FEBRUARY 2015
Wednesday 2015.2.25
Comfort Food
Sometimes you need a little (or a lot) of comfort food. I'm feeling no distress, no depression. I'm not worried about anything. I'm doing quite well. I'm a happy man. But lately, after eating mostly Minute Meals, I felt like I really need a big bowl of comfort food.
The Minute Meals have been getting a little fan attention lately. I'm used to hearing nothing at all about them. Someone in Montana wrote to say the meals solved his problem of wasting food. You know the problem. You make a nice meal. There are leftovers. They sit in the refrigerator until they either start to smell funny or look fuzzy. Food is even more challenging when cooking for one. Single-serving portions of food are seldom sold in stores, especially the big box stores or warehouse stores like Costco. I buy frozen vegetables in five-pound bags.
At Saturday's world news discussion meeting one of the women in attendance said she had been checking out my Minute Meals page as well. We enjoyed a good laugh because she knows I cook a lot of gourmet food for videos and recipes for this web site, but mostly I eat Minute Meals. I kept and froze some of the Pasta Puttanesca sauce I made on Sunday, but I also gave some away.
Yesterday, however, I felt like I needed comfort food. My all-time favorite comfort food is my Mom's American Chop Suey. It needs a little explanation.
It is not chop suey at all, which is kind of a semi-Chinese vegetable stir fry, more of a Chinese American fusion food—a combination of Eastern cooking technique and Western ingredients. American Chop Suey is known by different names throughout the United States. I've heard of several names and the one I liked best was S'ghetti and Beef. The name I use comes from where I grew up in New England.
The dish probably comes out of Italy, but the origin is not clear. Italy seems logical because of the ingredients: Macaroni with tomato sauce and ground beef. Some people add chopped bell peppers. My mom didn't use peppers, but she did chop an onion and cook it long enough to caramelize. The sauce reminds me of an Italian ragu, which is a chunky sauce as opposed to a smooth sauce like marinara. We garnished it with Parmesan cheese. I prefer Romano now.
And so, that was my comfort food for dinner, American Chop Suey. See the recipe for a photograh.
A Bit About the Weather
This weekend it is supposed to rain again. It rained this past weekend and thus I was able to shoot a video (the Pasta Puttanesca) because the neighbor's barking dog was inside the home most of the day. I'm thinking about what I might want to shoot this coming weekend. An Italian fan of the web site sent me a cake recipe, Torta di Ricotta e Mandorle. It is Ricotta and Almond Cake. I'm very intrigued by it. The ingredients are all in grams and I will therefore need to do the conversions to ounces. I can see some ways of garnishing this cake a little to make it give it more eye appeal. And there is so much acid in the batter (lemon juice and buttermilk), I can't justify using baking powder. Baking soda should work fine.
In case you need to know the difference: Baking soda and baking powder both contain bicarbonate of soda. It's the chemical that helps produce the bubbles that give cakes and some breads their leavening. The soda needs an acid with which to react to produce bubbles. Baking powder includes an acid salt, such as cream of tartar (the potassium acid salt of tartaric acid) or sodium acid pyrophosphate. When a batter will have no acid, baking powder supplies the needed acid for leavening. When there will be acid in the batter, such as from lemon or pineapple juice, soda can be used. The two are not equally substituted; so some experimentation (and a few failures) might be necessary.
If all goes according to plan, I'll bake this cake in a video this coming weekend.
Sunday 2015.2.22
No Regrets
Like many people this week, I've been watching the weather, but not the weather here in Southern California. I used to live in Connecticut, which is in southern New England. For a while I lived so close to the Rhode Island border I could walk the distance in minutes. That was important for a while because the drinking age in Connecticut was 21, but it was 18 in Rhode Island. I'll let you figure out the remainder of that story.
I wasn't interested in the availability of alcohol this week; I watched the temperatures. I moved to Southern California in 1975 to get away from family and New England weather. No one talked about global warming back then. I used to scrape ice off the windshield of my car. We saw the rust develop along the bottom sides of our cars from the salt put on the roads in winter. I drove during freezing rain and the only way to get home was to keep the car idling in first gear and drive with one rear wheel in the gutter where sand and dirt accumulated, offering some traction. It took an hour to drive the six miles home. Not all of it was bad, though. During the worst ice events we would put on our ice skates and skate on parking lots.
This week the temperatures here were more normal for the season, upper 60s and low 70s. Last week a few daytime temperatures climbed into the upper 80s. As I watch the Weather Channel and see the reports of ice and snow on the East Coast, I shake my head and thank myself for being proactive enough to move to the West Coast. I love it here. I feel no regrets.
We got a little rain today, which was good because I was hoping to do another cooking video. (Rain means the neighbor's barking dog will be inside the house, not out in the yard all day.) I've been thinking a lot about Pasta Puttanesca. Puttanesca comes from the Italian word for prostitute. There are different stories attached to the name. One claims the exotic aroma of the pasta sauce would attract men to the establishments of these ladies of pleasure. Another story says the ladies needed quick and nourishing meals for sustenance between customers.
Puttanesca sauce is a rich and boldly flavored sauce. My family on my mother's side were all Italian; so we ate spaghetti and meatballs often. My mother made her pasta sauce from scratch. Most marinara sauces are mild compared to puttanesca sauce, which is made with olives, capers, and anchovies. Many pasta sauces are cooked a long time; puttanesca is cooked for minutes. I have one cookbook recipe in which the sauce is not cooked at all.
As planned, I made the sauce, writing my own recipe after researching several from cookbooks and on line. The sauce was incredibly delicious. I used penne pasta.
I often give away the food I make, but this time I portioned the sauce and sealed it into little plastic packets to store in the freezer. I can thaw it later when I entertain guests for dinner.
Wednesday 2015.2.18
Expanding My Minute Meals
If you've been following this blog for any length of time, no doubt you've seen me go on, ad nauseam, about my Minute Meals. I've been eating them for longer than I've had this web site. I gave them that name because, although they involve a lot of work up front, they make meals quick and easy. Go to the freezer, select a protein like chicken or lamb, a couple vegetables, and heat them in the microwave. The foods are all pre-portioned and heat sealed in little plastic pouches. In four minutes dinner is ready, with no pots and pans to wash. Even a sandwich can take longer than four minutes to prepare.
There is one exception: Fish. Unlike foods like chicken, lamb, chili, etc., I don't cook the fish in advance. I buy it frozen raw, in single portion pouches, at the local warehouse store (Costco), thaw a piece, and sauté it for dinner. For a while they had bags of hake. I like hake. It's closely related to North Atlantic cod fish. I grew up in New England and North Atlantic cod is one of the best food fishes on the planet. The only other New England fish I can think of that I enjoyed as much was flounder, which we caught ourselves, filleted at the dock, and then brought home to cook for dinner. You can't get much fresher than that and it is delicious fish.
The warehouse store hasn't stocked hake in a while (maybe it's seasonal). I've tried the other frozen fish fillets, such as tilapia, and I'm not crazy about them. I prefer the hake. That leaves fresh fish.
The only fresh fish I like from Costco is steelhead trout. All the more amazing, it's farmed. I hate farmed fish. I've tried farmed salmon, cat fish, rainbow trout—it all suffers from the same problem. No flavor. The farmed steelhead trout, however, has a mild delicate flavor that reminds me of the fish I grew up with in New England. However, there is the size.
A single fillet could easily feed 4 to 6 people, and those would be generous portions. What if I were to cut a raw fillet into portions and freeze them in individual pouches, like the frozen fish I've bought?
Someone suggested I put a little water in the bags with each piece of fish. I tried that, although I might not have added enough. I see air pockets inside the bags. Is that future freezer burn just waiting to happen? I'll know as I cook pieces for my dinners. On the other hand, if it works well, I might have found an alternative to hake.
The price is decent too. The whole fillet cost $21.81. I portioned it into nine pieces at a price of less than $2.45 per serving. Not bad at all. Considering that I actually prefer portions of about 3 ounces, I could have cut 12 servings from this fillet if I had been less liberal.
Bread Again
Too curious to wait until I needed to bake bread again, I tried the new formula earlier this week. Everything proceeded normally. The formula was correct, giving me the moist and slightly sticky dough I like to see. The rising and the baking times were the same. The result was bread with the height I wanted without collapsing, and the crumb was a little more dense. That makes the bread a little more filling, more satisfying. Happy, happy, happy. I use bread only for toast and these slices should fit perfectly in my toaster.
Meanwhile, the weather is cooling down again. I'm thinking Pasta Puttanesca for my next cooking project. When I attend the next meeting of the world news discussion group I'll stop at the bougie food store where they have excellent olives. They should help make a delicious puttanesca.
Sunday 2015.2.15
"Unusual Weather We're Having, Ain't It?"
On Wednesday I mentioned the warm days we were expecting. Thursday the temperature outside my home reached 88°F with 13% humidity. Friday wasn't much cooler. While New England was digging itself out from yet more snow, we were walking around in short sleeve shirts. The weather will be more seasonal this week—days in the mid to upper 60s. Nonetheless, for February that's a bargain. The weather here is the reason I moved from New England to Southern California 40 years go.
More Computer Woes
The latest issue has been the mouse. I have a Microsoft track ball that I love. Both computers have the same pointing device. The one on this computer started failing last week. The problem was intermittent—it works okay some days; it refuses to respond on others. I have a wireless mouse, which I installed. It worked initially, until the computer said it needed to reboot to finish installing the drivers. Then, no response. I went back to the trackball, plugging it into a USB port rather than using the green adapter thing that plugs into the mouse port. So far so good.
More and more it looks like I'll be building new computers later this year. I'm just trying to limp them along until I see what Windows 10 looks like when it is finally released.
LED Lighting
I am liking the move to LED lights in my home. Last week the fluorescent fixture in my kitchen failed. It couldn't have happened at a better time. Costco is selling an "LED Utility Shop Light" at $8.00 off the warehouse price of $39.99. It is exactly the size needed to replace my old fixture and the box says it will last 45 years. I'll be 108 when this thing fails.
The down side is that it plugs into a standard outlet. My kitchen light is hard-wired into a ceiling junction box. Not a big deal except cutting the plug off the cord voids any money-back guarantee. And the mounting holes don't line up with the standard studs in the walls and ceilings of homes—mine are 16" apart.
Removing the old fixture revealed the problem that caused the original failure (and soiled my hands with a little tar). The ballast died. So, taking my time (it was hot), I used a piece of lumber to act as intermediary between the ceiling and the light fixture. Like cooking, most of the effort is in the prep work. That took a few hours because I worked slowly—measuring, cutting, drilling, double-checking everything. With all that done, the final installation was completed in minutes. Attach the wires and fit the fixture into place—job finished.
I won't be inviting any building inspector into my home to examine my work. It wouldn't pass code, but I know it's safe. There is no exposed wiring and the installation matches that of the original fixture. All the wiring is inside a metal enclosure and the "lumber" I used is fire resistant fiber cement board. It's safer than the original installation. The problem is that codes change. What might have been perfectly legal 40 years ago is now no longer up to code. So, I'm calling this a "repair" rather than a "new installation." It makes a difference.
Bread
I rewrote my bread formula this week. I like a tall loaf; however, if I let the dough rise too long in the bread pans (until more than doubled in bulk) the dough collapses under its own weight. My bread pans are the problem. They're 5 inches (13cm) wide across the bottom. Most bread pans are 4 inches (10cm). You can see the collapse along the top of this week's Honey Whole Wheat Bread loaves. (See the photo in the recipe page.)
I've had these pans since my college days and I therefore don't remember how they were originally sold. They might have been labeled merely "loaf pans" without designating whether bread pans or meatloaf pans, the latter tending to be a little wider. The extra width creates another problem—the "muffin top" that spreads beyond the sides of the pan makes the bread slices too wide to fit in my toaster. I solve that problem by trimming the slices before putting them in the toaster.
And so this week, when I divided a new 25-pound sack of flour into bread portions for baking, which I store in ziplock bags, I increased the amount in each bag by 25%. I also calculated new amounts for the other ingredients as well. Then I wrote and printed the new recipe and laminated it for my kitchen binders. Those are the recipes I use again and again. Laminating them makes them easy to clean if they get soiled with ingredients.
I won't need to bake bread again for a week or two. I'll see what kind of loaves the new formula yields.
But in the process, I learned something new this week. I could never match the texture of my Italian grandmother's pepperoni bread. This week, with the weather so warm, I let my bread dough rise in the refrigerator overnight. When I baked the bread the following day, the texture and appearance very much reminded me of my grandmother's bread. Now I want to experiment with pepperoni bread again.
And, finally, re the Shakespeare: I read Twelfth Night yesterday. Two Gentlemen of Verona is next.
Wednesday 2015.2.11
Miniaturization
My new MP3 audio player arrived in the mail yesterday. "Little" is an understatement. It's tiny.
The device has 4 GBs of memory and will supposedly hold up to 1,000 songs. I'm not much of a music sort of guy, but I do enjoy audiobooks. I like to follow along with the book (or, in my case, the ebook) as I listen to the recording. As I said in an earlier blog, I gave myself the goal of reading all of Shakespeare's plays. Reading while listening to the Arkangel audio dramatization is very enjoyable. Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Hamlet so far. Troilus and Cressida currently underway.
The little player also has an FM radio. With good ear buds and generous MP3 encoding—say a bit rate of 320 kbps—the sound quality is very good. No buyer's remorse here. (I like lossless and it plays FLAC too.)
The User's Manual does not come in the box; it has to be downloaded from SanDisk. It's very useful. There are a lot of features crammed into this tiny box and I had to research the settings explained in the manual before I was able to get Windows XP to recognize the device and load audiobook files to it.
So much crammed into such a tiny little box. It amazes me.
In Other News…
The weather here has been great for doing laundry (and hanging out clothes to dry naturally), but not a good time for baking. The temperature climbed to almost 80°F (27°C) yesterday, with humidity down to nearly 20%. It's supposed to be warmer and drier today. Temperatures will be up into the low to mid 80s. And I need to bake bread. I'll start early tomorrow morning before the day gets too warm to have the oven on. I might even make the dough this evening and let it rise slowly in the refrigerator overnight.
I grew up in New England. It was my chore in winter to shovel the snow off the sidewalks and driveway of my parents' home. I've seen what has been falling down, and piling up, in New England lately. Thankfully I don't need to contend with snow anymore. One of my dreams when I was young was to live in Southern California. I used college as my ticket. And here I am.
And speaking of food (bread), people are beginning discover my photographs. They are pinning them on Pinterest. I received a notice yesterday that reported more than 60 of my food photos pinned. Keep it up folks. I love it. I'm rather proud of my food photography and if others see them and enjoy them enough to pin them, that makes me feel all the better.
I'm also looking at recipes for roast chicken to video. The local Costco will not have rotisserie chickens available for six weeks while they remodel their kitchen. Those chickens are a major source or protein for my Minute Meals.
Next week the weather is supposed to be more seasonable, with days in the mid 60s rather than the high 70s and low 80s. There is no rain in sight. We need it. The National Weather Service reported a better than 50/50 chance that we'd have above-normal rains during the next three months. I hope so. We had some rains, but we're below average for the season, 75%.
Sunday 2015.2.8
An Amusing Yesterday
I've mentioned the bi-monthly discussion group I attend where we talk about world events in the news and share our knowledge on the various subjects. The Ukraine conflict ranked high in yesterday's discussion, as did Nigeria, Jordan, and the political atmosphere as we progress toward the 2016 campaigns.
Then came the amusement. At the end of the two hours the group started to break up as some headed home and others lingered for a little additional association. Personal beliefs in the spirit realm, contacting the spirits of passed loved ones, and mediums came up. I pushed my chair back and laughingly said, "I'm staying out of this." As pleasant as the conversation was (or might I describe it as a forced veneer of polite cordiality), the missiles nonetheless began to fly and I did not want to be a victim of collateral damage.
It reminded me of something I saw in one of my all-time favorite Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown TV episodes. It is the one in which he travels to Lyon, France to meet one of the city's most celebrated chefs and, indeed, one of the premiere chefs of the world, Paul Bocuse. I've seen the episode several times. I watch it again and agin to remind myself that there really is a world of cuisine out there that is beyond my imagination, where miracles are not only possible, they happen every day. It's also a humbling experience. As proud as I might sometimes feel when I make a plate of homemade ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta, draped with béchamel sauce, my greatest accomplishments are mere mud pies when compared to the creations of the world's master chefs. The show is episode three in season three, should you want to look for it. I highly recommend it.
The scene that came to mind was when Bourdain is invited to a meeting of an all-male eating and drinking society known as Franc Machon. They gather together to enjoy the finest of good French food and wine, and lots of it, especially the wine. One participant says of their discussions: "No women, no religion, and no politics—and it works." The women have their own machon as well. Take away all fuel for argument and the discussion stays pleasant, and has for more than a century.
I have my own beliefs as well. They are personal, as are most people's beliefs. I don't believe in dragging them out into the open and debating them, especially not heatedly. I dislike confrontation. I think belief defines who we are, individually as well as a specie. Where would we be without myth? Even though we don't worship the same gods as people did millennia ago, they still permeate our lives. As only one example, last month, January, is named after the god Janus, "the god of beginnings and transitions," according to Wikipedia. It comes to us out of Roman mythology. I might not share someone's beliefs, but good belief systems are part of a healthy psyche. Carl Jung taught that.
Politics is something the group does talk about. It has not, so far, led to any fierce debates, and I doubt it ever will. We're all of the same mind, although not all of the same political party—some are Democrats and some are Republicans. No one is so entrenched in their affiliation that it matters to them enough to exchange blows, verbal or otherwise. But spiritual beliefs, that's another matter.
As one person insisted that nothing that cannot be proven mathematically within the sciences of chemistry, physics, etc. exists, another person demanded the reality of a spiritual realm that could be contacted by mediums. That's when I pushed my chair back. I listened for a few minutes, more curious to see if there might be an outcome, than any interest in the subject or an opinion on the matter. When it proved to be nothing more than an exercise in futility, I finally stood up, put on my coat, and said my good-byes.
I do have one curiosity. Who will show up in two weeks? And dare I ask, "Who won?" when I arrive? If I were to describe the situation: These are people who have become familiar enough to drop the façade of polite etiquette, but not friends long enough to recover quickly when feelings might be hurt.
For my part, I enjoy staying with the purpose of our gatherings: Discuss world events reported in the news. I admit to being a bit of a news junkie. I watch several different news programs on TV and I read books. But I still don't know enough; so I listen to what others have seen, read, or heard. It makes for a fascinating and satisfying two hours.
Wednesday 2015.2.4
Thinking About Computers Again
By way of a little background, I have two desktop computers here in my home office. I don't name them, as some people might, but simple call them Computer-1 and Computer-2. I am sitting at Computer-2 at this moment, writing this blog. This is my production rig. I write all my recipes, edit all my cooking videos, post-process all my photographs, and maintain my web site on this computer. It is off line. That means it is not connected to the Internet. If you've ever been hit by a computer virus attack, you know how annoying they can be. I've been hit by several.
I faithfully keep backups, off computer. I have several hard disk drives (HDDs) on a bookshelf here in the office. When I do a backup, I plug in an HDD, copy files to it, disconnect it, and put it back on the shelf. No viruses can get to those backups. As if that weren't protection enough, I also archive all my cooking videos to blank DVDs and store those on the shelf as well. Before shelving them the disks are tested on the other computer to make certain there are no failures. And (a little OCD here) I have a 4TB HDD on which I also back up my videos. It, too, is on the shelf.
This computer, Computer-2, doesn't even have antivirus software on it. What would be the point? The computer is almost never connected to the Internet. The only time I connect it—for a minute or two—is when I upload the latest updates to my web site, after which I immediately disconnect it again. Isolated from the source of almost all viruses, it is safe from infection. Those might seem like famous last words, but this computer has sat on this desk for more than six years and never seen a virus.
Computer-1 is my play computer. Not play, as in games, but play as in Internet and other stuff. It is always connected to the Internet. On that computer I manage all my email, work on ebooks, research recipes, and occasionally play a game a two. I like Ricochet Infinity.
Computer-2 lost another DVD burner. It died last week. I had a spare out in the shed. Computer-1 has a working DVD burner, but for some odd reason it can't burn DVDs. I don't know why. Computer-1 has developed a new problem. If I turn off the power-strip before going to bed, starting the computer in the morning is difficult. I press the button, the power comes on momentarily, and then dies. It might take three tries, sometimes seven, before the power stays on and the computer boots up. I know the problem is a capacitor somewhere, either in the motherboard or in the power supply unit (PSU), because I've seen this before. I can't, however, remember which component failed the last time I had this problem. I have a spare PSU, but I do not have a spare mobo.
These computer are old. I built them in early 2008. The shipping documents (yes, I still have them) say February. So they just turned seven years old this month. Happy birthday computers. Normally, I wouldn't keep a computer beyond five years. If each dog year equates to seven human years, each computer year is more than double that, maybe 15.
Two years ago I had plans to build new computers. I wanted to build dream machines, pull out all the stops and blow the roof off this mobile home by purchasing the absolute best parts money could buy. I just looked at the spreadsheet I created to list the components I wanted to buy and their cost. The total is $3,028, for each computer, and I always build in pairs. I like having two identical computers because if something appears to be failing, I can swap parts between computers to figure out which component to replace.
What stopped me? The operating system. The latest decent OS at the time was Windows 7. Everyone was complaining about Windows 8. Win7 is okay, but I don't like it. I can't use my scanner at all. Some software won't recognize my printer. It's frustrating. Both computers are dual-boot systems. Each has an HDD bay, into which I can insert a hard drive and then boot the computer. Each computer has two of those HDDs, one with Windows 7 and the other with Windows XP. I almost always use XP. My stuff works in XP, and it works well, better than Win7.
Microsoft has been releasing information about their newest OS, Windows 10. I'm waiting. When it finally goes public, I'll read the reviews. I know my legacy hardware won't work in Win10, but I'll still have my XP. Hopefully the new computers will load it.
If I think I'll like Win 10, I'll again start planning to build new computers—dream machines. I don't know what the cost will be. Computer prices tend to go down, but high-end components tend to get more expensive over time. Whatever the price, I'll go for it. At my age, these might be the last computers I ever build. If they last seven years like these two did, I'll be in my 70s by the time they need to be replaced.
Sunday 2015.2.1
Pinterest Again
This week I received a very helpful newsletter/guide from Pinterest, titled "How to make great Pins." I have been messing around, on and off, with Pinterest pins for several months. I couldn't find a style that I liked.
I even tried some of those really long vertical pins you sometimes see on Pinterest. No. Not what I want.
Pinterest warns that such long pins typically get cut off in some views.
As is often the case, less is more. I followed the guidelines in the Pinterest newsletter, keeping the number of images in a pin low (they recommend four at most and I found three to be best). They recommend "clear text overlays" and keeping the text to a minimum. Verbosity can be saved for the description that goes with the pin. I came up with a style and shape that really works well for me.
The pin tells just enough of the story to "give Pinners a clear takeaway with a quick glance" (quoting the newsletter). Although the Smoked Salmon Ravioli recipe hasn't been featured yet here, you'll find the recipe in the Recipe Archive. The video will be uploaded to YouTube in coming weeks.
And Speaking of YouTube…
I've been checking the earnings from the monetization of my videos. I won't be making a down payment on a house soon, but the income is beginning to, at least, pay for some of the food I buy to make videos.
With a new kitchen counter to use in my videos, better pins, and a little revenue happening, 2015 is so far turning out to be a good year for making cooking videos.