Infallability- Cooking

The Help and I had a disagreement last night. It was his night to cook and he made shepherd's pie. The mash potato crust was very watery. He couldn't understand it. He followed the recipie. Well not exactly he didn't weigh the potatoes. I said maybe next time eyeball the liquid ingredients like the butter and the chicken stock. Then he got a little upset that he should have to veer away from the written word.
In our house I am the Eyeball Queen. How much salt goes in there? Idunno, I eyeball and taste. The Help wants exact measurements. Please note I don't bake, baking is not eyeball friendly.
Back to the written word.... I mentioned how on Epicurious.com people in the reviews make suggestions on tweaking the recipie presented. He did not like this at all! He wanted to know wasn't the recipie written by professionals, and if so why would it need changing? I got annoyed that he would take what was written as gospel and not bring ones own experience to the recipie as written.

Fat Tuesday

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which I found out last year is not a day of obligation so for the 1st time in years I'm going to skip the ash on the forehead. Maybe. Well I'm not taking off work for it.
For Lent I will be going vegitarian (actually pescaterian) and making Fridays sugar/HFCS free. The Help is observing Lent for the 1st time this year and will be giving up his beloved chocolate of which he has made an idol. He's given up chocolate before, when he was engaged to a gal with severe dietary restrictions. Together we will be reading Pslams or something from the Bible for our date nights.
To feast before the lenten fast we are going to a ritzy joint that I want to check out. Last year I went to Courduroy for Fat Tuesday. I don't need dancing half naked in the street and loud Jazz. No, I want waiters in black, a wine list, and white table cloths.

Dropping the Spinster and Thoughts on Prepping/Survivalism

I've decided to drop the happyspinster url. I'm letting it go. It will no longer be mine after tomorrow. If you want ti grab it before some site squatter does. My host keeps sending frantic emails but meh.

Okay. September is preparedness month. Don't believe me ask FEMA. I pondered putting something up on the popular blog but there are things that need to get done before the fiscal year ends, so maybe next year. Off and on I'd been reading The Chatelaine's Keys, a blog by a Jewish farmer lady, whose thing is peak oil, and that's why she's prepping. I think I found her for the canning and gardening tips. Then this year I came across a fellow named Jack Spirko and his Survivalist Podcast. We (me, the Help, and my libertarian leaning Buddhist cousin) listened to several of his podcasts while driving to and from western Virginia. His language is salty and we enjoy it when his Pennsylvania/Jersey accent peeks out from his adopted Texas/Arkansas one. He has a near daily podcast and it is informative. I've learned about biltong, and then found this lovely biltong box from Ikeahacker. I am very interested in food preservation and food security and growing, not because I fear the black helicopters (there are helicopters flying over my house but they are navy and white and they &^#!-up my TV reception) and peak oil. No. I need to free up space in the freezers and I sometimes like to be very lazy and not have to go to the store or market every week. Also there are minor set backs in the system. Old power lines go kablewy and we lose power for 1-16 hours. I think once we lost power for a full 24 hours. If it snows, more than 2 inches, the city loses it's mind, Metro stops working and the end of civilization is nigh. This is why I try to keep enough TP in the house for a 1 month seige.
These prepper/survivalist things just inspire me to can and preserve food from the farmers markets and whatever I grow if I get anything. Have bulk supplies of stuff I eat. Have a month or so supply of food on hand. Right now I can eat rice and tomatoes, and pasta and tomatoes for a month if I was trapped in the house.

Letting the Spinster Pass and catering update

In a few days I'm going to let the happyspinster.com url go into the great beyond where someone else can buy it up and use it since no one has asked for it. I'm keeping crappychristian.com
Now on to wedding matters. We are pondering a caterer. He's really not a caterer but a former chef. A former 4 star chef. I mentioned our price constriants. When I brought him up to the Help, he also wondered if we could afford him. I Googled him, he almost hit celebrity status. Worked at restaurants I can't afford. Okay, normally can't afford. I'm re-reading my email to him and I told him what our budget is and that I think he's worth more than what we've budgeted. I ran into him and he said, no problem he's not that busy at that time of the year.
Still, worried about the afford part. Because I know he has that 4 star chef desire for great, fresh, and local ingredients. And everything will be out of season.

Wussman I love

The Help is a bit squeemish regarding some food. His last girlfriend has some severe food allergies and barely ate anything. I on the other hand believe if it bleeds I can cook it and eat it. He likes the openess I have towards food but sometimes I am a little too open. I had him cleaning mussles for a dish, at some point he noticed the mussles making noises and I made the mistake of telling him they were alive. Oh, the little remarks I had to endure after that.
Before the mussle incident he would proclaim that he didn't want to eat anything with a head on it. He would eat meat or fish, just as long as there was no head on it. After the mussles he's included them in the list of things that look back at him. Dang it, I want to cook and eat blue crabs! I don't want to hear bitching about food that can attack you.
Then there was the time with the rabbit. The rabbit had no head. But there I was cutting it into parts for browning and he walked into the kitchen. The way he describes it is that its little legs were all sticking up and then I cracked the ribs. Upon the rib cracking he turned on his heel out of the kitchen. He also likes to avoid me when I've got a knife in my hands.
He's quite happy to eat what I cook, but I could deal without the wussiness of his meat eating. With further discussions we decided if push came to shove and if he had to live off the land like his hero Daniel Boone, he'd toughen up and eat things with heads and faces. Until then he's the 21st Century equivilent of the bespeckled man in the bowler hat who steps off the stagecoach in dime store Westerns.

What we don't know

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know. - Quote by Don Rumsfeld

I'm sitting here with my lunch, farmer's market gespatcho and Mexican Fruit stand avocado and I got to thinking about food. Particularly a question I asked the vendor who sold the soup a long time ago. I asked him if it was vegan. It must have been Lent when doing vegan Fridays (never again!). He said that the bread used was vegan. I was doubtful but bought it anyway. I never made bread and always figured it needed eggs and milk. I must have been confusing it with cake. But that was an illustration of what I didn't know. I didn't know that bread is flour, water and some sort of yeast or rising agent.
There is a lot we don't know about food. There is probably even more that we know that we don't know about food. There is probably even more than that which we don't know we don't know about food. The food unknown unknowns. As a society there is a lot we will know about what is trendy to know about food but will increasiingly loose knowledge about old foodways of cooking and food prep and food saftey because they are not as trendy.

Pasta Salad

Despite being very sore towards someone right now, I will say that previously I hoped marriage would be like pasta salad. Currently I'm trying to put marriage out of my mind. Let me explain. You know how people focus on the thought that in marriage you are stuck with the same person day after day and it is like eating the same thing day after day. Well sometimes when I discover a dish I love, I try to eat it day after day after day. Pasta salad is such a dish.
Here are the ingredients:

Rotini (originally called for tortellini)
Peas
Olive Oil
Garlic
Parsley
Dijon mustard
lemon juice
Red wine vinigar
Salt
Grated Parmesan cheese

I don't give measurements because I've been making this since forever. I get the water boiling and throw the rotini in for 6-9 minutes, depending on the package or experience. While that's going I squeeze the lemon, put the garlic in the crusher and deposit in the juice. Experience has taught me that the garlic is less likely to taste funny if I have it sit in the citrus. Then I take some vinegar and shake about a few drops into it.Then add some parsley, and mustard. I stir it up then add oil. The original recipe said about 1/2 of the volume should be oil. I make it less so. Just enough to get a good dressing. I try to emulsify. Then I add a boat load of cheese.
About 2 minutes before the pasta is done, I throw in frozen early peas. When the timer goes off, I drain the pasta and the peas and add them to the cheesy dressing. I love this dish. And each time I make it, it is different. The quality of the ingredients can differ, the measurements differ, my mood, what I'm drinking to accent the flavors differ, the heat of the pasta when it hits the cheese, etc. A bunch of differing factors makes the same dish different. Sometimes I use fresh lemon juice, or farmer's market peas, or fresh parsley from the garden and lots of it. All I know are the last 10 spirals in my bowl of the dish are the most precious things in the world and I try to savor them slowly.

Special Chicken

Okay I finally defrosted and cooked most of the Maryland local, free range chicken that cost me $17 for the whole bird. I had set aside the breasts for chicken marsala. Then I went to the bodega to pick up some items for ice cream making when the owner mentioned he had some fresh chicken. Oh, fresh chicken! The last time I had bought chicken, the $17 deal, it was frozen. So When I was ready I had to deal with the whole bird. I figured with a fresh chicken I could cut up and cook the parts as needed. This bugger cost me over $20. So I got home. Figured I would cut it up into parts and freeze it.
I had butchered half of it when I bothered to take a look at the packaging. It was a Polyface chicken. The same Polyface Farm as featured in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. I was immediately struck with my own dilemma. Was I going to continue with my plan or was I going to see if fresh chicken from Polyface tasted as good as the hype not knowing if the freezing would make a difference. Since I had cut up half of it that was going into the freezer. The other half was going to be roasted.
I chose a recipe from the Gospel According to St. Martha, aka Martha Stewart Living. It was simple. Preheat oven to 425F. Take a chicken, put on foiled cookie sheet (foil not according to recipe but my desire for easy clean up). Brush with butter. Though I failed to read this and wound up pouring bits of melted butter on it. Salt and pepper. Take fresh thyme, stick under breasts and strew on sheet. Smash some garlic, place on sheet. Take day old baguette, in my case bread that has been in the freezer heaven knows how long, strew on sheet. Cook for 1 hour, but since it was ½ a chicken, 45 minutes. At about 45 minutes the fire alarm went off. I need to clean my oven. I tested the temperature and it was above 165F near the bone.
OMG. It was good. The breast was juicy and tender, and the breast is one of my least favorite parts. The bread, the parts that weren’t burnt, were like huge flavorful croutons. Garlic, which I left in the skins, tasty too. Excellent!

Paralyzed by Quality

I’m trying to integrate more organic and locally grown food in my diet, with a slight hope that the more expensive the food the less of it I’ll eat, and the more weight I will keep off. This hasn’t worked so far as I am making lots of ice cream. Lots of local dairy, local eggs and local & organic fruit with organic sugar.
The problem I am now increasingly facing is meat. I’ve been buying locally grown or organic fruits and veggies and have no problem deciding what to do with them. I can eat them straight, put them in something healthy (or not so much), or let them become at one with the composter. But with meat, because of the expense I am sometimes paralyzed as to what to do with it. Considering a whole chicken I bought for $17, it took me a couple of weeks to decide what to do with it. I finally took it out of the freezer and cooked it, only after deciding what would be the best way to make the most of the bird. I was giving this bird more consideration than I had given any other chicken. I didn’t want to waste the bird on some unproven recipe, or drown it in sauces so I couldn’t taste it, and soup (tomato veggie) seemed to be unworthy. I finally decided on a chicken curry that was just lots of onions, salt, cinnamon and another spice. I had set aside the breast meat for my classic chicken marsala. It was good in the onion gravy and I could definitely taste the chicken.
Though I felt wasteful tossing the skin. I did save the wing tips for chicken stock. Also since buying the $17 local chickie, I had not bought any conventional chicken out of wanting to try to live more organically. But I do see myself buying conventional chicken to test out new recipes. Once tried and true it may be set aside for local chicken.
There is a piece of buffalo in the freezer waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.
I’m still going to buy conventional lamb, because I haven’t heard anything really bad about it. Yes, it has to get from down under to me in DC, but during its life it is feeding upon grass and apparently don’t take as much energy to raise and even when accounting for shipping uses less energy than local sheep farmers. Yet, beef and veal need to be local and grass fed, as well as goats.
The problem with buying higher quality and expensive food is I feel worse when I have to throw it out.

And I will still like Chipotle

Last night I watched Food, Inc.
In the past two weeks I listened to Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. About a month or so before that I watched Fast Food Nation. So, one would wonder if I haven't become a vegetarian or something. Nope, if G-d didn't want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them so damned tasty.
The only problem I have in my thinking of food is in my reading of Leviticus. I like my sheep still baahing, but there is something about not eating blood. I'm ignoring that since I also eat bacon. Of course Leviticus has a bunch of other rules that I'm just going to tip-toe over.
Anyway, back to the food disturbing books and films.... I plan to watch King Corn a little later. Seeing the factory farm set up did bug me, but really got my goat was the stripping of people's first amendment rights with laws forbidding 'disparagement' of the cattle industry or chicken farming by individuals. And Monsanto's harassment of farmers forcing them to buy their seed and suing those who reuse their own seed just seemed like some form of evil I can't put into words. Makes me want to avoid all American soy products.
But what of my own eating? I cook a lot of my own food. I tend not to eat a lot of beef. I'm more of a chicken & lamb person. For certain cuts I will seek out Virginia lamb. Otherwise, I'm actually comfortable with Aussie or NZ imported lamb. Besides bacon, I don't eat a lot of pork. I eat a lot of chicken and that's where I need to change. I have been buying more non-medicated-non-hormonal chicken. I a going to try to move that to more local chicken. My eggs are from Maryland, bought at the locally owned bodega. My milk (when I don't buy a carton at work) is also local and organic. My rice is from Asia or California. I've been buying Gulf shrimp, forgoing asian farmed shrimp.
But the problem is when I eat out. Most of y'all know my tastes can be high end. I don't worry about their sources. But when I go down market, like Chipotle, I'll stick with my veggie burrito to stay safe.

Don't kill them

My sister got some Meyer Lemon trees today, that I ordered from a nursery in Florida. The note I sent with the trees were "Don't Kill Them." Hopefully the Meyers will sit somewhere in the front yard, where there is sun. Hopefully. And in 2 years, I pray they have lemons. And send them to me.
Why?
Meyer lemons seem to be horribly expensive. I paid $6 per pound for them at Dean & Deluca. I spent a good two days searching for them all over the city before finding them in Georgetown. I like the Meyers. Not like the regular lemons. Unfortunately, internet options seem to involve $20-$40 in shipping. Money, I rather give to my sister. Oh, if the tree is fruitful, somebody could be paying a month's rent with citrus.

Valentine's day recap

For those who actually want to know.
I had told Jon that I was keeping my expectations low, as the Help admitted he didn't have a romantic bone in his body. Also the day before and day of I kept bugging, without response, the Help about what I should wear, because if we were going somewhere nice I wanted to dress the part. Day of, I find he hadn't reserved a table anywhere and just figured we'd go somewhere. *sigh. Because of the snow and the angry parking fights, I encouraged him to metro it over to my place.
He arrived a little late, 20 minutes past his ETA, which made me worried. When he did arrive he had in a plastic bag a pink teddy bear and a valentine's heart box. I eyed that with suspicion/ contempt. I am not a pink stuffed animal kind of girl. I was never a stuffed animal kind of girl. The box was a Russell Stover chocolate box, an inferior candy that I will eat if it's free and in the office and I don't feel like going out of the building for something better, like a Reeses Cup. And the box was falling apart.
I opened the box, no chocolate. Instead, the paper cups were filled with shallots and bubble gum. The kind of cheap .99 gum I love. I am addicted to bubble gum, especially the kind that gets hard quick and is nothing but sugar. The bear was just a container for brown rice. Yay. He knows me! He loves me!
Since my roommate was in and about and I really didn't have anything prepared we hopped on the metro to go back out to Maryland. We went to Tiffin, an Indian restaurant out in Langley Park that I used to go to when I worked and lived in Maryland. It wasn't full and we later stopped by the nearby former House of Spices (now some Halal market) to grab some black cardamon.
A good Valentines' Day.

Well that's depressing

Yes, many of you who actually know me, know I have a small vein of distrust against the government, yeah the same one that writes my paycheck. There is also a small, but not as strong distrust of large corporations. Mainly because no matter how big, corporations legally can't shoot you. I would say they can't take away your property or rights, but with lawyers, anything is possible, except the shooting. Maybe.
So I was poking around on the blogosphere and saw this diagram of large food corporations and their relationship to organics. Then I picked up my box of Truvia, the natural no calorie funny tasting sweetner, and it's made by Cargill.
I like the idea of small businesses and small farms, or mid-sized farms, and my food coming from them. Maybe I'll come to the day where I buy my chicken from small producers. But I'm not there yet.

What not to do on a hot day

Engage in marathon cooking and decide not to use the AC.
Yesterday I made the following:
Lamb Stew
Rice- 2.5 weeks worth of lunches
Scallion Soup
mini key lime pies
Orange Ice Cream
Chicken Pate
Salmon in soy sauce

I am trying, and failing, to use up the stuff in my freezers. I want to turn the saved ingredients into lunchable food. I have a lot of frozen fruit which I've just been throwing into glasses of ice tea or lemonade in lieu of ice cubes. I thought I had a recipe calling for bread crumbs, nope. I was hoping to rid myself of the bread crumbs and crossant crumbs. There might be a soup recipe for that.....
Also what not to do... stand for hours in flip flops. My feet and legs were dog tired last night after trying to make tons of food. I did not make as I didn't have the energy or will to make heart-attack lamb stew (I feel my heart seize up when I take my first bite), make it up as I go along ginger lamb curry, and lets see what happens when you mix coconut milk-freeze dried lemongrass and chicken breast.

Dried peas are a NO

I tried them and I hate them.
I was hoping to be able to have something shelf stable and wean myself off frozen peas and freeing up freezer space. Nope.
Black beans, I'm fine with. Navy beans, in a soup are good. Peas on their own, crap. Total and complete crap. Patoohey!

One woman mission

If there is anyone who ministers to whiny bloggers with the cold or flu (I got no clue as to what I have), fyi, I need help.

Got a quick call from Mom this morning. In passing she mention this woman she knows, and whose name is familiar to me, who dropped off a few loaves of bread for her and some hot dog buns for my sister. We talked about this. It was this woman's mission, give bread away. That's it, bread. Hot dog buns, hamburger buns, white bread, bready bread, bread and give it away. If you know enough people willing to take the charity, and you've got enough bread, you've got yourself a mission. What idea. Picking one little thing you can do, and going out into the world and doing it. And it is so small it doesn't require government aid, nor a large organization or even a church structure (though I suspect church ties do play a part).
A radio program I listen to occasionally does a 'giving hour' where callers call in and tell their tales of giving. The easy ones are leaving a huge tip to an IHOP waitress, like $100 tip. The trickier ones are anonymously leaving money to families they know are experiencing hardship, because there are so many things that can go wrong in the execution of the giving and the interpretation of the receiving.
Bread. Well if you know the people and you know they'll take the bread, that sounds like a pretty decent mission.

Vegan Friday Ruined by Unmarked Soup

I figured that I'd have more of the crappy hated vegan pumpkin soup. Let us note that the crappy pumpkin soup is crappy because it has a vegetable broth base and not a chicken stock base. Also, not too keen on pumpkin in large doses.
So today I had cream of wheat with soy milk, romaine lettuce salad and, I thought, crappy pumpkin soup. No. I'm enjoying butternut squash, apple and bacon soup. I thought I ate all that soup months ago. When I made the crappy pumpkin soup I didn't bother labeling it, because it's orange and soupy. What else in the freezer could be orange and soupy? Butternut. Who knew.
Though this violates the fast, it is an honest mistake. The soup was left over in the office fridge from yesterday because I was eating leftover vegetarian chili B. had made and thought that was punishment enough. B.'s chili wasn't bad, but not what I was yearning for that day. So until I ate it and discovered it didn't suck, I thought I was eating vegan soup.
Now for those whom I've pawned off my pumpkin soup on, please remember that either you're a neighbor's 1 year old and it doesn't matter how it tastes or I added chicken stock for you.

Now I'm cooking

This weekend I have been cooking. Dang-you Mexican Fruit Stand. Curses to a limited fridge and freezer space!
As of Monday 3:24 PM I have completed cooking and making the following:
Steamed Rockfish in some Chinese broth
Chicken Broth
Rice
Ziti in meat sauce
Goat and Parmesan Cheese Souffles
Banana Cake muffins
Chicken Curry
Chicken in Onion Gravy
Capon (leftover) in mushroom sauce
Capon (left over) in ginger sauce
Capon (leftover) cooked in a lemon, thyme and onion sauce/gravy
Garlicy Bulgar wheat
Leek and garlic soup &
Chicken noodle soup

When I am done resting at the computer I will cook a base for the lemongrass & mushroom tofu, sans tofu. 'Cause frying the tofu takes too much effort. I may roast the peppers and a few tomatoes for something, maybe soup when I find more containers.... I'm running out of containers. I've got to figure out what to do with some of the pears I bought, maybe throw them in a scone batch.
The problem with the Mexican Fruit stand.... dirt cheap food that will self destruct in 2-3 days if you don't cook or eat them.
In the next couple of days the rest of the bananas are going to go kablewy.

Old Spice

I need to toss my spices. Some are old. Old enough to be in school old. However I bought some spices in bulk and they don't get used fast enough to justify buying more and tossing the big bag of.. chili powder. And really, I tasted the chili powder, it's still hot. The cloves are still clovevy. I did finally toss the baking powder after it ruined the yellow cake. Seems aged baking powder okay with chocolate cake. However with yellow cake, it turns it into a hard brick. So I bought a new can of powder. Now my scones are fluffy-ish. Scones should be like bricks. Oh well.

Wheat Scones with raisins

1 cup of whole wheat flour
1/2 cup of plain white flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
raisins- as many as you want
1 tablespoon or less of sugar
3 tablespoons (or so) of butter
1 egg
1/2 cup of milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Mix all the flours, the powder, salt and sugar together. Maybe throw in the raisins. You know, throw in the raisins whenever you feel like it, or at least before your throw the mix in the oven. With a grater, grate in a little butter. Mix. Grate some more. The original recipe said until it looks like course meal. This is another good time to throw in the raisins.
In another bowl, mix the egg and milk. Then slowly mix in the milk mix into the flour mix. Add and stir, add some more and stir. Do this till you have a big moist glob and start wondering to yourself if you've just made a big glob of whole wheat glue, with raisins.
On cookie sheet with parchment paper or something to prevent sticking, place little balls of whole wheat raisin gloop. Throw in oven for 14 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes. Serve hot with marmalade and butter and tea.