SEPTEMBER 2011
Wednesday 2011.9.28
Cooking Without Taste Buds
Yesterday I made dinner for friends. It was an experiment with lamb chops. I bought some on a whim at the warehouse store (and, OH!, they now have veal—must get out the cookbooks!) and then stretched out on the sofa for a while, creating a stuffing recipe in my head. I still can't taste anything with my tongue; so I had to proceed on sense memory. My friend likened it to Beethoven composing when he was completely deaf. Imagine me, compared to Beethoven. Maybe he meant the dog.
I did go to the doctor and he sent me to the lab for blood tests. Meanwhile, I made an appointment to see a neurologist, but I have to wait until November. The doctor called me in the afternoon to say he received the results of the blood tests and everything is normal. He even had me tested for a couple of markers for cancer and those were negative. He was under the impression that the condition would reverse itself on its own and I would be back to normal before the appointment came due for the neurologist.
I've been taking ibuprofen in the meantime because one possible cause is inflamation of the myelin sheath that surrounds the nerve that carries messages from my tongue to my brain. The nerve goes through a canal in the skull and, kind of like carpal tunnel syndrome, if the sheath becomes irritated and swells it can pinch off the nerve. Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory. One possible cause for inflammation is a virus and I've been sneezing a lot more than usual lately.
I do little experiments occasionally. I sometimes put a quarter teaspoon of sugar in my mouth to see if I taste anything other than pepper. I take a sip of my coffee without sweetener in it and then taste it again after it is sweetened, to see if I can detect a difference. This morning the sugar tasted a tiny bit sweet. I could also detect a difference between sweetened and unsweetened coffee. So, hopefully I am recovering my sense of taste in my tongue. My little experiments are hardly properly administered double-blind studies, but if Timothy Leary could experiment on himself....
As for the stuffed lamb chops: I really didn't like the stuffing. It tasted too strong. Pepper again. Everything I eat has an acrid flavor of pepper. My friends, however, loved it. The lamb was cooked to perfection (always use a digital thermometer) and they thought the stuffing was savory and delicious. My sense memory is more reliable than my tongue.
I am planning to make the lamb again and do a video, now that I've worked out a few kinks in the process. I'll put it on this web site. On Sunday I'm planning to publish my recipe and video for Chinese Chicken and Cashews. That's the recipe for which I brought a little jar to the Chinese restaurant to take home the sauce for experiments. It came out very well. At the end of the video I taste it in front of the camera, saying how delicious it is. I am such a phoney. I couldn't taste a thing.
Sunday 2011.9.25
Uh-oh
Life took an unexpected turn recently. I can't taste anything. Well, that's not completely accurate. Everything tastes like pepper.
Last week I noticed my food didn't taste salty enough. I thought I had been drinking too much water and maybe I diluted my body's electrolytes and I therefore I had a craving for more salt. The situation became worse this week. I bought some cashew nuts to make Chicken and Cashews for this web site. I love cashews. I couldn't resist nibbling. The nuts tasted like they were seasoned with pepper.
I made the Chicken and Cashews today. I faked the "tastes fantastic" ending for the video. Afterwards, I tried adding more salt. Then more salt. Even MSG. I could tell by the feel in my mouth—sort of a burning sensation—that there was way too much salt in the food. Nonetheless, it still didn't have any flavor.
I decided to experiment with flavors I knew. I made tea. It tasted a little like tea, but very weak. I tried tasting a spoon of light corn syrup. I know that flavor. It's very sweet. It tasted like pepper syrup. I put a little honey on a spoon and tasted it. It tasted like honey, but it wasn't sweet. It was bitter. Finally, I put half a teaspoon of granulated sugar in my mouth. There was no sweetness at all. This tells me the problem is with my tongue. My oral hygene is good. So that is not the cause. Wait and see, I guess.
I'm not overly concerned. I went through this once before, several years ago, but that change in flavors was associated with a bad cold. I had bought several three-pound bags of my favorite coffee and it tasted just awful. The horrible flavor remained in my mouth all day. I discarded many pounds of coffee beans before I figured out the problem was not with the coffee, it was with me. After a while the problem went away. This time around, I taste bitter pepper all day, even when I'm not eating anything. Maybe I have something like a cold. I've been sneezing a lot.
I'll continue to cook and make videos, and I'll continue to fake the "tastes fantastic" at the end of each video until I can taste normally again. The problem will go away—I hope…
Wednesday 2011.9.21
Down for a While
I overdid it with the home improvement projects this week. Yesterday my back finally had enough and ripped in the lumbar region. I had bicycled to the warehouse store and was just locking my bike when it ripped. Thankfully I was locking my bike to a sign with a solid upright post to hold onto. If not for that post I would have fallen to the concrete. It took a few minutes to let the pain subside before I could go in the store, buy the few things I needed, and then bike home.
This is not new. When I was teenager I fell down a flight of stairs. I've been x-rayed, probed, spent time in a hospital, and otherwise tested, but the doctors can't find anything wrong. The vertebrae and disks are fine. It's all in the muscles. One doctor explained it fairly well: "You've got a lot of scar tissue in your lower back muscles and that reduces the number of muscle fibers available to hold you up. They get fatigued, and when you push them too far they get injured."
Normally it doesn't hold me back. I just can't sit for more than an hour without getting up and doing something to loosen up the muscles. When I had a job I worked at a desk. I was free to get up, walk around, do exercises, etc., whenever I wanted because I was sort of like Milton in Office Space—moved to a disused corner of a nearly empty room of cubicles I called "the cattle corral." It wasn't like they gave me carte blanche permission to do anything I wanted. They just never knew. No one checked on me. I slept in my cubicle when I needed a nap. The work got done, and that was all that mattered to anyone.
Besides the home projects, I haven't been riding my bike as much as I should. I used to ride to work everyday, 3½ miles each way, morning and evening. Bike riding keeps my back stretched and limber. Now I only ride to the store—a quarter of the distance—a few days each week. This latest injury is a wake-up call. More time on the bike.
As for the cooking, on Sunday I plan to post the recipe and video for Chocolate Mascarpone Pie. After the first pie fell to the floor, I started again and made it better. It came out fantastic. I ate only one piece (I am, after all, on a diet) and I gave the rest away. I went shopping yesterday to buy the ingredients for Chinese Chicken and Cashews. The recipe is written, the photography is done, I just need to come up with a video. Because of the back injury, I only bought half of what I needed. Depending on how I feel later today, I might just make a quick trip to the store to get the rest of the stuff.
On the positive side, my chronic back pain is easy to live with. I don't suffer from pinched nerves like my friends with herniated disks. I just need to keep my back in good shape with regular exercise. So I'll slow down on the home projects and spend a little more time on bike. I'll be back to normal soon.
Sunday 2011.9.18
Snob Cooking
Last week I drove down to the Snooty Cookware Store because it is only halfway into the city. I just needed a piping tip for the Chocolate Mascarpone Pie I was working on and I didn't feel like driving all the way into the city. There was a woman cooking in the center isle where the cash registers are located. She was demonstrating something like stuffed pasta shells from the look of things. The sales hostess (dare I call her a clerk?) at the register asked me what I was making and I told her about piping white chocolate leaves to decorate the pie. She asked me if needed white chocolate and I told her I already bought some. The cook at the stove asked, "Where did you buy your white chocolate?" "At the grocery store. I just bought the regular bag of tollhouse cookie morsels, only white." She turned away in disgust, as if I couldn't possibly have said anything more loathsome.
Unlike the Good Snooty Cookware Store down in the city, this store doesn't sell individual piping tips. I had to buy a set, with two bags (I already have one) and it cost me $20. I also bought an offset icing spatula. That furshugginer thing cost $32! When they asked me if I wanted to open one of their credit card accounts, I declined, saying I hadn't shopped there in almost 20 years. I didn't tell them their lack of selection and their prices are the reason why. The last time I was in that store I was looking for a stainless steel kettle to heat water for tea. I like tea in winter. They showed me kettles that cost well over $100, and that was 20 years ago. "I only need to boil water," I told the clerk. "Maybe you just need a pan," she responded in snooty fashion. I ended up finding the kettle I wanted at the warehouse store for under $20.
As for that Chocolate Mascarpone Pie: If you follow this site's Facebook fan page, you saw the pictures. Disaster. It turned out well. In fact, it came out fantastic. However, I lost control of it while putting it in the refrigerator and it hit the floor. SPLAT! Undaunted, I immediately started making more mascarpone cheese and on Friday I made another pie. It came out perfect, again, and this time it didn't end up on the floor. I only ate one piece. Too many calories. The entire pie, minus the one piece, went to a friend.
The recipe for the pie is planned for next week.
Wednesday 2011.9.14
Diary of a Retiree
I may be retired, but I'm still waiting for the golden years.
I never realized how many projects needed doing. This week I decided to tackle the entryway porch. Between termites and wood rot, it was literally crumbling and was on the verge of being dangerous. It was beyond repair. Almost every piece of wood had been attacked. I did have my mobile home tented for termites a few years ago, but there were still a few termites, mostly in the wood closest to the ground. I can do more than cook. So I am doing this project myself.
Monday:
On Monday morning I bought the lumber (2x6s) and hardware.
During the afternoon I removed the old porch. Demolishing that old deck was horrendous. The guy who built it must have absolutely loved hammering nails. They were everywhere. A neighbor came over to inspect my progress and we shared a good laugh over the abundance of nails.
I'm building the new deck differently. NO NAILS! I learned construction in theater. Anything that gets a lot of traffic, i.e. a porch, is safer if assembled with screws, bolts, and/or cement-coated nails. I bought 3 pounds of deck screws. They are coated and guaranteed not to rust. Also, there is no point in exerting myself pounding nails when an electric drill can bore the holes and be used to drive the screws.
In another cost-saving idea, I used the old porch lumber to make two saw horses. They'll get me through the project and then I'll cut them up and toss them in the trash.
Tuesday:
I bought a gallon of copper naphthenate.
It's a copper-based wood preservative. Termintes hate copper. I used it when I built my deck on the other side of the home. During the morning I coated all the lumber with preservative. I also altered my design slightly to make certain the load-bearing walls of the structure are on the concrete slab. That's where the previous builder went wrong. One side was off the slab, over dirt. He buried a 4x4 for support, but the imbecile didn't treat the wood. That just invited the termites in.
During the afternoon I measured and cut most of the wood. Assembly will be just drilling holes and driving screws. The electric drill will do most of the work. This will go together quickly. It's like cooking Chinese food. The prep work takes all the time. The cooking is quick.
Wednesday (today):
I started the assembly this morning. With most of the cutting done, the porch
assembled easily, but it was still time consuming. I also raised the porch up a little, on concrete pillars, to let the water drain away when it rains. Standing water causes wood rot. And, needless to say, cutting the wood exposed untreated areas; so they got a coating of naphenate as well.
I was done by about 5:30 this evening. It looks beautiful. Tomorrow I'll start painting it.
Total cost: $207.85US. Not bad.
As for cooking:
I've been making mascarpone cheese to attempt that Chocolate Mascarpone Pie again. If you follow this site's Fan Page on Facebook, you saw the pictures. The first pie was beautiful. Then I lost control of it when attempting to put it in the refrigerator. It fell onto the floor. SPLAT! Oh well, start again... I'll probably post the recipe on September 25.
Sunday 2011.9.11
My First Freebie
This week I received my first freebie as the owner of this web site—a WhackerSpoon. I was down in the city doing some shopping for this web site. I never leave my house—my mobile home—without my business cards, which I hand out when appropriate. In one store the owner's husband, Bob, was present. We got to talking about what we do. When I told him about my cooking web site, he was enthusiastic. It turned out he is the inventer and maker of the WhackerSpoon. He gave me a free spoon. I am looking forward to making pesto with it. I think it would be perfect for crushing basil in a ziplock bag, as I typically do when making pesto. I usually use a rubber mallet. There is a recipe here, Four Pestos, in which I demonstrate how I make pesto, and there is an associated video on YouTube. Now if only some French manufacturer of solid copper cookware would recognize an opportunity and send me a free set of pots and pans.
Addendum: Much later, in 2017, I learned the WhackerSpoon is no longer available.
On Friday a few of us from work (or, where I formerly worked) went out to lunch at our usual Chinese buffet. This is where I got the restaurant trade journal with the recipes I want to try. Besides the Chocolate Mascarpone Pie, I want to make the Sticky Toffee Pudding. Actually, I want to make nearly every recipe in that magazine. That pie is the reason I went shopping down in the city. I bought a tart pan. I told my camera guy not to leave town. The pie goes out the door with him. I don't need those calories around me.
And now for something completely diffefent: I broke another spoke on my bicycle Friday. I did a video of me replacing it. White Trash Cooking: How to Replace a Bicycle Spoke. I need a friend to see it before I dare post it to YouTube. It was fun not taking myself seriously for a video.
I can't end this blog without mentioning that today is the tenth anniversary of the USA's most damaging terrorist attack, as if anyone needs to be told. Coverage of the observance is being broadcast everywhere. That was a difficult time for me. I felt a total loss of control. I brought a television to work to watch the news. Somehow, getting the news made me feel I knew what was going on and that helped me to feel I had some control. It took weeks to recover.
Wednesday 2011.9.7
Just Plain Cooking
In one of my distant memories I remember going with my mother into town where there was an Italian market on a side street. I was probably only about five or six years old at the time. It was one of those old types of markets in which there were wooden bins of loose dry pasta and the clerk would scoop out the amount you wanted and put it in a paper bag for you. I remember going there only once. My mother would not have made a second trip if the prices were lower for the packaged pasta sold in the supermarket. She could spot a bargain from the opposite end of a crowded mall.
Cooking has, of course, changed a lot since I was a child. I live near a family that only knows heat and serve. What little cooking they do is only done by the husband on the grill in summer. As a result, more and more shelf space in stores is now taken over by convenience foods. And the good old fashioned staples of everyday cooking are becoming more and more expensive because so few people buy staples anymore.
If you think about it, you probably know people who use their oven for storage. For them, the oven is just another cabinet, not much good for anything else, and it has the convenience of having a light inside, like the refrigerator, which makes finding things easier. I knew such a family, and I would be willing to bet these people don't use their microwave oven for storage, even though it also has a light inside.
The difference can also be seen in the discards. My neighbor's recycle bin is full beyond the brim for the collection every other week. Their garbage bin goes out with the lid tilted on top of the mound that is visible above the rim. Sometimes, to do a video, I have to go outside and chase away the noisy crows who gather around the garbage for a meal.
Mind, I am not one to complain about the laziness of others. If you're familiar with my Minute Meals page you know that I am committed to the simplicity of heat and serve and I therefore have no right to look down my nose at my neighbors. Nonetheless, although I cook in large quantities and store Minute Meals in the freezer, at least I do the cooking, and I contribute very little to our local land fill.
That said, I take pleasure in cooking. There is something almost magical about hot homemade bread coming out of the oven. I look with pride on a roasted stuffed chicken. And I find more than comfort in the comfort food of pasta fagioli made from scratch. I've taught cooking, and I hope my recipes will be shared and used by others. There is something to be said for getting back to basics. Sure it's a lot more work. But with it comes the satisfaction of accomplishment and the confidence of mastering a skill.
Sunday 2011.9.4
Well, Slap Me Silly
If I am anything, I am definitely organized. On the wall above computer-2's monitor (I don't name them—just computer-1, -2, etc.) is my production schedule, such as it is. It is laminated so that I can easily add and remove recipes using a wet-erase marker and a moistened paper towel. Currently I have recipes and videos scheduled through 9/18. There are also three future projects for November and December that are done and ready to publish when the time comes. To the right of the recipes column there are two columns, one for "PDF" and one for "Video." A check mark goes into each column when each project is done. When I write a recipe I write "proof" in the PDF column, meaning the recipe PDF is done, but I need to proofread it at least one time before publishing it. After it is proofed, the column gets a check mark.
I have a second laminated page above the computer. It contains the list of steps to be completed each time I update my web site with a new recipe. There are 22 steps I do every Sunday when I publish a Featured Recipe.
This week's Featured Recipe is Shrimp Crêpes. There was a check mark in both columns, indicating that the PDF and the video were completed. Imagine my consternation when I looked for the video to post to YouTube and there was nothing there! Okay, not a tragedy. If Hamlet had only to deal with an un-encoded video rather than a dysfunctional family, there wouldn't have been a play—at least not one worth buying a ticket to go see. "Something is rotten in computer-2." (It sort of scans....)
For a video that is about 18 minutes long, the first encode takes about an hour. Then it gets encoded into DVD files, which takes less than a minute (because the first encode creates files that are DVD ready—all that is required is "muxing," which is the process of attaching the audio stream to the video stream). Finally, the VOB file is run through an mpeg encoder to make the final XviD file that is uploaded to YouTube. That last step takes less than 10 minutes.
Then I view the video one last time to make certain everything is correct. It's a good thing, too, because this week I found I missed a step in the video. I created a little "Oops" title to cover that error, and then started the whole encoding process again. Oh, well, that's the price I pay for being such a perfectionist.
All of this, of course, gives me time to write this week's blog entry. So, there we are.