A Once and Future Chef ???

Weapons of Choice

2010-03-05T14:03:00.004-05:00

I posted this today over on Chef Talk but though I would also add it here. I will try to remember to add some pictures.

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My previous career was in metal casting and I have a BS in metallurgical engineering. My perspective on knives may be a little different than everyone else's since I approach it from a metal and engineering view rather than a culinary view. Probably not right but some things I just can't shake.

In my opinion, a forged knife is hands down the best knife, ignoring brands, styles, size, etc. Of the forged knives I am a big fan of pattern welded steel often erroneously referred to as Damascus steel. Forging gives a knife wonderful strength, elasticity and crystal alignment that can't be done by stamping. The advantage of a pattern welded knife is that two or more different metals are forged together. At a microscopic level this gives a serrated edge with wonderful sharpness that in a sense re-sharpens itself as the edge wears since the different metals wear at different rates. My third favorite knife and quickly becoming my number one favorite is the sintered powder metal knife. Like the pattern welded knife it creates a microscopic serrated edge as it wears so it is brilliantly sharp. The fact that it is sintered allows for the use of some higher tech metals that are not available any other way.

I am opposed to buying a knife kit as I believe in buying the best knife for the job that is in my budget. My first knife was a Lamson-Sharp 10" Chef's Knife. GREAT knife. My only regret is that is isn't longer, but I didn't know that at the time. It's forged and made in the US. It didn't really come into its own until I began sharpening it myself with my two sided water stone and put a slightly narrower angle of edge on it. I use this knife every day in school and at home.

My second knife was a Nenohi Nenox G-Type Petty 5.9" (15cm) as I wanted to try one of the Japanese knives. This is a PM made knife and has an edge that boggles my mind. Some days I use this knife more than my chef's knife because it cuts so well and feels so good I don't want to put it down. This Japanese knife is a little harder to sharpen but once you get your technique down, it isn't a problem. One thing I learned from both of these knives is that sharpening them yourself will give you a better, sharper edge that lasts longer than what you got out of the box.

Third knife was a Ittosai Stain-Resistant Layered Steel Santoku 6.4" (16.5cm) as I wanted to try this new to me style and it was a pattern welded knife I could afford. Great knife but not as good as the other two. I really have not bonded well with this style but if I want to cut thin slices of onion, tomato or potatoes, this is a good one to use. But it normally stays at home rather than at school. Sharpness and edge retention is in between the Lamson and the Nenohi.

Next knife was a Glestain salmon slicer. I rarely use or require this knife but when I do, there is nothing better. Very sharp out of the box and I have not sharpened it yet. I am a little nervous about sharpening a 12" blade. Not sure as a culinary student when or if you would need to purchase one of these, definitely not at my school. It was a celebratory reward for myself.

Last knife I bought was a Misono Hankotsu for ripping up chickens. This was my first venture into single sided Japanese knives. This is a very heavy and menacing looking knife. Makes me feel like I should join the French Foreign Legion. While the edge out of the box is sharp, it isn't very good. It is not consistently sharp along the length of the edge. As before I think that sharpening this knife myself will get the maximum performance out of it. I just have not done it yet. I have to watch my DVD on sharpening first since I have never sharpened a single sided knife before.

For honing I use an F.Dick flat multi cut steel and highly recommend it. I don't do the razzle dazzle knife honing routine that every cook does. I think it is BS. I slowly pull the knife, at the proper angle, along the full length of the knife across the steel. After each pass I feel for a burr with my fingernail. If the burr moves to the other side then I hone that side. If I don't feel a burr on either side I don't bother honing the knife. I can usually hone a knife with three or four slow passes, though a knife that was used hard may need a few more. I hone them in the morning and then forget about it.

My recommendation for a first time purchase is to buy a good but not great nor cheap chef's knife, middle of the road. In my opinion, hands down, the Japanese steel is superior. But there is nothing wrong with the other's either. I highly recommend Lamson Sharp. Wustoff and Henckels are good too, but I would be sure they are forged. I have not been impressed with Dexter. Messermeister is better than Dexter. Regardless, this is a learning knife to learn technique, beat on, mess up sharpening, break the tips, etc. You won't be out much. Even an old Chicago knife is a good starter. Stay away from the cheap stamped Chinese crap. I don't like metal handles like Global but I think that is more of an individual preference, they are good knives. Buy a good steel and learn to use it. Buy at least a two sided stone and learn to use it, especially correct edge angle. I don't like oil at all but that is probably a personal preference. Do not ever ever ever rely on or use one of those pull sharpeners like fishermen use or an electric sharpener. Nothing will ruin your knife faster.

I'm going fish fish, fish fish, fish fish fishing again...

2010-03-02T15:04:00.005-05:00

After we finished with our tribute to Eire, Chef gathered class around to tell us that the next day we had someone coming in to talk to us about a trip to Italy in September. One of the other schools in the area goes every two years or so and Chef is tired of us being the orphaned step-child and wants to start having us have the same opportunity to go. There would be some sightseeing and and also some cooking school. Sounds awesome even though I don't like Italian food. For the others it would definitely be good resume padding. Mayfield kept interrupting with a bunch of question, how much? When? What is the program? Where? Finally I had to interrupt. "You know, I bet that is what the guy is going to tell you tomorrow." I'm so smart. Bunch of undisciplined, attention challenged, disrespectful people.

Afterward it was time for our Nutrition class. I had set out a piece of salmon last week but then school was cancelled and it had sat for a week in the walk in. I threw it out and started over. I did learn that the vacuum sealed fish is supposed to be thawed out unwrapped, not in the vacuum sealed package. Something about the meat gassing off.

I had not done fish yet for this class, and we all should eat more fish, so I checked with my client and it turns out she LOVES salmon. That settled it, barbecued salmon. I have not had barbecued salmon before but my niece raves about it. It is one of three foods she will eat. She was very disappointed when she came to visit and we took her to Herb's to experience true southe'n BBQ that salmon was not an option. I think it is a Midwest thing.

I received mixed advice on how to grill the salmon. Chef said he sears the outside and finishes it off in the oven. I did indeed use this technique. Another instructor told me to soak the salmon in milk, but of course that was not an option for my client. I didn't bother making a barbecue sauce from scratch. I heard once that 75% of all restaurants use Cattlemen's sauce as their own or as a base to make their own. I used some Bull's Eye that we had but added Worcestershire, honey and apple cider vinegar. I lightly marinated the filet for maybe a half hour before throwing it on the grill. I basted it a few times. I tried very hard not to over cook it but it zoomed past 145°F so fast after I had pulled it, even though I pulled it early. I wasn't too worried because I believe that most people are used to eating overcooked salmon as restaurants play it safe.

I combined a presentation and a vegetable by placing the salmon on a bed of roasted vegetables. I had intended to use yellow squash, egg plant and zucchini but discovered at the last minute that all of the yellow squash had been used up that morning. I subbed red bell pepper instead. Tossed everything in olive oil, grilled them then finished off the vegetables in the pan with the fish in the oven. I cut the veggies into strips after they were cooked. I have a very sharp knife so that was not hard to do. Because my client wanted her plate to go, I was not worried about losing heat or any of the food being cold.

For dessert I went as basic as I could get, an ounce each of fresh blueberries, strawberries and blackberries layered into a parfait with vanilla soy yogurt. I put a pinch of raw sugar on top just for effect. Wendy City loved it so much she wanted the recipe. Take that Sandra Lee!

I named my menu the Superfoods because it was loaded in nutrients.

My compadres were making oatmeal burgers. I have a reputation in my class for being a pure carnivore. It isn't true, I do like vegetables. Even more so fruit. But I have a reputation to maintain no matter how false, and it is a fun reputation to have. Most people thought I wouldn't make the oatmeal burgers because of my anti-veggie reputation. Not so. Chef said the times he has had them they tasted just like a real hamburger. My client does not, will not, eat red meat. There was no way, no how, I was serving her a food that is like red meat. You should never make your client vomit because of your food. I had to argue this point with Mayfield. He said there was no red meat in the burger so what was the problem. Sometimes it just is not worth arguing.

Unfortunately Chef couldn't find a third of the vegan ingredients for the oatmeal burgers so they had to make some substitutions. New Girl almost vomited I think after she tasted one. I had a big piece and the flavor really was not bad. The texture was awful though. Just a nasty mush. Baby food has better body than these burgers. I had planned on making a black bean burger this week, but after tasting these I changed my mind. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Morningstar Farms (formerly Worthington Foods as in Worthington OH, my hometown) spicy black bean burgers, but they are made with textured vegetable protein (TVP). Without TVP I had my doubts of making a successful black bean burger. Today I noticed that in my recipes I have a black bean burger recipe that I have made, I just forgot. Looking at my notes today, I see I commented on the texture and mush mouth feel of the burger.

I watched everybody plate up. I feel good working with Tennessee. He was making an orange sorbet and wanted something green to garnish it with. Naturally we didn't have any mint. My brain went to working and I came up with using some zest from a lime. He liked my idea, made me feel good. Mayfield on the other hand did not like my questioning his plate. Yes, your oatmeal burger is healthy and nutritious, but serving two of them isn't really a healthy concept. Can we say portion control? RK was looking for some A1 sauce for his. Blech! I never use that stuff. He asked if my Bull's Eye barbecue sauce was the same. My eyes glazed over. Then I noticed a half sheet of what looked like under cooked potato wedges. I called out, "what kind of chips are these?" I thought they might be jicama chips or yucca chips which is something I wanted to do. "Thems is just baked taters," RK replies. Yeah? Your pre-diabetic client is going to love those. If only she knew that RK NEVER EVER washes his hands. I don't eat anything he cooks.

Éireann Go Brách

2010-02-26T11:02:00.007-05:00

In college I always wanted to have an Erin Go Bra-less party, girls got in free if they weren't wearing a bra, with proof of course. Sadly, never happened.

On Monday we cooked once again for the local travel club. We had no idea what they were meeting about but it was close enough to March we decided to have St. Patrick's Day as our theme. If I had known ahead of time I would have brought my Irish cookbook, if I could find it. I said we should do a beef stew, shepherds pie, fish and chips and shortbread cookies. All of that got nixed except for the shortbread. Thanks TOM. Chef wanted more ideas. I said bangers and mash which isn't really Irish but close enough to count I think, I've had it at several authentic Irish Pubs. TOM pushed for a dish called Toad in the Hole. TOM explained that it is an Australian dish of a bed of mashed potatoes with the sausages sticking up so they look like toad heads poking out of a hole. While I realize that as a penal colony many Irish were shipped off to Australia, that doesn't make it an Irish dish. Turns out it's and English dish though I suppose it is popular in Ireland, made with Yorkshire pudding batter not mashed potatoes and the sausages lay down instead of poke out. I'm not surprised I am learning that TOM is all bluster, though I think the sausages sticking out would have been a clever touch.

So in the end we had corned beef and cabbage. Even though my heritage is Irish and German I do not eat corned beef and cabbage or sauerkraut for that matter. Blech! Chef did override TOM and added back the shepherds pie. Pizza Girl and The Kid made roasted vegetables, turnips, beets, potatoes, rutabagas and carrots. Slo Mo wore himself out making roasted potatoes. Chico and RK made soda bread. Hotties #2 and #3 made the shortbread. Tennessee, who was in our class as a make up day, I think worked on the potatoes, I'm not sure. New Girl and Sushi Boy 1 made apple cake. MILF chose me to be her partner to make bread pudding.

Except she didn't show up so I was on my own. We had a recipe for New Orleans bourbon bread pudding but we wanted to substitute the bourbon with Bailey's. But Chef did not get any Bailey's so I used a coffee extract. We were supposed to cook for 120 people. They had me sharing a chafing dish with the apple cake but that made no sense because the apple cake was going to be plated, so I got to use full pans. That was excellent because we have a shortage of half pans. What I did not know was that we were doing a double buffet line so I needed a full pan on both sides. This is the downside to things that are decided on Thursday when I am not there. Good thing I made three pans.

Pizza Girl had given the recipe to MILF so I asked PG if she could get me a copy. "Sure, after I finish with this butter." Tennessee wa standing next to me watching her pack a round tablespoon with butter and then scoop in out into a tub. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. I just shook my head and gave him a big Cheshire Cat grin. It's one thing if you scale a recipe for something like cookies and it requires 17 tablespoons of butter; baking is pretty exact with little forgiveness and you need to measure it out. It's another thing if the butter is for roasting vegetables, just round to three sticks! And she's done with school this quarter, she should know better!

I checked in on Sushi 2 and the toads. He was working with Igor and they were wrapping kielbasa in bacon and baking them. The sausages came out of the oven black. They so screwed up this recipe because they never thought about how they were going to serve the dish. They had baked the toad in the hole in full pans but were serving in a round chafer. So they spooned it all out into a round dish. Then they decided the sausages were too big so they cut them in half. In my opinion they were still three times too big. The batter/pudding stuff was nasty. The whole dish looked more like a pile of black dildos in vanilla cake than anything else.

Back on my side Chico and RK are arguing about their soda bread. Neither of these cats ever wash their hands so I wasn't eating any of this. Chico used a wooden skewer to test to see if the bread was done and pulled the pans out. RK had a fit because the recipe said it needed to bake for an hour and needed 25 more minutes of cooking. Back and forth. Chico walked off and RK cut a few slices of bread and then put them all back into the oven. They're both idiots. Later when Chico and Tennessee were slicing up the bread for service I told Chico that next time he could use his thermometer to check to see if his bread was done. HUH? He looked at me like I he was stoned and I had just flipped on the lights. When your thermometer reads 200°F, your bread is done. Like I'm the stupid one.

Earlier I had helped The Kid peel carrots for their roast vegetables. I use my petty knife. It is crazy sharp and I can peel a carrot faster than they can with a peeler. I just have to be careful to not go too deep or I'm hacking up the carrot. I can do it with potatoes too but it isn't as easy with the round shape. I was waiting for the HUGE mixing bowl that we usually use for salads. They were using it to toss their vegetables together before roasting and they were taking their sweet old time. I NEEDED that bowl because it is the only one big enough to do three pans of bread pudding. The Kid tells me that as soon as they finish these carrots I can have the bowl. I grab my knife and take over the cutting board. I asked how he wanted the carrots cut. Half rounds. It's funny that even though they seem to have learned that even sized pieces cook evenly they have not learned that as the carrot tapers down the piece has to be cut larger in order to maintain the same mass. I start in on the carrots and I'm cutting three to four carrots for every one that The Kid is cutting. Come on man, I might be twice your age but you only have one quarter of school left. You've got to have better knife skills than that!

After I get my three pans into the oven I see New Girl and Sushi 1 looking worried; their cake is not complete. Apparently after they had it in the oven a few minutes and were cleaning up they found their baking soda and realized they had forgot to put it in. So they pulled out the cake which was flowing over onto the oven deck and dumped it into a bowl to try to start over and salvage it. They weren't using an extender rack which was also a mistake. We don't use cake pans like you would at home, we have a rack that fits in the full sheet to make the cake sides. This is how the pros do it. They got everything mixed together and back in the oven, this time with the extender, but it was too late the cake just never cooked right. There was some discussion that they had also forgotten the milk. I would have scrapped the whole thing but they spooned the cake into a bowl and served it anyway. We had Toad in the Hole and Cake in a Bowl. Actually it tasted a lot like bread pudding and would have been good with ice cream on top.

I saw Mayfield's and TOM's shepherds pie. I am somewhat of a shepherds pie connoisseur. If I go to an Irish restaurant/pub I'm getting either shepherds pie or fish and chips or both. This was not shepherds pie. They made a bed of seasoned ground beef and onions and topped it with mashed potatoes and cheese. No peas. No carrots. And the meat should be in a sauce, almost like a beef stew. This was not right. Since I gave up beef for lent I did not try it but the mashed potatoes were awesome.

I had two pans of bread pudding out and ready to serve at 11:59. I still don't understand why the rest of them can't do that. Because we had two of each I said I needed a partner to help serve since MILF was not there. Hottie #2 asked why. Because I can't serve both sides at the same time by myself. Duh! She was serving the green shortbread cookies next to me. They were nasty. Remember we were supposed to serve for 120? About half way through all the people we ran out of cabbage, then corned beef and then shepherds pie. We did not run out of vegetables, potatoes, the nasty cookies and of course my bread pudding, because I had three pans, not just one. Dumb asses. Part of the reason is portion sizes. We are supposed to serve about a three ounce portion. My classmates have not learned that yet. People were getting half plates of cabbage, three 3 inch pieces of sausage, etc.

I am pleased to say that my bread pudding was a hit. I had many rave reviews and some people broke the rules and came back for seconds. I was even getting positive comments the next day with the left overs.

Sláinte mhaith!

Field Trip!

2010-02-18T10:25:00.011-05:00

Last week on Tuesday we finally got to go to Nori Nori in Atlanta. This trip had been cancelled several times but we were finally going. Bus leaves at 8:30. And at 8:30 there were six of us. Out of eighteen. We were picking up the Sushi Boys and Mouth along the way at Ingle's. We should have picked up RK too but Chef said RK had told him he was not going because he had an interview. Yeah right. New Girl and Pizza Girl were going to meet us there because they live closer to Atlanta than they do here. We were five miles out from school and Chef's phone rang. It was Slo Mo asking where were we. Chef let him off the hook and said he could meet us at Ingle's where we were picking up the Sushi Boys. Of course that meant we were going to have to wait for him since he was now 10 minutes behind us. What an ass. And why does Chef keep coddling him! He's never going to learn.

Mouth was a no show, as to be expected. Slo Mo had Chico with him. Now the Three Amigos were complete since Igor was already sitting in the back of the van. I told him it was his lucky day since both of his girlfriends showed up, he might get laid today. Thank God I remembered my earphones this trip. I covered my head and slept most of the way.

We arrived an hour early. Nori Nori doesn't open until 11:45AM. With time to kill, Chef took us to a bakery a "friend" of his owns, Alon's Bakery and Market. Alon was impressive as soon as he walked into the room. Towering. Alon came over from Israel and opened this place up. His store is HUGE and MY kind of place. I loved every square inch it. The fresh breads, the gelati bar, the meat counter, the deli, the confections and pastries, the wine and cheese. It was all incredible. It's the reason you leave a small town like ours.

Bar Code bought a beautiful focaccia loaf. I bought some Gruyere and walnut crisps after I had tried one of the crackers in the store and nearly fainted they were so good. I also cried though when I got home and opened the bag to find them all crushed into crumbs. The idiots Larry, Darryl and Darryl made one pass through the store and spent the rest of the time smoking outside. What a waste. Their small town brains could have learned so much inside. I don't get why they are in this program.

Finally it was time to go to Nori Nori. New Girl and Pizza Girl were there waiting for us. Bar Code led his posse of lap dogs, The Kid, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and Tweedledumber next door to the Italian restaurant. Remember, Bar Code doesn't do Chinese food. That pissed me off. If you go on a field trip you don't get to do your own side trips. I can't believe Chef allowed that. It further cemented to me that these are not team players. I don't want them on my team, even if I like Bar Code.

I was the only one who had been to Nori Nori before. I had been bragging about the place and you should have seen everyone's eyes bug out when they walked inside. It was even more impressive than all of my hype. The restaurant is a buffet and is the size of (though not quality of) a Golden Corral. MILF was the last one to finish and everyone at her table made a big deal about how much she ate. But then Hottie #2 said they never saw what I ate. She just ate slow. I had finally called it quits and MILF was still up at the buffet. I told Chef that we needed to leave soon or I was going to be hungry again in a few minutes.

Here is my first trip to the buffet. I pretty much stuck to only sushi with meat (fish) in it. I try to avoid the ones with cream cheese as I have a texture issue with those. I probably passed over an equal number of rolls as what I had on my plate, there are that many to choose from, all made fresh right there behind the buffet line. The soup is crab soup. You have the option of adding items to the soup like tempura fried shrimp, sea weed, noodles and I forget what else. I took mine straight up. The skewer in the middle is rib eye. The skewer in the back is barbecued octopus that was unreal.

For my second plate I began to move away from the rolls and into what I believe is called gunkan and ended with nigirisushi. The third piece clockwise from twelve o'clock with the silvery sliver falling off was pickled mackerel and was out of this world. And I LOVE anything with roe in or on it. Right or wrong, I don't use any sauces or condiments with my sushi. The ring in the center of the plate is for a small bowl for your shrimp sauce, soy sauce, wasabi, or what have you. If I have say six of the same kind I will eat a few with wasabi or a few with soy sauce but in general I don't like to mask the natural flavor of my food. Since I was only eating one piece of each style/kind, I didn't use any sauces. I'm the same way with steak, just give me some salt and keep your A1.

For my third trip, I snagged another rib eye skewer, they were soooo good, and then moved onto the salad bar. This is a sampling of maybe a third of what they offer. I have no idea what I was eating but they were all good. The funky looking black one at four o'clock was the best and I have no clue what it was. Started with an 'H,' I think.

For my fourth trip to the buffet I left the salads behind and hit the hot bar. On the scallop shell is something like a crab cake that was called Seafood Dynamite. It made my eyes roll back it was that good, better than any crab cake. The shrimp skewer has a cream cheese like filling that I didn't know about when I picked it up. The head was tasty but the filling was so so. I can't remember which of those piles is the beef teriyaki, but it was out of this world. Enough to inspire me to marinate some steaks at home this past weekend. Again this is about a third of what they had up on the buffet. I skipped all of the fish dishes. My understanding is that for the dinner buffet they also have crab legs, a carving station and a few other big dishes that they don't have on the lunch buffet.

Finally, dessert. I did get most of all the desserts but still left maybe a quarter behind. I like the fact that all of the desserts are bite sized allowing you to sample so many. The little cup was some type of berry yogurt. The napoleon/fruit tart at the bottom of the plate was the best of the bunch. They also have green tea soft serve ice cream which I did not get but every one else raved about.

All that for...drum roll please.... sixteen bucks! (I drank water). I think dinner is $24. It's more on the weekends but I think the buffet is bigger on the weekends. The under 12 kids' prices are clever. Pricing is by height, less than 3 feet is free, under 4 feet is 1/5 price, and under 5 feet is half price.

After lunch there was so much nagging to go to the oft talked about Asian Market that Chef finally conceded, even though we were only going to have about ten minutes. The Asian Market is in Chamblee which is locally known as Chambodia because of the high Asian population density there. The area used to have a high Hispanic population density which is still evident in the demographics at the market. I guess the market used to be called Hong Kong Supermarket but now is called Atlanta Farmers Market. I wish I had taken some pictures and they don't have a website.

The market was about a third the size of the Dekalb Farmers Market which is my gold standard and Nirvana for me. This market was great though. Unfortunately it would take me ten minutes to enjoy just one side of each aisle so I just made a circle around the whole market. Produce was unreal both in quality and selection. And prices were half of what we pay here at the grocery. The meats were neat. They had packages of fish heads. Sounds strange but all I could think of was how cool it would be to be able to buy one package and be able to go home and make a fresh fish stock. Not something I can do at Ingle's.

I have never seen offal from any animal other than chicken and cows. I saw packages of pork hearts and livers. Duck livers. Man I wanted to try everyone I saw. There were different "cuts" of pigs' feet. I've seen chicken feet before in markets but I had never seen boneless chicken and duck feet before. Don't know how they are used, but I want too.

And there was goat. I love goat. Ever since I had it at Taste of Chicago from an African stand selling a dish called zil zil made with goat instead of beef. Live bullfrogs were $5.99/pound. I really don't know what you do with those. There was so much to see and learn here, unless of course you were Igor, Chico and Slo Mo who preferred to stand in a circle outside smoking.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

2010-02-17T10:27:00.003-05:00

It's the Year of the Tiger.

Last week we did our banquet a day early and our theme was Chinese New Year. Once again, me picking the theme. "Chinese food" was suggested, which is a cuisine. I suggested "Chinese New Year," which is a theme. Subtle I know.

Immediately I knew what I was going to make, Hot and Sour Soup. I got tired years ago of not being able to find a good soup when we lived in Bainbridge. Not a single good Chinese restaurant there. To be fair, they aren't any better here.

For some reason our class has shifted from making 6-8 items which we can do well to making 16-18 items which we can't even do half assed. Soup is simple, but I took my time so I didn't get roped into helping out someone with poor planning. My only problem was the chicken stock I had expected to be there from the Principals class never got made. So I had to use chicken base, and it was my downfall. I HATE using bases. I make a mean soup, and it hit all the right notes, except chicken base is so high in salt that the soup was too salty to eat. Really pissed me off. In hindsight maybe I should have poured half of it out and replaced with water and hoped the cooking would have been long enough to not taste watery. I left the pork out so that there was a meatless option, though as I type this I wonder where chicken base falls in the view of the meatless world.

Once again the rest of the class wasn't ready until quarter after noon. This time I said screw it and stood at my station waiting for everyone to come out with their dishes instead of helping. At some point you have to stop being a crutch and let people struggle to walk on their own.

RK made egg rolls, how typical, a Chinese burrito. They were lacking on filling but were pretty. Mouth made little egg rolls and called them spring rolls. I pissed her off because she was the sixth person to ask me where food was supposed to be stationed. It's Chinese buffet, it doesn't matter! Hottie #3 made Peking? Duck, well duck at least. It seemed a little burned to me. Bar Code made crab rangoons, They were pretty neat because he baked them rather than deep frying. They were one of the better dishes served. He disappointed me though because he refused to eat anything we made because he doesn't eat Chinese food. That's an issue and an attidude problem if you me.

OMG! Not Vegetarian!

2010-02-16T10:12:00.006-05:00

Yesterday morning I went out to start the cars, I don't scrape windows, haven't in 15 years. Cars these days come with a built in function called "heat" and have "defroster" settings. Some even have front and rear defrosters. Amazing technology. I could be lazy and buy a remote starter, but it isn't that difficult for me, as long as I don't fall down the steps. Anyway, I went out yesterday morning to start the cars and it was snowing hard. So I went inside to check to see if there was any notice regarding school and there was an email saying school was not closed. Fine. I would appreciate some consistency though. Last time it snowed on a Thursday and on Monday we didn't have school. This time we got about two inches on Friday and had small snow squalls on Saturday and Sunday and it was snowing now. Not a problem for me, I've driven through far worse on a routine basis in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. But just be consistent.

I got to school a little early. Blue skies. Unbelievable. I think there were 8 of us out of 18. Hottie # 2 called in saying she couldn't get out of her driveway. BS. But what really pissed me off was the school president announced that anyone who missed yesterday was not to be counted absent. So what's the point of being open? It seems the school is in a quandary with snow days, make up days, and staff suffering through furloughs but being asked to work for the make days. And somehow the attendance is tied to state funding and they don't want to risk losing any. It was 45 degrees when I left school yesterday afternoon. And even then people were saying they couldn't get out of their driveways. B-S.

Last night we had a dusting of snow, blue skies at 9:00AM and right now and school was cancelled for "inclement weather." WTF!

At least I will be home for the start of curling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week's nutrition class was a little more difficult because we were not allowed a grocery list. We had to work with what was already in the kitchen. That meant that just because something was in stock when I left on Tuesday, didn't mean that it would be there when I got back to class on the following Monday.

I always try to have three parts to my meals, soup and salad and dessert, salad and entree and dessert, salad and entree and side, etc. I figured I could do a veggie wrap. I would take one of my extreme high fiber tortilla shells from home. I would make hummus and use it instead of mayo and hope for the best on a variety of vegetables.

Trying to figure out a dessert was a little more difficult. I finally decided to go with oatmeal raisin cookies since I knew there would be oatmeal at school. But I was going to have to do some modifications. The classic Quaker Oats recipe called for butter and I couldn't risk using butter for someone with a milk allergy. I searched some vegan recipes for ideas but many of them called for items I knew I wouldn't have access to like apple sauce.

The other obstacle to overcome was the recipe yield was 48 cookies. I need one cookie. I needed to try to reduce the batch size down. My goal was to make a 50g cookie and a four cookie batch. The scientist in me kicked into over drive. The Friday before my class I settled into experiment mode.

Batch Number One was the classic recipe scaled to a yield of four. It worked! Batch Number Two was my attempt at replacing the butter with canola oil. It worked! But then I did my nutrition calculations and decided I needed to get some calories out. With batch Number Three I attempted that by replacing the white sugar with Splenda. The cookies worked again! But I still needed to get rid of more calories. For the last batch I pulled out all stops. In addition to using oil and Splenda, I replaced part of the brown sugar with honey. I also replaced the egg content with egg white. And I upped the oats and reduced the flour to try to pick up a tad more fiber. They took a little bit longer to cook and the cookies had to be flattened with a spatula because they did not spread out. But they did bake.

All of the cookies were made with dried cherries because I couldn't find my raisins. From now on, I'm using cherries. I thought they were SOOOOO much better. For my class I was planning on using dried cranberries because I knew for sure they were in stock. Of course the unadulterated cookie was the best. My wife preferred the cookie with oil substituted for butter though. It had a softer texture. The cookie with Splenda and oil was almost indistinguishable from the one with oil and sugar. The final cookie with all of my changes was not bad. No, it wasn't as good as the previous three but it was still a good tasting cookie. If you had nothing to compare it to and had one fresh, you would come away thinking it was a good but not memorable cookie. Better than many of the nutriloaf cookies available.

I was excited because I achieved my two goals, make a small batch of cookies and a healthier version that still tasted good. In the end I was able to reduce the calories from 211 to 156 and the fat grams from 9g to 6g per cookie. Unfortunately I was only able to increase the fiber content from 1.5g to 1.7g per cookie. Still, it was a noble effort.

I had no idea what to do for the third component for my meal but I kind of had this idea of soup and sandwich that kept popping into my head. I wanted to make a Russian fresh mushroom soup because I was sure that I had fresh mushrooms to work with. But the recipe calls for milk. Ugh. This will only work if I have soy milk and even if I have that, can you make a good tasting soup with soy milk? I decided that I would wing the third part and wait until I got to school and see what I had.

There was soy milk!

For the soup, I halved the batch. It's a stone simple soup made with milk, fresh mushrooms, potatoes and a little barley. Instead of sauteing the mushrooms in butter, I tried with a tiny bit of olive oil. It did not work as well and I ended up overcooking the soup trying to get the mushrooms and potatoes soft. By overcooking I mean that the soup was much thicker than I have made in the past, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like thick soups. Of course the thickness could be related to using soy milk instead of real milk. Dunno. It tasted fine though.

I LOVE hummus. Just plain ordinary hummus. I don't need any of those fancy flavors like roasted pepper hummus. I can OD on hummus, and have. If you buy your hummus, stop. It is so damned simple to make and probably better for you than buying pre-made. I made a small batch and spread it on my wrap instead of mayo because if you are like me, you need something moist in your sandwich. I didn't know until later how many calories are in hummus. My nice thick layer of hummus skyrocketed my nutritious wrap to over 600 calories! A little less than if I had given her a Whopper from Burger King!!! If I had known that at the time I would have given her soup and HALF a sandwich, which probably would have been smart regardless. At least the fats from my hummus are far healthier than those in a Whopper. I did send the fiber content into the stratosphere with this meal.

For the veggies, I used a peeler to make thin strips of cucumber, carrot and bell pepper. I added a large leaf of romaine and for whatever reason decided to throw on some bits of broccoli florets. I kind of regret that last one. To take it over the edge, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes and sprinkled them over the middle. The whole thing rolled well, looked good and had the color that Chef wanted.

Except Chef wasn't there. New Chef liked what I was doing though. I hope I impressed him. He really liked my cookie and was very impressed with the thought process and effort I put into making them. Wendy City wanted her meal to go. I didn't think it was as good as the week before. The broccoli was really bothering me.

Speaking of effort. Mouth came in, pulled three items out of the walk-in that we had left over from lunch, put it on the plate, declared she was done and went home. Is that cooking? I didn't know we were doing Semi-homemade with Sara Lee.

In the end, my client didn't really care for the cookie, but hey, I tried. She did however love the soup and sandwich and appreciated all of my efforts.

Who Dat!

2010-02-12T10:58:00.005-05:00

First week of banquet we did a Chili Cook Off. Week Two was An Afternoon in Paris. Week Three was Super Bowl Party. I have no idea what day that was.

Planning was a joke. It took two and a half hours to come up with a menu, it should have taken thirty minutes. Basically we were doing bar food. Some of the ideas were off the wall. Seven layer bean dip. Tasty. Maybe you have it at your Super Bowl Party at your house. You don't get it at a bar. At least not the bars I go to. Slo Mo was indignant on his ideas. Both Bar Code and I were nonplussed. Dude, you aren't even old enough to know what bar food is! He's 19. BC and I both have 19 years of experience on him. Dumb ass.

As we were doing the grocery list, RK asks me, "you know what stuff is the absolute BEST! What's that stuff that comes in a can, got the peppers and onions?" "Ro-Tel?" says I. YEAH. There aint nothing better than that stuff, with that cheese stuff, what's it called. "Velveeta?" says I. YEAH! "I'm going to put that on the list, let's see 4 cans of Ro-Tel and that cheese, how do you spell it?" It took every bit of self control not to tell him to sound it out. He still spelled it wrong, v-e-l-v-e-t-t-a. I told him, there is no way Chef is going to get that for you. That's not cooking! That's dumping out a can and adding fake cheese. Now maybe if you made your own cheese sauce, but not Velveeta.

Another group wanted to make a dipping sauce for meatballs with grape jelly and chili paste. I don't care how great it tastes, that's not a culinary art! I just want to beat my head against a wall sometimes.

I drew Sloppy Joes. The recipe in the book calls for veal shanks but I was going to use the teres major once again. I ask Chef how much meat and put eight pounds down on the grocery list. Slo Mo looks at the list and says, oh good beef is on there. I tell him write down how much he needs. "You gonna use all that?" Yes. Write down what you need. "You touch any of my meat I'll cut your fuckin' hands off!" I tell him. Chef just laughs. That bastard is always doing that kind of thing and then when you go to grab your ingredients, they're gone.

I have a reputation of being a walking talking carnivore with an aversion to vegetables. That's not actually true but I enjoy maintaining the image. I joked with Chef that this recipe was awesome, no vegetables! Chef asked how it was possible to make Sloppy Joes without vegetables. "I don't know but the recipe called for straining the vegetables out." Really a loose meat sandwich than a Sloppy Joe. I did strain out the vegetables but left a few in, a paltry few.

I don't know what happened in the kitchen but it was like the first day of cooking all over again. I was the ONLY one out by Noon. It was pathetic. Slo Mo never even got his jalapeno poppers out. Chafing dishes weren't lit. I don't think any other food was out until quarter after. Pathetic. I met my goal though.

Wouldn't you know it, Chef bought Ro-Tel and Velveeta for that idiot. And RK couldn't even make it right. For someone who LOVES it, he should know to drain the Ro-Tel. It was more of a soup than a dip.

Not a lot of Sloppy Joe fans came though. It tasted good though. Oh well.

Moroccan Medley

2010-02-12T10:10:00.005-05:00

After our Afternoon in Paris, I have my nutrition class. Days have blended together now but I believe that we had a planning session for our nutrition class. Or maybe we cooked, I don't remember. I do know that I had asked Chef what our focus for our meal should be and Chef said Mediterranean Diet. Personally I am undecided if the Mediterranean Diet is all that yet. Is it for real or is it a fad? Probably somewhere in between but for sure it is the latest diet craze and frenzy.

Rather than just make something up like the others in my class do, I decided to do Moroccan. I try to make all of my Nutrition meals as three courses. For this one I wanted to do a soup and salad and a dessert. Most of my class is just serving a single salad, or in the case of RK a single empanada/burrito.

In addition to the nutrition summary that I have been providing my client, I started giving her copies of the recipes in case she likes what she eats. I scaled them for two. This puts me exponentially above and beyond my classmates.

The salad was a savory sweet potato salad served at room temperature. The soup was a chickpea and lentil soup with just a little bit of chicken. And for dessert I made a light fruit salad tossed in orange juice and honey. Of all of the food I have cooked in all of my classes, I am most proud of this one.

I was disappointed that afterward Chef said we need to work on our plating, he wants to see more color. He also said we need to focus on portion sizes. Surely he wasn't talking to me?

PS. I got a rave review from my client!

An Afternoon in Paris

2010-02-03T11:48:00.006-05:00

As I mentioned before, the theme for our first banquet was Paris. It seems that this was begrudgingly chosen. Oh well. Chef assigned people to dishes. He didn't call out my name so that meant I was on set up. I was just getting started when The Old Man came out and said I was working with him.

I had never seen The Old Man (TOM) before so of course I had never worked with him. He said we were making Boeuf Bourguignon. Sweet! I did not know that since my name was not called though I had suggested that when we were planning. I had brought my Julia Child with me so I was prepared. Since I had just made this at home this was not going to be that hard. I gave my book to TOM while I got prepped.

TOM started scaling the recipe and was running into problems because some of the amounts seemed excessive. Chef pulled me aside and showed me the meat we were going to use. Our class consumes a lot of teres major. I would not say this is a "new" cut of meat but it isn't something you see in the stores. It's a small shoulder muscle on the cow. It is quite tender and flavorful and if cut right you can fake a filet mignon easily with it. It seems impossible to over cook it too. You have to prep it though by removing the silver skin which I find to be a PITA. Give me rib eye any day! For some reason Chef can get it fairly cheap so we use a lot of it. We did have to explain to MILF why there were only two cuts per cow. She must have been lost in a daze.

The first step to this recipe is to render slivers of bacon. TOM was upset that I just chopped the bacon up with out weighing it. IT DOESN'T MATTER. While the bacon does get added back into the stew, the primary reason for this step is to brown the beef in the bacon fat. Unfortunately, our bacon got burned beyond usage. I had set it in a pan on the grill which was not being used. I came back later and the grill was on high and my bacon was in the pan burning black. I don't know who turned it on. It's possible that I accidentally bumped the knob with my fat ass, I don't know. But I was pissed. The bacon never made it into the Boef Bourguignon. Shhhhh, don't tell TOM, he never knew.

I bring the meat out and TOM and I start to prepping it. We chunk it up and I start to throw it in the biggest brazier I can find and then get the other half of the meat. TOM stops me and asks how much meat do we have, did I weigh it? Huh? We need to weigh it so we have our proportions right. Come on, man! This is nothing more than French stew. OK fine. I guess 15 pounds, he says better than twenty. I get a balance and it weighs in at 22 pounds. I start browning the meat while he begins chopping up the vegetables. We've got too much meat and I can't find another large brazier so I take two smaller ones and have three going at the same time.

I figure it's best to avoid TOM so I pretty much keep to watching the meat. TOM chops up the vegetables and asks my opinion on the quantity. IT'S FINE! At this point TOM is getting upset that we don't have the garlic in or any of the other spices and we only have an hour and a half left. IT'LL BE OK. Damn! I take the carrots and onions and start browning them. I grab the red wine and TOM tells me to use just a little. He says that Port is pretty strong stuff. Good to know. See you can learn something from anyone.

I turn around at this point and see TOM crushing bay leaves up. Huh? Dude, what are you doing? You can't crush those up! He says, "yes you can. If anyone asks, we'll just say the lawn got mowed today." Huh? You're going to put those in a sachet right? No. I look pleadingly at Chef. Now he asks what the hell TOM is doing. Chef scolds TOM explaining you can do that with fresh bay leaves but with dried you'll kill someone as they choke to death on one. Count how many you put in and take that same number out. Whew! My trust is TOM is now gone.

Sadly I'm forgetting a lot now, but all went well. The stew was phenomenal, maybe a little too salty but that was TOM's doing. And we forgot the mushrooms. Oh well.

Here is the Coq au Vin, which was my suggestion, made by Bar Code. Potatoes Lyonnaise, which were awful, made by Slo Mo, and a really bad version of crepes made by Hottie #3 and RK.

And here is the Boef Bourguignon!!!

Personal Chef 101

2010-02-03T10:43:00.008-05:00

Time is moving so fast I'm losing track of where I am and what I need to post.

My Nutrition class is basically Personal Chef 101.

Here is my first class effort:

Roasted Pepper and Olive Salad

Pan Seared Chicken Breast on Couscous with Green Beans and Cinnamon Gelato

I was pleased with the dish and I received a rave review from my client. It has somewhat of a Greek theme with the the olives, couscous and chicken. I'm not so sure that the couscous is actually couscous. Chef said it was but then Chef ordered a new case it it doesn't look like this stuff, but again, my client liked it, whatever it was. The chicken was seasoned with cracked pepper, cumin and turmeric. The "couscous" was tossed with onion, peppers and tomato. The green beans were seasoned with nutmeg. The gelato is not a true gelato since no custard is used. Cornstarch is used as a thickener instead. I also had to use soy milk because my client has a milk allergy. The taste was good but the texture was off. I would say it was closer to pudding than ice cream. It reminded me a lot of tapioca pudding. All in all I was pleased with my first effort. In looking at the picture, I could have done a little better on my plating.

We did this meal after cooking in the morning for our banquet class. That meant I was cooking or washing dishes from 8:30 to 4:30 with a break from 12:00 to 1:00 to serve food and eat. My ass was dragging. My feet and legs hurt so bad. I could feel myself move slower and s-l-o-w-e-r and slooooooowwwwweeeeerrrrr. I once saw a Red Wings hockey game that went to six overtimes. By the sixth period it looked like they were skating on slush instead of ice they were moving so slow due to fatigue. That is exactly how I felt.

Looking around the class, my buddy Tennessee was attempting to wing it with no prior plan. Fried prosciutto in a pesto cream sauce on homemade pasta. Kudos for home made pasta rather than processed and refined stuff, but not really a healthy meal overall. And damn that prosciutto was salty! Took me hours to get the taste out of my mouth.

Good ol' RK took three hours to make empanadas. They were the size of of a Hostess cherry pie, if not bigger. Granted they had a savory filling with rice and olives and raisins, but they were deep fried and HUGE! That was his entire plate too. He made eight, we're serving one. Some people just don't get it.

She's My Cherry Pie...

2010-02-03T10:33:00.003-05:00

Growing up I never liked birthday cake. Now if I do have a birthday cake, I want it to be chocolate chocolate chip, which is my favorite cake. But that said, I'm still not a cake fan. I'll take pie every time. Cold pie mind you. When I was a kid my Grandmother always made me a cherry pie for my birthday. It even had birthday candles on it. So for my birthday this year, my wife made me a cherry pie. Rose helped too. Those large vent holes are from her fingers.

And It's Magically Nutritious

2010-01-27T09:50:00.005-05:00

As I said, I'm taking two classes this quarter. In the afternoon I have my Nutritional Food and Menu Development class. Basically this is Personal Chef 101. As usual, the class started off slowly and spiraled down from there.

While our chili was cooking, I purchased my book for class in the school bookstore. Chef told me to buy the In Good Taste book. I cocked my head and said OK. I had noticed that everyone else had a book titled Nutrition for Foodservice and Culinary Professionals. In the book store the In Good Taste book was labeled as "required" and the Nutrition book was labeled as "recommended." Very good. Halfway through class Chef asks who has their book and a few start whining about how they don't. At that point I hold up my copy and ask, "I thought we were using this one?" Yes. Then the fireworks started. Whine, whine, whine. You told us to get the other book. Whine, whine, whine. WTF, you people can't read? (more on that later).

The issue apparently is the cost of the books. They are almost $100 in the book store. You can go online and buy a new one for half that and a used one for a tenth. For me, the class was that day and I needed the book so I bought it. I don't mean to sound like a snob, but I don't care how much the books cost. When I was in college and books were listed and ASSIGNED it was your responsibility to read the assignements BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. That meant, buy, borrow, photocopy, rent, whatever (we didn't have online sources back then, heck, we only had one bookstore, you bent over and took it). These guys are holding up the whole class because they don't want to shell out more than $5 for a used book plus $4.95 in shipping. Grow up dammit. That's like me not showing up to work because I don't have the money to buy steel toe boots. Find a way!

So any way, our modus operandi for this class is to pick someone in the school and cook a meal for them every Tuesday (or Monday if conflicts arise). We are to interview our client about their dietary needs. Cool. I can do that.

Holy shit! First we had to have a ten minute debate, explanation and just mental tripping over what a "meal" is. If you ever criticized Bill Clinton for asking the definition of the word "is" then you can shut up now since I just witnessed ten people, culinary art students, future chefs, asking for the definition of a "meal" and a "plate". Thank God my knives were locked up in a locker.

We also have to keep a notebook with our meal planning and nutritional data. It will be graded and I quote "I want you guys to put some effort into this quarter." You want me to keep a notebook? A lab notebook? Thank you Lord! This plays to my metallurgical engineering strengths.

Small scale cooking with a scientific approach? Now we are in my realm. New Girl is a former med-student so I think she and I will be the ones that shine in this class.

Not knowing a single person in the school I asked Chef for help. He recommended the receptionist, Wendy City. She's pissed me off in the past, but maybe some good food is the key to getting on her good side. She was agreeable to me cooking for her. I learned she's Type II, has a milk allergy, a shellfish allergy, does not eat red meat or catfish. Good, a challenge. I'm Type II also, so I won't need any research there, that part will be easy. Seven years of diabetic nutrition classes and I think I have that aspect down cold.

I came back told Chef and he was pleased. Now for the meal plan. I was thinking a salad, chicken and vegetable and a small dessert to cleanse the palate. I understand why Chef wanted us to use the In Good Taste book, it's a cookbook, the other is a text book, no recipes. First thing I find is a Roasted Pepper and Olive Salad. It uses kalamata olives so I immediately think Greek. I find a recipe for Pan Seared Chicken Served on Couscous and Green Beans. Perfect. To finish, a pseuso-ice cream made with skim milk, yogurt and ricotta. Yogurt just screams Greek.

I'm all set, I figure up my calorie count, proteins, and carbs based on the nutrition info given for each recipe. Looking good, about 700 calories. I start making my grocery list. Dammit, she's got a milk allergy. A ha! Cinnamon Gelato! Maybe I can substitute soy milk for the milk and get it to freeze? Chef says it's worth a try. Sweet! I'm ready to go and work out my details at home.

At that point Mayfield asks Chef about serving some of last quarter's Stollen as a dessert. What? For those that don't know, Stollen is the better tasting rich uncle of fruit cake. Chef frowns, "what are you talking about?" "The stollen bread we made. That stuff is so gooood. It'd be a great dessert Chef," says Mayfield. Yeah, like a piece half inch by half inch! Chef told him, "you have to remember what class you're in. This is NUTRITION."

Two A Days

2010-01-22T09:34:00.003-05:00

Back when I was single, rebounding and lean(er) and mean I used to work out twice a day at the gym, once around 11:00 AM and again around 11:00 PM. I don't know if I ever felt better. This quarter at school I am taking two classes on Mondays and Tuesdays. I have Banquet from 8:30-1:30 and then I have Nutrition from 2:00-5:30. It's a long day for someone who hasn't worked regular hours in ten years.

Tuesday we finally resumed classes after a week off for snow days and MLK on Monday. I was there early as usual. Bar Code came over and told me that Chef had to drop Slo Mo. Really?!? Yep, he missed all last week. He was sitting in jail. Sweeeeet! "That makes my year!" I told him.

I asked BC why he was setting up the buffet line. I mean surely we can't be doing a buffet, we haven't even had class yet. "We're doing a chili cook off," Bar Code told me. Well damn, if I had known that I would have brought one of my recipes from home. Oh well, I'll just join somebody else and ride their coattails.

The class began to fill in, slowly. Chef was apparently at the grocery getting chili supplies. New Chef was mingling with us. I can see he's getting antsy as we're not in the kitchen yet and it's 9:15. I don't know if he hears me but I tell him this group does not do well without leadership. Finally a few of us head into the kitchen and the rest slowly follow.

On my way in RK stops me and asks if I am in a group yet. Damn. Deep breath. No I don't. "Well why don't you and me team up. I got this recipe that I used at home a couple times and it's pretty good." Fine, no problem, I'll meet you in the kitchen. Sushi Boys are in this class too and and look lost so I tell them to join in with us, kind of dilute my time with RK.

Sushi Boys and RK head into the kitchen, I wash up and start filling the sinks and assembling the dishwasher. At this point Chef comes in and herds everyone out. We all sit down. Class has begun. Sign in, brief, ever so brief review of rules. Chef wants to do some neat banquets this quarter and wants us to put more effort into it. Come up with some themes. Find out what is involved in an Italian Wedding, or a Greek Wedding, or a Clam Bake. Mouth wants to do a wedding cake with birds that fly out of it. Nasty! Who wants bird shit in their cake? Salmonella Surprise Cake. She says it's an Italian Wedding thing. Chef says he's never ever seen that happen, but she can do a wedding cake if she wants.

Monday we have a big luncheon for the Travel Club and we need to think of what we want to do. I ask where there are going or what they are discussing. Chef says Valentines Day, "so what pops into your mind when I day that?" I say Paris. He looks at me confused. I say Valentines Day = romance and Paris is the city of romance. We could do an Evening in Paris, serve French food. No one seems to like the idea.

What's this! Slo Mo is here. Chef tells him he had to drop him and he needs to go to the office to be reinstated. Son-of-a-bitch! He's going to let that fucker back in! No lesson learned here. Damn it! Slo Mo's not allowed in the kitchen though, too much liability risk if he cuts himself or something since Slo Mo is now officially not a student. Thank God!

Chef says we are doing a chili cook off competition. Pair up in twos and each pair will be assigned a number. Sweet! I tell Chef I want to do Cincinnati Chili. Fine, who's your partner. I point next to him and say, "I want New Girl." I look over my shoulder at RK, sorry Bud, if this is a competition I want to win. Doh!!!!!!!!!!!! Bar Code is laughing his ass off. I didn't intend for that to come out sounding mean, but at the same time, I don't really care if he took it that way. It was true.

So after Chef goes on a long dissertation on not using the Internet for recipes and to use books, especially those in the school library, I tell New Girl we're going to look on the Internet because I know the library won't have a cookbook with Cincy Chili in it and I don't have my recipe with me. I couldn't remember the link for the recipe I wanted (Pleasant Hill Chili by the way). I found one that looked like it would work and away we went.

New Girl is not so new. She's a transfer from Chattahoochee because the two classes she needs to finish, Banquet and Nutrition, aren't offered this quarter and she wants to finish NOW. I think she is originally from here, her mom lives here so New Girl just comes up on Sunday and goes back home on Wednesday. In talking with her, her program sounds much more intensive than ours and she knows a lot more than us. It also sounds like all of her instructors took Gordon Ramsay as their role model and New Girl is grateful to be here.

We've got about a two hours now to serve since Chef led us back out late. No problem, not like chili is hard. Everyone else is in a panic but what's my mantra? Everything is Zen. I tell New Girl I want to prep every thing first. I'm looking around and everyone is weighing and measuring. Whatever. We need two pounds of ground beef. I take whatever the Sushi boys have left over after they are done weighing. Close enough. I set New Girl on chopping while I gathered the spices and start the meat cooking. We're simmering away in thirty minutes and have nothing but time to kill. I start in on the dishes, per usual and let New Girl meet some people.

WTF! I just don't get it. Slo Mo is in the kitchen making bread pudding. I guess he's just not allowed near a knife? I'm a rule follower. I might not always like the rules, but I follow them. And I enforce rules when it is my place to do so. So this just pisses me off to no end.

Bar Code and The Kid's chili looks like salsa. Hottie #2 and Hottie #3's vegetarian chili looks like I don't know what but it isn't chili, maybe stir fry. Broccoli in chili? RK's asking Chef questions about his recipe. I thought this was a recipe he's used at home before? He doesn't know what he's doing? MILF asks me to taste her chili; she thinks it is missing something. It is. I ask what she has in it and suggest another teaspoon of chili powder. She comes back later and says that was it. Chef hears her and knocks us both down a rung. "This is a competition, we DO NOT help each other." No problem. One needs to establish the rules and expectations ahead of time, but now I know. Mayfield is trembling. RK asks to taste Mayfield's chili and when he starts to offer a "friendly" suggestion, Mayfield shuts him up. Then RK asks what does "banquet" mean? You have got to be kidding me!

Show time. New Girl and I drew slot #1, which is good. This is a self serve line, which upsets me because now I have to explain how to build a 3-Way Cincinnati Chili. Chef snaps at us for all sitting down, but we've never done a self serve line before so none of us knew or understood we were still supposed to man our stations. Live and learn. Bar Code has slot #2 and we have some friendly banter selling our chili as people come through the line since they will all be voting for the best chili. Our chili is spot on. I know. I used to eat a lot of Hard Times Chili and we had just eaten at Skyline two weeks ago. Oh yeah, and I'm from Ohio too. The color was an amazing burnt burgundy color (I need to start taking pictures of the food we cook) and you could smell the sweet spiciness of the cloves and cinnamon. New Girl liked it even though she had never had Cincy style before. And I soon realized that was a problem. Neither had anyone else. I watched people skip the noodles. I watched them put the noodles in their sample cup and then put someone else's chili on top. One woman complained that we didn't put olive oil on the noodles. WTF! This isn't Italian food. One woman skipped the sampler cup and loaded her plate UP! She loves Cincinnati Chili, her mom used to make it every week. She gave ours a thumbs up, second only to her mom's. I told New Girl that if we came in less than second place, I was going to be mad.

We got to eat last. RK's chili was gone so I didn't get to taste his. Bar Code's was good but his beans were not done. Same problem we had last quarter with baked beans. We need a pressure cooker. MILF's steak chili was ok, the meat was good. The veggie "chili" was ok, would have been great with some chicken chunks, a la chicken stir fry. My vote for the best would have been Sushi Boys. Votes were tallied and.... drum roll please.... we came in third. Damn it! I don't know who came in second, it might have been Sushi Boys. First place and winners of a cookbook went to Hotties #2 and #3 with their Vegetarian Chili. All I can do is shake my head.

Anything Is Pastable at Home

2010-01-14T10:50:00.008-05:00

Yesterday I played with some new toys I got for Christmas. Trying to figure out what to do for dinner I decided on an old family standard, Beef Stroganoff. I had thawed out a chuck roast over the weekend to use because dinner fell through. At the time I had trimmed all the fat off (which I saved to render down) and de-boned it and then just put it back in the fridge.

I already had a couple of bags of egg noodles in the pantry. My family only uses the No Yolks brand, I don't know why, but that is what my Mom always used. Good enough reason for me. I haven't liked alternatives that I have tried. I also prefer their short dumpling noodle to the extra wide one. But yesterday I decided to break out my new toys. My in-laws spoiled me with their over indulgence and gave me pasta attachments for my stand mixer!!!

I've made pasta before in school. It's not hard. Like making homemade yogurt, I don't think making your own pasta is economically any better, probably not even healthier, but it is fun, their is a sense of satisfaction and I am really into this concept of knowing what is going into the food I eat. By making my own pasta I control that.

Here's my ball of pasta dough made with semolina flour. The dough knife was also a Christmas gift.

Rolling the dough out after it had rested.

Cutting the wide noodles for the beef stroganoff.

I was making the noodles early in the afternoon so I let them just semi-dry out on the counter.

Here is my pile of finished noodles. I found they were easiest to cut to length after they were mostly dry. I just used the dough knife as a chopper.

I was debating on whether or not to grind the meat or not. Since I already had the stand mixer out (not like it is ever put away) I decided to slap the meat grinder on where the pasta attachments had been and grind away. Home ground meat is always superior to store bought and this is a case where controlling the food that goes in is important.

The meal was great! The noodles were better than I would have thought. As in my class, I find that homemade noodles don't cook quite as tender as store bought, but they were still very good. I also think they held the sauce better.

What Have You Been Doing With Your Life?

2010-01-12T10:20:00.005-05:00

"Uh... professional killer."

"Oh! Good for you, it's a growth industry."

(One of the greatest, funniest, most under appreciated movies of all time).

I can't believe I went a whole quarter without posting. I'm sorry if anyone out there was looking forward to my school exploits. I guess I was really busy though I can't tell you at what. You know how it is. There's so much to cover that I guess at this point I should just summarize and move on.

Last quarter was American Cuisine. Sadly that had to be defined for RK. I'm not sure which word he didn't understand. I missed the first two classes because I was working in Alabama but hit the ground running the second week. Pizza Girl had the first week, her assignment was New England. I made the Boston baked beans for her except neither she nor I realized her recipe called for cooking the beans for 6-8 hours. Needless to say they came out way underdone, down right inedible. Live and learn.

In week 2 or 3 I think, I sliced my finger open and needed five stitches. It was Karma really. Early in the morning I was joshing with Tennessee, making fun of others knife skills, particularly RK. Later in the day I was talking to MILF while chopping parsley. I was looking to the side talking to her and when I looked back I realized my finger was not supposed to be under my knife. Too late. That of course prevented a lot of blogging.

Tennessee and I were assigned Mid Atlantic. We were to go week 4. I spent almost all of my free time prepping for that. I traded T the report writing and PowerPoint presentation for physical labor and dealing with the "workforce." It turned out to be a good move on my part. T is a short timer and one of two in our class who actually works in a kitchen. He has a lot of experience and was great to work with. We were the first group to not use a straight line buffet table and to decorate the table, a trend that continued. We truly raised the bar to another level.

Our menu.

My mantra in the kitchen is Everything's Zen. I lost my cool once during our week though. Slow Mo was supposed to make the potato chips. Well actually Slow Mo was supposed to make salad dressings but he kept bailing and disappearing. I got mad and put him on potato chips. Then he disappeared again. So I grabbed Scooter, who doesn't have a full deck, and put him with Igor to make the potato chips. I came back into the kitchen after checking on the buffet table at least twice and no chips were being made. When I asked why I got four different excuses. At that point I started slamming the table with my hand, "I don't care just make the fucking potato chip!" T lost it later when we needed people out serving and Igor and Slow Mo were frying the chips along with at least two other people. "Guys, how many people does it take to make potato chips! Get out there!"

I'm not sure which week it was but one week I snapped and went after Slow Mo. We were working the buffet and he kept disappearing. I was trying, struggling, to work three stations. He popped back in and Igor asked where he had been. At the same time the two of them are constantly touching each other, slapping and kicking like kids. In Slow Mo's typical Vanilla Ice voice, "I was taking a shit mannnnn. You don't believe me, you can go in there and smelllll it." This was while we were serving. I turned around and said, "Why don't you two go back in the kitchen and pump each other. On second thought, just leave. Get out of here if you aren't going to be professional." I grabbed Slow Mo by the back of the neck and marched him straight into the kitchen. We didn't see him the rest of the day. At the end of class he sat and sulked during the presentation. I heard that on the following Monday the whole class lit into him. Ever since that day, he got into it with someone in class. I guess I was the enabler that empowered people to stand up to him. I apologized to Chef for my behavior, if I was out of line, but he smiled and said Slow Mo had it coming.

Those are the highlights I think for the class. Sorry, I'm sure it would have been more entertaining week to week, there's a lot that I have forgotten and am passing over. Truthfully the class peaked with T and my week. No one else put forth the effort that we put in. I'm really hoping some people drop. Baby Face did get canned. Chef told Slow Mo to not come back and take plumbing, but I know he will be back. Chef did lay down the law on the final day after Super Clean up. NO MORE CELL PHONES IN CLASS!!! Yeah!!! These guys are constantly texting, surfing and listening to music and not paying attention. He says he is going to start enforcing the attendance policy, we'll see but I know a handful of people will not be receiving grades for last quarter for too many misses. But unfortunately they have the option to make up the classes instead of failing. Kind of toothless if you ask me. We do have to start wearing our neckerchiefs. I'm not crazy about that but will gladly trade it for the no cell phone policy.

Oh wait, one last nugget. One week Chico comes out to refill the soup. I made the soup and put it in a container in the warmer that was easy to handle with a larger potful behind it. Chico transfers the large pot to a pitcher and then brings both the pitcher and the pot out to the buffet table to refill the chafing dish. Huh? He pours the soup from the pitcher in first and then part of the pot into the chafing dish. Then he sets the pot of soup, dripping down the side, on the WHITE LINEN table cloth and looks at the rest of us and asks "what should I do with this?" Me, being a smart ass replies, "Oh, just leave it there." AND HE DOES!!!! What a dumb ass.

In the mean time, I haven't done a lot of cooking at home, but I did make a few dishes that are noteworthy. Ham braised in Madeira, boeuf à la bourguignonne, and fruit cake, waffles, banana bread, and turkey hash for example. Rose and I made a lot of cookies together. I want to discuss cooking with kids more. I just need to find some time.

The winter quarter of classes started yesterday but classes were canceled due to "inclement weather." I'm not sure why, it snowed last Thursday and everything was clear. Classes were again cancelled for today. So I have not started my Banquet or Nutrition classes yet. Monday is a holiday and the school is closed so we will see what next Tuesday brings.

And that's where I am. I think.

Why I'm Not a Pastry Chef

2009-12-05T21:38:00.002-05:00

It is ALL homemade though. Homemade chocolate devils food cake and homemade butter cream frosting. Ugly ain't it?

Left Over Thanksgiving Turkey Hash

2009-12-01T12:39:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving was piece of cake this year. It wasn't at our house. Our only responsibility was Dinah to make the family secret dressing. I'm not a dressing guy. I grew up with stuffing. I think dressing is a Southern thing and I just haven't bonded with it yet. But hers is good, albeit dry, but I just put gravy on it.

I made Funeral pie which I hope to post on soon.

I'm down on turkey this year. My favorite parts are the skin and the dark meat. I'm the ONLY one that eats the skin in my family. But there was little good crispy skin this year. But the dark meat just wasn't right. The problem might be me. Back in January I posted about trying a turkey thigh. Again at Thanksgiving I found the meat rubbery and just unpleasant to eat. I even found the color to be wrong. Maybe I'm just becoming dissatisfied with turkey. I've never been that fond if it anyway.

We did bring home two turkey legs. I have friends that crave smoked turkey legs like you see at fairs. I've had one good one before at a Nascar race, but in general I don't like legs (turkey legs that is). All the sinews and cartilage just give me fits. Scrounging for lunch today I saw the foil packages sitting in the corner of the fridge. Why not?

I grabbed the legs and picked off the best meat I could, then chopped it up. I didn't even cut myself thank you very much. I grabbed the left over French fries from Saturday's lunch Rose always insists on bringing home. Left over fries are never right no matter how you reheat them. I diced them and also an onion. Tossed it all with a little oil in the skillet and voila!

A little salt and pepper and better than any can of Hormel's corned beef has you ever had. You don't really cook anything as much as give it a little browning.

Unraveled

2009-11-21T20:47:00.002-05:00

I got the remaining stitches out tonight. My finger isn't all the way back yet. I'm having a lot of stiffness and I haven't quite figured out which parts are numb and which parts aren't. So typing, of my long winded sort, is still a little further out. But hopefully I will be posting more soon.

Oh No, No Eggos!

2009-11-18T08:23:00.003-05:00

I'm almost back... in the meantime there is apparently a great Eggo shortage!

The Great Eggo Shortage!

It's a good thing that Rose and I make our own. I freeze the leftovers and she eats them throughout the week.

Episode IV - A New Hope

2009-10-12T12:34:00.002-04:00

Class began anew last week, American Regional Cuisine. My new hope is that some in my class will finally begin to take things a little seriously and knuckle down and work hard instead of just trying to coast through. I was not in class though as I was in Alabama working on assignment. I guess it was my yearly step out of retirement to help out a foundry. Hopefully this one doesn't announce that is is closing the doors like happened last time. I was happy to see that I still have some mad skillz left, noticing some small details that were lost upon people with far more knowledge and years of experience than I have.

My class shifts from Monday/Tuesday to Wednesday/Thursday. I just finished sharpening my knives so I am all set to go. I'd really like a new chef's knife, a longer one of course. Isn't that what we always wish for. Given money is tight, if this class goes well maybe I will celebrate completing it with a new knife. It will be tough to wait though.

Your Own...

2009-10-10T10:32:00.003-04:00

...Personal...
...~~Jesus~~ Eggplant...

Admit it, you LOVED that Depeche Mode song, but hate that you can never get it out of your head.

Here is my Listia de Gandia eggplant in the Topsy Turvy Planter. This really is a great way to grow eggplants. Stupid easy to grow this way. But, I was surprised it took about 4 1/2 months to get this small harvest.

And here are my beautiful little ones. Now I just have to decide what I am going to cook with them.

Go Big Read

2009-09-24T12:30:00.002-04:00

I read this excellent article yesterday regarding Michael Pollans' book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto which happens to have been on my Amazon wish list for a long time. I first heard Pollan speak one night on Real Time With Bill Maher. I don't agree with every principal Pollan advocates but I do with many of them. I'm quite proud of my Alma Mater for starting the Big Read program. Unlike the critics, I don't see the school as endorsing or supporting Pollans's book or position. I see the school as distributing a book for people to read and draw their own conclusions. I see the school as steering educational debate. And isn't that supposed to be part of education?

Super Clean Up

2009-09-22T10:34:00.003-04:00

On Thursday we had what is called Super Clean Up. The entire kitchen is cleaned from top to bottom, the ceiling, the walls, all of the equipment, inside and out. Super Clean Up is worth one letter grade. We had to be there by 9:00am but the sooner we started the sooner we could get out. Mouth was in there early. I waited until there were about six more people and then started with them. Mouth deserved a head start. There were people who didn't show up until 10:00. SloMo didn't show up until almost 11:00. Bastards. I really hope they get docked but we'll never know. Shockingly Ridges didn't even show.

There are basically two classes. There is a third class but it only has maybe four people in it. So we had plenty of people for cleaning. Chef set out five or six pages detailing what needed to be cleaned and how. People initialed what they wanted to clean. I took both mixers. After that I took the double pizza oven. Hottie #2 helped me on that. Then we both moved on to the broiler. That was pretty nasty with all the baked on greasy carbon buildup. After that was finished, I wasn't in the mood to join any other group and with all of the jobs basically divvied up I went into the dish washing area and cleaned the dishwasher itself and cleaned other people's stuff. That pissed me off a little. When Hottie and I were cleaning the broiler we cleaned our own parts, we didn't toss them to other people to clean and come back for them but it's a petty issue really.

We finished by 12:30. I was exhausted but that's it for this quarter. Next quarter begins October 7th I think so I get a little downtime.

Pop Final

2009-09-22T09:34:00.005-04:00

Last week was the last week of the quarter. We were supposed to finally do our fish on Monday, review for our final and then take our final on Tuesday. Except the fish order had not come in. Chef lollygagged around until about 9:30 and said that we would review for our exam.

Flashbacks to my first class, people weren't paying that much attention. I was sitting with RK and Mayfield and they were furiously writing as if God was handing down another set of commandments. They don't have two working ears between them so they kept asking for everything to be repeated. We have a syllabus so I didn't bother writing anything down. RK didn't even know what a syllabus was even though he has one.

Chef finally got frustrated and annoyed and asked how many people had read any of the book. Maybe half the class raised their hands. We have reading assignments each week based on what we are cooking, according to the syllabus. Then Chef asked who had read everything. The only hand left in the air was mine. Lots of dirty looks. RK snapped at me, "you actually read the book, everything!" Well yeah. It's the same damn syllabus as my first class which is a prerequisite for this class, so everyone should have read this stuff before. And on top of that I had to read the chapters to know how to cook whatever we were cooking, though sometimes I read them after the fact. For example, when we made fresh pasta I had to read up on that first.

Chef was furious. Fine, you've got an hour to read everything and then we're taking the exam. Dammit. I had planned on Tuesday. I still had a lot of reviewing that I wanted to do before the exam. Everyone was in a state of shock. Mayfield starts whining bout how he never thought we would be tested on stuff in the book. "I thought the class was just about cooking, stuff we do in the kitchen." I just wanted to bang my head into the table. These people need to understand that this is a culinary program. You need to decide if you want to be able to cook at a professional LEVEL, not necessarily become a chef, but the end goal is to have that ability. So yeah, that does mean understanding what a coulis is or what beurre manie means and how to use it. How are you supposed to interact with other professionals if you don't? It will take a lot longer to find a specific fruit sauce if that's what you call it rather than searching for a raspberry coulis. If you just want to cook a better soup, take classes at Sur la Table or Viking or Williams-Sonoma.

Out of nowhere, RK looks at me and asks, "I don't mean to be mean, but how much do you weigh?" WTF! I looked at him dumbfounded and just said a lot. "Yeah, but how much?" WTF!!! Guess. He guessed, I said yes, and then he goes, "I never noticed how heavy you are until I saw how you really fill out that chair." I really have no words.

The test was not easy but it was very much like the final for my first quarter. It was a lot of writing. I can't believe how bad my handwriting has become but except for writing an odd check once every other month or so, I hardly ever write anything. I think I did very well on the whole test except for labeling the primal beef and pork cuts. I went back and looked and only got half of them correct. Oh well. The worst part of all of this was that you take the test, then present it to Chef who goes over it, then he sends you back to answer the questions you left blank or got wrong but you get to use the book the second time around. Grrrrrr. I really hope he gives some of these guys Ds or Fs to make a statement because otherwise there isn't much incentive to do well or try hard.

Baby Face didn't show up. I don't get it.

After the test, Chef asked if we wanted to do our fish on Wednesday or next quarter. The class was split, some just not wanting to come in on Wednesday, some eager to do it. I could have gone either way. It actually had to be explained how we could cook fish in American Regional Cooking. Um, you'd make a regional fish dish. Duh. The naysayers won out.

Though the final was Monday, the last day of class is actually Thursday when we clean up.

Earl of Sandwich

2009-09-16T09:06:00.005-04:00

We still had no fish after Labor Day, a good thing really. If it had come in on Friday it would have had a long weekend in the cooler before we got to it. Since we had no fish and the end of the quarter was rapidly approaching Chef had us prepare two sandwiches and and a side dish using up what we could in the walk-in.

The Pantry class involves a lot of sandwich making so this was a little introduction to those that might be taking that class. And in my opinion, most of the people in my class just don't get it. Nearly everyone just made shit up, throwing ingredients between bread or wrapped it in a tortilla. No thought went into what they were doing at all.

Chef wanted sweet potatoes used up. Man they were nasty. We had to cut the mold off of most. Nearly everyone did some version of fried sweet potatoes, chips, fries, waffle fries, etc. Absolutely no creativity. Igor did a very poor Monte Cristo. It was obvious that one, he's never had one, and two, he didn't bother reading the recipe. Baby Face did a Philly Chicken wrap that wasn't a Philly. It was just chicken and cheese. I did a classic Kentucky Hot Brown with a side of hash browns.

The hard part was not going too fast and being done at 10:30 instead of noon. My dish was fairly simple. It's an open face sandwich, usually topped with turkey but I used chicken breast, covered in a cheese sauce "gravy," topped with a cross of two strips of bacon and a garnish of tomato wedges. Served hot of course.

The cheese sauce was simple but involved steps I had never really done before as a whole. The sauce is made from cheese melted into a bechamel sauce and a bechamel sauce is basically a roux blended with heavy cream. So the first thing I did was make a roux but before I could make the roux I needed to clarify some butter. Simple but many steps. I only needed enough sauce for two sandwiches and my book recipes made about a quart of bechamel sauce and a quart of cheese sauce so I kind of eyeballed everything figuring a sixth of the recipe would work for me. Both the bechamel and the cheese sauce came together nicely. I strained the sauce through a chinois into a baine marie and held it on a warming shelf over the stove to keep it warm.

There were about five other people who were going to use bacon. It made absolutely no sense to have five people each cooking bacon so I got a sheet pan and a rack and went around asking people for their bacon so I could cook it all at once in the oven. I also know that every time, Chef says this is the preferable way to cook bacon, NOT in a frying pan, NOT on the flat top, which is exactly what the other five people were starting to do when I came around. You would have thought I was from Mars with the looks I got from every one when I started putting the bacon on the rack. They just don't pay attention and listen, doesn't matter if they are 19 or 55.

Sauce was done. Chicken was just a matter of sauteing two breasts and slicing them up. When the bacon was done, I cut the crust off of four slices of plain white bread and put them on the same rack that the bacon had been on and put them in the oven to toast. At this point I am basically done, ready to plate. I plated my sandwiches and put them in the warmer to stay hot and then started on shredding potatoes for my hash browns.

My hash browns were made with both Idaho potatoes and sweet potatoes with diced shallots. Since my sandwich had Parmesan cheese in the sauce, I topped my hash browns with Parmesan cheese also. I had my doubts about combining the two different starches but it actually worked quite well. Unlike the rest of my class, I remembered that the shredded or cut potatoes need to be in water to prevent browning. I had all of my ingredients prepped but at this point my side of the kitchen is being over run, so I get the hell out of the wait and go do dishes.

On a side note, I had decided not to start the dishwasher and fill the sinks and see what happened. It wasn't until 10:30 that Mayfield realized it hadn't been done when he went to wash a pan out and took the time to do it. It's a shame the dishwasher was already put together since I normally have to do that the first day of the week also.

When I got back to the kitchen, Mayfield was whining because someone had stolen his bacon. It was kind of his fault because he didn't claim it after it was cooked and let it sit by the oven for about an hour. I knew Ridges took it for his sandwich. I was pretty disappointed he didn't fess up to it. Mayfield had to start over but he put his bacon on a half sheet and put it in the broiler, which by the way he has never used before. I'm not going to say that we are not allowed to use the broiler but we are strongly discouraged by Chef to use it. Mayfield walked away and in a few minutes his bacon promptly started burning. Chef began yelling to get the bacon out. Chico was standing right in front of it looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Chef then gave a dissertation about not using the broiler after which I watched no less than a three people cook in it. Nobody listens. I really hope Chef either fails a few or gives them low grades just to send a message and an incentive to take the class seriously.

We had to present our sandwiches. No one knew how to do this. We did this in my Professionalism class and I let the teenyboppers slide a little since they don't watch Food Network or go to fine restaurants. Chico just said he had a ham and cheese sandwich. That's it? You've got to sell it people. I know most of them watch Food Network. Watch Chopped or Iron Chef America. there is a way to do this. Hell, go out to eat to a nice restaurant and listen to the server sell the specials to you. Chef went through each as if it were a competition noting that had this been the Pantry course, there would have been knocks for lack of color, height, plating, etc. I think it was lost on most. He had no comments on mine other than that at the Brown Hotel in Louisville they sell thousands of these sandwiches every day. My sandwich went over well I think. Both were eaten. I thought it came off spot on, even better than the one I had back in May in Lexington.

I think RK is starting to get a little miffed with me. When I was making my cheese sauce he came over and asked how long I had been in school. I think he thinks I'm a ringer. I told him this was only my third quarter, which should be the same as him but I'm having my doubts as to whether he took Professionalism and Serve Safe or not. You could see the little wheels turn in his head. Later when we were eating he asked me what restaurant I worked in. I said I have never worked in a restaurant other than McDonald's back in high school. The little wheels turned a little more. I can see the resentment starting to set in.

Extra Credit

2009-09-14T15:45:00.008-04:00

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to cook for the USO at the Atlanta airport for soldiers passing through the airport on the way home or way out.

Well, not exactly.

A year ago in my first class with the teenyboppers, Chef explained his expectations for the class. Besides the mundane like being there on time and every day and wearing your uniform, one of the expectations he mentioned was being involved in extracurricular activities. Chef said from time to time he will organize trips to ACF meetings or host ACF meetings. Also he will volunteer us to cook for various projects. We don't have to be involved in all of these activities but he does expect us to be involved to some extent and our participation is taken into consideration for our grade. A year ago he said that he had signed us up to cook for soldiers at the Atlanta airport, Labor Day 2009. But that was all the detail he knew at the time.

The original plan was to go down to Atlanta, cook in a real kitchen, and then serve the soldiers as they went through the line. That didn't happen. Instead we were going to prep the food in our kitchen and then Chef was going to deliver the food on Monday, Labor Day. Chef said it was strictly voluntary, I saw it as extra credit, so I showed up at 3:00pm on Sunday. No one else from my class showed. Another girl showed up about twenty minutes after me. Coincidentally she was in my first class. Another guy showed up about an hour later. He's finished the program and works for Chef at his restaurant. That was it.

Our menu was roast chicken, barbecue pork loin that Chef had smoked at his restaurant, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, roast potatoes, corn, and more of that key lime pie. I started in on the chicken. I think there were two cases worth, about 200 pieces. I filled five sheet pans. It took some time only because I had to wash the chicken, separate out the wings and pop out the bone in the thighs. I brushed the chicken with olive oil and seasoned the pieces with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, salt, pepper, and tarragon. Chef reported back no complaints.

Pizza Girl worked on chopping up vegetables to jazz up the canned beans. All of the food that we were cooking was donated by Chef's vendors. He was pretty disappointed with his vendors' contributions. Apparently they don't donate any more. A sign of the economic times I suppose but but pretty sad given the cause. Just goes to show you where loyalties really lie.

Sous Chef sliced the pork loin on the big meat slicer. I think there were seven loins. I have a really hard time remember meat cuts. It would help to learn the why they have the names they do. One would assume that pork loin comes from the leg or thigh area of the pig but it comes from the back. The barbecue sauce was a combination of two sauces. One was Bulls Eye but I don't know what the other one was.

Imoved onto the potatoes. This was basically the same as what we had done on Tuesday, except I think I had sixty pounds of potatoes! I filled a huge roasting pan with about forty pounds and then Pizza Girl started a second roasting pan. I seasoned both pans just like we had on Tuesday. Again, no disgruntled eaters reported by Chef.

Meanwhile, Chef made the macaroni and cheese. It was canned cheese sauce. Chef put some other stuff in it but I'm not sure what.

The last dish was the corn. Pizza Girl set out three large aluminum foil pans and filled them with the cooked frozen corn. The corn was pretty tasteless. We hit it hard with salt and a pound of butter in each pan!

We were done around 6:30. It was hard work but it was fun. And there was a nice warm fuzzy feeling for doing something good for these soldiers. Chef's plan was to come back in at 3:00AM! and cook everything, load the van up and head to the airport at 7:00AM. Chef said it was a tiny kitchen when he got there. He was worried that he had too much food, only enough for 200 but was told that was great, they were expecting 300-350 soldiers passing through. I'm sure each one of them loaded their plates up too. They had USO volunteers serving but Chef, his wife and Sous Chef also served. Chef said they announced each of our names over the PA system thanking us. And each of us received a flag patch from Operation Chefs Unite that we are supposed to iron onto our jackets. How cool is that!

Cooking for 100

2009-09-10T11:22:00.006-04:00

On Monday (the 31st) we had to cook for a travel club, about 100 people. The menu was pork loin, fried chicken, green beans, roast potatoes, broccoli casserole, coleslaw, a carrot salad, peach cobbler and the frozen key lime pie we unloaded from the previous week. There might have been another dish, I don't remember.

I told Red I wanted to work with her since I had not yet. Hottie # 2 was in our group also. We picked the potatoes. Chef wanted red potatoes cut in half, with onion, seasoned and roasted. I was late getting started with the others because I had to fill the triple sink and start up the dishwasher. When I got to our table Hottie and Red were slicing onions. I got a little uncomfortable because both of them kept deferring to me for instructions. It's not my show people. I appreciate the respect but you have to be able to think and act on your own.

They asked how to cut the onions. I said sliced into rings would be fine. Hottie was watching Red slice a large onion. She looked a little wide eyed and said Red was scaring her. I looked and could see how the onion wobbled as she tried to cut through it. It did indeed look like Red would cut herself at any moment. I agreed with Hottie and said if the onions were that large then go ahead and do half slices to be safe. Red got a little defensive and told me to make up my mind. Hey I don't need this shit. I told her I agreed with Hottie, it looked like she would cut herself at any moment and it didn't help that her knife was dull. She retorted, "fine, I've only been doing this for forty years." Sigh. I really, don't need this. "Fine," I said. "I'm just worried about your safety, If you've got big unstable unions like that then do it this way." I showed them how to take a sliver off the side of the onion so that you have a stable flat spot and the onion won't rock and wobble when you try to cut it.

Red had asked me earlier how many potatoes we needed. I had no idea. I haven't learned all those rules of thumb for X many pounds of something for Y many people. I'm hoping that comes in the Purchasing class. I told her to fill a hotel pan and use that many. Chef came by later and said we needed thirty pounds! I went to grab a balance and found we only had 15 pounds. So I took on weighing and cleaning the other half of the potatoes we needed. Hottie was flying through slicing the potatoes. To think that at the beginning of the quarter she was afraid of her knife!

While I was washing the potatoes they asked me if they they should cut the little ones in half. I said yes. Really? Damn it people! "Look I understand that the small ones are the same size as the cut halves but Chef said cut the potatoes in half so that is why I said yes cut the little ones in half. It REALLY does not matter to me." There was some muttering under their breath.

Meanwhile, The Kid was pestering me on how to cook the green beans. I don't know. I said I would do it with onions, maybe some peppers, maybe a meat of some kind. Like bacon? Sure. Well how much? I don't know! I said we were doing thirty pounds of potatoes so I bet thirty pounds of green beans. Ask Chef, dude. I don't know why so many people have such a hard time with going to Chef and asking for information or clarification. So many end up doing something wrong because they refuse to ask him. I never hesitate.

Sushi #2 asked me how to make broccoli casserole. Me? I'd make it the same way that we made squash casserole. Turns out I was wrong, but I think the concept was the same, at least in my eyes. They ended up using canned cheese sauce instead of making a cheese sauce, cheddar based instead of Swiss based. In the squash casserole we mixed the bread crumbs in the casserole, in the broccoli casserole they used rice in place of the bread crumbs. For the squash casserole we topped it with cheese, they topped the broccoli casserole with bread crumbs. Just proof as to why you ask Chef when you don't know what to do.

Back to the potatoes. I suggested tossing the potatoes in olive oil and seasoning with salt and pepper and rosemary. No one had any objections but Hottie said she doesn't cook with salt and couldn't recommended it. I said fine, but remember we aren't cooking for ourselves but for our customers. So we agreed on the salt. Hottie also wanted to add garlic. I said it sounded like a great idea and fetched the big jar of cloves for her. She mashed and minced it like a pro. We got everything mixed up and seasoned and into the oven the big roasting pan went.

While were were seasoning the potatoes, Hottie mentioned that no one was making fried chicken. You've got to be kidding me! Well, no reason why we couldn't do that too. Really rather simple. I got the case of chicken parts out to wash. Hottie made an egg wash and Red got the flour together. Chef wanted the flour seasoned, salt, pepper, onion powder. We were out of onion powder. Hottie wanted cayenne pepper in there too and I agreed but we were out of that also. We tried grinding up red pepper flakes but that was completely futile. Chef said no one in this area used red pepper in their fried chicken. What! When we lived in Bainbridge everybody used cayenne in their fried chicken. of course maybe the issue is there is no, and I mean no fried chicken in North Georgia. Not in Blarisville or anywhere nearby. When I asked where to get fried chicken around here I was told KFC. Gag. We ended up using a little bit of dried chipotle powder.

We fried all of the chicken in the deep fryer. It came out fairly good though I thought it was way under seasoned. I would have liked a little zip in it as Hottie #2 had suggested. Chef wanted the dishes caught up so I jumped on them while others served the food in one of the meeting rooms. I just chugged along on the dishes when Chef called me out. I sat down in our area and Chef briefly lectured us on not busing the dishes out of the meeting room. He sent everyone in to get them. When I got up he told me to sit down, I had done enough dishes.

After the dishes had been bused we were allowed to eat. All of the food was very good. Half the class was no where to be found. I joked with Chef that even when he tells them to stop working and eat they don't follow directions.

No class on Monday but Chef is working on a dinner on Sunday, anybody who wants to help can come in at 3:00pm. I know this means extra credit so I plan on being there.

Cookies and Eggs

2009-08-31T11:13:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday we still had no fish. Chef didn't want us to start any deeply involved project, so we made cookies.

I was sitting with the Sushi Boys so I said I would work with them. Neither of them had ever made cookies before!!! Ever! "Well OK then, you guys pick. I don't care what we make, I'll just be assisting since you've never done this before." They picked peanut butter cookies.

I had them get all the equipment and ingredients ready while I filled the triple sink and assembled the dishwasher, because apparently I am the only one who does this. Now that I think about it, maybe next week I won't and see what happens.

Chef wanted 2-3 dozen cookies which is about what each recipe called for. I think we ended up with a little more than that though. I immediately fetched a balance to weigh up the flour, peanut butter and other dry ingredients. I had a little flush of joy when Chef reprimanded all of the other groups for using spring scales. Chef hates those scales. I paid attention in my first class and knew this so I always grab the balance. You know it really is not hard to do well and get a good grade if you just follow directions (this is to be a prophetic statement).

Something that really irks me about professional/institutional recipes, besides not being in metric, is that the amount types of ingredients are not specified. For example, 10 ounces of peanut butter. Is that fluid ounces or weight ounces? In my world, as an engineer, measurements are always, always specific, fl. oz. or wt. oz. There is no confusion. Chalk up another point to the metric system. You can't get grams and milliliters confused. I guess the rule is that free flowing liquids are measured out by volume and everything else is by weight. Do you know I have to constantly tell people that the first of four lines on the small measuring cup is a cup?

For our size recipe we could easily use a stand mixer, but just barely. I showed the boys little things like cracking the eggs into a separate container rather than straight into the bowl so as not to accidentally get any shells in the dough. In order to get the flour into the mixing bowl, I used a Silpat and made a funnel. It would have worked better if the Silpat was the same size as the one I have at home but it was twice as big. It worked though.

Ridges came over to see how we were doing. He cupped his hands and said they only had that much dough. What! How did that happen? He said he didn't know and just shook his head. I asked who we was working with and he said Red and RK and that RK wanted to halve the recipe. Ah. The rest of the day Chef gave RK a hard time for not making enough cookies. They were pretty cookies but they didn't even fill half a sheet pan. They were making spritz cookies piped with a pastry bag with half a maraschino cherry on top.

Since we were ready to start dropping cookies I took all of our dirty dishes into the dish washing area. MILF was in there doing dishes listening to her MP3 player. What are you doing in here, why aren't you cooking? I'm mad at my group. Really. who are you working with? She told me Hottie #2 and Mouth. I was surprised she was mad at Hottie since they often work together and have always gotten along. Not surprised about Mouth though. I've worked with Hottie #2 before and found her easy to get along with. From what I heard later, Mouth and Hottie wanted to make chocolate chip cookies and MILF didn't want to so she lost the vote 2-1 and stormed off.

The directions in our book prescribed splitting our dough into one pound halves, rolling each into a twelve inch long, slicing off one inch discs and then rolling each disk into a ball to be flattened with a fork on the baking sheet. Huh? I called Chef over. Why do we have to triple handle the dough to make dough balls when we could just scoop the balls directly from the mixing bowl. He was dumbfounded too and told us to just use an ice cream scoop. I told Sushi #2 where they were and sent him off to fetch one. He came back with two large ice cream scoops. I laughed. Dude, those will make twelve inch cookies! Weren't there any smaller scoops? He went back to look and found two tablespoon dishing scoops. They were right next to the ice cream scoops but he didn't see them.

We ended up with two and a half sheets of cookies. The guys were really impressed that they made actual cookies. I still can't believe it was there first time. Chef had us cook them at a lower temp than in the book. They came out great. I didn't try anybody else's cookies.

After all the cookies were out, everyone was just standing around. I was putting some dishes away when I saw a few people clustered around the stove and Chef with a few flats of eggs on the table. Sushi #2 told me to get three eggs, we were making omelets. I did a few more dishes then asked Chef for instruction, better to not rely on hearsay. He told me crack three eggs into a bowl, we were making omelets. I asked him if I needed milk and he said no, some people like to use it, he doesn't, but if you whip your eggs enough you won't need it. So I cracked my three eggs and gently beat them with a whisk. MILF was running around looking for Cayenne pepper. Ridges was adding salt and pepper to his. Someone else was looking for broccoli to put in his. Mouth already had hers started at the stove on the other side.

STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the few times I have ever seen Chef outright mad. It might have been the first time for every one else. Time to get dressed down. Chef went on to say how many of us aren't good at following directions (see the prophecy from above). If he says crack three eggs, that doesn't mean add stuff to them, it doesn't mean make an omelet, it means crack three eggs. If any of you have added stuff to you eggs or started cooking, throw it out. I only want to see three eggs. Many of you are going to end up working for a chef and if he tells you to do something, you do it. You just can't do what you want or flavor things they way you'd like He then went on to explain, the classic speech I have heard so many times from so many people, you all are not always going to work with someone you like. You aren't always going to like your boss. That's why I always want you working with different people, so you can learn those skills in here before you go out there. You aren't always going to agree or get along with the others in your group but you have to learn how to (pretty sure this was a reference to MILF). It was a good and well deserved rah rah speech.

At first I was pretty excited about the omelet making because I really need to improve mine but after I saw Chef's demo I saw this was not the info I was looking for. All we were doing was frying an egg, flipping it in the pan and then sliding the egg out onto a plate, cheesing the top before we folded the egg over with the edge of the pan. I've seen this technique at so many cook to order hotel breakfast buffets. I like to have some of the ingredients mixed into the egg so I always try to fold the egg over in the pan and this is where I am struggling. Mine taste great but the looks aren't always there.

Chef very clearly said to get your pan hot, then add the butter so that it melts quickly without burning then add your eggs. RK was up first and he put a pan down on the stove with the butter already in it. I just don't get this guy. He was standing right next to Chef when the instructions were given! I watched Mouth come over with her second attempt. She had to dump her first one because she had started before Chef said to. She knows everything. Her eggs stuck to the pan badly. Why? Because she already had her eggs in the pan before she set it on the stove. Again, nobody in this class listens. How hard can it be?

Once I had a physics exam in high school. Our teacher told us to read all of the instructions before starting the exam. The first instruction was put your name on the exam. The second instruction was to go to the last problem on the exam. The last problem said "turn your exam in now. Any marks on your exam other than your name will result in an F for not following directions." More than half the class failed that exam. I've never forgotten that lesson.

I did piss Mouth off though because I quite loudly asked her if she ever smiled. Oh did she glare at me. But my point was made. Chef laughed and said he had seen her smile once when she was yelling at someone.

Both Sushi #2 and Hottie #2 were timid about flipping their eggs. I rooted them on saying the secret is that you have to believe that you can flip the egg. If you don't believe in yourself you won't be able to do. "I know you can do it so just do it." Both flipped their eggs perfectly. Me? I got impatient and flipped mine before my eggs had fully set. I lost half down the burner. I ended up with a small omelet but I did get an omelet.

After we had cleaned up we were instructed to pick out a fish dish to prepare. I immediately knew what I wanted to cook. I wanted to do fish in parchment paper, poissons en papillote. I got the thumbs up from Chef and went to check on ingredients. Meanwhile a HUGE order came in and Chef went to check on that. I helped a few others with finding ingredients, giving them ideas on fish or alternatives, trying to convince MILF that the recipe she picked would not be too hard, I'd have plenty of extra time to help her. Mouth announced she was leaving. We still had an official one hour to go before class was over. Chef came back in a few minutes, asked where she was and went into a rage when he found out she had left,. He called her cell phone about five times and got even angrier that she didn't answer.

I just don't understand this crap. I wonder if we will see Mouth on Monday, though my bet is yes, she seems to have some type of in with Chef to get away with her daily behaviour.

Soup Again

2009-08-30T09:50:00.005-04:00

On Monday we were supposed to fabricate fish, meaning butcher and prepare. I was cautiously excited about this. Most of my life I have been fishing, though not for the past ten years. Growing up my Grandpa would take me out on Lake Erie by the Crib and we would fish for perch. Strangely, I never caught any perch, I always caught Sheepshead. No complaints here, they are a much bigger fish and more fun to catch. I loved collecting the luck stones from their heads. We'd be out all day and catch hundreds of perch. I was never involved in the cleaning but the adults would fill the freezers full of fish, never filleted mind you, always pan fried.

My Grandpa would also take us trout fishing at a duck and trout club he belonged to. Every year there was a fishing derby for kids that was a madhouse but often we went on quiet weekends. Since it was a stocked pond I would often catch my limit of trout.

And my family still maintains a cottage in Angola IN where I did most of my fishing growing up. Most of what we caught in Crooked Lake were blue gills(our place is just on the other side of the point, left of the X). We had the wire baskets that we would hang off the side of the dock to keep the fish alive that we caught. I would lay face down hanging over the side of the dock and clean my catch in the lake, scaling the fish right in the water with a spoon. Friends of ours two doors down taught me how to clean my own fish.

I did a lot of fishing in South Carolina. My friends and I mostly poached on farm ponds. I always thought we had permission, but in hindsight I'm not so sure. Often when we would fish with Clarence and he would haul a flat bottom jon boat in the back of his truck that the three of us would put around the pond with an electric trolling motor. It was in SC that I learned to fillet fish. I'm sad to say that I haven't fished since I left SC. Lack of access I guess. I need to do something about that since I need to get off my butt and take my daughter fishing.

In planning for fabricating fish I took my awesome Glestain salmon slicer with me to class. Unfortunately I don't have a fillet knife. But when I got to class I learned that the fish didn't come in. Instead we would be revisiting knife skills. Chef felt walking around the past few weeks that we really needed a refresher. I could not agree more. My skills aren't the best but at least I don't stand two feet away from the table with the knife held like a hammer hacking away at my vegetables. I'm just a slow slicer.

For once I worked by myself. Which was good. I saw no reason to crowd a table with knives slinging about. I'd walk around trying to figure where to put my cuts with people who had made similar cuts. It was kind of scary to see what people were doing. Amazingly every time I told a table that cut potatoes go in water I'd get the evil eye. I joked with Ridges that his table mates had nice brown potatoes.

Chef told us that one side of the class was going to make a cream soup and the other side was to make a stock based soup. Then each side was to divide in two groups. I aligned myself with Ridges' table which included Hottie #3 and Baby Face, who I find to be a prick and a half. He did not change my opinion of him.

Ridges suggested corn chowder. Sounded good to me. I was not in the mood to be a leader that day. Since we had been chopping up onion, celery and carrots we automatically had some mirepoix. Ridges and I agreed that we would get it cooked down and then strain it out like we did with the Mulligatawny soup. Baby Face and Hottie #3 were very anti-social, which I found unusual for Hottie since she is normally quite social with me. But BF is her best friend and I suppose that was his influence upon her. Somewhere our soup morphed as they both began dicing up potatoes to go into the soup. Ridges seemed perplexed but I went along with it.

I checked on the other side. RK had a couple gallons of frozen beef stock in a large brazier that he was chipping at with a chef's knife. Dude! I told him to knock the top of the ice block off and went to fetch a lid. After he had enough of the top chipped off I put the lid on and explained the ice would melt much faster with the lid on because you create a steam bath. Come on man! He seemed perplexed but later we were washing dishes and I had to stop him from taking the dishes out of the dish washer before they went through the rinse cycle. He said the washer had stopped. I said yes but it does a rinse cycle next, pointing to the digital readout that said "RINSING." You have to wait for it to finish rinsing off the soap and sanitizer before you take them out. I'm not sure he understood me so it's no surprise he didn't understand why I put the lid on.

Next thing I knew BF and Hottie were chopping up Italian sausage. WTF? This is like no corn chowder I've every heard of. Then they wanted to roast it in beer. Huh? Roast it in beer? I have never heard of roasting sausage in beer. Boiling in beer, yes. I went to Wisconsin. We eat brats and drink Miller at 8:00 AM waiting for kickoff, but roasting? Of course they all treated me like I was the dumb ass. Of course roasting! Whatever. Oh to be 20 again.

Looking at the mirepoix, there was nothing to drain the vegetables out of. I suggested to Ridges that we add a quart of cream to the vegetables and let it simmer awhile for flavor and then we would have something to strain. So the soup came together like this: we strained the mirepoix out, added the strained cream to the 2 quarts we had simmering on the back burner, added the potatoes, added the sausage sans beer (who thinks beer and milk go together?), seasoned it all and let it simmer until the potatoes were tender.

I guess we ended up with potato and sausage soup. It was really good, though I'm not sure that the sage in the sausage really went well. I'm not sure why Hottie #3 picked that sausage. There were three other sausages in the freezer but I don't think she looked that hard. Mouth and the Sushi Boys made some kind of cream of chicken with bacon. It was pretty good too, as good as ours I would say. On the other side, Bar Code and his lap dogs made something like minestrone which I did not care for. MILF and Hottie #2's group made a vegetable beef soup that was good but the meat was too tough. They needed to braise the meat longer or better yet use a pressure cooker. MILF said that was exactly what the book called for. Good prediction on my part!

Field Trip

2009-08-23T20:55:00.003-04:00

As an early aside, on Monday I registered, and paid I might add, for one class next quarter. My choices were Pantry, Purchasing or American Regional Cuisine. I asked if Pantry was about stocking shelves. Chef thought that was pretty funny. Pantry is all about making salads, composed salads, salad dressings, mayo and other condiments and sandwiches. Basically the cold stuff in the kitchen. Chef said WE didn't have the prerequisite math yet to take Purchasing. Oh, I have the math. I'm sure my three semesters of Calc, three semesters of Statistics and an engineering degree trump their basic math class. And if it doesn't, screw 'em, I'm not taking it. I didn't feel like taking classes Monday through Thursday 9-2 nor did I fell like attending class from 9-5 all day Wednesday and Thursday and I didn't want an evening class, so it was settled, American Regional Cuisine. RK asked what American Regional Cuisine meant. I thought it was pretty self explanatory, cooking styles from across the USA: Deep South, New England, Southwest, Tex-Mex, etc. "You mean we're going to cook those different styles?" No, we're going on field trips and padding our frequent flier miles. I might have to start drinking during the day.

Speaking of field trips, on Tuesday we took a ride down to Gwinnett GA to a food expo. We loaded up in a school van with an additional four people in a school car. While it was a nice experience to have, it really was not that thrilling of a trip.

When we got there, there was a LONG line for registration. It was quickly apparent to me that I was the only one who has ever been to any type of expo before, and I've been doing them for 20 years, both as an attendee and as a vendor. Truthfully, no matter the industry, an expo is an expo. Mayfield was in dismay, "why do we have to register, I thought we just walk in!" Dude, these things aren't free ya know. Come on! I wonder where my hip flask is? Chef, who had strangely disappeared after we got in line, showed back up with comp passes from one of his vendors. Everyone seemed shocked by this, man are we special. No we're not, I used to hand them out too to my customers. You would have thought we were a bunch of high school teenage girls getting free purses when we went through the line to get a complimentary tote bag for the swag given out (BTW, I've known that "word" for years knowing what it meant but never knowing exactly what it stood for. A quick search reveals that it apparently stands for Stuff We All Get) . I turned mine back in empty and unopened. I have twenty years of totes at home.

This expo was mainly food vendors hawking prepared foods to restaurateurs, things like Tyson chicken nuggets and chicken tenders. Brew City mozzarella sticks and black and tan onions rings. About every appetizer you've ever had was there and many of the desserts. Vienna Beef was there with there Chicago hot dogs. So on one hand it was a neat experience but on the other hand it was disappointing because 1) I/we were not there in the capacity to buy or find a great deal and 2) it kind of pops the bubble of fantasy that none of these foods that you order in a restaurant are prepared fresh.

So there's the highlight, the drive there and back was the worse part. I really thought that when I left the teeny boppers behind from my first class things would get much better, but they really haven't. It must be something about those who are drawn to the culinary world, 16 or 56, they all seem to have the same mental age and mentality. Oh how I wish I had brought headphones and could have listened to music and tuned everyone out. Poor planning on my part. On the way back I told MILF I wish I had brought my knife kit. Why? To put myself out of my memory. I'm not going to go into the inane conversations on the way up that Chico, Ridges, Bar Code and Igor were having about sex with each other or the equally inane conversations on the way down the Sushi boys and Mouth were having.

I learned that Igor and Chico are Bar Code's little lap dogs. Those two are inseparable at the hip it seams and follow BC everywhere he goes. They seem lost without him. I asked Bar Code what it was like to have his own groupies. I don't think he got it. It's like a comic version of Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle. On the way back I had the infinite pleasure of sitting next to Igor and Chico. From what I could gather, Igor convinced Hottie #2 to give him her phone number and then preceded to hit on her and ask her out via texting. It seems that she slammed him and then continued to brutally slam him the whole ride home. I immediately felt a kinship with her. She asked me if I was following along. I said yes, it was pathetic. She laughed so hard. She loves me now.

What I wouldn't give for some intellectual conversation. Outside of with my wife I really haven't had any since I left the foundry. And my wife doesn't enjoy intellectual banter, philosophical ponderings or what-if games. She's pretty pragmatic. And that's not a fault. So much for meeting people through school.

It was good to arrive home.

But I Would Do Anything For Love But I Won't Do That

2009-08-17T21:31:00.005-04:00

Today was meat loaf for lunch, ugh! I am not a fan of meat loaf though I'm willing to eat a bite. Chef broke us into two groups of eight and said each group was to make meat loaf, a pasta dish, two vegetable dishes and a dessert. Family style southern cooking. We were cleaning out the walk in. We all had to cook, no one was allowed to direct and not cook. Bar Code and I immediately took over though I noticed he kind of deferred to me. We didn't have the strongest group: RK, Mayfield, the Sushi boys, Chico and Igor. Bar Code and I had the most experience though. I said it made no sense to have eight people making meat loaf and we should break into subgroups, three doing meat loaf, three doing the pasta and two doing the veggies and dessert. RK said he wanted in on the meat loaf since he's never made it before. Bar Code said find pick two other people. Mayfield and Sushi #1. Bar Code grabbed Chico and Igor and said they would make the starches, pasta and sweet potatoes. We had linguine and Bar Code didn't want to do Alfredo because he was sick of it. I said fine, do a pasta salad with it. Bar Code asked me about doing sweet potato fries. Fine, I don't like them but sounds good to me.

I grabbed Sushi #2 and we headed for the walk in. On our way Chef said someone had donated some pinto beans and it would be good to use them up. Good, we'll do barbecue baked beans. We didn't have much for vegetable selection but we found some yellow squash and thought about a squash casserole. Chef was very pleased, he had hoped someone would decide that. For dessert I suggested short bread dipped in chocolate ganache. Sushi liked the sound of it and it's pretty easy. Thumbs up from Chef.

Dinah and her Mom make a squash casserole and all I knew was that it was squash, soup and crackers on top. I asked Chef if we needed to make our own soup base or could we use canned? Soup? Chef said, "here's how I make squash casserole: blanch the squash, sliced onions, cheese sauce, Worcestershire , mayonnaise, Swiss cheese slices,bread crumbs." OK, we can handle that.

We got the squash sliced up. For some reason the water took forever to boil. Onions were sliced. I had an idea on how to do a cheese sauce but sent Sushi around asking. The book called for making a bechamel sauce first and I was pretty sure we weren't going that route. I confirmed that with Chef. After Sushi got back I poured a quart of heavy cream in a sauce pan, put it over medium heat and had Sushi start blending in some shredded cheddar cheese. He was doing it little bits at a time which made Chef chuckle. Finally Chef had him just dump the whole bag in. Then Chef had him fetch some Gruyere from the freezer. Up until this week I had no idea you could freeze cheese. Makes sense though, I mean it comes on frozen pizzas that way. The class knife wouldn't cut through the frozen cheese but my extra sharp knife with a thicker blade made short work of cutting a huge hunk of the Gruyere into cubes. That took a little longer to melt in and unfortunately we did burn on the bottom of the pan. I heard some whining in the dish washing area about that but strangely I had no problems getting the pan clean. Experience always wins.

When most of the cheese had melted I spiced it up with some dry mustard, ground white pepper, the Worcestershire sauce and added some mayo.

Finally our water was boiling. We blanched the squash until it was fork tender, drained then spread it out over the bottom of a hotel pan. We thought we would give the onions some extra flavor so we sauteed them in olive oil and then spread the sauteed slices over the squash. Next we poured the cheese sauce over the onions and squash. I had ground up some bread crumbs and we were spreading the bread crumbs over the top when Chef stopped us and said the bread crumbs should be mixed into the casserole. That was new to me but no problem. Into the oven it went. I t didn't take long for it to cook and the top got a nice golden brown. We pulled it out and topped the casserole with shredded mozzarella and put the pan in the warmer where the cheese would finish melting.

For the beans I made a batch of my Grandpa's barbecue sauce. This proved a little tricky because with two groups making meat loaf we were running low on ketchup. I just had enough though and the sauce tasted pretty good to me. We mixed in the can of beans and put it all into a half pan and into the oven. When the top of the beans started to brown I pulled the pan out and put it in the warmer.

We were going to make shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate but Bar Code's group finished their pasta early so they jumped on the dessert. It was interesting how every time they hit a speed bump they came running to me: "the other group is making a pasta salad!" Don't worry, just change the flavor. Barbecue and meatloaf is the theme today, try a barabcue pasta salad. There's andouille sausage in the walk-in. It might turn out good. "We don't have enough apples!" Go grab some canned apples and combine the two. I guess I'm the answer man.

Since we were done I went to get some of the dishes caught up. I enjoy running the dishwasher, and I'm pretty good at it. Earlier, Chico, who is absolutely brilliant, started the garbage disposal without looking to see if anything was in it. Immediately there's a sound of metal being ground up. I think it took him a full thirty seconds to process the information and turn the disposal off. Now an hour later, I get ready to run the disposal but I check first. Chico never bothered to remove the measuring spoons he ground up in the disposal. The bastard just turned it off and walked away!!! Unbelievable! I fished them out. They were only bent, no rough or ground edges, so I straightened them out, fished out the ring, reassembled them and ran them through the dishwasher correctly. Like I said, brilliant.

We all had to man the chaffing dishes and serve at lunch. I was shocked that nobody wanted the sweet potato fries. They are a staple down here. I thought they were actually pretty good even though it is not a food that I like. A few people tried our baked beans. I will admit they were quite different, not bad but probably not what people wanted. There was no sweetness to them and I think that turned some people off. They were also a little on the thin side. It was then that it dawned on me that my Grandpa's 50+ year old recipe is more like a buffalo wing sauce than any barbecue sauce. I guess he was ahead of his time. Sushi #2 really liked them though.

No one ate any of the barbecue pasta salad which is a shame because it was pretty good. It was on the sweet side because they put honey in it. They did cook it down too low so the sauce was about the consistency of peanut butter. Like I said, Chico is brilliant. The funny thing was the sauce almost tasted like a peanut sauce, like a satay. It was pretty good on the noodles. I liked it.

There was some green bean casserole with home made french fried onions on top. It was OK. And there was a macaroni and cheese casserole made with bow tie pasta with the soupiest cheese sauce yo ever saw. The meat loafs were meat loaf. What can I say. The desserts were awesome! There was an apple pie that Mouth made and the cherry cobbler that Bar Code made was great. I guess he switched gears at the last minute since they didn't have enough apples.

I have to say that our casserole was the best dish and I'm not saying that because we made it. It really was good. It was pretty cool that we made such a good dish working with only a concept and not a true recipe.

Tuesday was field trip day. We were going to a food show in Gwinnett.

The Pastabilities

2009-08-16T19:59:00.003-04:00

Tuesday was pasta day. Supposedly we were also making pizza but as the day progressed that fell through. As I have mentioned before, I really am not a fan of pasta. But you have to be able to cook things that other people like. Good! I was also working with two very green cooks who are eager to learn and the best way to learn is to teach. Great!

For whatever reason nearly half the class wasn't there. I just do not get the attendance issues with these people. Sushi #1 and Sushi #2 were both there so no problem for me. I've actually made pasta before many many moons ago. We actually own one of those pasta makers, looks like a toaster kind of. A gift from a previous life I think, used maybe twice. But the point is, I have done it.

I did have to slow the guys down. Let's prep everything first. By the way, Sushi #1 is the quiet one, Sushi #2 is the more outspoken one, who I think I relate to better. Our task was to create three to four servings which I knew meant about a pound of pasta. The recipe made four pounds so the math was easy. I also knew that a pound of pasta was easily made in a stand mixer which I grabbed from the cage. RK came over. Where'd you get that man? In the cage next to the other eight, you know the cage you're standing in front of? WTF?

I apologised up front if it felt like I was bossing the guys around but I felt they would get more out of it if they did most of the work and I kind of supervised. Neither had used a mixer before so I showed them how to set it up. We had a good looking dough going soon enough but like the day before, we needed to add a little more flour. We had our dough wrapped and resting well before any other group was even close to starting on their dough.

On to the sauce. I knew from my first class that tomatoes concasse meant canned tomatoes. So I grabbed a can of those while the guys sliced up onions, garlic and herbs. I let them use my knives which I had just sharpened rather than fight with dull class knives. Sushi #2 really likes my LamsonSharp chef's knife.

We got the oil hot in the pan. I explained to Sushi #2 how you look for a sheen in the oil to know when it was hot enough. I told him that we were looking for the onions to be soft and turn translucent, slightly brown but not crisp. Then I apologized for telling him something he probably already knew but he assured me I was not out of line. Then we threw the garlic in and I told him that the reason the garlic goes in late and we only saute for a minute is because we don't want the garlic to burn. If the garlic burns it will be bitter.

Again I had an idea of what I was doing because I had made a tomato based sauce in my first class. I showed the Sushi boys how to use their hands to squeeze the tomatoes out into the pan. I was also emphatic that we cook tomatoes in a stainless steel sauce pan explaining how the acid in tomatoes with react with aluminum. I could see the guys taking mental notes.

At this point our sauce is simmering and our dough is resting and our chicken is prepped. We're ahead of schedule and it's time to work on the pizzas for the Hero's luncheon. The guys prepped some veggies and Chef had me shred cheese in the Robot Coupe, a fancy industrial food processor. I thought we were all going to make pizza but I guess Chef got caught up in his element and he began cranking out about a half dozen or so pizzas by himself.

So it was time to get back to our pasta. I got the old fashion hand crank pasta roller out. I've never used one of these but I used to roll copper plate in college so how much different could it be? We started with some verbal instructions from Chef but things just weren't looking right. The dough was sticky and tearing. Chef came over and said we needed some flour on the table and showed us how to roll it down by degrees. Now it was looking like pasta, what a difference a little flour makes. We ran it through the cutter and we were making some beautiful noodles. We laid it out on the table and covered it with plastic wrap.

Finally it was time to cook the noodles and plate. I explained to the guys that for pasta we can use an aluminum pot since it brings the water to boil faster. Our recipe called for boiling the pasta in chicken stock to give it more flavor. We had a quart already. I told the guys that we needed a gallon of water per pound of pasta. So four quarts to a gallon..."wait, there's a conversion table in the book, I can look it up," says Sushi #2. No, I'm telling you, there are four quarts per gallon. I'm the only one in my class that knows units. And to think I prefer metric! So what we are going to do is do two quarts of stock and two quarts of water. I sent Sushi #2 to get more stock but he didn't seem to understand how to get it from the frozen container. So I had him chip it out with my knife and scoop it into a quart container and nuke it while I got the water. My final tip was that we always salt the water, a tablespoon or two per gallon of water. I overheard one of the guys say to the other, "man this is why we need to work with him. We've learned so much."

I let the guys check the noodles for doneness. They had never done it before but they did know how done they wanted their noodles to be. Good. So final part. We tossed the chicken in the sauce. Next drained the noodles into a pot, then tossed the noodles in butter to coat and then a spritz of lime juice. Then poured in the sauce and tossed. Finally I explained that the reason we saved the pasta water was because if we needed to thin the sauce up and want it to have some pastiness to it to stick to the noodles we could add a little of the pasta water. Since the starch from the noodles leeches out in the water it will help bring the sauce together. We added about a quarter cup.

All of the dishes were OK. The best dish was actually the salad that chef made with an awesome dressing. Ours was OK but Sushi Boys were blown away by it. Mission Accomplished.

Not sure what we are doing on Monday. Tuesday we have a field trip!!

Breaking Fast

2009-08-16T13:30:00.003-04:00

On Monday our theme for the day was to make breakfast. I was excited at first because I have been struggling trying to master the omelet at home. Mine taste great but I'm never happy with the appearance. Unfortunately that skill was not to be learned in this class. In an effort to be sure I did something new I teamed up with Mayfield and RK to make focaccia bread. other groups made pancakes and home fries, biscuits and fried chicken. All of us were supposed to each made Hollandaise sauce and fry two eggs either sunny side up or over easy.

Since we had to wait on the bread to proof, Chef told us to start our bread first while everyone else started on their sauce. Working with Mayfield and RK is a trip. These guys are both older than me. Mayfield is overly sensitive to please Chef, classic kiss ass. RK just makes me shake my head. Both these guys make everything harder than it needs to be. Even a simple instruction like "dissolve the sugar and yeast in the water" has to be read several times aloud and then parsed down to it's "true" meaning. Both have recognized that I am more experienced so they constantly ask me questions. I'm flattered.

Chef commandeered me to weigh up ingredients for Tuesday's pizza dough since I had the balance out to weigh up the flour for the focaccia bread. I let RK and Mayfield know that I was right behind them, holler if they needed me. Come on guys, you can do this.

We were half way through RK dribbling the flour into the water with a whisk when Chef came over and explained that in Intro to Baking we would learn that any time we saw the words "straight dough" we could just throw all the ingredients into the mixer and let it run, regardless of what the recipe directions called for. So then we had a five minute discussion on how to do that. Come on guys, just dump it all in. Makes me want to stab myself in the forehead with my knife. But they mean well. They want to do it right.

We ended up having to add some additional flour to our dough. I knew it was supposed to be on the wet side but Chef said ours was too wet. But hey, flour is like that, depends on the humidity and other factors. I took it in stride but I think Mayfield was a little concerned that Chef was questioning whether or not we followed the directions correctly.

Next it was on to the Hollandaise sauce. I distanced myself a little here. We were supposed to clarify our own butter which I began but since so many people had been doing it before us, there was plenty already made so I got what I needed out of a communal container.

Mayfield wanted of know if he could make a double boiler out of an aluminum sauce pan on top of a stainless steel sauce pan. No. Use a mixing bowl. We don't have any, they're all dirty. Dude, I just ran five trays through the dishwasher. There's a whole stack of them over there. Come on man look first. Of course then I had to explain to RK what a mixing bowl was. I quietly relocated myself to another table.

Most of the class struggled with this. I saw some really badly burned butter. Some burned Hollandaise, a lot of broken Hollandaise, curdled Hollandaise and some that was just plain the wrong color. Fortunately I had the advantage of having made this my first quarter so I knew exactly what I needed to do without even reading the recipe. And this time was easier since I was making only a quarter of what I made the first time. RK asked me if his yolks were ready. No dude, you just beat them. Like this, I showed him mine, bright yellow and left ribbons when I lifted the whisk out. For whatever reason he and Mayfield decided not to try to get theirs to match mine and continue on. Their sauce ended up a strange burnt orange color and kinda chunky.

I got all of the butter whisked into mine. Nice sauce consistency. I saw many that were as thick as sour cream. Ugh! I got the nod of approval from Chef and poured mine in the communal pot. That was a sight to behold. Rather revolting I might add. Eventually the pot came to a boil and the sauce broke. Someone in their infinite wisdom had the burner turned up. I had turned it off a couple times. I guess they didn't read the book.

Finally time to do eggs. Chef was quite vocal about using CLARIFIED butter and NOT whole butter. There weren't enough non-stick pans to go around so we had to wait turns. I'm not sure how many people I had to explain that too. Meanwhile Chef has some people putting together a small service station for the staff's lunch, stuff like butter pats, coffee, not sure what else, not sure what they are eating. I went around the other side and there is RK squeezing four of the plastic cube containers of butter out into his pan. Dude, what are you doing! Buttering my pan. I just walked away. Somehow RK realized that he isn't doing it right so he comes over and spoons his half melted butter pats into the clarified butter. So now the clarified butter is all screwed up. Thanks man.

We had to flip our eggs in the pan. Sweet. I do this all the time at home. I've even mastered flipping hash browns with the pan. I watched Igor terrified to flip his eggs. Took him at least ten tries. When he finally did it we all clapped. Hottie #3 missed half her eggs on the side of the pan. Whoops. I wonder how many are underneath the burners. Ridges and I got up together. We each had perfect flips. I lucked out though. His eggs stuck for some reason to his pan mine didn't. He ended up scrambling his. I got the thumbs up from Chef, making sure that I told him the other two eggs on my plate were not my broken yolks but Hottie #2's eggs. She doesn't eat eggs let alone over easy eggs.

Breakfast was good.

Afterwards Chef told us that we were doing pasta on Tuesday and pizza for a Hero's meeting. We would be making fresh pasta. I told Sushi #2 I needed to work with someone new so I joined him and Sushi #1. They were both thrilled to have me as a partner. We flipped through the book looking for a recipe. I asked what kind of pasta they like. Both said fettuccine. I found an acini di pepe recipe in the book and suggested that we substitute the acini di pepe pasta for fettuccine. They were excited. I went into the kitchen to see what ingredients we needed to order. I found left over fried chicken that had been made for today's breakfast and said we could substitute that for the shrimp in our recipe. They were both even more excited.

I was exhausted. Class feels a lot like work at the end of the day.

Cajun Bobs

2009-08-09T17:11:00.005-04:00

So Tuesday in class all we had to do was make our dirty rice and grill our kebabs. Easy peasy. I has asked MILF if she had taken Professionalism which was the first class I had taken, first quarter. Yes. Did you cook much? No. Ah ha! That explains a lot. I've been through all of this before. When I took Professionalism we cooked everyday, she said they maybe cooked a total of ten days. SO I know the routine for the day. Groups of two, make three to four servings, then we divide each plate up and everyone samples everything. I'm very relaxed.

Dirty rice appears to be easy. Our recipe called for chopped pork and chicken livers, sauteed and then added to cooked white rice with some chicken stock and a spice mix that was nearly the same as our Cajun spice mix. The danger here was cooking too fast.

Rather than letting MILF dive in, I suggested we prep everything first. We chopped the meats, the veggies, putting them in separate pans for separate additions. She divvied up the spices and I measured out a cup of rice. MILF has to constantly be moving. I think at times she spent more effort fetching than prepping but what can you do.

We got the rice cooking and started sauteing up the meat. We were running about an hour ahead of schedule but as I told MILF, we can hold the rice. As we got closer I told MILF it was time to skewer. I taught her the little trick of soaking the skewers in water so they don't burn. She was impressed. I learned it my first quarter in Professionalism so that is the kind of edge I have. MILF wanted to know how we were going to do this. You go first and I'll watch. Huh?

I said I like to cap the ends with meat to hold the vegetables on but there are no rules to making kebabs. Only thing is to get four pieces of meat on each one because that is what we prepped. Which goes next? Doesn't matter? How many mushrooms? Doesn't matter. Jalapeno next? Doesn't matter? How many tomatoes did you put on? Doesn't matter. I could tell that she struggled with the unstructured method here but it's good for her, most cooking really is unstructured. It's just application of basic fundamentals. Relax and enjoy.

The kebabs grilled fine, maybe a little over done. I had not planned on having to hold in the warmer so long while we waited for everyone else. I think we had one of the better dishes. MILF insisted on a piece of fruit for garnish and more stock in the rice. She likes "wet" food. Not my cup of tea, but fine, like it matters to me.

Mouth had a glazed pork chop with honey glazed carrots. The pork was excellent though I could have done without the carrots. Her wild rice had sweetness to it that I really did not like and I think it was undercooked.

Bar Code, Ridges and Hottie #3 made a seafood stuffed pork loin with twice baked potatoes and stuffed mushroom caps. Chef told them next time they stuffed such large caps make sure you cooked them first. After the first bite I understood, the caps were not cooked all the way through. Otherwise they were good. Their pork roulade was OK but their twice baked potatoes were awesome.

SloMo made a pathetic Caesar salad. No cheese, no anchovies. I didn't touch his pork since it wasn't cooked all the way through. There was another stuffed pork dish but by the time I got to the plate all the portions were gone. They did make excellent steak fries though. I can't remember the other dishes.

I have no idea what we are doing this coming week.

Gelato

2009-08-07T20:37:00.003-04:00

Several weeks ago I was watching Barefoot Contessa as I am wont to do waiting for PTI to come on and Ina Garten was making what she called Deeply Chocolate Gelato. It looked amazing. Even though I like hazelnut chocolates I thought that I would make it without and call it Double Chocolate Gelato.

I can see the difference between gelato and ice cream. Ice cream typically does not have the custard base made with egg yolks. But I'm not sure of the difference between gelato and frozen custard. We Cheeseheads LOVE our frozen custard (I miss Milwaukee).

Besides leaving out the hazelnut chocolates at the end I also opted to use up the ordinary Hershey's cocoa powder I had on hand rather than using a fancy expensive one as Ina calls out in her recipe. I also used a 3oz bar of dark chocolate rather than buying any bittersweet chocolate. It was just easier. I finely chopped and used the whole bar. The bar I bought was from Green & Black's and was 70% cocoa. Easily found at Ingles in the candy aisle. Whatever you do, do not use chips. Chips are coated with a release agent to keep them from sticking together. You don't want that in your gelato.

I found that I needed to strain the gelato twice. Once after I combined the cocoa and chocolate and again after I made the custard. I found that not all of the cocoa powder dissolved and some lumps were left behind. Maybe I only needed to strain the second time but I don't think it hurt to do it the first time. Besides I had some chocolate bar wrapper pieces I needed to strain out.

I was amazed that I didn't have any Kahlua in the house. I did have an OLD bottle of Starbucks coffee liqueur. I don't even know if they still make the stuff. I used what little I needed and threw the rest out. It wasn't Kahlua but the gelato came out great with the Starbucks.

The chilled gelato base is pretty thick. I put it in my Krups Automatic Ice-Cream Maker. This is one of those counter top units where you freeze the bowl a day in advance. Lickity split it was done, maybe 15 minutes.

The gelato was divine. It was so rich that after just six bites you have to consider that you've had enough. I think this gelato is as close to eating frozen fudge as you can get.

No Soup for You!

2009-08-07T16:54:00.004-04:00

I enjoyed Jerry Seinfield as a stand up comedian. I'm going to admit it now that I did not watch his show. I quickly lost interest after the first season. It was just too mundane and inane for me. But I did like this particular episode.

Monday began week four and our task was to make soup with either the chicken stock or the veal stock from last week. Chef wanted us to work with different people so he assigned a few groups of two and let the others self pick. Me, I was told I was making soup by myself. Two times people said they did not have a partner and would work with me and two times Chef said no, I was working by myself. The second time he got a little angry, I think because it was obvious people were not listening to him. Off course I felt like a teacher's pet. Oh well, there are worse problems to have. Bar Code wanted to know why I was special and got to work alone. "I don't know, because Chef said so."

If anyone showed up late they were to work with me.

A few people immediately went to the Internet to look up a soup recipe. My first class Chef told us he strongly discouraged people using recipes off of the Internet, most of them don't work, so I didn't even bother looking at a computer. We have good recipes in our On Cooking book though often you have to rescale them. I'm not a soup kind of guy so the first problem was finding something I would even like. I had to move past my first few choices since they didn't use any stock and that was part of the assignment. A few others looked way too complicated. I finally settled on Mulligatawny Soup. Never heard of it. Evidently this is a popular British soup. It wasn't too complicated and I thought it might be palatable. We were supposed to make a half gallon of soup. No problem, I just doubled the recipe.

At that point Ridges came in and I told him he was working with me, we were making soup and since he was late I had already picked it. The soup is really easy, diced chicken, mirepoix (diced celery, carrots and onions), sliced mushrooms and diced apples in a chicken stock with curry powder. I found some left over grilled chicken breast in the walk-in so we didn't even have to cook any chicken. Ridges and I spent the first part of the morning just prepping all of our ingredients. We had two quarts of some nasty looking chicken stock from the previous week. I'm standing there slicing mushrooms, Ridges is next to me and I see SloMo standing at the corner of our table spooning out the fat from his chicken stock into ours. Ridges just stares at him and finally says, what are you doing? Oh is this your stock, man I'm sorry. So now our stock is looking really bad. We pull two more stocks out of the walk-in and they are both congealed nastiness. Ridges pulls the last one and it's clear. It also happens to be the one he and I made. Not sure what everyone else did wrong. So now we were back in business.

Now that everything was prepped it was time to start cooking. We sweated the mirepoix instead of sauteing it. That took a little longer. Next we added the chicken stock and spices and brought it to a boil, simmer 15 minutes. At this point Ridges and I debated about whether or not we should strain the mirepoix out. Since neither of us had ever heard of this soup we didn't know what it was supposed to look like. We finally decided yes, strain it, to let the chicken, apples and mushrooms shine.

At this point I look at the table next to the stove and it is an absolute chaotic disaster. RK and SloMo are making gumbo. RK is sauteing chicken, I think, but seems absolutely lost. SloMo is screaming stuff. They've got two pans going on the stove and two more on the table. SloMo has butter in one and is dumping flour on top of it. Chef asks what he's doing and SloMo says making gumbo. It looks like he's making cookies. Chef asks how do you make gumbo? You make a roux. That's what I'm doing SloMo retorts. How much flour and butter asks Chef. SloMo say something about 20 ounces of flour because that's what the book says (there we go again. I don't think boy wonder resized the recipe). Chef makes them dump it out and start over with oil and flour. He whisks it himself and explains to RK how in New Orleans they use oil and bake the roux in the oven to prevent it from burning, stirring occasionally. They never did get a dark roux for their gumbo.

We've got everything going well. We add the chicken, apples and mushrooms and basically just need to simmer for 15 minutes. I ask Chef when he wants to plate. He wants us ready by 11:00. We are serving a buffet line for school administrators at noon. It's 10:30 so we are going to have no problem. Chef looks at me, smiles and points to the gumbo disaster and says they won't be ready. Unfortunately Ridges and I were the only ones ready at 11:00, everyone else took all the way until noon or soon after. I have no sympathy for the others. Part of cooking is looking at the recipe, knowing what you need to do and being able to plan things out so you are ready in time. That's why I passed over a good twenty recipes when I was trying to find one. I certainly would not have attempted the gumbo with a thirty item ingredient list.

We got the buffet going and most people passed over the Mulligatawny soup. I think the name was too scary. If we had called it Chicken Curry with Mushroom I think more people would have tried it. Though curry still scares people away. The apple was good but I'm not sure people would have identified it as apple. I was impressed because apple in cooked savory dishes is something I avoid.

One group made chicken noodle. I passed on that. I also passed on the roux since I saw what went into it. The southwestern chicken tortilla soup was so so, not enough broth to really be a soup. I passed on the cream of broccoli though I heard it was good. Bar Code and MILF made borscht. Having taken Russian in high school I have had it several times. There's was OK. I've never had it chunky before but MILF swears that is how her Russian uncle served it. I also have to give credit where credit is due. Mouth showed up nearly two hours late and Chef assigned cream of mushroom soup to her. Hey wait a minute, there's no stock in that! Regardless, or irregardless as the say down here, her soup was outstanding. I ate three cups of it. It was the best soup there hands down.

After lunch we got everything cleaned up. We had recombined all of the chicken stocks, reheated and this time we were going to chill them down and freeze them. Everyone thinks we are going to get out early when Chef throws a curve ball: pick a new partner and come up with a pork dish for tomorrow. I never pick a partner. I don't care who I work with though I am hopeful I can make the rest of the year without working with Mouth, SloMo, Baby Face, Igor or Chico. MILF whips around and says you and me. Fine. Actually I'm looking forward to working with her, I like her, she's good, she's considerate and I think I can show her a few things, after all the best way to learn something is to teach something.

I tell her that we should avoid the Internet. She fetches her book and I flip to the meat section. I start with lamb explaining to her that pork is an easy substitute in any lamb dish. We've got two huge boneless loin to work with and need to make enough to serve three to four. Roast lamb, lamb chops, stuffed leg... I ask MILF what she would like to make. She says when she thinks pork she thinks Cajun. Fine. Lamb shish kebabs. Hey! I say we could do Cajun pork kebabs. MILF loves this idea. We'll do cherry tomatoes, onions, half slices of jalapeno peppers and serve it on dirty rice. See, once again the secret to success is combining ideas.

Chef gave us the thumbs up and we headed into the kitchen. We decide to make out own Cajun seasoning, there was a recipe in the book. I tried to explain to MILF that since we didn't need to make the six ounces of spice mix we could easily scale it down by substituting a tablespoon for each ounce of spice called for. The ratios would stay the same. I'm not sure if she understood me or not but that it what we did. The flavor was spot on. Next we cut our pork into chunks figuring four per skewer, tossed the meat in our Cajun blend and wrapped it up to sit over night in the walk-in.

School - Week Three

2009-08-07T09:27:00.003-04:00

I was distracted last week with my motorcycle trip to the Guzzis in the Blue Ridge that I didn't have a chance to post about school.

On Monday we spent most of our time cutting up chickens and making a stock. I think we made hot dogs for lunch but otherwise it was not a very memorable day. Maybe the only worthwhile note was that after we had cut up our chickens, we were to go back and debone the chicken breasts. I think my buddy Ridges and I did at least a dozen each before anyone else had the first one done. Helps to have a sharp knife and ambition.

On Tuesday we re-heated our stocks to finish them and worked on prepping a luncheon for Wednesday. What's the difference between lunch and luncheon, is lunch just short for luncheon?

Ridges and I made bread, or more accurately we assisted Chef in making bread. I learned a few things here. I'm not sure I am running my dough long enough in the mixer. Chef ran it for 18 minutes. I don't use high gluten bread flour, Chef said that makes a big difference. I also don't use a bread conditioner though Chef said that the conditioner is very hard to find. Maybe King Arthur Flour sells it.

Later it came time to strain our stocks. We are supposed to strain through a china hat lined with cheesecloth. Babyface had a line behind him waiting to get some cheesecloth. I look and he's trying to cut through it with what looks like a tiny pair of nail scissors. I grab my petty knife and go up to the front of the line. "Dude, they give us knives for a reason," and slice right through it. Amazingly he gets all pissy with me, "I was trying to prove a point," he huffs at me. Don't be a dick head, you're holding everyone up. He and I are not going to get along. Of course he only seems to come to class every other day, so maybe the problem will take care of itself.

After we stained everything, Chef asked what we were going to make with the chicken. None of us knew that was the plan. Think fast. Shredded chicken to me immediately says Mexican. Ridges said chicken salad. So we did a Mexican chicken salad. I was a little pissed that three other tables decided to do chicken salad. MILF and Hottie #2 worked at our table too. They did barbecue chicken, and again , two other tables did the same thing. The most amazing thing was that we had four people working our table and we never got in each other's way.

Unfortunately since I grabbed mostly backs, we did not have a lot of meat left from our stock. I almost fell on the floor when I heard RK come over and ask Chef about saving the tails, not really meat right? Since we didn't have enough meat, Chef let us saute up a few of the chicken breasts we had boned out the day before. Ridges worked on dicing the jalapenos, green peppers, yellow peppers, green onions and cilantro while I worked the chicken. After the chicken was cooked through we added a few ladles of chicken stock to deglaze the pan and half of the diced vegetables to the skillet. This way we had more flavor but enough fresh veggies to still have a crunch and freshness.

I think hands down our dish was the best. It wasn't hard to do. I think the key is to make something simple and rather than cooking out of the book take each partner's idea and combine them into one dish. One group made shepherds pie with the chicken except there was no stew-like gravy and no peas. That's mashed potatoes on top of chicken not shepherds pie. The other two chicken salads were indistinguishable other than one was chunky and the other smooth in texture. Both could have been from the grocery. The barbecues were blah. The one voted as the "best" tasted kind of off to me. I asked about the vinegar and suggested maybe cider vinegar should have been used. Sushi #2 told me they used red wine vinegar, "because that's what the book said." And there in lies the problem. All these other groups measure everything, Ridges and I don't. I remember Chef saying in my first class, learn to eyeball everything.

Afterwards we had to cool our stocks including a huge steam pot of veal stock. SloMo and Babyface were put in charge of the veal stock. What a clusterfuck. There was steaming and scalding, spilling all over the floor, screaming and swearing. These guys are going to hurt somebody. They transferred the stock into a HUGE stock pot. At which point I said they needed to break that down into smaller containers because they won't be able to get the liquid line below the water line for cooling. Baby face snapped at me, did I know how many pots that would take? It doesn't matter, it won't work the way you're doing it. The smaller the volume the faster the heat dissipation. We have to get these cooled as fast as possible. I've got a fucking engineering degree. How many semesters of thermodynamics do you have? Dumb Ass. So another group of us start transferring from the HUGE stick pot into smaller containers. SloMo comes over with another pot full of stock and wants to fill up the ones in the ice bath. No! Smaller containers cool faster. He got all pissy with me. I had to just walk away.

Dumb ass.

Preservation Hall

2009-07-25T11:20:00.003-04:00

Since we are broke I've been trying to save every scrap of vegetable we have. Here in Appalachia that would mean canning, but I have no understanding of canning. I really want to learn but right now I can't afford the equipment let alone the jars. Which is a shame because apparently Union County has a cannery. Damned if I can find it though. It is in a turn of the century (20th), unmarked building near the high school. Great directions huh. If I find it though, it only costs something like a quarter per jar, you do all the prep work. The only thing I know about canning is that in the basement of my Grandpa's old house there were shelves of jarred pickles. And I never remember anyone eating them.

But freezing I can do. I found a good guide on freezing vegetable from UGA. My mother-in-law gave us her old chest freezer (she bought it to prep for our wedding) and I also am "borrowing" her vacuum freezer bag machine. I've been a mean green freezing machine this week.

Out of my garden I have frozen three 8oz bags of green beans and one 5oz bag of snow peas. That looks like it is going to be it sadly. But Dinah has had pounds of produce bestowed on her at work. So far this week I have packed and frozen about five pounds of yellow squash, four cups of okra and probably four pounds of string beans, all of which was just given to us. There is probably another two pounds of string beans yet for me to process. I prefer the bush beans to string beans but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Yesterday I bought a dozen ears of corn and then Dinah brought home another dozen that was given to her. What we don't eat, I'll freeze. And since cooking corn is the same as blanching it, any leftovers after dinner I just freeze now.

The downside to either freezing or canning is that you still end up with a cooked vegetable. For example, you can save carrots but you have to cook them first. So there is no way to save a fresh carrot that I grew in the garden for January. But cooked is better than none at all.

I do need to figure out the canning thing if anything just for pickles. But first I have to figure out the pickles; that's not going so well so far.

By the way, Preservation Hall is in New Orleans, at least I hope it still is. It is one of those must stop and visits if you are in the Big Easy for the historical significance of it whether you like jazz or not. I loved seeing it.

Week Two - Tuesday

2009-07-24T20:54:00.004-04:00

Tuesday the plan was to cook lunch for a group called the Hero's Group, whatever that is.

I'm confused that since school is pay to play, why do people not show up every day of class or not arrive on time? Hottie #2 and #3 were in class on Monday but not Mouth. It was reversed on Tuesday. Red was not there on Monday but showed up late on Tuesday. I don't get it.

First order of the day was a video on roasting and then another on fabricating chicken. Kick ass! Cutting up meat was the number one reason I wanted in this class. I am baffled about butchering a chicken. The video was a little confusing with the fancier preparations or fabricating that did not involve cutting out all of the major parts.

After we watched the videos we headed into the kitchen and each grabbed a chicken. First we had to truss the bird as if we were going to roast it whole, have it inspected and then cut the chicken up into eight parts. Trussing was lickity-spit and I got the thumbs up from Chef. I mean how hard is it to wrap a piece of string around the legs and then around the bird. The hardest part is using a long enough piece of string to begin with.

Next I got out my petty knife to start hacking this thing up. I don't have a true boning knife and there was no way I was going to trust the sharpening job on one of the class knives. It is funny to watch these guys sharpen knives. They really love the electric sharpener which is the fastest way to grind down and ruin your knife. Then they rub their thumb over the edge and say "that's a mighty sharp knife, " or something to that effect. Dude, it's a chef's knife not a lawn mower blade. Got to remember where I live I guess.

I digress.

The first step in fabricating the chicken is to cut out the back bone, down one side then the other. I was in awe at how my knife went through the chicken like butter. That thars a sharp knife! Now I want a real boning knife, a Japanese one though, of course.

I laid the chicken flat, skin side down an then sliced along the white membrane around the breast bone like I saw in the video. With some effort I was able to tear the breast bone out but not as easily as they made it seem in the video so I was having some doubts.

I got the wings off easy enough. I could not remember how to separate the breast from the thigh/leg and had to ask Chef. Secret was to cut through with the skin side up where the muscles are obviously distinct. So now I had four pieces, two wings, two breasts. Cutting the leg and thighs apart was easy. Eight pieces. I even trimmed the excess fat off of all my pieces. Then I looked around and saw that I was the only one finished, by more than a little bit. Some people were still trussing. I wasn't sure if I was finished but I had eight pieces. I was stoked.

I got Chef's blessing which tickled me pink because this was the first time I had ever cut up a chicken and I really was unsure of what I was doing. Chef showed me how I should pop the thigh bone through the meat. This technique prevents a blood pocket forming during cooking. Cool!

After all the chickens were cut up we threw them into roasting pans, seasoned and put them in the oven. The green beans and broccoli were pulled out of the walk-in. Ridges worked on bringing back a cheese sauce from the day before. A group of like eight sliced up cake and cheese cake for the lunch. Bar Code and two other guys were portioning some steaks left over from an ACF meeting the night before and would be served at lunch. So once again I decided to hit the dish washer and periodically check to see if anyone needed assistance.

We arranged the tables to make a long serving line. We had a student working each food to serve the ladies coming through the line. I am still amazed that some people don't don't which pieces are white meat and which are dark meat. Whatever you wanted, you got a thigh. I was at the end of the table with Mouth serving the desert. When the ladies would ask what we had for desert, Mouth would roll her eyes and venomously spit out "cake." This girl has an attitude problem. She snapped at me once during clean up. I see conflict down the road.

The food was good. We accidentally over cooked the chicken. But, it was probably the way most people would have wanted it since people have an overt fear of undercooked chicken. The mashed potatoes weren't cooked all the way through before mashing. The steak was very good.

Next week we are fabricating more chicken and making chicken stock. Sweet.

Week Two - Monday

2009-07-24T20:10:00.003-04:00

Week two of school oddly paralleled my first culinary class. On Monday we focused on moist cooking methods, boil, steam, poach, etc. One half of the class was given potatoes and the other half vegetables. There was a bit of irony in that my class with the kids handled this better. When I took Professionalism with the kids we paired off in groups of two (I like the redundancy of that wording). In Monday's class we split into two groups of like twelve. The old adage too many cooks in the kitchen came to life. Nobody could make a decision, the people who were experienced tried to dominate the task and it just became a true cluster fuck, to say it nicely.

I was on the vegetable side. We were given frozen green beans and frozen broccoli. It was decided that we needed to blanch the beans. Blanching green beans made no sense to me, as they are already blanched prior to freezing. Essentially we just thawed them. Oh well. The blanching also did not involve boiling water which I felt to be strange, but I went along with it.

Somehow it was decided to put mushrooms, onions, yellow and red peppers in with the green beans. I'm not sure how and it was humorous that this was beyond what Chef envisioned. One of the guys who works at a fancy resort in the area told us to remove the stems from the mushroom caps prior to slicing. Then Chef came over and said put the stems back in. Too funny.

Since it was taking four to six people to "blanch" the frozen green beans in a single pot I decided to go down and help the other end of the table. In my first class Chef stressed that if we finished with what we were doing we were to help others who needed it. This is second nature to me and I'm good at it but was a new concept with the kids. It's a big part of our grade so it is not a concept to be taken lightly. The other end of the table was making Bolognese sauce (meat sauce for pasta) as a special task from Chef. First step was mirepoix and they were busy looking up the recipe for it. I told them it was 2:1:1 onions, carrots celery. MILF corrected me that it was 50% onions, 25% carrots and 25% celery. That's what I said. I grabbed some carrots and started dicing. They were in cone shapes from roll cuts so it took a little extra time.

After that it was still discombobulated in the kitchen so I did what I do best, ran the dish washer.

The Bolognese sauce was for pasta that Chef made for us for lunch. It was pretty good. Chef said the extra effort was my fault since I complained about no meat in the vegetable soup last week, so he was making sure I got meat this week. I laughed and said I didn't think I was so much to blame as much as I was inspiration.

Yogrit Update

2009-07-23T08:15:00.003-04:00

Again I'm changing too many variables at once but I feel like I can reasonably figure out the influencing variables.

The latest batch of yogurt I made with the last cup of the previous successful yogurt as the starter. But I also decided to flavor the yogurt before it fermented rather than after it was finished. I added the equivalent amount of Splenda and True Lemon that I would have used for the individual cups.

The result was throwing the entire batch out. Each cup appeared to be only half set, very liquidy. I also noted that the consistency of the solids was like curdled milk. A quick taste confirmed it was curdled milk.

I don't think that the remaining yogurt used as starter was the problem as much as the addition on True Lemon. Even though this is a dry ingredient, I think the True Lemon rehydrated and had enough acidic content to curdle the milk.

Back to the drawing board. I'll get this mastered yet. I bought another cup of the organic plain Greek yogurt that I used successfully last time. Oh, it is Stonyfield Farms not Stoneybrook Farms. Sorry.

Garden Update

2009-07-22T21:21:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd give a run down on the garden.

Eggplant - The plant itself is growing great. The first blossom wilted, withered and died. The next two blossoms did very well and you can see little tiny eggplants up inside. But today I noticed one of the little tiny eggplants seems to be molding. There are a couple more blossoms but I don't know if they are producing yet. So I would say the jury is still out on the eggplant.

Spring Onions - These are growing very well. The green parts are HUGE. I pulled one and it tasted great. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other five. I'm sure it would be best to cook a tasty dish with them but I bet I just eat them straight, with salt, just like I used to do with my Grandma.

Carrots - Same as the spring onions, growing great with HUGE green tops. Rose picked one and it was about six inches long. We ate the carrot and saved the top for a stock. I think there are three or four left to pull.

Cucumbers - I have two different kinds, straight eights and pickling cucumbers. The straight eights are growing wild. I've been fortunate this year to see a lot of honey bees pollinating the flowers on everything, especially the cucumbers. I saw very few honey bees last year. I've picked at least six big cukes so far and there are at least twenty blossoms waiting to become cucumbers right now. The pickling cucumbers are doing well also. I've picked at least 12-18 so far. I've been making pickles with both kinds (more on that later). The one negative with the pickling cucumbers so far is that the plant is not prolific enough to produce a large enough quantity at a time to make pickles. That is why I have been supplementing with the regular cukes. If I can master the pickling process then then next step would be to plant more pickling cucumber plants than I did this year.

Tomatoes - The tomatoes make me want to cry. All the plants have fruit and all of the plants are six foot tall or more. And all of the plants are dying. I'm not sure the tomatoes will ripen fast enough before the plants die off. I was hoping for a bumper crop but I'm going to be lucky to have a few servings. All of the plants are diseased. I was hoping it was just early blight but the leaves are not responding to the anti-fungal sprays I have tried. So now I am thinking that it is fusarium wilt. I have two watermelon plants planted in the same bed and they are looking week too. I've learned that watermelon is susceptible to fusarium wilt which adds to my suspicion on the tomatoes. I don't grow hybrid VFN tomatoes which are fusarium (the F in VFN) wilt resistant. The problem is in the soil. Next year I'll have to plant the tomatoes in a different location. I'm not sure but planting marigolds might "purify" the soil. I need to look into that more.

Peppers - All of the peppers are growing very well this year. I've already picked a dozen or so jalapenos, two Mexi-bell hybrids and two Cubanelle style peppers. As usual the main problem is I have more peppers than I actually cook with. Looks like I'll be freezing more. I still haven't used up the peppers from last year!

Watermelon - As I mentioned above, the watermelon in the same soil as the tomatoes is looking pretty puny. There are melons on the vines though. Little ones. I planted two more watermelon plants in another bed and they are growing like they are on steroids. So far there are 8-10 melons between the two plants, one about as big as a bowling ball. I'm not holding my breath though. I have never successfully grown a melon to ripeness so there is still a lot of potential for these to be a disappointment. But they look good so far.

Snow peas - These have been a huge disappointment. So far I have had one round of picking that yielded about five ounces of peas. I froze them. Last year I picked batch after batch after batch. I don't know if I planted too close together or if the soil isn't right or what. Today I noticed more new flowers but no peas.

Bush beans - These too have been a disappointment. At first things were going great. The plants are thick and tall. There were lots of flowers. I picked two or three go-arounds for about two pounds of beans, most of which I have frozen. And then all of a sudden everything stopped. So I'm not sure what the problem is here.

Corn - Keeping in mind that the corn was a last minute experiment, I think it is doing fairly well. I did not properly work the soil and I planted in mini-peat cups and the bed is in partial shade. I've lost probably half of the sliver queen. Some of the loss is from stunted plants, I'm guessing because of the shade. Some of the loss is from week roots; the plants fell over from watering and never sprang back up. I think this is a result of poorly worked soil. And some of the plants look like they were trampled. I've only seen two deer one time in two years here, so I doubt it was deer. I'm guessing a dog stomped through the patch of corn. I've only lost about 25% of the early bi-color corn, for the same reasons. I think if I get six ears of corn from either type, I'll be happy given the experimental nature of the planting. I noticed today that some of the early corn have baby ears sprouting from the stalks.

Pumpkin - The pumpkin is going gang busters. It is out of control. Based on blossom count alone, there is potential for at least forty pumpkins. The honey bees have been busy over here. The pumpkin is pulling down corn stalks and branching out along the compost fence. I think some of the vines may be twenty feet long. I'm excited about the potential here.

So there we go. Call it a midterm report card. There is still a lot of growing season left so we'll see what happens.

...Now It Cuts Like A Knife, But It Feels So Right...

2009-07-15T13:14:00.002-04:00

Day two of class was knife skills. Which is funny because day two of my first quarter was knife skills, but I guess everybody needs a refresher.

Before we could start cutting we had to unpack some new equipment, wash it and put it away. I am finding it smart to often play stupid. Many of the other students believe that since this is their second quarter and they have not seen me before that I'm a newbie. I just don't remember some things or we did things differently. Example, I couldn't figure out how to get the sanitizer to work. Our MILF said that it only takes a drop and Chef concurred. Ok, I didn't remember. Too my credit though the low battery light was on. But when I asked why they weren't using the dish washer and doing everything by hand I was returned with a look of a deer caught in the headlights by Hottie #2. I am a dish washing machine so I jumped in a cranked a few racks through.

One of the items unpacked was a dozen paring knives from Dexter. I grabbed a basket to run them through the dishwasher and MILF stopped me saying knives had to be hand washed. I asked why, knowing that running twelve paring knives through the dishwasher was much safer and that Dexter knives are made to run through dishwashers. Her smart ass reply was if I had read my book last night like I was supposed to, I would know. Ok, I'll bite, I did read the book, but again why? Because dishwashers wil ruin the handles and dull the knives. OK, true enough, but these are Dexters! I'll ask Chef. I came back, said it was OK with these particular knives. I learned long time ago, play dumb, let people feel like they are in control and feelings don't get hurt. I like MILF by the way.

Next we watched some knife skills videos. I am starting to wonder if people with ADD are drawn to be cooks? My class is older and more professional than the kids I was with before but as soon as Chef went to his office, people started talking, goofing off and then fast forwarding the video so we didn't have to watch as much. The NEVER happened when I was in college. I wished they hadn't. There was one really good section on sharpening that got skipped over. These people will struggle with sharp knives for a while.

We set up in a long assembly line which was strange because with the kids we used both sides of the kitchen and had some elbow room. We were supposed to practice all of our cuts, batonette, julienne, brunoise, dice, lozenge, roll cuts, etc. I didn't bother with tourné since I don't have a tourné knife and I didn't bring a short paring knife with me. I bring my own knives. I don't bother with the knife roll if I don't have to since 90% of the time all we need is a cook's knife and a paring knife. For me it is quite simple, I don't trust someone else's sharpening skills. I sharpen my own knives. I know they are sharp. If I cut myself it will be my own fault, not because I trusted someone else's dull knife. Usually I bring my cook's knife, my petty knife and sometimes my santoku knife. Now I wish my cook's knife was about two inches longer, but doesn't everybody.

Mouth was at the end of the table, she's a lefty. And a constant complainer. Several times I heard her say she hates this class. Why are you here then! She has a nice knife though.

The Kid was on my left. This guy is like 4' 8" and drives a big 'ol (1970 something) beat up pick up truck with a huge blower scoop on the hood. He's serious but he massacred an onion. I tried to show him how to cut it correctly rather than just hacking away at it. He was using his paring knife. He was shocked when I said that his knife was dull. It's brand new! Yeah, well, that doesn't mean that the company sent it to you fully sharp. I like The Kid.

On my right were Sushi One and Sushi Two. These guys both work at a steak and sushi place down the road. Young guys but committed. They take copious notes. Deja vu with my last class, Sushi One asked me for help with his cuts. I showed him how his tomato would bend under the knife before cutting, a sure sign of a dull knife. I let him try my knives to see the difference. He just needs more practice with the sharpener.

We cut up potatoes, onions, and carrots. A few of us did a chiffonade on some cabbage and minced some garlic. A few others diced up some celery. We all had to dice some Roma tomatoes. Some were diced some were mangled. Chef threw it all into the big steam-jacket pot with some water for a vegetable soup. When it was ready everyone grabbed huge bowls. I grabbed a coffee cup and asked Bar Code to fill it half way. I don't like vegetable soup but felt it was important to taste it. It was actually pretty good but that doesn't make me a fan.

Next week is sauces and stocks. If we get to pick a sauce I want to make a velouté sauce, first step to poutine!

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-07-13T21:12:00.003-04:00

I started back to class today. I had to cash in some of my pitiful retirement to do it but it was starting to look like there was no other way and that if I didn't do something drastic any possibility of ever taking this class again would be slim to none. (I can't believe that is one sentence).

Of course the school had to piss me off again. I had to reapply as a returning student (is that redundant) since I took two quarters off. That involved filling out paperwork with information they already have on file. I can see it myself on-line. Then I had to get another TB test because mine had expired one week ago and you need an up to date one every year. I needed that before I could register for my class But the test takes 48 hours to read which meant that I wouldn't have my test result until Thursday which is after Wednesday when classes begin. And registering after classes begin means I have to pay a late fee. Never mind the fact that I had everything together other than my TB test which they allowed after the fact the first time I applied and never mind the fact that my class didn't start until today NOT ON WEDNESDAY.

Piss ant school.

I think what really grates me is the fact that they treat me like a punk high school kid. I'm married. I'm almost 40. I have a kid. I already have a degree. I've already had a career. We pay property taxes that pays for this school to even exist. Stop treating me like I'm 17 and show me some respect. Even the president of the college was patronizing to me.

Piss ant school.

Class looks like it will be good. The silver lining in having taken two quarters off is that the high school kids are gone. The class is big, about 20 people but so was class with the punk high school kids so that's no problem for me. Most of the class are restaurant people, many commuting from as far away as 60 miles. A good third of the class look to be my age or older than me. We have one recent high school hottie who I was told by Ed, one of the elder cooks, is the mouth of the class. Her mom owns a catering company and apparently this girl knows it all. I actually watched her smart off to Chef Drake and get rewarded with sweeping and mopping the kitchen. Ed pointed out another young Turk and told me he was 18 with 40 years of experience. I laughed. Should be a good class.

Today was orientation so we were done in two hours. Except for Hottie, she still had to mop. Tomorrow we start with knife cuts. My knives are sharp so I'm ready.

Yogrit

2009-07-10T12:29:00.003-04:00

That's how Rose says yogurt and that is just too cute.

A while back I made a lemon yogurt pound cake. Since I had to buy the large tub of Dannon plain yogurt I thought I might take the opportunity to make my own yogurt. I had just recently watched the Good Eats episode, again, on making your own yogurt and felt inspired. Rather than making a big quart of yogurt like Alton Brown did I thought I would use the opportunity to break out my yogurt maker. The yogurt maker was my Mom's which I saved from being thrown away. It was probably thirty years old and used five times.

The recipe Alton Brown has for yogurt is here. Simple enough. I left out the honey though. His method is a little odd because he only heats the milk up to 120°F rather than 190°F as so many other recipes call for. I think this is because milk today is pasteurized and homogenized and the higher temperature dates back to another time. I think.

My results were so so. The flavor and smell were correct but the consistency was thinner than Yoplait which I find to be the thinnest of yogurts. Like Yoplait is fine as Yoplait has always been my favorite but this was too thin. The yogurt was also grainy. So I decided to try again with some modifications.

I broke one of my rules of only changing only one variable at a time, however I only changed two at a time so I think I can work out what was effective and what was not with a few more trials.

My second attempt at yogurt making I swapped out the powdered milk for condensed milk. My thinking was that the powdered milk was causing the graininess and that the higher fat content from the condensed milk would thicken the yogurt up. The added sweetness would be nice too. I also used the last cup of yogurt from the last batch as the starter rather than the Dannon yogurt.

The results were the same. The yogurt was still thin and still grainy. This time I salvaged the yogurt by straining it and making Greek yogurt. That worked well and removed the graininess actually but I found the end product a little too tart. Back to the drawing board.

I did a little research on the Internet and came up with some changes for the third batch. I read at a university web site that the 190°F threshold really is important and while 120°F will work, results are more based on luck. So the third time around I heated the milk up to 190°F, left out the dry milk or the condensed milk all together and went back to the Dannon yogurt starter. I accidentally fermented this batch twelve hours instead of eight. Damn, that's three variables. Oh well.

The third batch was exactly the same as the first two. Thin and grainy. But for some reason I felt like I was making progress. I also learned that if I added one packet of True Lemon and one packet of Splenda I got a yogurt taste that I really liked.

Trial number four. This time I looked around the Internet for problems with grainy yogurt. Just about every website I found was a blog or forum with unhelpful advice. Cocky home cooks spouting their way was the best way, any other way was wrong and espousing just about every trick I had tried before. I finally stumbled on to a web page, an article from a university food science department I think, that dealt with issues facing large dairy producers. On the subject of grainy yogurt it mentioned pitching the starter at too high of a temperature or using an old starter. Another factor was poor blending of the starter in the milk. Back to the drawing board.

For the fourth batch I bought some plain Greek yogurt from Stoneybrook Farms. I used regular low fat milk bumped up with a little half and half to simulate whole milk. Again no additions of dry milk or condensed milk. I did bring the milk up to 190°F but this time I cooled the milk all the way down to about 80°F before I threw in the container of Greek yogurt (that was strictly an accident. My goal was 100°F). I whisked it all together until it was almost frothy. I filled my containers and started the maker. Since I did this in the evening I unintentionally fermented the yogurt twelve hours instead of eight.

Voila! Not only was the graininess gone but the yogurt was much thicker, more like a Dannon yogurt than a thin Yoplait. The yogurt was not overly tart for having been in the maker 12 hours. There is a little textural difference in the yogurt in the very bottom of the cup around the rim. I think this is from an unevenness in temperature profile in the yogurt maker. It probably runs hotter there. But otherwise I think I got it! I think the success came from a combination of using a fresher yogurt for a starter and pitching it at a lower temperature. I will try a few more batches to iron things out. Next batch I will try with the last cup of yogurt rather than buying some more Stoneybrook Farm's Greek yogurt. Then I will see if I cannot get the lower temperature to work instead of heating to 190°F.

I have to say there is no cost savings to making your own yogurt. The advantages are in being in control of the final product, it can be organic or any fat content you want. And it's kind of fun.

First Harvest

2009-06-29T08:22:00.002-04:00

It isn't much... yet... but it's ALL mine!

Garden of Delight - The Pics

2009-06-09T16:23:00.007-04:00

Sorry for the picture quality. I had to use my camera phone, but you will get the gist. Container gardening is way to go. If I had the money, this is the way I'd go, probably adding a unit or two per year. But I don't have the money, so this is how I do it.

Above is a topsy turvy planter, yes the same one you see on TV, that my mother-in-law gave to me. Instead of going with the tomato seeds she gave me I put an eggplant in it. I'm not crazy about eating eggplant but I'm will to try. Below is Rose's onion. This onion sprouted on the counter top and I decided to go ahead and plant it so that she could watch it grow. When I water the eggplant is drains out the bottom and waters the onion. Pretty slick, huh?

This is the side porch. The topsy turvy planter had cherry tomatoes in it last year. It did OK but I wasn't really impressed. This year I planted pickling cucumbers in it. I've made homemade pickles before and hope to do the same with these. The plant is growing well, it remains to be seen how well it produces. Next year I want to grow some gherkins too. Underneath is a large planter that I have used for years. At various times it has had beans, peas, and tomatoes. Remember, I hate bending over or getting on my knees. I made the soil mix myself. It is a mix of sand and potting soil. That is sand you see on top and keeps the weeds to a minimum and easy to pull when necessary. This year I planted radishes around the back radius. Silly me never thought that one radish plant produces one radish. I had six nice radishes. Note to self: plant a whole container of radishes next year. Where the radishes were I planted carrots, I'll get six of those too. Silly me. Well it was my first time for both. In the front of the planter are spring onions. They are growing well so far. Yes that is an oak tree in the middle. The tall ones seems to have died, but the short one is growing well. They were given to me as six inch starter saplings and I didn't know what to do with them. Still don't but I couldn't bear throwing them away.

Here is an aerial view of the garden from the side porch. I can't take credit for this gardening system. The guy who owned the house before us started this and left me half of the beds. They are blue plastic 55 gallon (40 gallon?) drums split in half and mounted in frames made of 2'x4's. Holes are drilled in the bottom for drainage. A few of them are pretty rickety and will eventually need to be replaced, maybe with weather resistant wood. I want to add another one too but will have to wait until I have funds. The previous owner even took the time to paint a few blue, why I don't know. I put in the floor of cardboard this year because I couldn't afford new mulch and have way too many moving boxes. You can see my laziness though, I didn't finish the right side.

Here's a view of the garden from ground level. I stole Rose's wagon for hauling dirt. I need to give it back!

Believe it or not this is a compost pile though refuse pile is probably more accurate. This pile was all on the left this morning. On this side was a small brush pile which I burned today. I turned the compost over to the right after everything had burned out. You're actually supposed to turn your compost about every three days but I'm taking it slow. This will probably be ready for next year. I have a lot of branches and brush mixed in which isn't really right but in my mind I think of them as providing air space in the pile, aerating the compost which is important. Eventually it will break down or I'll sift it out. When I turned it I noticed I have some good looking compost already now, at the bottom of the pile and some huge earth worms which is a good sign. Since it is now turned you can't really see all of the table scraps I've been throwing on the pile, watermelon rinds, corn husks and cobs, egg shells, coffee grounds. Big stuff is supposed to be ground up but I have not been taking the time to do that which makes it more of a refuse pile at times. I have an old garbage disposal that one day I hope to resuscitate for that purpose. Behind the pile you can see the huge burning "pit" that the previous owner of the house had that I hope to reclaim, slowly.

This is the only ground level bed I have but learned last year that corn does not grow well in the above ground beds. I think the roots need to go deep. This was a big experiment. Corn is fussy. You can't really start it indoors and transplant it, it really needs to be sown directly into the soil. But I hate weeding. Years ago I started playing with weed block with row crops but I had never done it with corn. My great idea was to make slits in the plastic and sit mini-peat pots in the holes and plant to corn in the little pots. This is a new bed so I don't have well tilled soil underneath. Next year will be better but so far the results look promising. This bed has shade in the late afternoon but gets full sun starting in the morning. The four plants near the corners that don't seem to belong are pumpkin plants. I went with cooking pumpkins but we'll use a few as little jack-o'-lanterns for RoRo. I have a few more beds like this that need to be reclaimed, one is a large bed of strawberries that doesn't produce much. I think it went wild. I might try reclaiming one of these beds for a late season of corn.

This is basically a tomato bed. On the left are two watermelon plants, one in each corner. The hope here is that the plants will either spread under the tomatoes or drape over the sides, either way works. The tomatoes are planted by height. The two cages on the left are bean cages. I had lima beans and pole beans here last year but opted not to plant either this year. My limas were disappointing last year, just not a large yield. The pole beans did well but I think I prefer stringless bush beans, at least I have in the past. Two of these tomato plants are cherry tomatoes, an early and a late producer. Cherry tomatoes tend to grow quite high. The other is a Cherokee purple tomato.

This bed has more tomatoes and peppers. These are the large and medium tomatoes that don't grow as high. I've had some pepper plants grow fairly high so I caged them this year. I have the plant tags stapled in front of each plant, you can see them on the edge. I didn't take the time to read them so I can't report which ones are which.

The herb garden. At one time this had about six herbs in it but I never seem to use as much as I think I will. I used to have cilantro in here but it goes to seed so quickly that it is simply easier to buy it at the grocery. I'm sure I have wild cilantro growing underneath. On the right is a single thyme plant that has taken over the bed. It is about two years old. I stopped trying to control it. I cut half of it out last year and couldn't give it away. It came back with a vengeance. On the left is a new parsley plant. I'd love for it to take over that side like that single thyme plant did. There's some wild grass and weeds in there too that I hope the parsley chokes out.

This middle bed has two more watermelon plants on the right and snow peas on the left. I may have to stake the peas, I'm not sure yet. I've found that snow peas need little support. This is a different variety than I planted last year. Like the corn, I planted these and the beans in the next bed in individual mini-peat pots that I pushed though a slit in the weed block. Success so far. The middle section I deliberately left unplanted. This is where I will plant a late crop of beans and/or peas, probably next week.

This bed has shade late in the day. On the left are two more pepper plants. One is a jalapeno the other is a pimento chile. I have no idea what to do with the pimentos but I have a bunch of Spanish and Basque recipes that call for them. I usually end up freezing or drying most of my peppers. In the middle are the stringless bush beans. They are doing very well. On the right is a cluster of straight eight cucumber plants. Like the watermelon I'll let them branch under the beans or drape over the sides.

So a little inspiration for all of you gardeners out there, if not this year then for next year.

Garden of Delight*

2009-06-01T09:13:00.003-04:00

When we got back from Nashville my priority was to get the garden in. I was pretty anxious as I really wanted it in by the end of April and now it was looking more like May 15. Ugh.

I've been gardening for years, though I would never say that any of them have been that successful. My best garden I think was my first one in South Carolina. I was living with a buddy of mine in a single wide deep in the sticks of SC, Hodges. His trailer was dropped into a clearing of a woods. Our crazy "neighbor" had a farm tractor and came over and tilled up a nice patch for me. It's amazing how well that tractor prepped the soil. All I remember of that garden was that I had so many cucumber I couldn't give enough away. I had a bumper crop of bush beans and I thought the corn was promising but it went to smut.

When had my own house in South Carolina I also tried a garden. I borrowed my friend's brand new rear tine tiller and it promptly broke. It wasn't my fault. The tiller had a cracked block from the factory but I don't think I have borrowed any power tools in my life since. I had high hopes for that garden. I think the first year went well but the succeeding years got worse and worse, finally going wild in the end. I hated the heat in SC and just couldn't muster the resolve to get out and tend the garden.

In Michigan I also put in a garden. It started out well but when I left the foundry and started traveling for a living that was basically the end of my gardening career there. I was never home to take care of it. Sometimes I was gone for multiple weeks at a time.

When we moved to Georgia I didn't even bother gardening in Bainbridge. It was more miserable than SC. When we moved to Blairsville, the previous home owner had a neat above ground system for gardening. He had taken blue plastic drums, cut them in half and mounted them in wooden frames. This is great because a fat guy like me hates bending over or getting down on my knees. In addition to his system, I cover each planter with weed block and grow my plants through them. This not only eliminates any weeds but also retains more moisture in the soil which is important since we've been in a drought the past few years. I have pictures on my half dead laptop that I can't get to and I can't post from this net book. Sorry.

The first summer here I only did tomatoes, snow peas and herbs I think. Last summer I added Lima beans, pole beans, peppers, cucumbers and watermelon. Also last summer I ordered my tomatoes and peppers plants on-line. That worked out fairly well. The heirloom tomatoes didn't grow great but I was still pleased with the results of ordering plants on line.

A while back I had posted on the importance of gardening and eating more locally. One of my challenges was to either start a garden or add something new to your garden. So here is what I have done to step up to my own challenge. Once again I have chile peppers and tomatoes from Chileplants.com. This year I added an eggplant from them. In addition to the "normal" cucumbers I bought a pickling cucumber plant (I prefer to start from live plants rather than seeds). I'm trying a different watermelon this year. I've never been successful with watermelon. But I try. I switched from pole beans to bush beans, the same beans I had so much success with in that first garden in Hodges.

I'm also trying corn this year. This is a big experiment on two fronts. One, I reclaimed an old garden bed from the PO that had gone wild. This plot has not been well worked or tilled. This plot is also partial shade. And two, trying to use my weed block system, planted all of the seeds in mini-peat pots. So far so good. The early corn is up and the Silver Queen is right behind it. I planted some pumpkins in with the corn also. I went with cooking pumpkins instead of jack-o-lanterns but with Rose's since who's to say we can't use them for Halloween? That is if they grow.

On the porches I have the eggplant in a topsy turvy planter that my mother-in-law gave me. Rose helped me plant it so we call it HER eggplant. That's on the front porch. I also had a white onion sprout on me and she planted that. I sits underneath the eggplant. I don't expect much out of that, certainly no onions, but hope that it grows tall. I have topsy turvy planter on the back porch also that I had cherry tomatoes in last year. This year I put the pickling cucumbers in it. So far so good. That hangs on the side porch.

Also on the side porch I have a HUGE pot that I had used for the snow peas in the past. This year I have radishes and carrots. I planted them after being inspired from a visit to my sister-in-law's. On a whim I bought some green onion seeds. Rose planted them. Those seem to be growing well along with the radishes, not sure about the carrots. I'll try to post pictures later for inspiration.

I think I rose up to my own challenge.

*song from Mission UK's album The First Chapter

Cast Iron and Sticky Fingers

2009-05-29T11:18:00.004-04:00

Where was I? Oh yes, leaving Nashville.

Our route home took us through Chattanooga which meant we would be driving right past the Lodge Manufacturing foundry and outlet store. I have posted on this before. Several years ago I had an opportunity to spend a day in the foundry touring it and picking it apart. Neat place. Afterwards I dropped a pretty penny in their outlet store. I have more than a complete "set" now. At the time you could still buy raw unseasoned pans, not anymore. I don't know why but I like seasoning my own for some reason. I don't always do the outsides either. Anyway, we stopped in, had a good look around and didn't spend as much money as I did before. I wish I had planned better and brought my buddy's business card with me and got an extra 10% off. Of well.

Dinah bought for me an enameled three quart casserole dish, in red to match other stuff I have, as an anniversary present. It had some nearly invisible blemishes in the coating. Amazon has this item "on sale" for $59.83, regularly $77.50. She bought it here for $29.95. For herself she bought an apple dutch oven which she has longed for for awhile. It almost matches our plates. Amazon has it for $116.70 marked down from $169. I think Dinah bought it for $60. Both broke my rule about buying Chinese iron but I didn't make the purchase. I don't turn away gifts! ;-)

I can't remember all of the things we bought and the prices. I know I bought this muffin pan for $8.95. I got it out of the back room where the casting defect stuff is.That's where the real bargains are. It's pretty easy for me to find stuff with meaningless defects since I used to do that for a living. I was compelled to buy another little witch's kettle. This one was seasoned of course. My old one is not which I use for keeping change in. I paid $7.95. I was tempted to buy a giant Dutch oven, but really don't have a need. They were less than half price. We also bought two mini-corn stick pans, about nine bucks I think, and a cast iron horse toy for Rose. That thing has a big sand inclusion in it's side. Damn Chinese castings. Well worth the stop if you are in the area.

After we left we opted to eat in Chattanooga. I take great joy in letting Rose pick where we are going to eat. It's better than a magic eight ball. I let her chose between Sticky Fingers and Big River Grill. It almost didn't work because she would change her mind every minute, even as we would pull into the parking lot. But I did get her to commit to Sticky Hands, as she called it. I got the ribs. This isn't the first time I've eaten at this chain but those ribs were some of the best I've had in a while. They were so good and so what I had been craving. Nobody has good Memphis style ribs where we live. I know I am going to be disappointed anywhere I get ribs until we travel out of town again.

An Asian Style Dinner

2009-05-27T09:31:00.006-04:00

I've still got some things to cover, the garden, Rose's birthday, maybe even Sticky Fingers. But right now I need to cover last night's dinner.

Last night's menu:

I watch a lot of Food Network. Though all of the shows aren't as good as they used to be but there are still a few really good ones. I'm actually a big fan of Barefoot Contessa. I think Ina Garten is one of the most natural personalities on the network. She really seems like she could be the cook next door. On a certain level I think she's even sexy. Her stuff is actually pretty simple though I have learned that she has steps and ingredients on her show that she doesn't include in her written recipes. Good to know. It's rare that I ever see a show where I want to copy the entire meal presented but this time her meal looked like a perfect combination.

Why is it that my garlic never looks as good as the garlic they get on TV?

This turned out to be a great meal. I would say the dishes are Thai inspired without the heat. That was a little disappointing, I'd have preferred it if the noodles were spicy but that can be fixed next time. I would definitely be willing to serve this to company, especially for my more persnickety friends who don't eat beef or pork. Bah!

All of the ingredients were easy for me to find here in the sticks so you shouldn't have a problem. I was not in the mood to multitask so I took the whole day to make the entire meal, but if you multitask you can whip all of this up fairly quickly, especially the noodles and salmon. Just remember to plan on the 15 minutes for the salmon to marinate and the 15 minutes for the salmon to rest after cooking. Oh yeah, this can all be served room temperature or even cold. That could come in handy.

On the noodles, I guess if you can buy toasted sesame seeds, go that route. I was able to easily toast mine in our new toaster oven. It was quick and easy, just be sure to watch them as you can quickly burn them. I had used up the fresh ginger I had on the salmon marinade so I substituted an 1/8 teaspoon of ground ginger. It probably wasn't as strong as using fresh ginger but it didn't hurt. Not being a fan of bell peppers, I left them out. Your choice. At the grocery I hesitated when buying the sugar snap peas almost buying snow peas instead. I like snow peas more and besides, they are "more" Asian. Then I thought about buying an eight ounce package of each. In the end I went with the snap peas. The peas I buy you can microwave in the bag so that's the cooking method I used. The snap peas were tasty.

The salmon came out great. I have very few fish dishes so it was good to add one to the repertoire. Again the ingredients were easy to find. I was surprised that my grocery didn't carry the ubiquitous squeeze bottle of Sriracha which I was going to buy for the chile paste. I think I remember that was what Ina Garten used on the show and I remember my friend's crazy half Asian-something ex-wife cooking with it so it seemed like the right stuff to get. Instead I found some Sriracha sauce from Ka-Me. The panko bread crumbs were supposed to form a crusty crispy layer. Mine did not so I suppose if you don't have any panko on hand, just use regular bread crumbs.

The lemon cake is very lemony, very good. I'm sure that is from using real lemons. It is so good that you don't need to make the blueberry sauce but blueberries and lemons go so well together it's a nice added touch. This is the first time I have used yogurt as a cooking ingredient I think. The recipe called for whole-milk yogurt. Try to find some. We've brainwashed ourselves over time that we can only have low-fat or fat-free yogurt or somehow we are going to die of clogged arteries. Do you realize how much yogurt you would have to eat for that to be an issue? And the truth is the whole-milk yogurt is actually probably healthier for you. Since I have some plain yogurt left over, maybe this is my excuse for finally getting around to making some homemade yogurt. It was the covered on Alton Brown a few nights ago. An omen? I did not have any vanilla sugar on hand. Since it takes several weeks for the vanilla beans to permeate through the sugar it wasn't something I could just whip up. But this was a wet application for the vanilla sugar so I used a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract to one cup of sugar and I think that was fine. My blueberry sauce was not thick like it was on TV but it still tasted good. I put it in a squeeze bottle for Dinah to take to work with the left overs.

Last Supper in Nashville

2009-05-26T09:27:00.003-04:00

I'm almost caught up.

It was our last night in Nashville and I thought that we would try the restaurant recommended to us for lunch, South Street. I found their website on-line and it looked like a dangerous place to eat, it was expensive and I wanted everything on the menu. I also knew that this restaurant was highly rated on Tripadvisor.com. The only knock I saw was that parking was limited. Boy was that prophetic.

We found the place and it was tiny. And there was absolutely no parking. We circled the restaurant once looking for a place to park but after that I said let's go somewhere else. When we go out to eat we will often call out a back up in case our first choice is packed or closed. Our back up was Stoney River. At the time I did not know that it was a chain, but it's not like we have one where we live. Again, this restaurant had great reviews on Tripadvisor and was called out as the steak place for locals, as good as the upper crust places like Ruth's Chris or Morton's but at a discount.

We found the place no problem, walked in and immediately I was stressed. The place was dark, overbearing and stuffy. Clearly most of the tables were business dinners so everyone was dressed up and we were quite casual. The hostesses were not friendly. But, Rose was famished; there was no turning back.

Now ordinarily I do not let appearances at restaurants get to me. One of my all time favorite restaurants is Cargo Portside in Brunswick GA which I'd put up against this steakhouse or any fancy restaurant in the big cities like Chicago and New York. I'd get there early wearing shorts and a t-shirt, earrings in both ears and sunglasses on. I'd sit out front, smoke a $20 cigar, sip on a glass of Shiraz and read the paper while they got my table ready. When my table was ready, I'd snuff out my cigar, follow the hostess in and walk through the glares of the local South Georgia elite as I was shown to my table. I'd get the appetizer special, the dinner special and often the desert special. I drop close 10 a hundred bucks and I'd probably tip 25%. My point is that my money spent the same, and to the restaurant and staff probably better than the elite locals. I don't think we should judge the book by the cover, mostly.

Maybe my problem at this restaurant was that we did not have a children's menu. There was nothing but $40 steaks, lobsters, fancy French preparations. Dinah and I are frantically trying to find something to feed to Rose that we know she will eat since we know she was starving. I said something to our waitress about how hard this was since they didn't have a children's menu. "Oh we have one, the hostess didn't give you one?" All of a sudden the dinner dramatically improved. I relaxed. I think Dinah relaxed. I looked around and noticed a few other people more casual than the business class. The dim lights seemed a little brighter. Deep breath.

I'm sure you can guess what I ordered. That's right, another ribeye and Caesar salad with anchovies. It's been a good week. Both were excellent, on par with what I had at Sal's in Lexington but still not as good as the Chicago Prime at Malone's. I don't remember what Dinah and Rose ordered. I think they both ordered shrimp of some sort. Rose's was huge butterflied and fried and Dinah's was spicy?

For desert we got the Chocolate Fudge Cake. There needs to be a disclaimer here. It's a Blondie with ice cream and fudge sauce and candied pecan pieces. How they get away calling that a fudge cake is beyond me. That said, it is eyes-roll-back-into-your head-good. Skip the restaurant ambiance, go for lunch and get this dessert.

More Nashville

2009-05-23T21:44:00.002-04:00

How did we end up in Nashville anyway? Well it was actually a choice between Hickory NC and Nashville TN. Strange I know. Dinah had months ago put in to take the week off of our anniversary. We haven't had a vacation at all since last year's anniversary. She didn't care what we did, we could sit around the house for a week, she just didn't want to go to work. Not me. I'm already home all week. Being home everyday just doesn't sound as enjoyable to me. I already do that. So I thought if we could get away just for two days, somewhere four hours or less away, it would at least seem more like a vacation and be more enjoyable for me. And vacation for Dinah means sleeping in, loooong naps, someone making the beds and clean white towels everyday. We didn't have to actually do something.

For awhile now I had been thinking about buying a pair of Kevlar reinforced jeans for riding my motorcycle. I can't afford good riding gear or leathers but the riding jeans are in my price range and significantly better than regular everyday jeans. I found two companies, Draggin Jeans in Hickory NC and Diamond Gusset Jeans in Bon Aqua TN, about 45 minutes from Nashville. I was leaning toward the Draggin Jeans until in March when we were unable to meet with my folks in Lexington so Mom wanted to reschedule for the first weekend in May. Since we were already taking time off and since Nashville is kind of in the area of Lexington, my choice was made for Diamond Gusset Jeans and a two night getaway in Nashville.

So our last day in Nashville we got the breakfast buffet at the restaurant, free with my Priority Club status, and it was above average for Holiday Inn breakfasts. Then we headed out to find the Diamond Gusset store in Bon Aqua. Tensions ran fairly high since the directions and map from their web site did not work. Finally I called the store, got new directions and we managed to get there. When I told them about our problems the response I got was, yeah we hear that a lot, it happens to a lot of people. But they were just sales clerks not the store owners so they had little interest in correcting it.

The jeans were great. It was nice to be able to try them on in the store rather than order blindly over the Internet and hope for the best, especially with my size. The jeans were slightly cheaper since we bought them at the store. And best of all, the jeans are made here in the USA!

On our way back, Rose was quite ornery, I think because she was quite hungry. I asked at the hotel where we should eat if we could only eat one lunch in Nashville. She gave a me a recommendation but we got distracted by a brew pub on the way there. It's hard for me to pass up a brew pub. So into the Blackstone Brewery we went.

I believe that Dinah had the American Pale Ale and I had the Mai Bock. Bocks are my favorite of favorite beer styles and I will go out of my way for one. Oh the memories of Huber Bock, a once upon a time favorite. Mine was great and I think Dinah enjoyed hers too. It was a driving lunch so I had a one drink maximum. With the beers I ordered their hot soft pretzels. They were so good yet not very pretzely, more like good buttery bread shaped like a pretzel. They were served with two mustards, a smooth and a stone ground which went well with both the pretzels and the beer.

Dinah ordered a wood fired thin crust pizza with pepperoni, mushroom and garlic. It smelled amazing but truth be told, as much as I love garlic I do not like it on pizza. The pepperoni itself was outstanding. I was excited to get the mushroom burger because our waitress said I could get it medium-rare. The best! But it came out medium-well and that made it only a so-so burger.

After that it was time for naps. We all needed one, especially Rose. We had planned on taking Rose to see the new Disney movie Earth while we were in Nashville since it would likely not be playing in our rural neck of the woods, but Dinah and Rose both slept right through all of the matinee showings. Oh well. I learned later there were many scenes of animals eating each other, though not graphic, and that maybe the movie is not that well suited for a soon to be three year old. Worked out for the best then.

I'll save dinner for the next post.

Thoughts on Corn

2009-05-21T23:00:00.003-04:00

I need to interrupt the vacation saga to discuss my thoughts on corn.

I picked up six ears of corn either Monday or last Friday, I can't remember. I had it chilling in the crisper in the fridge so it doesn't matter. The corn was from Florida so it was semi-local to here in North Georgia. If you don't believe me look at the license plates around here. I didn't even know they grew corn in Florida. Fresh corn in May is pretty cool. You can pick and ship corn from Florida to Georgia in the same day, at most day and a half. Of course I know it sits in giant coolers before shipping to keep its freshness, so it's not THAT fresh. I saw lots of those coolers living in South Georgia. Fresh corn in May, hard to believe from someone who grew up with Indiana corn and the mantra "knee high by the Fourth of July."

My favorite and usual way of preparing corn is in my steam pot. Rarely do I boil it anymore. Occasionally I will microwave it. Last night I threw it on the grill at the end of grilling the boneless pork ribs. I ate the three left over ears this afternoon for lunch, cold, straight out of the refrigerator. Yes, that's right, I said cold. I love cold corn. Don't know why. It started when I was a kid at the Lake in the days before microwave ovens. I don't know how I would have reheated it back then. I even roll it in butter, which barely sticks, and salt it. I so love cold leftover corn.

Which brings me to this:

Why do we cook corn?

We don't think twice about not cooking tomatoes, onions, celery, apples, oranges, peas, radishes, carrots, strawberries, etc. But you mention eating corn raw and people's faces blanch. I think it is the only vegetable that we eat that we always cook. Well maybe potatoes and I don't know anything about turnips, but those are roots anyway.

I maintain that the only reason we cook the corn is to melt the butter and the only reason we need the butter melted is for the salt to stick. So if you don't salt your corn, save some time and skip cooking it. It tastes the same. I know. I've tried it. And if yo are boiling your corn for 20 minutes, stop! You don't need to cook it, only make it hot enough to melt the butter!

I asked (emailed) Alton Brown to look into it once. He never got back to me and I have yet to see it mentioned in an episode.

All that said, I still cook mine. I have to have the salt.

I can't wait for the next batch of corn, hopefully Sliver Queen, and the cold leftovers.

On to Nashville

2009-05-20T13:16:00.005-04:00

The next morning all of us regrouped. Mom seemed to think we'd go do something but Dad and I both knew better. After breakfast and some lolly gagging it was time to pack and head out. Besides this way we'd all be at our destination before rush hour. My folks had a three hour drive and according to Google Maps so did we.

Unfortunately for us Google Maps was a little off, the directions were correct but the estimates were not.

We drove through Frankfurt KY. This looks like a really neat town. We might have to visit some time. Outside of Frankfurt we spied this:

Rose was just as excited as I was. It is called the Castle Post. Here is a long and sometimes redundant history of the castle. Apparently it burned to the ground a few years ago, was rebuilt and opened only recently as a luxury hotel. We will have to save our pennies because it looks like it would be worth it for one night.

Since we wewre not on interstate we snuck up on Louisville where we picked up the interstate, finally. According to Google Maps we should only be 125 miles to Nashville though it took us two of the three hours to get to Louisville. The first mileage sign we saw said Nashville 185 miles. Dammit. That was a real buzz kill. Since we were at this point hungry but had planned on being in Nashville at 3:00 and now it was looking like 6:00 we decided to get some grub at White Castles!

I love White Castles and no Krystals are not the same. Perhaps my love of White Castles comes from their being headquartered in my hometown of Columbus OH, though I did not eat them growing up (I didn't grow up in Columbus). We got a sack of 10 sliders. Rose seemed excited about "little tiny cheeseburgers" but after one bite she gave it back. I don't think she liked the onions. I should have known better.

Finally we rolled into Nashville as Dinah gleefully made sure we were listening to the Indigo Girls, arriving at the Holiday Inn Vanderbilt. We pretty much always stay at a Holiday Inn and I try to get a good one for Dinah. I wanted the Indigo down the street but you had to pay for parking. I have thousands of Priority Club points allowing for free nights but my stash is dwindling. Maybe that means it is time to go back to work?

This hotel was very nice. We were on the exclusive executive floor. There was no bath tub but a beautiful walk in shower. Poor Rose, she's petrified of showers. If only Dinah and I were skinnier, this shower was made for shower sex.

Anyway, it was the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, one of my favorite holidays and once again Dinah and I failed to celebrate it properly. After a long drive I didn't feel like driving to the "good" Mexican restaurant recommended to me, nor did I feel like walking across the street to the Mexican restaurant and dealing with the college crowd. So we opted to eat at the hotel restaurant/bar, order chips and salsa and Mexican adult beverages. This way we could both imbibe and all we had to do was not lose Rose and be able to find the elevator.

Dinah had her usual, margaritas. I had a free drink coupon for domestic beer so I got a Bud Light Lime, closest I could get to something Mexican. I followed that with Dos Perros from Nashville's Yazoo Brewery because it sounded Mexican and finally an Enlightened Black Ale because I love black beer (Xingu maybe my all time favorite beer). Rose got a cheese quesadilla, Dinah is a sucker for hot wings and I got a cheeseburger. Dinah's wings were hot. They were so hot I think she only ate three. I finished the rest. They were hot. And they weren't vinegary as so many are, just good and hot, hot but really really good. The way a hot wing is supposed to be. Rose was too distracted to eat her quesadilla so I think Dinah finished it. Maybe it helped to get the heat out of her mouth. I realize my cheeseburger was not very Cinco de Mayo-ish, but if it wasn't the absolute best cheeseburger I have ever had it was darn close. Damn it was good! I was in shock. At a Holiday Inn! I was having a hard time not justifying coming back the next night. Man that was an awesome cheeseburger. I am going to be sorely disappointed trying to find a matching one after that.

I mentioned that Rose was distracted. As you might expect, there is live music all over the Country Music Capital that Nashville is. And that includes the Holiday Inn Vanderbilt. They have Songwriter Night every night. Some acts are bands that play a full thirty minute set, other times they have multiple songwriters on the stage at the same time and they play their songs in a round robin fashion. Rose loves all music but she really gets into live music. You should have seen her dancing.

My favorite act of the night was the Arthur Godfrey Band. They played a thirty minute set. Lyrically they reminded me a little of Kevn Kinney (a major favorite of mine), just a little. We also liked Melissa Bollea. She shared the stage with Doug Mays and one other guy I didn't care for. They took turns singing their songs. I really liked Melissa Bollea's voice. At times she reminded me of Feist though the style was different. Doug Mays was good. He reminded me of South Carolina/Savannah beach music like Hurricane Jim though Mays is more blues than reggae. I might have to track down CDs of all three.

More Great Restaurant Food

2009-05-19T13:31:00.005-04:00

While Dinah and Rose napped I hung out with my Dad down in the lobby of the hotel. We asked the front desk for another restaurant recommendation. I told her that we enjoyed Malone's last night and would like something of equal or lesser value. She asked about tastes, what about Italian? No, I don't like Italian. What about sushi? Well I LOVE sushi but there was no way my Mom and Dad were going to go for that. I'd be the only one eating. So she recommended Sal's which is owned by the same company that owns Malone's. And it's in the same shopping center, about five doors down. At least we wouldn't get lost this time.

Sal's Chophouse was just as posh as Malone's and the menu was only a tad less expensive. Mom was thrilled. The rolls were better but we missed the garlic butter that Malone's had on the table. Again I wasn't drinking but Dinah ordered a Pixie Stick Martini. She became enthralled with this drink, I think she even had two. No appetizers tonight as we were all still a little full from our late lunch. My Mom ordered a scallop special with a Caprese salad. She doesn't eat salads though. Dinah ordered the grilled scallops. I could have who ordered which scallops backwards though. Dinah said they were great but still not as good as what we enjoyed in Charlottetown. They never are. I had debated between the ribs or the ribeye. Actually, nothing really sounded that appealing to me except for the ribeye but I felt guilty getting another expensive entree. My Dad settled on the ribs but when I found out that the ribs had a raspberry barbecue sauce, I settled on the ribeye. I do not like sweet barbecue sauce. What is that my third ribeye since we left home? Well my cholesterol is too low anyway (seriously). Need I say that I gained weight this trip? Grrr.

Everyone's meal was excellent. I do have to say that my ribeye was not as good as Malone's but there's nothing wrong with second place. Of course we all had to have desert. They had the same cookie as Malone's!!!! Dinah wanted to split one but I said NO. Though I did share mine with Rose. Dinah got her own and my parents split a tasty looking sundae.

There was no night cap at the bar because we we just too stuffed after we left the restaurant. We did get another Rose free night though.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Once we got home Dinah worked at trying to clone the Pixie Stick Martini. She finally got it mastered Sunday night. Here it is:

1 oz Pucker Blue Island Punch
1 oz Vodka
1 oz Triple Sec
1/2 oz Sweet & Sour mix
1 oz Grape Pucker
2 oz of 7-up
Shake and serve in a chilled glass with a pixie stix sugar rim (She mixed red, blue, orange, and purple together and made a little pixie stix sugar blend -- it's good she says).

Some notes:

We could not find Pucker Blue Island Punch so Dinah used Blue Curacao, which looking at the Pucker/DeKuyper website looks to be an upgrade over the Pucker Blue anyway.
The Grape Pucker proved to be impossible to find, in Georgia at least. We found it in Murphy NC. Dinah rates this part to be critical. She tried making the drink without it, substituting grape popsicle instead and it was close but not right.
If it isn't Halloween pixie sticks may be hard to find. Well they sure are in rural America at least. BUT, Cracker Barrel has them. They are behind the cash registers, five cents a piece.

Horses and Bumpers

2009-05-18T15:24:00.017-04:00

So the next day in Lexington the plan was to go to the Kentucky Horse Park. I don't think my folks were really up for this but we knew that Rose would love seeing the horses. So after an awesome breakfast we headed on over there.

On thing to know about this place is that it is spread out. You'll do a lot of walking. The weather was cool and overcast, it had rained the day before. This was probably a good thing as the park was not hot and stinky and full of flies. Because it was Monday, the place was rather dead. Many of the stalls were empty and it seemed like a lot of maintenance was being done; they were probably recovering from the weekend. A lot of horses were being walked around the park. This gave Rose an opportunity to pet one.

Rose also got to do some "barrel riding:"

Maybe the barrel riding gave her courage to ride a pony, especially since Rose was WAY overdue for a nap. The pony ride was the highlight of the entire visit. Both my parents were glowing over it.

As great as the pony ride was, Rose's highlight may have been the playground. Rose is addicted to going to the park back home and the playground they had at the Horse Park was one of the best I have ever seen. And it was a real thrill for me for my Dad to be able to play with Rose on the playground.

While there appears to be a restaurant on the park grounds it did not seem to be open while we were there. At the entrance where we bought our tickets, Mom asked for a recommendation for lunch. I think most of us were still pretty full from breakfast but Rose was hungry so we decided to find this Sam's Diner for lunch.

We were told that Sam's Diner is a local favorite and sure enough it seemed that only locals ate there. I don't think that anyone of us had this kind of restaurant in mind. It was a true diner/truck stop. But it had bad juju from the time we pulled in.

I pulled our minivan in and parked by the front door. Since I pulled in a little crooked, I decided to back up and straighten out. Immediately there was a horrible crunching sound. I checked all my mirrors and everything looked good. So I started slowly backing up again. Again the crunching. I stopped and Dinah got out to look. I knew it was bad when she started mouthing "fuck, fuck, fuck." I got out and looked. The bumper of the minivan was resting on the ground in front of the car. The rebar used to anchor the concrete parking marker was protruding out about six inches on the left side. It had caught underneath out bumper and just tore it off when I backed up. I didn't even think I had pulled in far enough to even touch the marker. In hind sight I wonder if I had stopped after the initial crunching sound if the damage would have been as extensive. I'm a magnet for this kind of stuff, especially when life starts to go well. Bad shit happens to me.

And dammit the restaurant was a smoking facility. This is one thing I can't stand about KY, TN, and NC. I hate smoke around my food. ]

Sooooo, we all went into this dive of a restaurant. While our food was being prepared my Dad and I went outside to see what we could do. We managed to get the bumper off and into the back of the minivan. My Dad actually usually carries a full set of tools, don't ask, but not this time. But he did have zip ties! So we got the flaps tied up and the van at least in drivable condition. Hey, at least we look like we fit in now. If only I can find my high school graduation tassel to hang from the rear view mirror to complete the look.

Our food was ready shortly after we got back inside. My Mom and I both ordered Kentucky Hot Browns which was their version of the famous Louisville Hot Brown. I was expecting more of an open faced sandwich than something more akin to a casserole, but it was very good. Maybe too much sauce, but I did eat the whole thing, so no complaints.

After that we all headed back to the hotel for naps, but not before I backed into the car parked behind me. I didn't see any damage so we hauled ass out of there. Like I said, bad juju.

Hotel Food and More

2009-05-15T15:58:00.003-04:00

From Maryville we headed to Lexington KY to see my folks. We are not from Kentucky nor do my parents live there. My Mom is sometimes wheelchair bound and Columbus is a long drive from Blairsville so my Mom wanted us to meet in the middle. So Lexington it was. All the time leading up to it my Mom complained and fretted that Lexington would suck, there was nothing to do and the hotel would be horrible.

We had a great time.

I've been accused my whole life of being a pessimist. Still don't understand that.

Anyway, Mom booked rooms at a Marriott resort outside of Lexington. The rooms were nothing spectacular but they were nice. They had an expensive breakfast buffet, though I've had more expensive ones, much, much more, while working the past 10 years. It was typical of some Holiday Inns and Embassy Suites. The bacon was better than average. But they had an incredible fresh fruit bar. Absolutely perfect blueberries, humongous blackberries, deep yellow pineapple and three different melons, cantaloupe, honey dew and watermelon (two of which I don't eat). Oh yeah, ripe strawberries too. They also had a phenomenal hash brown casserole. Two things made it special. One, it was peppery. They did not use a light hand on the pepper. Two, crisp, toasty melted cheese on top. Mmmmmm. Those were two excellent breakfasts in Lexington.

The first night my Mom was recommended to eat at Malone's. And again the fretting over would it be any good. "You just never know what your going to get from someones recommendation." She had us look at restaurant descriptions in the travel booklet. My Dad and I were both up for Billy's Bar-B-Q but Mom wanted something nicer. Finally I said that since we didn't know the area, let's just go with the recommendation of Malone's.

It was about a 10 minute drive and we were running late which made me more than anxious. We also thought we were lost but Dinah called while we were en route and smoothed it all out. Nice place. Mom said it was EXACTLY what she had in mind. I thought it was a little pricey, but what Mom wants, Mom gets. I'm not complaining though.

Dinah and I shared some excellent PEI mussels while my Dad ordered some calamari as an appetizer. The calamari was OK for my tastes. I prefer the leg ends and this was just rings. I was thrilled to be able to get a Caesar salad with real anchovies on top. Oh so good. They had fresh bread with a creamy garlic butter on the table. I can't count how much bread Rose ate.

While I stuck with water with lemon since I was driving, Dinah order a local beer from Lexington, Alltech's Kentucky Ale. She deemed it pretty good. As a follow up she tried what was billed as the very popular Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. This she found repulsive after one sip! I tried it and it tastes just like bourbon. If you like bourbon, this is your beer. I however was not in the mood for bourbon, nor am I a big fan of bourbon, so we just let that glass sit for the rest of the evening.

Dinah got the seared Ahi tuna appetizer for her dinner. It was thinly sliced the way I prefer it. I stole a piece and can attest to its wonderfulness. Mom got some kind of surf and turf, two shrimp stacked on top of a crab cake stacked on top of a Filet Mignon. My Dad and I both treated ourselves to thirty dollar ribeyes. Hey, Mom was buying. I had never thought that "Prime beef from Chicago" ever meant anything that special. I was wrong. My Dad and I both agreed it was the best steak either of us had ever eaten. And we've eaten a couple cows between us in our lifetimes.

Now if you are going to have a fancy dinner like this, you have to have dessert. Rose and Dad had ice cream. Dinah had a creme brule, her favorite but I can't remember what flavor it was. I ordered the chocolate chip cookie. It is worth driving to Lexington to get this cookie. The cookie was about an inch thick, six inches across, hot, half baked in the middle, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a slight drizzle of chocolate sauce. If it doesn't bring you to orgasm with the first bite it will at least make your eyes roll back.

My God it was a great meal, perfect too because unbeknownst to my parents it was our six year anniversary. Mom kept going on about how she thought it was the following week. I just bit my tongue; that was the last one. As an added bonus, Rose stayed with Grandma and Grandpa, so we were able to continue to celebrate our anniversary with a few drinks at the hotel bar before retiring to our room for a child free night!

A friend of mine once asked, why is hotel sex better? I don't know it just is.

Beef about Beer

2009-05-13T13:10:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was a complete loss since I was recovering from a sleep study. I never sleep during one of those. OK, not never, I got 3 hours of sleep. Thus, no post yesterday. Right now I'm resting a little after working in the garden this morning. More on that later, I've still got a little catching up to do.

My neurologist appointment was Friday, May 1st and after that I considered myself on vacation. The next day, Saturday, we headed to Maryville TN to visit some friends for the evening before we headed on to Lexington to visit with my folks.

Maryville had been described to be as being in the sticks. Hah! Blairsville is 650 people, that's the sticks. When you have malls, Target, and every chain restaurant you can think of, you aren't in the sticks. We don't have that many options here in Blaisville for dinner so we were a little excited about dinner. Cinda suggested Texas Roadhouse. GREAT! We don't have one and for a popular chain restaurant's steak, they are one of the better places to go.

Now I have to admit upfront that I do have a history of messing with wait staff. I will tease, flirt, poke fun. All in good taste and good fun though. I'm never mean or rude and if you play along, you will get a better tip.

This night we took two cars because we didn't have enough seats to accommodate Rose's car seat. So Adam drove me in one car and Cinda drove Dinah and Rose in our car. Bonus time! We both get to drink! So taking advantage of the situation I was aiming for a beer or three.

Our waitress came to the table, asked what I wanted and I asked what did they have on tap? She paused. She paused a little too long. So I said, wait, let me guess, the usuals, Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Coor Light, Mic Ultra, Sam Adams and one other. Big smile.

At this point she got pissy. No, that's not what we have, we have Budweiser, Miller High Life, Yuengling. Stop, give me a Yuengling. I looked at everyone, did she not just list the same beers I listed? Just because you say Budweiser it is still the same as saying Bud. I DO NOT need some 17 year old high school priss getting pissy with me about beer. Please, I went to school in Wisconsin. And after that, our quality of service dramatically decreased. She was polite the rest of the evening except to me. Whatever. She didn't get 25% tip that night. Her loss.

My ribeye was excellent by the way. Little did I know it would be only the first of many ribeyes that week. :)

Benne no Hana

2009-05-10T14:12:00.006-04:00

The Thursday before my neurologist appointment I decided to make some cookies. I like to make cookies on Thursday so Dinah can take them to work on Friday. I don't know why because they don't always eat them. Thumbing through my recipes I decided to make Benne Wafers. The recipe I used is here but don't bother with it, it isn't the best written recipe.

While it says that benne seeds are sesame seeds the first thing I had to do was to figure out what parched benne seeds were. I had a gut feeling it meant toasted. Searching the Internet didn't yield much as people just kept repeating this or a similar recipe and never defined parched. Finally I found a web site for a sesame seed importer I think where it more or less described parched sesame seeds as toasted. But then I got confused on whether or not the sesame seeds are supposed to by hulled or unhulled. I decided just to buy whatever the grocery sold and to toast them. Screw it if I'm wrong.

I read that you have to be careful when toasting sesame seeds as they will burn quickly and that they can toast in as little as four minutes. Maybe it is because I was scared about this possibility and kept opening the door to check every one minute but after 15 minutes my seeds had not toasted to my satisfaction. So I put the pan on the lowest rack and turned my broiler on to low. This got things toasting quickly. My seeds didn't burn but I think they may have gone a little past the golden brown I was shooting for. But since it was nearly impossible to get a single layer of seeds I had a wide range of toasted levels and thought the toasted flavor would average out.

I never seem to have any light brown sugar on hand. I put it on today's grocery list. But in all the times I have used dark brown sugar instead I have never had a flavor problem. I think it just made my cookies a little darker. As you may know I am a strong advocate of weighing ingredients, especially when baking. I don't bother packing one cup of brown sugar. It's 200 grams.

I don't know why the original recipe says to flatten the wafers with a wet knife. I tried that on three and it just makes a mess. These cookies spread out on their own into thin crisp wafers so just let the oven do it's trick.

I used my Silpat for these and had no burnt or stuck cookies. I can't say the same of the batch I made with a non-stick cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. If you don't have a Silpat, consider getting one. It is a nice little kitchen gadget to have.

The cookies were a nice change of pace from the standard sugar cookie base one normally has. They were crisp and nutty. I thought my brain was deceiving me when I thought I tasted a hint of toasted popcorn until my wife had one and said the same thing. It reminded me of the popcorn in Cracker Jacks. If you would like to give these a try, here is my write up of the recipe.

A Little Catch Up

2009-05-08T20:46:00.003-04:00

Actually I have a lot of catching up to do. Where oh where to begin? Well the next few posts may be out of order but I'll start with last Friday, 01 May.

I had my neurologist appointment and left with a clean bill of health. Nothing even remotely close to a cardio issue. As he said, for the issues I was having, worst case was TIA , best case was migraines. Since I have no pattern of migraines and have not had them before, no need to start any preventative medicines. The third possibility was not discussed on this visit and that was viral meningitis. My gut tells me that's what I had. Undiagnosed and untreated it could easily have lasted four weeks. Meningitis is more likely to cause left sided numbness than migraines. And I find it hard to believe I experienced migraines for four weeks. Even though I never had a fever, meningitis is a better explanation. I think even Dinah agrees.

So good, monkey off my back.

Next I need to talk about the cookies I made the day before my neurologist appointment.

Happy Feeth of May

2009-05-05T21:31:00.002-04:00

We're on the road and this keyboard is just too small to do any long post with. So more to follow about today when we get back. In the mean time, Happy Cinco de Mayo and have a tequila on me!

Quickly Now

2009-04-30T23:34:00.003-04:00

Quick update as I am short on time.

My computer died so I have had to resort to my travel netbook and borrowing my wife's computer. Bummer.

I made cookies today and will be blogging about that as soon as possible. BUT, I have my neurologist follow appointment tomorrow and then we are taking a few days off to visit friends, my folks and a short stay in Nashville. So time is short but I will get to it.

Stay tuned.

Have a Sprite and a Smile

2009-04-22T19:39:00.003-04:00

Today was a scramble to make dinner. Actually it was yesterday that was a scramble but I fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was too late to fix dinner. But I was determined to get it right today. I had a pack of chicken, what to do?

I started scanning some of my old keepers and settled on Chicken Casserole with Sprite. Yes, Sprite. There was a can in the fridge. I'm not sure where it came from since we only drink diet in our house, probably from my father-in-law. But it was there waiting to be used.

You're probably still stumped on the Sprite part. I have the Classic Cooking With Coca-Cola book. It's rather interesting and I tried this recipe once before and it was decent, worth keeping.

The problem was the ingredient list. I didn't have cream of celery soup, but I had cream of mushroom. I didn't have 16 ounces of Sprite, just a 12 ounce can. But last time the casserole was on the soupy side, so I thought a 12 ounce can would probably be an improvement. I also didn't have 6 ounce box of long grain wild rice, so I used Texmati brown rice. By the way 6 ounces of rice equals one cup. I had a can of cut green beans but as I noted before I didn't think French cut was that important. But I drained the can this time since, as I mentioned, the casserole was soupy last time. I had no pimentos on hand, so I just skipped them. Nor did I have a can of water chestnuts but they've always reminded me a little of raw potatoes. So I took a large red potato, quartered it and and sliced it thin. I thought some French fried onions on top would be a nice touch but I couldn't find any so I took my advice from last time and covered the top with cheese.

So how about that, a completely different casserole! It came out rather good, except, the rice didn't cook through. It took my brain a moment to register how the slivered almonds got in there until I realized it was the rice. That's probably the difference in using "real" rice versus Uncle Ben's. The potatoes were just barely done but then again they were supposed to emulate water chestnuts, so that was fine. I probably should have used a shallow casserole dish instead of a deep casserole dish to get a better cheese to casserole ratio. Next time. I think French fried onions would have been better than the cheese but the cheese was better than not. I'll probably keep the portion of casserole that's covered with cheese and give the rest to the feral cats. I've come to enjoy that ;)

Первый блин комом*

2009-04-20T10:47:00.004-04:00

The first pancake is a blob.

I think it's true. That first one is always no good and you have to throw it away. That happened with our first pregnancy in Michigan and then we had a perfect pancake on our second try named Rose.

The blog has been quiet this past week as I've been preoccupied with ultrasounds and bad news and a D&C. We started making pancakes again and once again we had to throw the first one out. In Michigan it was the very first time and so it was devastating. This time it is a little nonchalant, at least for me. I think because we have Rose. I think God looked down and said, "I did such a great job with Rose, this one just won't meet the standard I set, so I'm going to nip it in the bud right now." And I'm good with that. Kind of happy really. I think the next pancake is going to be a really, really good one.

I did actually cook once last week. I made stew. I bought a top round roast with do idea of what to do with it. Stew seemed like a good compromise. I made it from a recipe that I had used before. I'm still tweaking it as the recipe in the book is wrong. For example it calls for a 1/2 cup of garlic powder. Uh no. Tried that last time and we didn't need to fear any undead for a 200 mile radius. This time is went much smoother and I think I had the best sear on stew meat I had ever done. While I was making it we got an invite to go out to dinner so I packed up all of the stew in individual serving containers to quickly cool down in the fridge. Serve Safe, remember? We had it for dinner two days later. It tasted really good but it just wasn't stew. It was more like pot roast. I don't know what happened but it seems like sitting in the fridge the meat and vegetables absorbed all of the liquid so there was no "soup" component. Dinah was home most of the week for obvious reasons and I had lost interest in eating the pot roast stew, so with no one interested in eating it, I've been leaving it out for the feral cats. They LOVE it! Though it could be a raccoon or opossum I'm feeding I don't really know but I like to think it's the cats.

This week hopefully we get back on track, hopefully.

*I actually took Russian in high school. I was close to fluent but I don't remember much though I can still read it. Someday I'll revisit learning i.

Nothing Says "I Love You" Like Food Poisoning

2009-04-11T12:54:00.002-04:00

Growing up, 8th and 9th grade, my best friend and I had a routine every week. Friday night we'd spend the night at one house, staying up late, being goofy, playing games, watching David Letterman. Saturday night would be at the others house, same thing, watching Saturday Night Live. We always got pizza from Dominos, only Dominos, both nights. Back then it was two large one topping pizzas for ten bucks. We always got pepperoni, only pepperoni. We also would get an 8-pack of Coke in bottles for both nights, four for Sean, four for me. Remember returnables? Coke tasted better in glass. We'd eat one and a half pizzas probably, all four cokes, and leave the remaining pizza in the box on the stove to sit over night to be eaten for breakfast. No, we never refrigerated it. My Mom was horrified! I'm not kidding, we did this for two years, 90% of the weekends in that time. And not once did I ever get sick on the leftover pizza.

In college I did the same thing, except I left the pizza on top of a gas stove. Boy was I smart putting a cardboard box right above gas pilot lights. But this kept the pizza a little warmer and gave a soft pliable pizza and a neat congealed cheese the next morning that was oh so tasty. Again I never got sick on left over pizza.

I've eaten raw oysters as long as I can remember. Love 'em! Belly up to the bar at Acme's or Felix's (I like Felix's better). Dinah treated me to a birthday treat by taking me to Apalachicola just to eat as many as I could. Never gotten sick on oysters.

My ex-mother-in-law gave me food poisoning three times though. First time I vividly remember being leftover clam dip, one of my favorite treats. I think the second time was coleslaw or pasta salad. Can't remember the third. All three times I never threw up so much in my life. I threw up until there was nothing left to give and still I continued to heave. The first time I went to the hospital and the ride over there was brutal. Every bump made me heave again and I was having second thoughts about getting help. All three times I just wanted to die, just to make it stop.

I often hear people say they think they have food poisoning, their stomach is a little queasy. No, you don't. If you aren't praying for the end, it's not food poisoning. Food poisoning is brutal, not uncomfortable.

I experienced a new form though last night.

Dinah often has outside vendors bring in lunch. On Thursday she called wanted to know if I wanted her to bring the leftovers home for dinner. Hell yeah, you don't have to ask if you can bring home food. I can at least eat it for lunch if we don't eat it for dinner. So she brought home some left over club sandwiches and chicken tenders. It made a good dinner. And within an hour, my stomach was upset. But I wasn't praying to die. I wasn't nauseous, so I wasn't worried. I had the remainder for a late breakfast Friday morning.

And then it started. Never was I nauseous but I did have pain in my stomach. Almost like an incredible hunger pain or acid reflux. I had an appetite and no problem eating. We even went out to dinner last night. But I was shitting my brains out. I didn't sleep at all last night, it was every 10-15 minutes. After I started the third roll of toilet paper for the day (and these are mega rolls of Charmin) I wasn't praying to die but I was definitely praying for something.

I asked Dinah, did the leftovers go into the fridge after lunch or did they sit on the break room table all afternoon until time to go? They sat for a while, maybe an hour and a half. Dammit. There's basically a two hour window starting from the time the food came up at the restaurant. Oh well, it's not her fault, based on what I had someone at the restaurant is probably sick and didn't wash their hands well.

So let that be a lesson to ya'll, put those leftovers in the fridge right away.

Almost Vegetarian

2009-04-10T16:35:00.003-04:00

But not quite. As I said, the other night we had black bean burgers and tortilla soup for dinner. Substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock in the soup and you're all the way there though. Be proud of me Amberly.

I do like black bean burgers though. I really like the ones made by Boca (from Madison Wisconsin, Go Badgers!) and the ones made by Morningstar Farms (formerly Worthington Foods from Worthington Ohio, my hometown). I eat two at a time for lunch, with or without a bun. Both Boca and Mornigstar use textured soy protein in their black bean burgers which gives them some body that this recipe doesn't have. The burgers that I made had a quite mushy texture, but once you got past that first bite, it was all good. Besides, I'm not so sure that soy is as healthy as everyone has made it out to be and my wife can't eat it anyway since she's allergic to soy beans. No more Morningstar Farms sausage links, her favorite pancake adjuvant. Sigh.

I have to admit that these burgers are stupid easy and quick to make. I think the longest part of the recipe is to heat up the frying pan. No excuse not to make these. Here's my rewrite.

I think I have mentioned before that I am not really a soup eater. I don't crave it or go out of my way for it. Nor do I have any association of soup with weather. I'll eat it whenever I damn well please. As a general rule of thumb, if it is chunky, a stew, or a bisque, chances are I will eat it. Dinah on the other hand loves soup. She eats it every week at work. Well that's mostly because we are broke and it is simple and quick to fix in the office but she loves it nonetheless. So I make soups mainly for her benefit.

There are numerous versions of tortilla soups out there. The aforementioned Amberly has her own that I remember being quite excellent, even if it was vegetarian. I've never made it before so this was my first attempt. I did take the time to make my own tortilla chips. It's not hard, adds a little special flair, but there's nothing wrong with buying store bought tortilla chips (is that redundant?). I used up all of my turkey stock on this recipe. Time to make more stock. I think because I used real homemade stock Dinah declared the soup to be meaty, even though there was no meat in it. I felt the magazine's recipe was not well written, and doing the tortilla chips first gave the recipe better flow and used one less pan. So here is my rewrite.

Thankfully we do have a Mexican grocery so it was easy for me to find the chiles and I even bought crema instead of sour cream. I foolishly did not buy the cheese there since I assumed the grocery had it, but they didn't. In the future I will look at a crock pot version of this and I like to find a way to simplify recipes that call for toasting chiles for those that don't have the access.

Every time I stop into a Mexican grocery I buy a bottle of Coke because in Mexico it is made with sugar instead of evil high fructose corn syrup. It tastes just the way it did when I was a kid with a crisp aftertaste instead of coating and clinging to your tongue. DAMN IT, they've changed the recipe. Now the label says made with corn syrup or sucrose and damn it if it doesn't taste just like the American crap we have here. I'm hoping Canada still uses sugar. My fingers are crossed.

2009-04-08T16:20:00.000-04:00

Last night I made black bean burgers and tortilla soup for dinner. It was good and I'll be writing about it but for whatever reason today I just don't have any ambition or energy. So be sure to check back later.

No School for You!

2009-04-07T15:42:00.002-04:00

Classes resume tomorrow. I looked at the schedule and they are only offering three classes next quarter thanks to budget cutbacks (they let Chef McKenna go too). Two of the classes I have already had and the third class I don't have the prerequisites for. Mar. :( I even called Chef Drake to confirm. There wasn't even a class in another subject that looked remotely interesting. No surprise I guess since the two main programs are medical assistant and cosmetology. So I'll have to wait until the summer quarter. I'll just keep practicing at home I guess.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month - No Food Today, Sorry

2009-04-06T14:31:00.003-04:00

If you tuned in today then you are listening to Evil Stig in Today's Kitchen Music. And if you are wondering if that isn't Joan Jett that you hear, yes it is. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Top Five. I fear I may wear this CD out but thankfully this disc is still available, for now.

Evil Stig is The Gits spelled backwards. They were a punk band on the Seattle scene in the early 90s, on the verge of making it big. Then in 1993, while walking home, the lead singer Mia Zapata was brutally raped and murdered. At the time there were no leads. The band got together with Joan Jett on lead vocals and began a benefit concert tour to raise money to fund finding Mia Zapata's murderer. This CD was released of that work and proceeds from its sales also went to the search. I'm pretty sure I bought it when it came out in 1995. Thank God, thanks to DNA, the murderer was finally found in 2002 and convicted in 2003, ten years after. Now I believe sales of the CD go to benefit Home Alive (though I think when I bought it part went to RAINN but maybe that was another CD).

_____________________________________________________________________

I can't tell you why sexual assault bothers me so much, why it makes me so angry, makes me grit my teeth, even send me into a rage. I have no personal experience with it. I've never been touched by it directly, only third or fourth hand. But it makes me seethe. I imagine my eyes turn just like Anakin Skywalker's did in Revenge of the Sith regarding the subject.

It's on the short list of things that make me hate. There is just too much ignorance and too much apathy regarding sexual assault and domestic violence (I don't separate the two). People just don't give a shit. When we moved to Bainbridge I was gung ho about getting involved in the community. I wanted to make a difference. So Dinah and I both joined the Decatur County Family Connection group. Because of my deep seated feelings I immediately felt compelled to join the Domestic Violence Task Force committee of Family Connection (I was briefly chairman of the task force, cut short only because we moved). It was an eye opening experience.

Things moved slow as they often do in committee work, especially when you only meet once a month. But I felt like I was getting involved. We met and worked with the Stepping Stone house which was a half way shelter for women recovering from substance abuse. We tried to help the Halycon Home which was the local domestic violence shelter. We put awareness inserts in student report cards about child abuse. We sponsored some town hall meetings about problems at the high school level. We had a rally for awareness (since we left there has not been another rally, sad).

What I found was people didn't want to hear about these problems. They didn't want any light shown on these issues. Bringing attention to it was criticizing what a wonderful community we have here and we just don't like what you are doing. No one from the city government wanted to participate in our task force. No one from the city police department would participate. The churches all refused our invites. Not a single one of the largest employers in the county would participate and certainly not make any donations to help us fund our projects. Not even the hospital. I should point out that we had excellent support from the county government and the county sheriff's office. Go figure.

I was the only male on the task force. I think that summarizes a lot of the problems with domestic violence in the country. We are still a male dominated society and my belief is that as a whole, males don't care. I remember telling the director for Halycon Home that if it was a shelter for battered men, she'd have no problem with funding. No one disagreed.

I used to believe that ignorance led to fear and fear led to hate and that education would solve all the problems. Bainbridge taught me that there is no cure for ignorance. You can educate as much as you want but you can't change the ignorant. I witnessed people supporting a community leader who sexually molested a teenager. I witnessed a community that believed that if you were raped and were dressed provocatively you deserved it. I witnessed a community that supported a high school teacher who slept with one of his students because she was 16 and knew what she was doing. And those are just the ones that made the paper. And no matter how much I railed against this ignorance, nothing changed.

When we moved to Blairsville I didn't seek out a similar group. I'm still too sick to my stomach and discouraged. I don't think I can do it again. I need to find another way to get involved though but the task forces and working with the general public aren't for me. But I don't know how. I just can't spin my wheels and not make a difference. There has to be a better way. I wish I had influence, like celebrity status or wealth, then maybe I could move mountains.

Which brings me to the past election. I really didn't want to see Hillary Clinton as president but there is one reason I did. If she were president, then I would try to get one of my dreams accomplished. In our society we treat murder as the most heinous of crimes; it has the steepest of penalties, 25 to life or the death penalty. It's not the worst of crimes. Sexual assault is the vilest, evilest of all crimes. With murder the victim is dead, the suffering is over. Sure friends and family have a burden to carry but the crime is done and the victim doesn't have to endure. Not so with a sexual assault. Rape/assault/molestation is carried for life. The damage never goes away. The suffering endures. Maybe over time it eases and the pain is less and the memories duller, maybe, but it is still always there. Just like a scar. And not only does it affect the victim but also everyone the victim knows. And the crime will have impact of some type on everyone the victim will know in the future. Behavior changes, relationships change. Life changes, emotions change. Personality changes. Murder seems rather benign comparatively speaking.

But the penalties for rape and sexual assault are a pittance compared to those issued for murder. The penalty for rape in Georgia is 25 to life with parole eligibility. That's not more sever than murder yet the crime is clearly more severe. By the way in Georgia rape is defined as being only perpetrated by a male on a female victim. Ponder that for a while. What about the penalty for a younger victim? We feel better about calling it molestation even though it's still rape. Now the victim, being younger, has to carry the scars of the crime for an even longer period of time. And being younger and more innocent, the trauma can be even greater. Should not the penalty be even more severe? It's not.

So if Hillary was president I would try to push for maximizing the penalties for sexual violence at the federal level to be more severe than than for murder. I want minimum of 35 years, no parole. My belief is that as long as our government is dominated by a male majority, it will never happen, but a female president would be the trump card that might make it happen. I just don't know how to push it.

Damn this is a disjointed rambling. I get that way on this subject. I get too worked up. My apologies for not being better structured in my writing.

If you don't know it April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Please, support a domestic violence awareness organization. Sexual assault and domestic violence are together the most insidious problem we have in this country that no one knows about. These groups work to at the minimum bring awareness to the cause all the way to fighting for the rights of victims. Support a local group, a local shelter or a national organization like RAINN. Please don't forget about it this month and try to do one thing proactively to help fight for the cause. Thanks.

Stir Crazy

2009-04-03T20:02:00.003-04:00

Tonight I made a simple pork-mushroom-snow pea stir fry. Of course I got the recipe out of my magazine, I'm maximizing my subscription fee, but I would not say that it is authentic anything. There's really no point in writing this up as stir fry is quite simple and like I said, it's not like this was an authentic dish of any type, but I thought I'd relate a few notes I made along the way.

I haven't made any stir fry in over ten years. I debated about getting my wok out for this or not. Maybe I'd use the electric wok? I got that from my parents. They were going to throw it out. I bet they got it as a wedding gift. No. Maybe I'd just use a big skillet. My low sided non-stick pan actually works pretty good for this. No. I'll get the wok out. I mean, I bought a real hammered steel wok all those years ago for a reason.

I used a little more than a pound of pork. This is either the third or fourth recipe I've gotten out of that big pork loin that I bought, capitalizing in buying when things are on sale. I trimmed the fat of with my petty knife, saving it for something else. Man I NEED to sharpen my knives. I have a super-duper salmon slicer so I sliced the pork down very, very thin with ease.

The recipe called for a 1/2 pound of snow peas. No problem they come in an 8 ounce bag. I buy them all the time because I snack on them like other people eat chips or popcorn. The recipe called to remove the strings from the snow peas. Hmmm, never heard of that with snow peas. OK. I ended up doing about half. It doesn't work very well, especially not like string beans. Sometimes the strings came off, sometimes not. Like I said, I eat snow peas all the time and the strings have never bothered me. And as I said, I left half of the peas with strings intact. I couldn't tell a difference when cooked.

I don't think I had enough oil for the garlic and I should have added it after the peas not before. I think I burned some of it though I never noticed any bitterness in the dish from burnt garlic. What I did notice was that the three cloves of garlic seemed to be about six cloves too few. I couldn't taste any.

Same with the teriyaki sauce. When it comes to Asian food I do prefer to buy from Asian groceries rather than from the regular grocery store because I want something authentic and I'm not always sure that the Kikkoman brand or La Choy brand are really the real thing or Americanized. Besides there's the extra excitement of buying something with a label you can't read. I avoided the two popular brand and bought the one other one that Ingles had, a Korean teriyaki. It was good but the two tablespoons seemed like I should have at least tripled it.

Also any recipe that calls for crimini mushrooms I just buy baby portobello mushrooms. I'm pretty sure they are the same thing. That and I can buy an 8 ounce container of baby bellas already sliced, just what the recipe calls for. Perfect. Done!

Maybe this recipe was written for the wusses out there who don't like much flavor, are afraid of anything ethnic or need the "intro" version to get started. It was really a great dish, just a little on the bland side. Didn't stop me from eating until I was full though.

One other note, I certainly didn't use an appropriate rice. I used Texas basmati rice, a brown rice because it is a healthier option. I've been using it for awhile now for any dish that calls for rice. It is interesting because it has a very creamy texture. Not correct but it was tasty.

Rose threw a temper tantrum of grand proportions this evening unlike any we have seen before. It started during dinner and continued well past until we said enough, you're going to bed. That's when she took it to another level. Then she tantrumed until she puked. Now THAT'S a temper tantrum!

Eat More Broccoli, and Some Fish Too

2009-04-01T16:25:00.006-04:00

Yes more broccoli. I must be on a broccoli kick. My parents would be shocked. I especially enjoyed last night when Rose told me she didn't want any broccoli, even saying the word and pointing to it. It's funny because she has never had it before.

Last night we had Broccoli-Parmesan Gratin, a tuned up Italian casserole and Cilantro-Chipotle Tilapia, a spicy Latin inspired dish . Two dishes that really don't pair together well, but I didn't care, it's what I wanted.

Both of these dishes are quick and easy. I even got lucky in my lack of planning because I made the gratin first which finishes under the broiler which I then used to cook the fish while the gratin rested. Sometimes you just get lucky.

If you put steamed broccoli on my plate, I'll look at it, chop the stalks off, salt it and eat the florets happily. You make it into a casserole, especially with CHEESE, and I'll devour it. This one was no exception. If I had any complaint it was that there wasn't enough of the cheese sauce, maybe next time I'd double it. And maybe because it seemed under-cheesed it seemed like too much bread crumb. But really I'm nit picking, it was delicious.

But the star of the meal was the fish. I love fish even if I rarely eat it. I ate a lot as a kid. I'll go out of my way for smelt, perch or pan fried bluegills, but I find most restaurants' fish choices to be ho-hum and stuffings and breadings on top do nothing for me. But I really dislike cooking fish. I find it messy and it stinks the house up.

Not so with this dish!

To me this was the kind of dish that you would be served in a restaurant. It tasted like I had hit a home run out of the park. I know I blew Dinah's socks off. But there are a couple caveats. I have learned there are two types of people in the world, those that love cilantro and those that hate cilantro. We LOVE it, can't have enough. This dish is packed with it, especially since I made a cilantro rice to serve the tilapia on. Also, we love hot and spicy food. This dish did pack a punch, it was WARM. Man it was good. The only reason I didn't have seconds was that I wanted to send leftovers with Dinah to work in hopes of getting another opinion.

If you want to give either of these recipes a shot, and they are worth it, especially if you are entertaining or need to bring a dish, here is my version of the Broccoli Parmesan Gratin and my version of the Cilantro Chipotle Tilapia.

Enjoy.

Mixed Review on the Butternut Squash Soup

2009-04-01T09:46:00.003-04:00

I think I'm going to have to attempt to try this again at a later date. Everyone in Dinah's office was too cowardly to try it. Wusses. Dinah said the flavor was great, the bacon made it meaty and savory and not too sweet. The texture was right on. She did not add the REAL bacon crumbles that I gave her (sacrileg!) but said it was great with the crumbled crackers she had.

Unfortunately Dinah got nauseous afterwards so I can't say the soup is a keeper yet. Who knows why she felt vomitous. She said she got the same feeling driving home so it probably wasn't the soup.

On another note, last night's dinner, I hit a home run out of the park. More on that later.

Back to the Food

2009-03-31T15:50:00.005-04:00

Yesterday's return to food was simple, pork steaks and tater tots. And while I was at it I made a butternut squash soup for Dinah to take to work.

As you may or may not remember back in December I started using coupons in earnest and buying in bulk at my local grocery store (which by the way I learned yesterday sucks. They don't have the same stuff or as much stuff as the neighboring towns' Ingles do. I'm switching to the Ingles in Murphy). On one of my trips I bought a fifteen pound bone-in Boston butt. I have no idea what to do with a fifteen pound pork shoulder, especially one with a huge bone in it. I could smoke it and make BBQ, but that was way more effort than I wanted to put into it.

For those of you not of the Southern persuasion, the Boston butt is THE cut for pork barbecue which is THE main food group here below the Mason-Dixon Line (really lower than that). As much as I may whine about down here, it is also one of my favorite food groups, so for me it is a perk of living here. I did start early in life. My Dad was born in Louisiana of Hoosier stock and grew up in Houston. My Grandpa used to barbecue HUGE amounts of chicken with his own secret sauce, hot not sweet. And I grew up with that, but I prefer pork. And truth be told the best of all options is a Texas Plate, preferably somewhere in Texas, of smoked sausage, brisket and chopped or sliced pork with beans and fries and a sweet tea (all my trips to Texas, I ate it almost every day). I love it so much that someday I hope to complete the NC BBQ Trail. So far I've got Murphy and Shelby under my belt. But I'm getting way off topic here.

Boston butt is a pork shoulder and is quite tough. But it is well marbled with fat and so when it is cooked "low and slow" like in a smoker it basically self bastes and the meat comes out soft and tender and very moist, a la perfect barbecue. I cut out six pork steaks from the shoulder. The rest was pretty fatty with some meat and of course the bone. That I broke down and froze for a later day, maybe I'll smoke it, more than likely I'll make chorizo with it.

The meat was interesting. The steaks looked exactly like NY strips except with the marbling you typically associate with a rib-eye. Even the meat looked like beef rather than pork, deep red in color. I grilled up two about a month or so ago. Didn't pay attention and over cooked them, well they were perfect for those of you who grew up with pork that had to be cooked dry to prevent trichinosis, but I like mine just at done. And sure enough they were tough, just like the pork I grew up with, needed a lot of bottled barbecue sauce to get down.

THIS time I planned ahead. Two hours before I was planning on grilling I tossed two steaks in a gallon sized Ziploc bag and covered them with some Fat Bastard Shiraz we had laying around that was old but had not gone bad. Put them in the fridge and flipped them over every half hour or so. The marinating did the trick. I cooked the steaks perfectly through and they were still tender and moist. There was an ever faint but pleasant taste of the wine, matter of fact it may have even made the meat taste more like beef than pork. It was an excellent little technique tenderizing tough meat and shows you why you should do it BEFORE you cook it rather than after.

As for the soup, I don't eat it nor do I eat squash though I did the last time. So I can't say much about it, yet. The recipe is here. When Dinah reports back, if there are positive reviews, I will write up how I made it and post it here. It looked right, just like the picture.

I'm Baaaack!!!!

2009-03-30T18:58:00.005-04:00

I hope at least. If you've been wondering where I've been the last few weeks, I've had some head issues. A short history...

For a long time I have suffered from something that I call "watery vision." I call it this because everything looks as if I have my eyes open under water, you know how everything is not blurry but not clear either. Well it is clear but just not right. Hard to describe. It's a refraction issue if you can remember your high school physics. Sometimes it seems like I have no depth of field, everything is kind of flat. Other times it is as if something is between me and whatever I am focusing on but I can't see it. And at times it affects my balance so when it happens I try to sit or lie down until it passes which usually takes about an hour.

I've brought it up with two opthamologists and both told me that it is an ocular migraine. I've never had any pain when it happens and I've never suffered from a migraine headache. They told me I was lucky. I remember my grandmother getting them and it looked awful. But I've had these ocular migraines for at least ten years, off and on, no more than four times per year and they are always more of an annoyance than anything.

Two years ago when we lived in Bainbridge I got a headache every morning for awhile when I woke up. Can you guess why? I was taking Advil every morning for I don't know how long until my doctor told me I had to stop or I could create even worse rebound headaches. He wanted to try me on Topamax, a migraine preventative drug, but I deferred since it can cause drowsiness and I was on the road all the time. Eventually the headaches went away and hadn't come back. Can you guess why?

So the beginning of March I was leaving the dentist's office and as I walked out my vision shifted, to my so called "watery vision." I had to be careful driving home, but I wasn't too worried, same ol' same ol', gone in about an hour. Two days later I got hit by a headache like I had never known before. It hurt so bad I was whimpering. I couldn't even sleep. This was new for me. Everyday I had a headache and about every other day it was crushing where I just tried to lie still, curled in a ball with my eyes closed. It hurt so bad I couldn't sleep and if I did finally fall asleep, the pain would come back and wake me up and I would just lay there sobbing.

Nothing helped. Not aspirin, Advil, Tylenol, or Alieve. Not coffee. Not Cephadyn, Imitrex, Phenergan, or Reglan. Not even Valium. This lasted until about ten days ago, when in a stab in the dark my doctor gave me five days of Prednisone hoping the steroid would act as an anti-inflammatory and open up some constricted blood vessels causing a headache. My headache went away in an hour! I think it was a coincidence.

But they did come back, maybe not as frequently and not as severe but they were still there. Better though. Now it seemed like they came around when I stood up and sometimes when I laid down but not when I was sitting.

Then about two weeks ago I was sitting watching TV, typing on my laptop when I noticed my left leg fell asleep and so did my left arm. I didn't think anything of it since I hadn't moved in the chair in awhile, trying not to cause a headache. Eventually it went away.

Late that afternoon we were meeting friends for dinner. Dinah and I drove separately since she was going to stay with Jennifer and Arwyn to go to a play after dinner and I was going to return home with Rose and put her to bed. When I got out of my car I instantly got struck by a massive, piercing headache, right between my eyes. And then my left leg went numb. Uh oh, how am I going to get up those stairs? Very gingerly. Grabbed the rail, left arm went numb. Damn.

We sat down at our table, we were early, so we ordered an appetizer. I'm sitting against the window with my left arm on the window sill which is good because I can't move it. I can pick it up with my right hand but can't really work it by itself. But my problem now is I can't read the menu. I can see it, but I can't read the words, they just won't focus. It seems like every time I get a word to focus it moves farther away. Damn.

At this point Dinah is concerned and wants to go to the hospital. I don't because this should only last about an a hour, that's how long it lasted last time. Besides, our friends have not arrived yet. Her argument is I might die. I counter that I don't want to die hungry. Right about then Jennifer and Arwyn arrive. And right about then my tongue goes numb and so does the left side of my face. Uh oh.

Jennifer is a cancer doc and Dinah considers her the smartest doctor she knows. That's a lot of respect. She asks Jennifer to check me out. She asks me some questions, I don't really remember. I'm having a hard time talking, my tongue feels about three inches around. And the left side of my upper lip isn't working. Jennifer says I'm stroking. Damn. I'm cognizant enough that if Jennifer says something, you take her seriously. Got to go to the hospital. I don't want to go, but inside my head, I'm scared now. But I'm worried about Rose, who's going to take care of her? Dinah calls our friend Michelle who is going to come and pick her up and take her home with them. Rose is going to Emma's house, so she's excited! We're out the door with quick good byes and apologies making a stop at a gas station to pick up some aspirin.

If you have never chewed aspirin let me tell you, it is awful.

We get to the hospital and it'd obvious they don't think I'm having a stroke. My blood pressure is normal, as usual. They aren't panicky. I get some blood work done and a cat scan of my head. Everything comes back normal and fine. I get to go home after a few hours. The good thing is we get a good but late dinner in Ellijay where they have better restaurants.

It was after that that I met with my doctor and I got the Prednisone. But she did refer me to a neurologist. Prior to seeing the neurologist I had an MRI done of my head. MRIs suck. If you are the least bit claustrophobic you could lose your sanity. You've got your head in this tube and then it sounds like the are working a jack hammer at different spots on the outside of the tube. And the whole time you can't move. For 45 minutes!

The neurologist meeting went well, no cure but a plan. I was frustrated the whole time though because I felt like I was disappointing the doctor, somehow giving the wrong answers. Dinah told me not to worry, that's just the way specialists are, quirky. It was a long session but in the end he felt there were three possibilities. One, could just be migraines not behaving right. Two, the radiologist didn't note it but my neurologist felt there were signs of slight swelling on the surface of my brain in the MRI meaning viral meningitis. If so, that would account for all of my issues, headaches, vision issues, numbness. BUT, and it's a big but, I don't have a fever. If I had meningitis I should have a fever of like 106 but I haven't had one all month. While it is not impossible to have meningitis without the fever it is extremely unlikely and doubtful. And it would still be unusual to just have the numbness on the left side.

So that leaves TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack). That's his main concern, our main concern and my biggest fear. It's the reason why we are there and why I'm not really concerned with the headaches anymore.

Am I having mini-strokes? Was this a prelude of bad things yet to come?

So to rule it out he wanted me to get another MRI (technically an MRA) but this time of the arteries in my neck (carotids). He was adamant that I get it in Gainesville GA at a specific hospital on a specific machine because it had to be on a big bad ass MRI machine for the results to be worth a damn and those machines are few and far between and they have one here in Gainesville but not in your little hick mountain town of what wasthe name of it again? Otherwise I'd have to get three Doppler echo-sono somethings and that is really unpleasant and the results won't be as meaningful. Get the 3T MRI!!! I also needed to get an ECG on my heart and an bubble echo cardiogram of my heart where they bubble saline solution through my heart while looking at it with an ultrasound. Those two we were allowed to do back in Blairsville. Whew.

So last Thursday I went to get my MRI. In the meantime my headaches are now at a tolerable level. I still have them every day and I still have them for hours at a time but they are much less severe, maybe a two on a scale of one to ten instead of an eight. Very much like that period in Bainbridge. There are still a few eights but now they are short bursts under a half hour fading to a dull throb. Always seeming to be triggered by standing and walking. And this is exactly what happened when I got to the hospital in Gainesville, walked in the door and it felt like someone hit me with a maul right between the eyes. The pain intensified as I walked down the halls eventually fading either when I sat down or given enough time. I guess the good thing was that I'd be in pain while they were looking for something.

I got all ready to go.... and didn't fit in the big bad ass 3T MRI machine. Couldn't get it past my elbows without crushing me. Double damn! So I went to lunch since my neurologist's office was out to lunch and couldn't offer me any direction. I finally got a hold of them on my way home. Wait! Stop! Turn around! They wrote my cell phone number down wrong and had been calling the wrong number. At this point I'm having my doubts about this group. I like the doctor, not sure about the support staff. The scheduling dude, Clayton, tells me they rescheduled me for 3:30 at a different hospital for a CT scan of your carotids. Remember what I said about how important that 3T MRI was? Remember that CT scan was not given as an alternate? Dr. Baugh spent ten minutes ranting on that point. Does this sound right to you? Didn't to me either but Clayton insisted. Of course when I presses he never said this was the doctor's decision, he said and I quote, "well I guess the doctor is just going to have to get what he can get." Hmmm, don't feel right to me ma. I really pissed him off when I called to double check again from the radiology exam room.

The CT scan (technically a CTA) went smoothly. They had to do some blood work ahead of time which caused a delay, but I had gotten there early since I had nowhere else to go. This scan involved a contrast dye none of my previous ones did. Boy is that a weird feeling flowing through you. I was done by 4:00.

The next day I had the ECG and bubble echo. Nothing to report there. That visit went smooth as silk. It was neat to watch the ultrasound. He couldn't tell me if my heart was a boy or a girl. I had heard that the bubbles would be neat but I didn't see anything.

My ECG was fine and the radiologist said everything on first exam looked good on the echo, no leaks, holes or pooled blood. I haven't heard back on the CT scan but they haven't called me saying I'm dying. I did call them saying I didn't want to worry over the next month until my followup appointment. They said they wouldn't call if everything looked good. They didn't call back today so I guess it's good.

So it seems like we didn't have any answers for the numbness or a definite reason for the headaches but we've at least proven I have a healthy heart. Whew! Good to know.

So that's where I've been and why I haven't had any posts in a while. Needless to say I haven't done any cooking in that time until today. But after that lengthy of a post, maybe I'll save today's cooking until tomorrow.

And More Chicken!

2009-03-14T13:19:00.002-04:00

This will be a relatively short post as the writing of the recipe is already done. Last night we had White Chicken Cacciatore. My fellow Guzzisti, Danilo, posted this recipe and story on his website. The dish is on the oily side but olive oil is healthy, right? I don't see me making this too often but this is a great presentation dish. I'll be tweaking it a little. My big skillet wasn't big enough! Anyway, checkout As the Dude Abides and his recipe from the Old World.

The Whole Bird

2009-03-13T08:46:00.005-04:00

Oy vey! For the past week I have had migraines about every other day. OK one day and the next day I just lay as still as I could in bed. Yesterday I saw the doctor and it's just like a migraine except different :) I guess the location of the pain is different though the pain is just as intense, or at least I assume so. I've never had a migraine before. So now I have a some pills, we're treating this as sinus related and I have a cat scan on Monday. And she's a new doc to boot.

So with all of that, I have cooked very little. I was supposed to make this dish last Thursday but then I burned my glaze, I got pissed off and said screw it. Friday Dinah was out so Rose and I ate on our own. Saturday was full of pain. Sunday was recovery. Monday was back to pain. So Tuesday I did it.

I made a roast chicken with mushrooms and potatoes. I also made creamed broccoli. I'm willing to admit that this was the first time I have ever tried roasting a whole chicken. And it will probably be my last time. I did it. I've done it. I'm a T&A man. Except when it comes to chicken, it's all T. I only like chicken thighs and since you can buy them with skin on or boneless, why should I buy all the rest of the chicken which I don't eat. And I can't carve a chicken to save my life. Mine didn't have thighs. I think it was a Chernobyl chicken.

If you are so inclined to follow along, the recipe is here.

What made this dish special was the mushroom and potatoes. Naturally I couldn't find shallots here where I live, so I used a yellow onion. In hind sight, I used to much onion. Oh well. I soaked two ounces of dried porcini mushrooms in water, washed and chopped up them up. This went into the skillet with the onion and some Marsala wine and cooked down until the onion was soft. The potatoes were steamed in a skillet and then opened up to cook down. Mine burned to the bottom of the pan but that happens with non-stick cookware. A little soak in the sink and no worries.

Meanwhile.... I took the mushroom and onion mixture and stuffed the bird with it, trussed the legs and tossed the whole shebang in the oven. It cooked for an hour or so I think at 425. The chicken came out of the oven looking amazing and perfectly browned. I was stunned. If only I hadn't burned the damn glaze.

Out of the chicken drippings I made a pan gravy with some flour and vinegar. Seemed strange but it did work with the mushrooms. To serve, combine the mushrooms and onions with the potatoes to make one dish. The gravy you can spoon on to the potatoes or the chicken or both!

It was good, but not that good. Like I said, I'll just buy thighs in the future.

The broccoli on the other hand was a winner. I mean how can you go wrong with broccoli and Parmesan cheese? It's a pretty straight forward recipe and I even took a few shortcuts. I'm not sure I spent more than 20 minutes on the whole dish. Enjoy!

Now let's see if we can tolerate some music or if my head will explode.

I'm Burnin' I'm Burnin' I'm Burnin' For You

2009-03-05T20:09:00.004-05:00

Dinner came to a screeching halt this evening and we ended up eating at Rose's favorite place, Brother's Restaurant. I have an interesting recipe for a glazed roast chicken with porcini mushrooms and potatoes. The glaze involved cooking down some water, honey and Marsala wine. All was going well but I was bored watching the pot boil and went into the other room to write a two line email. That's all it took. Burned it straight to the bottom of the pan. Dammit. The house still reeks. So tomorrow we will be having roast chicken with porcini mushrooms and potatoes sans glaze. Oh well.