.

Not to mention the brouhaha the media scared us witless with earlier this year about how them danged Chinese are selling us melamine in our food and now our government says certain levels are safe?

Ya can't trust the internet; ya can't trust the government; ya can't trust the media.... what do we do?

Score!

• Love the Bangkok Blend so much I bought the 4 oz size and an empty bottle to store the half that doesn't fit in my previous bottle.
• Added Turkish Seasoning to a pkg of dry garbanzos I crockpotted to freeze for hummus whenever I wanted. It's so good I've eaten half the garbanzos and will have to start over.
• Mixed the Chili Powder with water, lime and oil and rubbed a spatchcocked chicken I grilled Friday night. Stupendous - nice warm flavor without too much but that was only 1 T for the whole chicken...
• Italian Sausage Seasoning is because I make 3#s of sausage a month and it's just too much easier than keeping fennel seeds and all the other ingredients.
• The Wall of Flavor? Mural of Flavor? was free with this order and haven't looked at its contents. Vanilla is the same price as pure vanilla, 35% alcohol, at local stores so what the heck.
• Chinese Five Spice Powder is because so many on my cooking group use that as an ingredient I didn't want to try their recipes without it.

Penzey's says their whole spices are good for 4 years (!) and ground spices for 2 years if not more. If I'm going to be eating the cheap parts of animal carcasses and more and more veggies, this seems like a good investment over a 3 yr period. If they're all as good as the Bangkok Blend I'm afraid I'm in trouble. I learned the first visit not to walk into their stores; it's safer to order online and check your total every time you add something!

How I fell in love with bread machine loaves again

I've used only my bread machine's dough cycle for about 6 years. It's an original model (donated when Willie and Julie transferred to Denmark in '97) and the bread was great but I didn't care for the vertical shape with a hole in the bottom and a bulb on top.
I use a baking sheet or a restaurant supply loaf pan. Boy, I defy you to burn bread in one of those things. I've slept an hour past "done time" and the top was really brown but the insides were perfect. Guess it's because the sides and bottom are two layers with air(?) in between.

There honestly have been a few times - with overnight guests and all - that I've used the delay timer so fresh bread is ready at 7am without waking the entire house. A couple of weeks ago I was so busy I didn't want the distraction of setting an alarm to take the dough out before the second rising, form it, and set another alarm for when it was baked. So I went full force with the machine.

It smelled so good the last half hour of cooking that I took butter out to be ready when it was. This looks a little under-done but it wasn't when cooled and sure was good slathered in butter.

The big discovery was when I split the bread in half vertically (I did start letting it sit a half hour before this step). I had two loaves, the bottom hole/slash was not so much a problem, and they were the perfect size for a half sandwich for lunch. Add the fact I pour in all ingredients then Set It And Forget It and it's how I've baked my bread the last two weeks. This will probably change when daily temps get down in the 30s... or maybe not.

Belgian fries

Poor Asta. I've conquered Belgian fries and she doesn't get any more limp, greasy rejects.

My Fry Daddy has only one temp setting so I couldn't fry them in 2 steps and at 2 different temps. My solution is to 3/4 bake them in the microwave, let them cool, cut into spears, and deep-fry.

I tried slicing before microwaving, which I thought would give more crispy bits on the outside but that doesn't work at all.

Dip into sriracha lime mayo and mmmmmm.

Yes, I realize the Belgians peel their potatoes. I don't.

An entertaining site (in English) with history and recipes is The One and Only Original Belgian Fries Website.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year... shopping wise

This is the week for shopping and stocking!

Penny bought 2 HEB turkeys at .77 last week. I told Harry she shoulda waited...

This week, HEB Houston has turkeys for .29lb with $20 purchase. I'm going twice.... and should go three times. Last night I made a Fiesta run and got a .57lb turkey with $10 purchase. My fatal mistake was greed. I bought a 15lb turkey. When you intend to put 4 turkeys in your freezer, they gotta be 12lbs or less. Also in the mix: Harry has a 12lb turkey he took from my freezer during The Ike and keeps saying he's going to return it.

Cream cheese, which has skyrocketed to a sale price of 1.19 pkg, is .88 everywhere. The sellby date on all is Apr 09. Not only is that 6 mos away, it's the sellby date which gives another 3-4 months afterwards which means it doesn't have to be frozen. Tonight one block is dedicated for Robb Walsh's Atomic Deer Turds on the grill.

I use HEB's online shopping list which allows a list on the right side for your "needs" shopping list and the left side is from their sales circular (by location). The weekly sales disappear as expired and the month-long sales stay. This not only consolidates all, it focuses on my most favorite store - the HEB at Beltway and Beechnut. I call it the Asian HEB since that's their market there and the types of seafood/veggies have a definite Asian influence - and they open at 6am. The back of the printed list gives plenty of room for specials at other stores for the week. I store it in my purse because in the next 6 days I'm near any of the other stores for a dropin.

Also checking out Costco this weekend, where I haven't been for 6 months. Scallop recipes (both sea and bay) abound on the internet lately and they're the only source I'm SURE doesn't add water/chemicals to their scallops. And it's time to replenish my "hospital size" olive, feta, and sun-dried tomato stores.

More reasons to love Foodsavers

This cilantro was purchased Oct 28 and immediately sealed in a vacuum canister. I opened it last night. Can you imagine cilantro lasting 1 day short of a month and all it has is a couple of yellow leaves? I cannot tell you how much liquid cilantro I've dumped in my compost before I bought my Foodsaver.
I bought this lettuce the week before Thanksgiving 2007. No! I didn't open it last night but I did open it (by the photo timestamp) Dec. 22. That's a month! Nothing brown but the stem where I'd already cut some leaves.
Leaves require a canister, not a vacuum bag and you are NOT to wash them first. I'll try cilantro and lettuce in the same canister next time. This will be handy when all my lettuces are ready to harvest at once.

I bought mine at Costco after researching and hearing owners discuss them for a year and saw their price drop. I realized later it was $129 only because a new model was coming out but it was a good deal and included a huge roll of plastic to seal and 3 sizes of containers. The 1/2 qt size fell out of the fridge and cracked in two a month later and the 1.5 qt size suddenly has a crack one year later (sure no vacuum packing with an opening in the container...).

I've since bought a set of 3 square, squat 24 oz containers that are good because they're stackable in the fridge. I don't have to eat leftovers every day when I do a mass cook-in because they'll keep for much longer than a week. One thing doesn't keep a week: bread with no preservatives - but it does keep freshly soft for 4-6 days.

Just the happiest house and day....

I have a 4-day vacation coming for TG - 2 days of heavy home maintenance/renovation involving tile-setting on my courtyard sidetable and surgical scrub and painting of the master bath followed by a day of compost laying and transplanting more winter crops, and then a spa in the new bath and general loafing and cooking things I've never tried before on Sunday.

This full moon has been a fool moon with all kinds of weird situations, lots of business, emails and long calls from people I haven't seen in years, kind of like the surprises every evening when we see what congress has (not) done daily. Maybe it's a planetary lineup and affecting everyone. Sure beats boredom.

Beating that is finding out at 1pm that today is Thursday, not Friday! That's a good thing as busy as work is. And explains why all my new seeds and a Penzey's order due Friday haven't arrived by 3pm.

Even Asta's in hog heaven. Can't get to the store for dry food so she's eating from the gallons of chopped pork steak stew I made for her last month and froze in 2 cup packets. Bring it to boiling, toss in 1/2 c rice and some veggies and she thinks it's human food.

And leaves all this for me...

Full Moon - Forever tied to The Ike

Full moon this week reminded me it's been two months since Ike. I'm sure it will always remind me of electricty-free Ike days when I see one. And it still makes me walk thru the house turning off lights.

Other post-Ike notes:

• It brought hummingbirds to my courtyard for the first time in years.
• It drove four-and-twenty doves from my palm - who won't be back since mockingbirds bought it.
• All the squirrels in my yard are adolescents (and all that entails). Asta is beside herself.
  
• Halloween morning four men walked down my street with chainsaws. Would have called 911 pre-Ike.
• Heavy trash trucks still crawl thru 3x a week. Trees are still falling.
• All frozen foods in Houston are new. Not a single package has a solid clump on one end or another yet.
• While bored witless recharging my phone in the car one day, I got the Bob Dylan CD unstuck from the player and it's good.
• While bored witless listening to talk radio, I cleaned every crevice of my ole jambox and it looks brand new.
• It was the 3rd store that finally had Asta's required Pedigree canned food. It was recalled the morning Ike hit and I had no way of knowing!
• My handwriting is legible again, almost engineering level form. Ike (in my neighborhood) is worth that alone!
• Still miss leaf confetti. Ike's winds tore leaves into little 1/2" pieces that covered the windows like mosaics some mad hippie created during the night. After things dried, twice a day the wind would pick up and they blew off the roof onto my courtyard like confetti. This lasted three days but one last confetti a week later delighted me once again.
  

Another thing I love about full moons. Little rocks always show up in the garden. Christy noticed when she used to work in my garden and asked me once where they came from. They're too random to be tossed by neighbors so I was sure they work themselves up from the soil.

What I noticed after that is there are more of them the day before and through the full moon. Don't call me crazy until you're intimately familiar with your soil. I've watched it for years and sometimes break up the soil a week before so they're more visible; but they'll come up thru hard soil as well.

Changes in sizes and pricing

Yah, everything's going up in price and no one likes it but I've noticed people can't agree on how manufacturers should keep their costs and profits level.

Half feel they're being cheated when the price stays the same but the container or portion size shrinks. The other half asks why the price has gone up again on the same size container. I didn't mind either way but have decided the huge number of people in the US on fixed or low incomes, able to pay one price, would be better served if sizes decreased and pricing stayed the same.

A box of cornstarch lasts me years so I've no idea when this happened. Argo has changed to a resealable plastic container. I passed over it three times looking for a cornstarch box that hadn't changed in decades. It seemed like a great idea to add this safety feature to compensate for a smaller size. Whoa! Both of them hold exactly 16 oz. It has a larger footprint but easily supports another box or can on top. I'm sure the price is higher (it's corn-based, isn't it?) but this is a fine example of why you must read labels.
Coffee, not so good. When the old 16 oz cans went to 13 oz, I switched to the 39 oz size. Well, about the time the new 13 oz decreased to 11 oz, the 39 oz decreased to 34.5 oz (left). Now I see it's down to 27.5 oz (right) and the price has gone up a dollar! I won't switch to lower quality (my sister-in-law is laughing at me saying that right now) but if I can cut back to no coffee after 11am, I could pay the same and buy good quality coffee beans.

Roberta's Chicken Fried Steak

My aunt Roberta in Dalhart, TX made the best chicken fried steak I've ever had. It happened to be the first one I ever had and they were the first people I knew with a meat locker. Willie and I rode over with Uncle Bill one morning to pick up the meat for dinner. They also introduced us to corny dogs but that's another story.

I watched Roberta prepare the meal and it was quite a production with a flour dip, an egg dip, and another flour dip (those are required). It took me quite a while to capture the heat regulation for a perfect steak. I always cook them in a stainless steel skillet so add in that problem making sure they don't stick. (The secret, I learned on a cooking group, is to bring the dry skillet up to heat first, then add the oil and then the meat. Works every time.)

Kroger's little meat clearance bin last week yielded some tenderized steaks at a great price. Too bad I was already over budget with all the chuck and sirloin roasts I grabbed at a great price so I only got one pack.

Not a big fan of mashed potatoes but this called for them and I splurged using cream and lots of real butter (not that you could taste butter with my 40-weight cream gravy poured over all). On second thought, this is a once-a-quarter splurge so it's a good thing I only bought this much.

Sweet Potato Hash

I wanted only Southern foods for my election night watching but sweet potatoes can be so boring. I found this House of Blues recipe as featured on one of Burt Wolf's episodes: Sweet Potato Hash This was so much better than expected. The whole is way better than the sum of its parts.

It's quick to chop the large pieces and the smell of garlic and onions is perfect to set the stage for dinner.

Not only did everything hold its shape, you can taste each of the different veggies in the finished dish. I took it out soon after this, cooking only til the potatoes were done but not falling apart. Must have been really good because I forgot to get a plated shot. Definitely a do-over.


UPDATE: Mark Bittman's Nov 14 column Skip the Marshmallows and Give Heartfelt Thanks gives a few options for sweet potato dishes. For starters, he grates and sautes them until they carmelize - what a concept!

Cookies for me, cookies for Asta

Coffee all day works against me if I'm not madly typing and clicking so I switched to green tea during the Ike days. I decided to make some cake mix cookies to go with my tea while I was cooking and Foodsaving 4 family packs of pig last Thursday. The recipe is 1-2-3 simple and we made them all the time since my now 17-yr-old granddaughter was 5 years old.
Cake Mix Cookies
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
3 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 box cake mix [any flavor]

Mix all ingredients together and drop by teaspoonful onto ungreased cookie
sheet. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

The small cookie on the left is 1 tsp. Obviously, I used 1 tbsp for these. One thing about using the gas grill for baking is you can only use 1/2 the grill to bake at 350. This doubles baking time and I'm not patient enough for that... with all the other prep and cooking being done during this.
Asta patiently waited (and got her treat) but I decided this was a good time to try that recipe for dog cookies while I had the peanut butter out.
Simple Simon's Birthday Bones
from Three Dog Bakery Cookbook by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $12.95)
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup natural peanut butter
1 cup skim milk
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. In another bowl, mix the peanut butter and milk. Add wet mixture to the dry, and mix well.Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll out 1/4-inch thick, and cut out shapes. (I made these way too thick and will correct for the next batch. She doesn't seem to mind the only cookie cutter I had that was in any way dog treat shaped was a snowman.)
Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly brown. (Ah, here you can see I've switched from tea and cookies to red wine.)
Cool on a rack, then store in an airtight container. Makes 30 large bones.
Asta loves these so much when I ask if she wants a treat, she runs to me licking her chops over and over and over.

Cooking spree! Pork and Cabbage Soup

I was afraid to restock my Ike-emptied fridge for the first 2 weeks after electricity was restored. Catching sight of both doors open for 15 days never failed to give me a start... kind of like seeing a relative laying on the kitchen floor bleeding profusely would. Not sure I'd survive throwing away another freezer full. Not to mention the dread of cooking everything all at once again.

Good decision because 10 days later it went off for 24 hours (new tree-falls on my lines). But it knocked comcast out of order which took 5 days to fix. I decided the odds of electricity failing again were enormous, and I couldn't work with no internet access, so I went shopping. I purchased 4 family packs of different pig parts :O! None of them cost over $1.67lb so I drug out the Foodsaver and started cooking (Please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch - this time it was fun cooking everything at once.)

First start was a loaf of whole wheat bread. My courtyard table gives the best rises but I wondered how it would be affected when the current coldwave kept the temp below 80 even at high noon. No worry. This happened in just under an hour. And, by Jove, Jon Stewart's right. Karl Rove's face DOES look like a loaf of unbaked bread dough.
All three dishes were prepped at the same time, in 3 different areas of the kitchen, so I guess I'll separate them by dish. (Hope I don't have to say these were finished and eaten over 36 hours) First was getting the pork and cabbage soup started in the crockpot.

This was .99lb pork steak cut into pieces and sauteed. Under the top steak (both packages) the steaks were 25% pork fat so I guess I'll be rendering lard in the near future. Not sure what I'll use it for but everyone from Homesick Texan to the top chefs give how to instructions and recipes on their blogs so what the hey.
Tossed the pork, raw onions, celery, carrots, and cabbage in the crockpot with Italian spices and poured in a can of diced tomatoes. 8 hours later it looked like this and I sliced into the whole wheat bread.


Mmmmm. This is good even if it's not cold outside.

Cooking spree! Ratatouille

No pork here but I have a Musgovian eggplant half and have never even eaten the dish. Since even 2nd graders can pronounce the word correctly now, it's time.
It's pretty enough to eat raw.

And smells good enough to wait.
Excellent with a salad using homemade 1000 Island dressing and homemade croutons from the last loaf of bread. Consists totally of staples so this is a do-over.


Odd, Mom made this dish all the time but called it Eggplant Creole. Just googled that recipe and it's a legit modification of shrimp creole for vegetarians. Huh. Can't find it in Joy of Cooking so it must have been a clipped recipe.

Joy of Cooking did have a recipe for Grilled Ratatouille Salad, very similar to this one on epicurious.com, but Joy includes grilled fennel, tomatoes, and a head of garlic. Yum. I even bought fennel last week (to make Italian sausage) but need to pick up some feta... and another eggplant!

Cooking spree! Pork and Broccoli Stirfry

This one I did after starting the cabbage soup and sauteed it and the ratatouille at the same time. One of the best parts of my Vacuumsaver is using the vacuum to marinate meats. The vacuum sucks all liquid into the meat and what used to be a one-hour marinade is done in 5 minutes. This consisted only of soy sauce and garlic powder.

When garlic was sauteed to golden (Supposed to take it out at that point but I don't. Everything added afterwards cools it all down for a while.), I added the pork.
When pork's half done I added diced carrots, onion, and celery.
When they're cooked, I stirred in frozen chopped broccoli and the sauce: 1/4 c soy sauce, 1/4 c rice wine vinegar, 1 tsp grated orange zest, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. When the sauce thickened I added a cup of day old rice.
Could have used a splash of sriracha but the vinegar was tangy enough. After this I vacuum packed the rest of it because I have a lot of food coming up!

Most Bang for the Buck Appetizer

Unique, fast, and easy.

Bought Rosa Bianca eggplant seeds (heirloom, Italian) on a whim, not knowing they take so long to ripen. They're softball size and the blooms are, too!

These should have been picked before IKE. Every morning I'd see four of them from my kitchen window getting older and older but who has time??? I did have time with no electricity for 15 days but unable to google a recipe. Finally peeled, cut into chunks and roasted them last night then mixed with olive oil, red wine and balsamic vinegar, green onions, capers and mint leaves. Wish I'd remembered the mushrooms in the fridge. This was delicious and so quick to prepare.

But everyone roasts eggplant. The topper is the Crisp Rosemary Flatbread I found on epicurious.com (be sure to read the reviews for other ideas). I've been searching for a cracker-like bread recipe since I first tried it at Sorrento years ago. This one is so easy, takes no yeast/kneading and even the first time was super simple. (I don't use parchment paper, just oiled the baking sheet and cooked it on the grill which may be why it took an extra 10 mins to brown.)


I have a fresh old-fashioned eggplant in the fridge and am making it again tonight with the addition of sliced mushrooms and chunks of roasted carrot. Wish I had Parmesan or goat cheese but there's only so much lost food you can afford to restock per month. Plus, I have this nagging feeling the electricity will suddenly go off again and I'll have to start all over. When does that end?

First Meals Post Ike

After more than a week of Dinner Impossibles - entrees and sides dictated by what's going bad the fastest instead of compatibility - Fiesta had the brand of NO olive salad I saw at the restaurant trade show and assumed I'd never find retail. Grabbed it and the rest of the fixings for a muffaletta... on a bolillo roll.
Saved a recipe last month from NPR which stated the olives go on one side only. Compounded that error by trimming meats but using both pieces on the tiny bolillo.

Tasted swell but next two made with those bolillos will have one layer of salami, olives on both sides, cheese on both sides. Will heat it in a cast iron skillet with another on top instead of using the microwave as well.

Made a loaf of whole wheat before grocery shopping thinking I'd only have sandwiches for a day or two while catching up with work. Couldn't wait to dig into it so this was breakfast the next morning.

Breakfast Sausage

SCORE! Fiesta had .99 lb family packs of pork sirloin. Made a batch of Homesick Texan's Breakfast Sausage on Day 3. I've tried four different online recipes and hers is by far my favorite. Only used 2lbs of the pork for this recipe so have enough left to freeze for stirfries, to grind for a freezer stock of dumplings,* and make more sausage.

So glad to have access to my food processor again.

Grind the pork, mix in the spices and it's done! I add 4 T water, as Nathan Lau suggests. He actually says water or wine which will be an interesting experiment.

Delicious, preservative free, and half the cost. I think this is what my Mommy and Daddy ate as breakfast sausage when they were young. Tomorrow is biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.

* Did you assume, like I did, that wonton skins must be refrigerated because they'd get moldy? Ike taught me THIS is what happens when they're not refrigerated!