Mmmm... Food!
Recipes, Recipe Carnival, and other food stuff
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Saturday, January 07, 2006
Oops!
I figured out the other day that months ago I accidentally fed Sadie something that was made with peanuts in it.
So much for absolute caution that she gets nothing with peanuts until she’s 3, on the off chance she’s allergic. Doh.
Of course, we’ll still wait, but at least we have reason to believe she’s not one of those violently allergic people. Yay!
Meanwhile, she’s had banana bread made with pecans in it and been okay. A far less likely allergy, but still, good to know.
Speaking of food, she is so funny. She ate almost all of the meat, half or so of the cheese, and eventually a little of the bread out of half of a German bologna and cheese sandwich. I always cut the half into four triangular piece for her. She then takes them apart and eats the filling. Part of the time I was at the table with her, she systematically alternated between cheese and bologna, until she finally ate a second bologna piece in a row. It was so funny to watch. That and her total focus on performing the task of eating.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Speaking of Food…
It’s so cool how Sadie does these discontinuous leaps that at least seem sudden and are usually forced or indicated by her, or at least result in an “it’s about time” reaction.
I bought a $9-something booster seat the week before Christmas, on the idea that we’d bring it to my sister’s, because my mother would forget to bring hers. That and we’d need it soon anyway. She did, predictably, but so did I, almost as predictably. It may not have helped Sadie’s disposition during dinner at my sister’s to be standing in the chair rather than having a place to sit. It certainly encouraged her to keep trying to climb onto the table.
Anyway, after the holiday, we took it down from where it had been and she latched onto it. She carried it around, sat in it in the living room, all excited to have a me-sized chair. I’m tempted to buy another for that purpose.
We strapped it to one of the folding chairs that pass for kitchen seating here, but that only heightened her excitement. She wants to sit in it regularly. As we’d planned, we started feeding her there and sitting with her to eat at the table. The reaction is essentially “yay, I’m a big girl now, what took you so long,” and she is only a fraction as messy as she was in the highchair. She ate chicken salsa fiesta with a shirt on and walked away clean.
At the same time, she’s made a leap toward mastering silverware. She can spoon the milk out of her cereal bowl and get it to her mouth now, with surprisingly modest spillage. She’s also gotten enthused about using a napkin to wipe what she spills and her face. She’s still awkward, but has the right idea and does manage to come out of meals with her face a fraction as slopped as before.
It’s so cool to watch.
Ick
I was a bit unsettled before then, but I’ve been stomach sick since “Christmas dinner” at my sister’s on the 24th. Thought it was gone apart from, well, being a bit unsettled, but it seems to be back in force.
At least it’s not like the night (I think it was Christmas night) when I went to bed with the worst stomach pain I have ever experienced, and in my sleep I moaned in pain between snores.
I think the pork roast that wasn’t a turkey also had the audacity to be undercooked, and I blame it. I tried to convince myself that the pink part must have been one of those “if you cook it long enough it turns pink and looks uncooked even though it’s overcooked” things, and that if it was really as undercooked as it appeared to me, multiple people with far more cooking and eating experience would notice. I was kind of grossed out when the bottom centermost part of my slice of pork was stone cold, but tried to convince myself that it must have been transported from my grandmother’s house and not stayed hot or been reheated enough once it got there. The logical alternative was that it had been frozen, cooked not fully thawed, and therefore not fully cooked because not everyone is as careful as I tend to be.
Or it could have been something else. I just know it needs to go away now. I should check whether anyone else who was there got sick. Deb and Sadie only had the ham.
Too Long For Just A Comment
Sharon posed this question
If organic food is so darn unprocessed, straight from the proverbial cow, why in the hell is it so damned expensive? It seems to me it would cost more money to"process" it and add shit to it then to just get it and throw it on a store shelf.
Anyone?
I wrote an entire post in her comments, which I thought I’d add life to and get more thoughts on by duplicating here:
I’d venture that it’s a combination of supply and marketing.
To get truly organic ingredients, you have to arrange for pure suppliers, who do it because more money can be made, and might be growing smaller, more intensive quantities, which also may require greater hand work or incur greater losses due to not using things like pesticides. Supplies that can be assured are more limited and iffy than mass produced, efficient versions of the same things. Agreeing to be an organics supplier is a great strategy for small farmers who need to boost their cash flow and not be just one of the herd.
On the marketing side, there’s perception in pricing. In general, higher = better in most people’s minds, especially if they haven’t thought a lot about it. All the more so if they are on a mission to encourage a particular product or line. If you are hot enough for organics, price will be less of an object than simply for someone who wants to take advantage of modern efficiency and mass production to feed their family well and affordably. Plus things like organics are more likely to be a “thing” among people with more money to burn, who are also surprisingly likely to lean far left and have a particularly strong anticapitalist, radically environmentalist streak and limited appreciation of economic reality.
So the combination of a willing market that will bear inflated prices as a matter of satisfying a perceived added benefit or emotional need, and genuinely higher costs in many cases (for instance, most corn grown in the US has been genetically modified and it takes real effort to get corn that isn’t) adds up to higher retail prices. Usually. I used to get the organic mini peeled carrots on sale at Shaw’s frequently for less than the other brand.
As for processing… If you are making, say, pasta, it still has to be processed into pasta. It’s just that the ingredients will be organic. Tortilla chips are still corn processed into chips, whether it’s cheap corn or organic corn. Maybe that doesn’t apply to a sack of whole wheat or rice that are organic, but most stuff is going to be similarly processed if it is an analog to a non-organic.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Christmas
There will be pictures at some point. Probably a large number. Sadie was great fun this year.
It worked out unexpectedly well to have the thing at my sister’s Saturday, as we all slept excessively late today and Sadie took hours to open everything. The main complaint I have is false advertising. The turkey and ham at my sister’s turned out to be roast pork and ham. Had I known, I’d have bought a turkey and cooked it today. We even tried, but got to Hannaford after 6:00 Saturday night. So I couldn’t even get a pie and some eggnog as planned.
Sadie’s overwhelmingly favorite present was a dog from my mother. It’s not so much a traditional stuffed animal as a toy that takes batteries and is stuffed animal looking. She latched onto it in a way she never has for any other stuffed animal or doll. She also loved her Nemo floor pillow from her great-grandmother, and her tent from her grandparents. There were other hits too, and nothing she particularly dismissed. It’s just that she really got excited about those.
I got the Bo Bice CD for Deb. It sounds great! We played it twice in a row today. What’s funny is I went in Wal-Mart the day it was released, saw it on a one day sale for $4 off, said “oh, Deb will want this,” and grabbed it. When I got home, Deb suggested I should get it for her, and she had been thinking along those lines around the same time I was seeing the CD in Wal-Mart.
At any rate, the CD isn’t exactly what we’d expected, which is a courser, more southern rock style, but he just sounds amazing. Overproducing and commercializing doesn’t change that. When he’s an established seller, maybe he can dabble with his roots.
Anyway, sleepy now. More later.
Yay For The Landlord Again
I don’t recall ever having received a gift from a landlord before, not counting when my uncle was my landlord. Actually, I may have received something from my first landlord ever, Ray Clark. I don’t remember, except there was at least a card. Anyway, it’s a rare thing.
Christmas Eve morning there was a knock on the door. It was their daughter, delivering these:
The top part is Lindt truffles! I told her if I’d known she was coming, we’d have made them a plate of cookies. We did up two of those for the neighbors, being subversively nice. Now I’m really glad we included the landlord when we mailed cards.
Carnival of the Recipes Is Up
After you’re done, or in between your Christmas activities, check out the Christmas Eve Carnival of the Recipes, which includes the sugar cookie recipe Deb posted the other day.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Christmas Dinner and Stuff
For me, dinner on the holidays has always been at the traditional noon dinner time; after 12:00 and before 2:00. I’ve always thought it an oddity to encounter people who had holiday dinner as supper rather than lunch. Yet when I do these things at my own house, with my own family, they tend to be later, if not fully into the evening. Tomorrow when we have dinner at my sister’s, the time specified for being there was 1:00 - 1:30.
For Christmas it is normally turkey and/or ham. With so many of us, sometimes it’s both. Almost always turkey, at any rate. Rarely it can be a roast beef or a pork roast as a secondary meat. Then stuffing, mashed potato, gravy, butternut squash, sometimes sweet potato, of late most likely in the form of an apple & sweet potato dish, turnip, and maybe something green like broccoli. This year it’s going to be broccoli casserole. Oh, we can’t forget the cranberry sauce! Toto, I don’t think we’re in California anymore. If we’re having ham, sometimes there’s raisin sauce, though making that was my late grandfather’s specialty. There can also be cranberry relish and pickled beets. Normally there are rolls.
Afterward, when we eventually can stand to add anything to our bellies, there are always various pies, maybe some cookies or squares, sometimes other odd items like the “cranberry pie” that’s not very pie-like. Pies are usually pumpkin, apple, and one or two other kinds.
Favorite Christmas carol? That sounds familiar...
Thursday, December 22, 2005
This must be some sort of pregnant thing.
I just made up dough for another batch of the Famous Sugar Cookies of Doom™. Ambition that extreme has to be hormone-induced.
I also did four loads of laundry today. I *heart* my new washer and dryer, I really do. They kick ass.
Oh, and I cleaned part of the bathroom. And caught up the dishes.
Definitely hormones. Heh.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
The Famous Sugar Cookies of Doom™
The cookies I mentioned way back here turned out wonderfully. So, as promised, the recipe:
1 c butter
1 1/2 c sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 c sifted flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Cream butter and sugar together, then add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients gradually. Chill a minimum of 3-4 hours...I made mine the night before I rolled it out. Roll out (on generously floured counter or board...I think I worked an extra two cups of flour in this time, it was very sticky dough) to 1/8 inch and cut cookies with your favorite cookie cutters. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 375 for 6-8 minutes.
Supposed to make 8 dozen cookies...YMMV depending on size and the attitude of the dough.
Icing:
2 c powdered sugar
dash salt
1 tsp vanilla
enough light cream or milk to achieve desired consistency
Beat ingredients together, and add food coloring if desired.
Here’s the result:
One of the things I love about these is that they never turn out entirely neat...no matter how careful you are they always look like a kid iced them. Purty, ain’t they?
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Recipes
Caltechgirl has the latest Carnival of the Recipes, naturally heavy on the holiday items. This wassail history with recipes is particularly interesting, as I never knew what wassailing was.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Wish Me Luck
The Christmas baking season has now officially started, as the dough for the Famous Sugar Cookies of Doom™ is now chilling in the refrigerator, waiting for me to get my courage up tomorrow morning and roll it out. This is the cookie recipe that would drive my mother to such artful swearing that we’re tempted to beg for them just to hear her curse like that. She gave them up as soon as the kids were old enough not to be disappointed. This is my first go at them in several years, and my first in my own home (with a video-equipped husband, no less...I’m sure if they fight back he’ll catch snippets of it. Heh.). It’s supposed to be impossibly cold and dry again tomorrow, which is the best possible weather, so I have high hopes…
If they turn out, I’ll post the recipe.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Gratuitous Sadie Pictures
Sadie loves sitting in these metal baskets that are supposed to be in a wooden storage thingy. Not only are the baskets not allowed to store anything, they aren’t generally allowed to remain in the piece of furniture. She’ll bring one in the living room and sit in it, or she’ll sit propped against the air purifier to watch TV. The air purifier bit is another teenager pose.
Here’s what happens when Sadie eats blueberry pie, which she seems to love as much as I do.
That first picture gives a slight look at something that was never a photography problem in our old place: too much light. The better basket picture had a big enough washed out patch on it that I decided not to use it.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
A Yummy Food Meme
If just thinking about food doesn’t nauseate you at this point in the weekend, anyway. LOL. Here’s an either/or, which do you like better meme...I’ve bolded my preferences.
01. CHEESE or CHOCOLATE?
02. BLUEBERRIES or STRAWBERRIES?
03. COFFEE or TEA?
04. CORN MUFFIN or ENGLISH MUFFIN?
05. PANCAKES or FRENCH TOAST?
06. YOGURT or CREAM CHEESE?
07. RICE or PASTA?
08. CAKE or PIE?
09. GROUND BEEF or GROUND TURKEY?
10. HOT DOGS or HAMBURGERS?
11. JELLY or MARMALADE?
12. AMERICAN CHEESE or SWISS CHEESE?
13. DIET SODA or NO SODA?
14. LEMONADE or ICED TEA?
15. CHERRIES or GRAPES?
16. CHOCOLATE QUIK or STRAWBERRY QUIK?
17. WAFFLES or PANCAKES?
18. WHITE BREAD or WHOLE-GRAIN/WHEAT BREAD?
19. PEAS or CARROTS?
20. PUDDING or FRUIT-FLAVORED GELATIN?
21. COLD CEREAL or HOT CEREAL?
22. KETCHUP or MUSTARD?
23. MUSTARD or MAYONNAISE?
24. MAYONNAISE or KETCHUP?
25. BLACK OLIVES or GREEN OLIVES?
26. ONION or GARLIC?
27. PLAIN BARBECUE or BARBECUE WITH SAUCE?
28. SCRAMBLED EGGS or FRIED EGGS?
29. EGGS or EGG REPLACEMENTS?
30. MEAT or VEGETABLES?
31. CHINESE TAKE-OUT or PIZZA?
32. SUSHI or DELI SANDWICH?
33. WHITE CLAM CHOWDER or RED CLAM CHOWDER?
34. KEY LIME PIE or LEMON MERANGUE PIE?
35. PIE & ICE CREAM or CAKE & ICE CREAM?
36. WHIPPED CREAM or CAKE FROSTING?
37. HONEY or MAPLE SYRUP?
From Fat Lady Walking.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Soup
I made delicious turkey soup without trying. I put the carcass in the crockpot, along with a couple wing and thigh pieces still heavy with meat, added water and leftover drippings (about half the total from the turkey) about 2/3 or so up, and cooked for six hours.
Then I picked out bones, which brings me to a question: When cooking down a bird carcass, is there an easy or preferred way to get the bones, even the small ones, out once most of the meat and meat-like substances have departed the bones? I used a pasta spoon and a fork to scoop up meat and pick bones and intact hunks of skin or fat out. I got everything large, but there remain little pieces of bone. Which is annoying more than a problem, since they have cooked to the point of softness. Still, it seems like there ought to be a better, more thorough way.
Anyway, I added a couple cups more water, about five sliced up carrots, and just under a cup of brown rice, then cooked another eight hours. This morning it was soup. I just had a bowl, and it was fantastic, bordering on too salty. Apparently the secret ingredient is the beef boullion cubes used on the turkey along with the spices. Those contain stuff like MSG. Last time I did this, it was bordering on bland, despite spicing it and using drippings. This time I used nothing. In the back of my mind I had the idea if it was bland I would spice it and cook just a little longer after it was otherwise done, since the problem before seemed to be that the flavor of the spices cooked away after so long. No need this time.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Mmmm… Pie
I was pretty sure we weren’t going to bake anything else for the holiday, though I was tempted to find another, dessert-like banana recipe, or to try my hand at apple pie with all the apples we were given. Well, I needed to go to the store today for a few things like sour cream, cottage cheese, and soda.
Walked in the door and the first thing I saw was a table of pies with a sign “price as marked,” which is shorthand for “discounted because look, it’s Thanksgiving eve and we made about a hundred too many.” I ended up getting a lattice top blueberry and a crumb top apple for $3 each. Go me. I was tempted by the mince, but I’d be the only one eating it, unless Sadie liked it. Probably, since this is Sadie we’re talking about. Mince pie at holidays pretty much ends up being for me, my grandmother, my uncle if he’s around, and maybe my mother and sister. I don’t think anyone else likes it to speak of.
Anyway… luckily I didn’t have to buy a turkey, cheap as they were. Both of us were paranoid enough to think of giving the turkey in the fridge the smell test earlier, in case. I smelled a turkey-like, pleasant smell. She smelled nothing. We declared it good and I sealed it back up enough to keep it overnight. Yay for free turkey.
I thought about buying poultry seasoning while I was there. Looked at the ingredients, said “I could make that out of stuff I already have, except maybe the nutmeg” and returned it to the shelf. Nutmeg? (Which it seems I do have after all.) Who knew. I have the sage, marjoram, etc. Speaking of which, I need to look up what I did last year. I seem to recall I used my friend Tom’s method of starting at an extremely high temperature to sear in the juice, switching to a lower temperature for the bulk of the time. My uncle told me the opposite, cooking an extended time at a very low temp, then finishing at a high temp. It just goes to show there’s probably a different turkey cooking variant for each cook.
I still haven’t decided whether to bake or candy the sweet potatoes. It’s so good either way…
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Mooooo
We’re starting to think we have a baby cow rather than a baby human. She loves milk and other dairy products beyond all reason.
Nice that she got dairy tolerance. I always had that and didn’t react noticably to milk until well into adulthood. Even so, it takes quite a bit of milk to bother me, and amounts of ice cream no normal person would consume at a sitting.
As I write this, Sadie is sucking down a glass of coffee milk without pausing, as if it might go away if she stops before it’s gone. This has become her choice of breakfast. Actually, we joke about her being a hobbit, because there’s usually a second breakfast. She’s definitely my daughter, with her stomach waking up last, eating little or nothing first thing. By noon or so she’ll be up for eating, say, almost an entire ham, turkey and cheese sandwich. Yep, most of a sandwich. She’ll eat an entire hotdog and the bread it’s on.
What’s weird is we had butternut squash the last two nights and I am not sure she so much as tasted it. That was one of her favorite babyfoods (which is weird because to me it was one of the worst tasting babyfoods), so we figured she’d go crazy for it. It was all about the meat and rice for her. She didn’t even eat much of the especially good brocolli.
Speaking of Sadie, she’d trying to grab the mouse and is crawling under my desk, so off I go. Heh. She climbed onto the under the desk shelf.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Any advice on Making Onion Rings?
My mother gave us a Share box, Thanksgiving edition, plus some extras thrown in. All of a sudden I need buy nothing for Thanksgiving except maybe sweet potatoes, and perhaps brocolli or asparagus to have some green on the plate. And perhaps some baking ingredients.
The trouble is, we already have a bag of onions from last time, and now we have another. After the last one, I was thinking onion rings, but forgot in the interim.
So. What does one use for batter and are there any other tips?
Of course, I think I asked this before, so I should probably go look, but putting up a fresh post is easier. Heck, I could Google it, the same way people do when they’re trying to come up with new company, product or web site names…
Friday, November 18, 2005
Yesterday’s Checkup, Drugs, and Turkey
Today I seem to be finally seeing a more convincing show by the cold that’s been trying to afflict me in the background for perhaps as long as weeks. Ironically, that seemed to provoke a burst of physical effort. Go figure.
I meant to follow up about my appointment yesterday. It was supposed to be a quickie blood pressure check with the nurse, but I ended up also seeing the doctor and his current student.
Blood pressure was still up slightly, on the order of 140/96, so I am up to two a day on one of the meds, from one and a half. I still go back in three weeks as planned, then in four more weeks after that.
I confirmed that he indeed had intended my Effexor to be extended release capsules like the samples, not plain tablets. He gave me more samples, enough for a few weeks, to take in doses of 150 mg a day and see how it works before potentially writing a prescription again. I will need to go to CVS, tell them the prescription is cancelled, and see how they want to handle the six interim pills I haven’t used or paid for. I’ll be happy to pay for them if it messes them up to have to take them back. At least it’s a reprieve in needing to sink huge money into them.
My weight has stayed rock steady at Too High, even as I keep looking thinner and having more trouble keeping pants from falling.
Oh, for whatever reason, they didn’t so much as mention blood test results. Probably that means everything was fine, as usual. It was blood sugar, potassium, and a bunch of other stuff, to see if anything looked suspicious.
I think tonight’s unhealthy meal is going to be chicken, brown rice, brocolli, and butternut squash.
Speaking of food, how many days before cooking it (Thanksgiving, in the case) would you purchase a fresh turkey and expect it to remain perfectly good in the refrigerator? We have too little freezer space to mess with frozen, not to mention all the time to thaw. Last time or two I did turkey, I spent extra on the hotel style. I think I will try a full turkey this time, as I like the drumsticks and plus leg meat can always go into a post-thanksgiving soup.
Whaddaya Know!
We finally found a vegetable Sadie doesn’t like. Asparagus.
Even so, she ate part of what was on her tray after a while, and it wasn’t the best example of the genre anyway. Despite my having buttered and peppered it for her, when usually she gets her veggies plain. I wasn’t watching, but apparently she had the funniest look on her face in response to her first taste.
That’s okay. Asparagus is kind of a special treat. It was on sale, being close enough to still “in season” for import from the souther hemisphere, and I had a hankering. She’ll get a chance to try it again in the spring, so who knows. At least it’s a switch from frozen corn, peas and beans, and sometimes fresh brocolli or carrots.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Banana Bread, Onions, and Sadie’s Re-belly-ous Tummy
I ended up using approximately this recipe for banana bread currently in the oven. Without the nuts. It was the only recipe for which I had all the ingredients, being that we have no lemons, lemon juice, or cream of tartar, and using white vinegar just seems odd and doesn’t necessarily give as good results.
It required three bananas to make just about 1 1/3 cup. I added an egg, because they are so small. Normally I’d buy extra large eggs, but Hannaford has 18-packs of large eggs at a price that compares favorably to BJ’s, so we’ve been buying them. Eggs are one of those things we don’t buy at Wal-Mart. For the 3 tablespoons of oil, I melted together a mix of Crisco and butter. The vanilla rebelled against being opened after so long, but eventually hot water won the day.
It looked great going into the pan. We’ll see how it turns out in half an hour or so…
Meanwhile, thinking about making myself a hamburger, I noticed the bag of onions we were given, thought “I could saute onion to go on the burger,” then thought “what am I going to DO with all of those; we never use onions,” and then remembered the idea of making homemade onion rings. I’ll just need to come up with a batter and test it out. Sadie loves onion rings, so that’ll be cool. But I’ll wait until she’s over the stomach bug completely. It seems like maybe she picked something up at her grandmother’s house Monday, or subsequently. Poor kid. At least we had bananas and applesauce on hand for calming it down. She ate almost nothing yesterday, then ate those two things and toast for supper. You know she’s unwell when she leaves half the applesauce.
Update:
Yum! The banana bread came out very nearly perfect. It required the longer range of time suggested by the recipe, plus a little.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Banana Bread?
Anyone want to share a good recipe for banana bread? We got some free food yesterday, including more bananas than we’ll use before they spoil, and which already look unsavory because of apparently having been in some form of cold storage. So we have decreed banana bread as the thing to do.
Last night’s supper cost about 50¢ after the food we got free, courtesy of an unclaimed Share box. The potatoes, carrots, and marinated steak tips were all free. Woohoo! I added some frozen peas to the mix, and it was great. Not quite how I’d flavor the steak tips, but not bad.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Not Just ANY Happy Birthday…
This is the extra special birthday announcement… Deb’s!
Yep, it’s her big day. We’d probably go to Carmen’s, which we haven’t done since just before Sadie was born, but I was practical and bought groceries with the cash I had left pending my client’s check clearing and my being able to get more.
I got her a “birthday present” a few weeks ago, but I had something else in mind that has also been delayed by cash flow. Sheesh. Her requested present is that I catch up the dishes, which I don’t mind. It used to be easy to get a lot of them done while hanging with Sadie as she ate. Now she eats so fast!
And so much. Last night I got a pound of ground sirloin and made it all into three burgers. Sadie got her own, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 the size of Deb’s, which was about 80% the size of mine. Call it a couple inches or so in diameter and half an inch thick, covered with cheese. Served it with ketchup and half a bulkie roll. She devoured it. And a mess of homemade fries, which I made again because the potatoes had to be used. Perhaps a traditional “large fries” worth of them or a tad less. Heck; put that way, the burger Sadie ate was probably the overall amount in a McDonald’s burger, just thicker and less big around.
Was that enough? No. She also had a large glug of apple sauce and two good sized spoonfuls of pumpkin ice cream. She knows both those words; apple sauce and ice cream. But this wasn’t supposed to be a Sadie post, and there’s more, like the fact that she insisted on ceasing her play time in the bath, getting out and getting a diaper on because she knew she was about to poop, and like her knowing what “the remote” is and her fetching it for you if asked, and like her obsession with my hairbrush and wanting to brush her hair, and like her insistence last night on attempting to eat ice cream and apple sauce with a spoon, which in a first she treated as a tool rather than a toy.
The unexpected fresh burger - on a roll no less - and fries were kind of an unexpected birthday surprise for Deb, and she loved the Edy’s pumpkin ice cream. I noticed Peaceful Meadows had pumpkin ice cream now available on their sign by the road, so I thought I’d have to get some one day, even just a pint, so she could try it. I love that and egg nog flavors, both seasonal. Then in Wal-Mart I noticed Edy’s had pumkin. Turns out it’s spicier than I remember Peaceful Meadows being, but still fantastic.
This seems like a good time to mention Deb’s recent observation that there seems to be a generational demarcation in the form of being born before and after the first Star Wars came out. Interesting theory, no? That’s puts both of us in the pre-SW camp, if not in the same traditional generations.
But then, sometimes the traditional demarcations aren’t completely telling. At least, being a baby boomer isn’t. I am technically one, but am worlds apart from someone born in, say, 1948. You would expect that 13 year gap to put Deb and I worlds apart, yet somehow it doesn’t. Which could simply be an indication of choosing well.
Anyway, happy birthday to Deb, the Accidental Jedi, great blogger, Sadie’s cool if sometimes overwhelmed mom (Sadie’ll do that to you), my lovely wife. May there be so many more that we lose count.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Mmmm… Veggies (Plus Other Food Digressions and More!)
We regularly have meatless suppers. It can save money, which is always good, and you know how cheap I am most of the time. Depending what it is, it can be extra healthy. And it’s good.
Speaking of which, due to the silly Papa Ginos commercials, if you say “Sadie, is it good?” or simply “it’s good!” to Sadie, she throws her arms up the way they do in the commercial.
Last night we used three sweet potatoes I bought a week or so ago. It’s been ages since we had those, and it’s not that common because they aren’t cheap. Plus Sadie eats a huge range of foods now, so there’s no need to have those a couple times a week for her exposure to first real foods. They were always her favorite. Those we baked into submission, until they were drooling sweet syrup and done to perfection. Those went in when we first thought about what we might have for supper.
We decided on veggies, feeling a bit tired of chicken, and rice, but we are almost out of rice. We’ve been buying brown rice, and no more of the huge 10 or 12 pound bags like I used to buy. Though I still think there’s merit in that, from a “firm belief in stocking up on versatile nonperishables in case I ever need to eat without being able to replenish supplies for an extended period” perspective. I’d make a good Mormon, in terms of wanting to be prepared for down times. I think I get it from my mother’s side, where the Depression and early loss of fathers shaped the outlooks of my grandparents. Growing up poor myself contributed. Finally, my own personal “great depression” era, circa the Papa Bush administration, made me absolutely paranoid about having enough food around to go through times of no money. To paraphrase the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, “food will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no food.” Or something like that. At the same time, that personal down period gave me later difficulty eating certain foods, or buying certain rock bottom goods.
How can I digress this much in a quick and dirty post about a surprisingly yummy supper? Sheesh.
The lack of rice led to the bag of potatoes I’d bought that we hadn’t opened yet. Rather than baking or mashing, I surprised Deb by making homemade fries. Damn, they’re good! And so easy. Peel, cut, cook in hot melted Crisco in a cast iron pan. Sadie approves. Though she didn’t like the ones that got a little overdone while I rescued her. She apaprently was well on the way to climbing to the top of the utility cart - the one with the three metal basket drawers, one regular drawer, and leafs that fold up to give extra work space. We had gotten it to make up for the lack of counter space in Stoughton. She thudded onto the floor from however high she’d gotten behind my back, enough to make me run at the thud, nevermind the screaming. Silly kid.
I decided that the fries were the “meat” portion of the meal. Heh.
Along with that, we had corn and lima beans. The whole thing felt almost earthy. Sort of an Inca de Maya celebration, if you will.
Sadie was in food heaven. A shame she’d had so many fries while I was cooking, as she didn’t dive into the beans as much as normal, and didn’t devour every last bit of her half a sweet potato. To give an idea of her appetite, she ate probably a dozen fries - say the equivalent of a small fries from McDonald’s, almost half of a medium or larger sweet potato, a hefty serving spoonful of corn, and about half of a hefty serving spoonful of lima beans. Starting not that long after her previous meal.
Of course, we don’t always do meatless so interestingly. Usually it’s beans and chips. That is, heat a can of refried beans, adding some jack or cheddar cheese to melt into it. Put it in a couple bowls, maybe with a little more shredded cheese on top, and with a dab of sour cream. Serve with tortilla chips to dip in it. That’s a quickie meal, too. But tasty! And the price of cans of refried beans at Wal-Mart is less than the case price at BJ’s works out to.
We also use flour tortillas not only with cheese alone, but also with beans and cheese. Put some beans sort of thin on one half of a flour tortilla, add ample cheddar or jack cheese, fold over, heat in a frying pan on each side until hot and the cheese is melty. Mmmm.
A lot of our meatless meals feature Rice-a-Roni as the main component, with other veggies on the side. Sometimes, of course, it’s rice. Which reminds me of the time I invented taco “meat” filling, with almost the same texture, out of rice, refried beans, and some salsa. Plus the normal seasoning packet and some chili powder. Haven’t made tacos lately. Just homemade burritos using the flour tortillas. Which can be made with chicken, steak, burger, pork, or no meat at all. I used to eat hard shell tacos all the time, and eventually found I preferred them made with ground turkey rather than beef. Weird.
But I digress, and we all know that almost never happens.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Mmmm… Blackberry Jam
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Wal-Mart Surprises Us
We eat a fair amount of frozen vegetables, and I usually buy store brands. Recently we’ve found that Wal-Mart has superior store brand veggies. At least in the form of peas and lima beans, both of which were among the best examples of the genre I have ever had.
How unexpected. And they’re inexpensive.
We’ve also found that Hannaford’s aren’t great; possibly not even as good as Shaw’s brand. The generics at Roche Brothers are better than either, but no match for Wal-Mart.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Mmmm… Candy
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Butterfinger |
 They call you sticky fingers for a reason! |
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Strange Kid
She likes jalepeno flavored Pringles!
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Sadie’s First Popsicle
Orange seems to be her favorite flavor, so far, and the first one was the one she liked the best. Sometimes when given these she doesn’t care all that much.
Mmmm… Pork
Nope, this is not a post about Congress, or Bush’s form of “conservativism.” It’s not even a post about Pooh and Tigger inviting Piglet over for pork chops, though that’s closer.
I have almost 2.5 pounds of thin, center cut pork chops, with bones. Very nice looking meat.
Any serving suggestions? Figured my couple of readers might have thoughts on a new and exciting way to prepare them.