AUGUST 2012
Wednesday 2012.8.29
Where There's Smoke, There's Burning Oil
I had some free time to surf YouTube lately. I looked at some cooking videos. All modesty aside, I am usually inspired not by the recipes so much as by the ineptitude. A lot of people cook food, but that doesn't make them good cooks. To be fair, there are a lot of excellent cooking videos on YouTube, certainly better than mine. I am not a culinary-school-trained chef. That said, there are also many disturbing cooking videos too.
Case in point: I watched one video in which the cook poured plenty of extra virgin olive oil (because EVOO is such fantastic stuff) into a very hot cast iron skillet. Billows of smoke arose. "Billows" might be an exaggeration. Let's just say cumulonimbus clouds of smoke. Then she browned vegetables in the ruined oil. I wrote on my "Future Projects" list: "Seared veggies."
High heat destroys extra virgin olive oil because it has a relatively low smoke point. Use it to flavor cooked foods, not to cook foods, except at low temperatures. Butter has an even lower smoke point, as low as 250°F (121°C). If you need to cook with butter, use clarified butter (the pure butter fat without the water and milk solids common in whole butter) because it has a smoke point of 485°F (252°C).
In one of my kitchen binders I created a page that lists the smoke point, in Fahrenheit and Celsius, of all common cooking oils. It's a useful reference.
I made lamb recently—Honey-Glazed Lamb with Herbes de Provence. There isn't much preparation involved, and therefore it doesn't require much video time. That left room for seared vegetables, and an opportunity to use my new stove top cast iron grill/griddle again.
My plan was to do two different types of vegetables: Dense vegetables that would need to roast in the oven with the meat and watery vegetables that could be cooked on the grill and added to the other vegetables later. I chose to grill slices of butternut squash, yam, and potatoes to sear them with bar marks before transferring them to a roasting pan in the oven. On the grill I seared and cooked slices of eggplant and thick slices of onion. Herbs and garlic provided additional flavor.
The vegetables came out of the oven with the lamb. While the meat was resting I assembled the cooked vegetables on a platter and drizzled plenty of extra virgin olive oil over the top, finishing with salt and pepper. Sounds good? It was delicious. I love roasted vegetables with lamb.
The cooking oil I use on the grill is safflower oil because I can heat it up to 500°F (260°C) before it starts smoking. Extra virgin olive oil has a smoke point of 375°F (191°C), certainly high enough to cook foods and give them a little browning. If you can't find safflower oil, corn oil will suffice, as it has a smoke point of 450°F (232°C), or extra light olive oil, which has a smoke point of 468°F (242°C). If canola oil is your thing, it has a smoke point of 400°F (204°C). And, as mentioned above, clarified butter can be heated to a hotter temperature, almost that of safflower oil.
Some oils are for cooking, others are for flavoring. True, some can do dual duty, but keep the extra virgin olive oil out of skillet. Its flavor is too wonderful to be destroyed with high heat.
Sunday 2012.8.26
Ponzi Scheme
I might have lost another friend this week, at least for a while.
About a year ago this friend tried to get me involved with ZeekRewards, a scheme in which we could make thousands of dollars by working less than five minutes per day. You supposedly performed some minuscule task and earned points that could be cashed in for money after a grace period. A mutual friend of ours had signed him up and both men were enthusiastic about the results. They were earning money without having to work for it. My friend has always been fixated on money. He talks about money more than all my other friends combined and he is an easy target for those who appeal to his tendency toward greed.
Although participation was free, those who invested money in the scheme earned more points and greater rewards. The maximum investment was $10,000USD, which my friend invested. More points could also be earned by signing up new investors. I looked for reviews on the Internet because this sort of setup looked like a pyramid scheme. Most reviews extolled the virtues of the company, often using the same exact words, as if people were copying and pasting identical flattering text into their web site page, and each review concluded with something like: "So if you want me to sign you up, here is how to contact me…" The reviews were nothing more than advertisements some investors created to sign up more investors.
My friend explained the details over lunch. You did something on an Internet screen that posted an advertisement for a client in a target media area. It took only a few minutes. You earn points for each ad you place and after a grace period you can start cashing in your points, but you were encouraged to re-invest your points for a greater return later. I went to his office at his place of work and looked at the Internet site. The screen action looked like a simple cue-anticipation feedback loop, one of the oldest psychological tricks to encourage continued behavior. The cue was the screen action, leading to the anticipation of a reward—money, lots of money.
It seemed too good to be true; so I declined. I told my friend it was an illegal Ponzi scheme. "No, it's not like that," was his objection. However, when he cashed in points, he had the checks sent to his daughter's address so that he could hide his activity from his wife, a righteous religious woman. I know his wife. She would never allow him to participate in an illegal scheme. And he certainly wouldn't hide something from his wife unless he knew he was doing something illegal. The last time I had lunch with him, several weeks ago, I asked him how much money he had earned so far. He answered: "$30,000." The friend who signed him up probably earned a lot more.
What really angers me about this whole scheme is that these two friends are Jehovah's Witnesses and elders in the congregation. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society stresses obedience to the laws of the land. Every spring, prior to tax season, these elders give talks about the importance of honesty in business matters and paying taxes. They quote the Bible. "We must be obedient to governments and authorities as rulers, Titus 3:1." However, when there is money to be made, no matter how illegal, they close their Bible and open their checkbook. Honestly, I am sickened by the hypocrisy of these men.
Late last week the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission shut down ZeekRewards, seizing their offices in North Carolina and freezing their assets worldwide, claiming it was a $600 million Ponzi scheme. The amount of money in question was less than the Bernie Madoff scheme, in which only a few thousand investors were plundered. It is estimated that millions of people were defrauded in the ZeekRewards scheme. Some news articles are calling it the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The founder agreed to pay a $4 million penalty without admitting guilt or wrongdoing. It seems to me that agreeing to pay a huge penalty without a court trial is as close to an admission of guilt and wrongdoing as yelling "I DID IT! I AM GUILTY!" from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The most succinct news article title, from Fox news, simply asked: How Can 1 Million People Be So Dumb? I can answer that. Greed.
My friend hasn't invited me to lunch since the scheme began to unravel. Nor has he responded to any of my invitations to meet for lunch. I must admit, I am feeling smug. I feel entitled to gloat a little. I know what it feels like to be wrong. It feels so much better to be right. If I could just memorize that Scripture about the love of money at 1 Timothy 6:10....
Wednesday 2012.8.22
100,000
That's the number of views my YouTube channel reached during the weekend. I don't know whether or not that makes me a contender, or for what, but it's a milestone nonetheless. I'm pleased.
Costco Connection magazine ran a sidebar titled "Calling all crafty members!" in the latest two issues, inviting hobbyists and crafts people to tell their story. I'm assuming the lucky selected individual(s) will get a decent little write-up in the magazine. This web site and my YouTube channel are my hobby; so I sent them a long email with lots of information. What are the odds I might get some recognition? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 100,000? As I told a friend, if I don't make an effort the odds are absolutely zero.
The growth rate for this web site remains slow and steady, which I think I really prefer over phenomenal overnight success. I don't earn any money from this site. It is purely a hobby/vanity web site. Therefore, I am not in any position to pay anyone to do whatever might be necessary to make this site commercially profitable. I'm not sure I even want advertisements on the site. There is plenty of room. Look at the header at the top. Lots of white space. I like that white space. When I designed this site I wanted it clean, white, and simple.
I've seen sites that are so clogged with ads, features, video clips, and menus on the home page, it is difficult to know where to navigate. Look at the BBC News page. Between all the junk there is supposed to be news, but I can't find it easily. At least the Google News page is clean and easy to follow.
Google was one of the models I was advised to look at when I designed this site—clean and white. I suppose there is some method to the madness of cramming the home page with as much content and advertisements as possible. But why do people visit a web page? Are they looking for content overload? Are they wanting to be inundated with video advertisements? Animated GIFs? I certainly don't. I want specific information and I want to get to it easily. I know where the milk is at the grocery store. When I need milk, I go to the dairy case. I don't wander up and down all the aisles, searching for milk until I find it.
Advertisements are a necessary evil in commercial web sites. I understand and accept that. But when they become an obstacle blocking my way to the content, I switch to another site. I've try getting my news from the BBC web site. Invariably I give up and go to Google. I suppose this site might eventually grow to a point at which advertisements are necessary to pay the bills. I hope that time comes later than sooner. If it ever happens, I'll probably try to sell the site for a gazillion dollars and let the new owners pollute it with ads.
One more thing: I am back to lamb again. As unpopular as it is among some fans (the lamb recipe PDFs are among the least downloaded), I still love the meat. Yesterday I bought a leg of lamb to make a honey-glazed roast with herbes de Provence. I'll make it in front of the video camera today. The leftovers will be sliced up and portioned for my Minute Meals.
Sunday 2012.8.19
Still Too Warm to Cook
When I was growing up in New England my father hated any temperature that was either above or below 72°F. That might be a slight exaggeration, but winters and summers were all about controlled environment. It started with a window air conditioner in the living room. He added a second AC unit in his bedroom a few years later. Our bedrooms were not air conditioned, but we could leave our door open and benefit from the living room unit running all night. It was sufficient.
His other enemy in summer was humidity. I admit, there were times when it was oppressive. Some men kept an extra shirt in the car so that they could change shirts during the middle of the day. I never carried one, but sometimes it seemed like a good idea.
In winter my dad would check the thermostat often. If it showed 72°F and he was feeling cold, there was something wrong with the thermostat and he'd crank it up a little. My mother, who hated to pay for water, heating oil, and electricity unless it was absolutely necessary, would turn things down when he wasn't looking.
I moved to California to attend college, but mostly to get out of New England. Heat and humidity don't bother me as much as the winter cold. I hated winter. Snow on the ground, on the roads, on the sidewalks and the driveway. Guess who had to shovel our driveway and sidewalks to get his 50¢ allowance each week. I also had to put the milk bottles on the porch (we had home delivery back then), keep the back stairs swept, and trim the hedge in summer.
If there is one thing I don't care to do when the temperature is above 80° and the humidity above 50%, it's cooking. Your intrepid cook here has, nonetheless, forged ahead. This past week I heated a stove top grill/griddle to 500°F and seared some lamb chops for a video. They were excellent. I also made some weird Italian pastries, calzoni (small calzones), that needed to be fried in a large pot of hot oil. The next item on my schedule (I've been working down a list of 25 projects I planned a few months ago) was cream puffs with almond praline filling. This required the oven. I started those yesterday and finished them this morning.
Of course, in a few weeks the weather will change. Those who have been reading these blog entries all along know that the cooler months make me think of soups—Pasta Fagioli—and Real Texas Chili. I've heard a few predictions that this winter might be wetter than usual. One thing I really love about retirement is staying home and sitting at the window sipping coffee, the curtains wide open, feeling dry and warm, and watching the rain pour down outside. This past winter's rain was only about two thirds normal. I'm hoping for plenty of rain this winter.
In less than two weeks I will have completed that list of 25 projects for this web site. Then I'll plan my next six months. Keep coming back because the ideas keep coming to me.
Wednesday 2012.8.15
This And That
Here are a few minor things to write about, none of which are sufficient for an entire blog.
The Weather
It has been too hot outside to do much cooking. On the warmest days I eat cold sandwiches. If it is already 75°F (26°C) outside when I finally roll out of bed at 9:00 in the morning (retirement, what can I say?) I know the day is going to be a scorcher. Yes, I know other places are broiling in temperatures above 90° and crops are perishing in the fields in the American Midwest because of the drought. I live in an area of Southern California that I often jokingly refer to as the bubble. I am close enough to the ocean to sometimes hear the waves breaking on the beach. So, yes, I'm a little spoiled if I think the day is too hot to cook when the temperature is in excess of 80°F. Nonetheless, I haven't stopped cooking entirely. I made a few recipes to feature on this web site.
Self-indulgence
That's one of my favorite terms. It describes movie directors who made some of the worst films I ever watched. It also describes me when it comes to some foods. I know lamb is not popular with many fans of my web site. I can put a picture of roast duck on the Facebook fan page and within 24 hours it has ten Likes. A picture of lamb chops might get two or three. I really like lamb. I buy it more than beef because lamb has so much more flavor than beef. True, they're cute when they are white and fluffy like bunnies, and so much better looking than a big ugly dumb cow, but they do taste better. Lamb meat is a little more challenging to work with too, which I also enjoy. Beef is like chicken. It's hard to go wrong. Because lamb is a little bit gamey, you need to give some thought to the flavors you will pair with it. Robust herbal flavors like pesto or herb salsa verde work beautifully, as does plenty of olive oil and garlic.
Site/Sight Improvement
That's kind of a play on words. I'm thinking of making an improvement to this site by adding Photo buttons to the Recipe Archive page. Clicking the button would open a new window on your browser, showing you a picture of the food when it is ready to eat. I need to create separate HTML pages because I don't know Java and therefore I don't know how to program those little closeups you often see on shopping sites. You know what I'm talking about. You click a link and a little window appears, showing you an enlarged view of the product. If any of you know of a book or two that explain how to program those things for a web site, use the Contact button on the left panel to tell me about it. I'll happily buy the book.
Hot Oil and Spoil
I recently bought a cast iron grill/griddle to use on my stove top. It was already seasoned, which saved me the trouble. I know I need to use an oil with a high smoke point if I want to sear those bar marks into the meat. It appalling how many people think it's a good idea to pour extra virgin olive oil into a hot cast iron skillet and then sear their food. Noooo! Extra virgin olive oil has a smoke point of only 375°F (181°C), which means it will smoke and burn when you heat it above that temperature, ruining the flavor of the oil and possibly the flavor of the food. I use safflower oil because it has a smoke point of 510°F (266°C). I can sear foods safely without destroying the oil. You sear the food in a high-temperature oil and then drizzle plenty of extra virgin olive over it after you plate it. You'll have that delicious flavor of fresh olive oil with none of the bitterness of burnt oil. I'm feeling so stirred up by it, I plan to do a video and recipe for searing vegetables.
That gets a few of my little issues out of the way. I feel much better.
Sunday 2012.8.12
My Second Anniversary
This week marks the second anniversary of my White Trash Cooking web site. As I usually try to do, I observe milestones with a biscotti recipe. This one is a delicious variety of biscotti, if you don't mind the price of hazelnuts.
My web site's design has changed very little during the past year. I added "Get the PDF" buttons to the Recipe Archive because the page didn't make clear how to download the recipe PDFs. A few months ago I asked a web site designer to review my web site and he wrote to say, "It is very clean." That was my goal in the original design. When the Recipe Archive page became populated with many recipes, I organized them under subheadings to make it easier to search.
The big changes, of course, are in the numbers. I now have 106 recipes on my site, compared to slightly more than 50 a year ago, and 112 videos on YouTube. I don't follow the stats the way I used to. When I switched to another hosting service in January, their stats reporting program returned inaccurate numbers. For many weeks there were no stats at all, and then they resumed with an updated reporting program. If I can trust the new numbers, the visits have been slowly and steadily increasing since the update was installed. One of the least gourmet of my recipes, my Finger Lickin' Chicken, has been the most popular in recent months, followed by Mascarpone Cheese, French Bread, and Pain de Mie.
The biggest numbers have been on YouTube. My overall views are above 97,000 and nearly 600 people are subscribed to my channel. My French Bread video is the most popular, probably because it was mirrored by other sites.
One point of pride for me is that I never missed an update. Every Sunday I uploaded my latest recipe, page updates, and included a video to YouTube. On Wednesdays I added a mid-week blog entry. After two years and more than 200 blog entries, I never tire of writing about food.
What's to come?
Very little. One friend is encouraging me to learn Wordpress in order to add an interactive blogging environment. I like the idea, but it would mean creating my site on the hosting server, not on my home computer. I am not comfortable with this. Currently, all the content is created here in my home office and then uploaded to my hosting service.
Another idea for the future is a multipage recipe archive with further subdivisions, such that the main course recipes might be divided by beef, chicken, lamb, seafood, etc. The Recipe Archive page isn't too large yet, so that change can wait a little longer.
Other than some minor changes, mostly I will continue to contribute new recipes and videos to this site and to YouTube for as long as I am able. Everything is working well, so why make any big changes?
Wednesday 2012.8.8
The Bane of Being a Good Cook
Friends are like bed sheets. Change them at least once a week.
I try not to complain too much when I write these blog entries because, to me, a blog shouldn't be a wailing wall. Nonetheless, as this is about food, and food has certainly changed my life, it might not be too bad an idea to reflect a little.
I have lost more friends over food than for all other reasons combined, and this includes the many college friends who went away after we all graduated, never to be seen again. This year I shed yet another friend.
I'm not sure whether I attract sycophants or everyone out there is a sucker-upper. I do know that I am a better cook than almost everyone I know, or ever knew. It isn't that I am culinary school trained—I'm not—or that I am a gifted genius with special talents for cooking food. I think it is because I am simply not afraid of experimenting with food. I will go to the store and spend $45 on a goose or buy sea scallops at the fish market for $30 per pound. I will research the Internet or pore over my three dozen cookbooks (and 300+ cookbooks in EPUB ereader format on CD) and study recipes to find a new and fantastic way to prepare the food. I can assure you of this: I have never, in all my life, ever purchased a package of Hamburger Helper.
So cooking is as natural to me as sleeping and I do not hesitate to throw off the boxing gloves and attack food with bare fists. And therein lies the problem.
Most of the people I know barely cook. Each week my neighbors' garbage and recycling bins are overflowing with empty packages from pre-prepared foods. The pizza delivery truck is as ubiquitous to this neighborhood as are the children on bicycles. I understand. It is not easy to feed a family seven days a week. Wouldn't it be nice if you had the money and the free time, not to mention the energy, to spend hours in the kitchen each day, preparing fabulous gourmet meals.
Those of you who are familiar with my Minute Meals page know that most of my meals are heat-and-each convenience meals. They are easier than TV dinners because they are ready to eat in only five to seven minutes. I do not cook gourmet meals for myself every day. But the fact that I CAN cook gourmet meals is the problem.
I get invites to dinner. "We'd like to have you over to dinner some evening so you can cook your Pesto Lamb for us." Or, "When can you come to dinner and cook for me?" Or, "Dennis, we want Salami Pie and Eggplant Parmesan." Most of these people don't even offer to pay for the ingredients. That might sound unbelievable, but I can't tell you the number of times I have heard these "invites." I tell them, "You know, when you invite someone to dinner, it is you who provides the dinner, not your dinner guests." I never hear from them again. If I ever move to another state and make new friends, I will tell them all, "I can't boil water without burning it."
Among my past friends have been some devout Bible-thumping Christians. I needed to remind them: "When Jesus said, 'It is better to give than to receive,' he didn't mean it is better that people give to you rather than they should receive from you." You can watch their eyes glaze over as they attempt to process this thought.
Okay, so maybe changing your friends each week is a little drastic, but they come and go and I'm okay with that. I enjoy my friends, but when they become dependants I cannot claim on my taxes, it's time they go.
Sunday 2012.8.5
Unusual Weather We're Having
While some parts of the USA are suffering through the worst drought in decades, here in Southern California it is weather as usual. I often share weather stories with a buddy up in Bend, Oregon. He is currently baking in 90°+ temperatures while it is a pleasant 75° degrees here. During the summer months I often tell him there is no weather at all here in SoCal, which is usually the case. Last night was different, however.
During the evening it started to rain, very strange for this time of year. I checked the NOAA weather Internet site and they forecast a very slight chance of thunder showers. I was so hoping for a boomer. Nothing eventful happened. During the night it rained more. The patter on the aluminum awnings woke me up and again I waited, hoping for a few flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder in the distance. When nothing happened, I went back to sleep.
When I was I child I and my brother and sister cowered one night in our parents room as the most powerful thunderstorm in my memory passed overhead. Even as a child I had an analytical mind. I figured out that thunder follows lighting more quickly as the storm gets closer. I remember the flashes of lightning and clashes of thunder coming with such rapidity that night, I couldn't tell which boom went with which flash. That was in New England, where we often had memorable thunderstorms in summer. While playing outdoors as kids, we'd watch the large thunderheads in the distance. If they headed in our direction we'd hurry home to stay out of the weather.
Today I checked the county rainfall report to see if any measurable rain fell during the night. Most areas reported 1/100 of an inch, with a few areas reporting 2/100. Measureable, but barely. Our county reservoir is currently reporting 78.5% capacity, which is safe. We didn't fill our reservoir this past winter. Rainfall was only about 66% normal for the season. Hopefully this winter will be better.
A few years ago a visitor at work was amused that I predict the winter rainfall by the ants. When the ants attempt to move indoors during the late fall, I like to think the winter rains will be abundant. This past fall I saw very few ants in my kitchen. Maybe it's just an old myth, but the ants have been a fairly reliable predictor in the past. That year when the visitor laughed we had record rainfalls. I hope he noticed. I'm ready this year. I have brand new ant traps.
Now that I am retired, the weather I enjoy the most in winter is the occasional downpour of heavy rain in a good wet storm. I open all the curtains, sit on the sofa with a fresh cup of hot coffee, and watch the rain pour down, snug and warm in my own home. Hopefully I'll enjoy this delight several times during the coming winter.
Wednesday 2012.8.1
Your Faithful Little Cook Goes Networking
I have this friend who likes WordPress, a platform on which to build a blogging web site and which can be used as a content management system to build an entire web site, like the one you're looking at right now. For two years he has been trying to persuade me to learn WordPress. I'm working on it.
I am reading one of those "For Dummies" books about WordPress. I like the software, but I'm not crazy about building my site "server side," which means I build everything on my hosting service's server and then publish my content. If I want to save a copy, I need to download it to my home computer. I work the opposite way. Everything you see here was built first on one of my home computers and then uploaded to the hosting service when I was ready to publish. Backups are as easy as plugging in a hard disk caddy and copying files—drag and drop.
In one chapter of the book there is a list of web sites where WordPress programmers can share their knowledge. One source is a meeting web site where you can look to see if there are any WordPress support groups holding regular meetings in your area. On Sunday I visited the web site, entered "WordPress", and narrowed the search down to a 10-mile radius. The query reported a meeting being held the following evening and gave a way to sign up.
As an aside, driving down into the city allowed me to shop at the fish market next to the harbor because the WordPress meeting was almost across the street. I bought a pound of "divers' scallops" for a recipe I'm working on for this web site. They were expensive, $30 per pound, but I do it all for you guys.
With the scallops carefully packed in ice in a small cooler in my car, I went to the meeting. It was actually an SEO meeting—Search Engine Optimization. These are professionals—some are web site consultants, entrepreneurs young and old, CEOs of their own small business, webmasters, etc.—who are looking for ways to enhance their web site presence to rank higher on search engines such as Google. They are trying to earn a living, either by building better web sites or using a web site to build their business.
The meeting started with introductions. Each of us had to give our name, talk a little about our web site and our efforts to optimize our site's search profile, and maybe even give an example or two of successful ways we've found for improving our site's ranking. When it was my turn to introduce myself I stood up and said, "My name is Dennis. I cook, and my web site is for sharing my recipes." I felt as out of place as Sarah Palin at a Mensa convention. Needless to say, I couldn't wait to get out of there.
As for WordPress, I found on the Internet a way to install it on my home computer, giving me the freedom to experiment locally rather than server-side. Maybe there will be some major upgrades to this web site in the future. Maybe not.
As for those scallops, I made an excellent meal of Scallops with Chorizo Ragu. Fantastic! The recipe and video will be on this web site and on YouTube in coming weeks. The $30 was not wasted.