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DECEMBER 2020

Wednesday 2020.12.30

The Year in Review

And so another year comes to an end tomorrow. It has become a tradition of this blog to write a year-in-review summary and perhaps to look forward a little into the year to come.

The year was mostly dominated, of course, by the coronavirus. It changed nearly everything — not only for me but for most people around the world. I quickly became determined to do all I could to avoid the pandemic. At my age, nearly 70, the risk was too great.

I live in a college town. Even though the local university locked their classrooms and conducted all learning online, many of the students came back anyway. Some had signed leases for apartments. The college community is a coastal town overlooking the Pacific Ocean; so there is the attraction of the beach. And, being young college students, there is always the lure of parties. They also shop locally, many of them at Costco, which is within walking distance of my home.

On the positive side, mask wearing is strictly enforced in stores here. The people adapted to it readily. I rarely see anyone in a store without wearing a mask. Costco posts personnel at the door and they won't allow patrons inside unless they wear a mask. I don't like wearing one, but if it keeps me safer, I'll comply.

To keep myself even safer, I limit my shopping trips to once a month. My freezer is well stocked. I have other foods stored out in the shed. Some foods, liked canned goods and beans, I order online from Amazon.

Thankfully there are video conferencing sites on the internet. I used to have lunch with friends regularly. Now we meet online. In fact, I haven't been to a restaurant in so long, I still have the same two $20 bills in my wallet that have been there since March.

Another important development this year was the buildup to the election. I followed events closely. The primaries were disrupted by the pandemic, but two candidates eventually emerged. I wasn't sure who I wanted as the Democratic nominee. I only cared that it was someone who could beat Trump in the election.

I watched the election results on the evening of November 3rd, and I followed the results as they trickled in during the days that followed. I was confident Biden would win the election, but I really wanted to see those final states declared in his favor to get him the 270 electoral college votes necessary for a win.

At the end of every year I usually mention the loss of any friends. This year there isn't much to report. No one passed away, thankfully, and only one friend moved away, to Kentucky. We'll still meet in a teleconferencing web site, but I doubt I'll ever see him face-to-face again.

Maybe a few minor things worth mentioning:

More Simplification

There was one web site change I put into effect toward the end of this year. I disabed the Contact feature. The button remains only on the home page and it leads to a page that briefly explains how to send a comment through one of my YouTube videos. I might keep that page on the site for a month or two, maybe longer, and then delete it when I feel everyone got the message.

There are a couple reasons for this decision.

1. I rarely get friendly comments from this web site, maybe one every other month or so. Most of the messages are either spam from sales personnel who want to sell me something I don't need or want, or from trolls. I've been getting several everyday. So much for the Christmas spirit!

2. Anyone can message me through YouTube. All my videos accept comments. And all those videos have comments set to "Hold all comments for review." Trolls can write harassing comments, but no one sees them. I delete them, or if the comment is particularly insulting (some really are) I "hide" the person from my channel, which means only they will see their comments. No one else will, and that includes me. I can't do that sort of blocking on my web site.

It was surprisingly easy to remove all the Contact links. There were more than a thousand. I thought it might take several days, maybe a week or two, to make all the changes. Thanks to DreamWeaver's Find and Replace function, it barely took three hours. After I uploaded all the changes to the hosting service, not one unwanted email appeared in my inbox.

A new computer issue arose this week. Computer-2, the one on which I maintain this web site and produce my videos, wouldn't boot. I tried to trace down the problem, but everything seemed okay. Maybe it was only a loose cable? I have extra solid state drives (SSDs) on the shelf. They're still new in package, never used. So I used one to install Windows 10 again and get all the latest updates. That SSD was then returned to its box and put back on the shelf. I have a spare if needed. I like having spares.

Meanwhile, I need to install my programs on that SSD, which aren't many. I mostly use this computer for my web site and videos; however, there is one game I still play occasionally, and there are a few programs I use to archive backup files to DVDs or Blu-ray blanks for safe keeping. I try to maintain good backups.

Looking Ahead:

The most important anticipation for me personally is the availability of a caronavirus vaccine. They're already available for some — hospital workers, first responders, and older people living in congregate housing such as nursing homes or retirement homes. Earlier this month a vaccine was available to some people in England. I've been following the news to see how those first recipients are responding. What are the side effects? Are there any dangers? As long as any side effects are not permanent, I will happily endure a short period of discomfort in my arm if the vaccine is effective.

What about the future of this web site and my YouTube channel, Mobile Home Gourmet? I'm not getting any younger and I've said before I feel more and more like slowing down. In truth, I need more exercise to improve my stamina. My insurance pays for gym memberships, but gyms are closed because of the pandemic. There is a way however…

There are exercise videos on YouTube. I have an app on my computer that allows me to download a video in high definition (720p). I can start the video on my TV and use it to enjoy (maybe "enjoy" isn't exactly the best word) exercise routines in my own living room. And it's free. Those Mirror exercise units cost around $2,000 each and after an initial free period any continued exercise programs are $40 per month.

Future Simplification

I already have next year's simplification project planned. I want to remove all the old Blog Archive files. Does anyone look at them? As my web site increases in size it becomes more of a challenge to maintain. I'd like to reduce it down to only a repository of recipes in support of my YouTube channel.

I'm not sure what my future cooking projects might be. I'm losing interest in complicated gourmet recipes. Maybe it's the pandemic, but now I want simple easy meals that I can either cook in a single pan (or my Instant Pot) or pull from the freezer and heat. This week, however, I made a canvas cover for my Sun Oven. In spring, when my driveway gets more sun, I'd like to leave the oven out (rather than store it in the shed) and use it more often.

Sunday 2020.12.27

How Was Your Christmas?

Mine went very well, despite the pandemic. I stayed away from the news as much as possible to avoid negativity. I watched some college football. I did some home cooking. The day before Christmas I made some New England Clam Cakes. If you're not familiar with them, they're actually more of a fritter. They are deep fried in oil. I grew up with them in Connecticut and they were known throughout New England as clam cakes. Look at the recipe for a photograph of them.

There were no presents this year. I sometimes buy myself something special toward the end of the year. So far, there hasn't been anything special I want, except maybe a coronavirus vaccine.

And, in a way, I'm glad the holiday has passed. Although it is the best time of year for my YouTube channel — people searching the Internet for holiday recipes — it's the time of year when the trolls are most active. I wrote about them earlier this month when my web site was getting several troll messages every hour. (I stopped that by removing the Contact button from the left panel on all the HTML pages.) The trolls have been active on YouTube as well, but I expect them to settle down now that the holiday season is passing.

Harvest Time

I harvested the largest ripe Roma tomato and ate it on Christmas Day. It was delicious, the way only a true vine-ripened tomato can taste. It's not like the tomatoes sold in the grocery store, which are picked green and then gassed with ethylene to artificially ripen them. Left on the vine to ripen, tomatoes will develop their full flavor.

One of the smaller tomatoes turned red this week. I haven't harvested that one yet. And two new tomatoes are developing.

I also harvested one of the green onions I have been leaving to grow and grow in a pot outside my home. It didn't look anything like the green onions you see in the grocery store.

It weighed about 4 ounces (113g). That's one green onion, weighing ¼ pound! I cut the stalk about an inch above the soil and left the root bulb in place. Two days later it was growing again. From what I read on the internet, green onions will grow year after year. If planted in areas with a harsh winter, the onion tops will die in the snow, but they'll sprout again in the spring.

I've been looking into ways to dry the onion leaves. I read they can be dried in a dehydrator, or simply air dried. I sliced up all the green parts of the green onion I showed in a Kitchen Vlog (see below) and arranged them on a rack covered with parchment paper. The rack is on my kitchen table.

I also harvested all the tangerines from my dwarf tangerine tree. It's one of the citrus trees in planters in my yard. New flowers are appearing; so I thought it might be a good idea to remove the fruit (which had been there for months) to allow the tree to divert energy to the flowers and new fruit. It yielded 25 little tangerines, which are sweet and delicious, and which were also a little amusing because it was Christmas day, the 25th.

My Kitchen Vlog

On Christmas Day I recorded and published a Kitchen Vlog in which I talk about my container gardening.

Bakery Pizza?

I hadn't heard of it. Someone on YouTube asked me for a recipe. It is unheard of outside of Rhode Island, where it is supposedly as ubiquitous as New England Clam Cakes. Rather than made in pizzerias, it is made in bakeries that also bake bread, cakes, cookies, etc. And it appears to be baked in a sheet pan, not on a pizza stone nor in a pizza oven.

I looked on the internet and found only two recipes. Larry Olmsted at USA Today wrote an article about bakery pizza back in April, 2019. He included pictures. If I were to compare it to something I know, it would be Focaccia, but with a lot of red sauce on it. The sauce is very thick, like tomato paste, and spread like frosting on top of the dough. No mozzarella cheese is laid on top, but a small amount of Parmesan might be customary. The dough is then baked until crisp around the edges. It is eaten at room temperature.

Although I am (or was) a big fan of tomato sauce and bread, the idea of focaccia with tomato paste on top is something I never considered.

When I was a wee lad I would sometimes come home from school and see my mother had made a red sauce for pasta for dinner. I'd tear up some bread and place it in a bowl with some sauce and that was my afternoon snack, while my mother was still at work. I got caught one time because I left the bowl in the sink. I was told never to do it again. What I never did again was leave the bowl in the sink. I always washed it and put it away. Always hide the evidence.

And that leads me to recall something else from my youth. Our family was Roman Catholic. Eating meat on Friday was a sin. (I've been known to say: God might have created humans in his image, but man created religion in his own image.) Friday dinner was sometimes spaghetti without meatballs. Mom always put a loaf of Italian bread on the table. We'd use a slice of bread to mop up any sauce left in the bottom of our bowl.

So I know bread and sauce.

One detail of one recipe intrigued me. The toppings are put on the dough, which is then set aside to rise a second time, for about an hour. Yesterday afternoon I gave this a try. I did, however, cheat a little. On one half of the dough I spread thickened tomato sauce and added a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, like classic bakery pizza. On the other half I also added mozzarella and pepperoni for a more traditional pizza.

How was it? I wasn't impressed. It's just sauce on pizza dough. In other words, bread and sauce. If you're hungry for a tasty snack, it might be satisfying. But I'd rather have full pizza.

Finally, Some Rain

I wondered if we might get through the entire month of December without a drop of rain. So far, the area where I live has seen 1% of rain this water year (Sept 1 through Aug. 31). All other areas have done better. And of the amount of rainfall normally seen by this time of year, the county has received only 8%.

I've been watching the forecast all week. It started out with "chance of rain" for this weekend, and then the percentages started to appear. They fluctuated a little, but as of this morning there is a 30% chance of rain this afternoon, 80% overnight, and 80% chance of showers tomorrow.

And One Last Thing

Computer 2, the one on which I maintain this web site and produce all my videos, wouldn't start this morning. I checked the C: drive (system drive) on the other computer (that's why I build in pairs) and it looked fine. Without going into a lot of boring details, I did some testing and everything checked out okay. After which, the computer booted normally.

If this computer eventually fails completely, it won't be the end of the world. I have new solid state drives, never used, on the shelf and I can install one of them to load Windows 10 again. I might load one anyway, just to have a spare ready to use. I like spares.

Wednesday 2020.12.23

It's Beginning Not to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

Christmas is not the same this year. I've been watching Christmas movies, but not with much enthusiasm. I know I'm not a Scrooge. It's the coronavirus. Although I'm doing what I can to feel safe, the pandemic is weighing on my mind. It will pass, especially when the vaccine is available to people in my age and condition group. Maybe if I were to bake some Christmas Cookies … but then again, not. That would require a trip to the store.

I have been cooking, although not for the holiday. I did a recipe video this week, more of an experiment than a recipe. I made my favorite winter soup again, Pasta Fagioli, only this time I cooked it in my sun oven. It worked. At noon the oven temperature peaked at 340°F (171°C). I really can cook with sunlight, even when the sun's energy is at its weakest level.

I also did a Kitchen Vlog this week, in which I assembled a plastic model a friend gave me. It's a Ferrari Testarossa convertible he had in his garage. (Everyone should have a Ferrari in their garage.) It was fun to build. I hadn't assembled a plastic model since my youth.

I wasn't sure how to edit the video. There was so much of it — 18GB. It would have been an hour long. By contrast, the Sun Oven Pasta Fagioli video clips amounted to only about 4GB.

I worked all day on the editing and I couldn't get what I wanted. I finally scrapped everything and tried again. This time I got the idea to speed up some of the clips. I was going to remove the audio and record a voice-over, but when I heard myself talking like a chipmunk it made me laugh. Sometimes genius happens purely by accident.

Weather?

I'm not a pessimist by nature, but I honestly believed we would get through the entire month of December without seeing a drop of rain. A dreaded drought is looming again. However, the weather forecast says there is "a chance of rain" on Sunday and Monday. Of course, the weekend could be a whole year away as far as weather forecasts go. Sometimes I think the weather people can't predict what's happening right now when it comes to rain. But I'm hoping they're right. We need the rain.

Happy holidays!

Sunday 2020.12.20

Coronavirus Survival Tactics

First I needed to get past the anxiety. Then I had to work through my cabin fever. That was followed by attempts at alternative shopping (mostly Amazon). And now, finally, I think I'm actually enjoying this challenge of surviving the pandemic.

It has been nine months since California Governor Gavin Newsom issued his first "stay at home" order on March 19th. I've been doing the best I can. Those of you who regularly read this blog know that I try to limit my shopping errands to one per month. I did a small shopping errand on Friday, buying only three items. One of them was a 3-pound package of sliced pepperoni, which I portioned, heat-sealed in packets, and put in the freezer. I put away 28 packets, which I'll use later for pizza.

I still have plenty of food in the freezer, plus "alternatives." Alternatives seems like a good word to describe the groceries I get from Amazon. Costco sells in bulk at good prices, but Amazon is fairly good too. One of the fans of my YouTube channel told me about sardines on crackers. I like sardines. Ritz crackers cost about the same, 16¢ per ounce, and I prefer the Amazon packaging. Sardines, although a different brand, are about the same too.

Not everything on Amazon is a bargain. I buy Jose's brand Columbian Supremo whole bean coffee in the three-pound bag at Costco. The price on Amazon is double. So it's good to do some comparisons before submitting an order.

And, of course, the pandemic isn't improving. Reports in the news on Thursday were saying "ICU availability reaches 0 percent in Southern California amid coronavirus surge" (The Hill). There are also reports of the state ordering refrigerated trailer trucks to hold corpses and thousands of body bags. Evidently this is the post-Thanksgiving holiday surge that was expected. And then comes Christmas. All the more reason to take to heart a survival strategy.

Getting Out of Doors

On Thursday I did feel like getting out of the house a little; so I went for a short bike ride. I didn't realize I would be biking into a strong cold head wind. All the time I kept asking myself: "What was I thinking? What did I get myself into?" It had been a while since I rode my bicycle. Thankfully, the wind was behind me when I was coming home. I only rode 4½ miles, but it felt a lot longer. That's how much I let myself get out of shape during this pandemic.

Not Much New in the Kitchen

The only idea I've been working on is the rice pudding I mentioned earlier. As I said at the time, I've been trying to think of a way to make it more like tapioca pudding. I'm still experimenting.

Yesterday the order of sweet rice flour and tapioca starch arrived from Amazon, making the next experiment possible.

How About Those Tomatoes?

Are you bored with my writing about them yet? Okay, people grow these by the hundreds every summer. This is my first one; so I'm enjoying the process. The largest tomato is about ready to harvest. The smaller ones continue to ripen. I'm thinking of doing a Kitchen Vlog video about it, tasting it on camera, and showing pictures of the growth from seedling to ripe tomato. And the baby tomato I found last week is still growing.

And what's this? A little tiny sprig of a sprout is appearing at the base of the plant. This is a determinate tomato plant. It's supposed to survive only one season. I'll be watching that sprout closely to see if it might develop during the spring.

Meanwhile, the onions continue to do well. Two of them took months to start growing, but they're finally developing leaves. And the garlic continues to thrive as well.

And, Finally, What's So Good About Being Organized?

I have a bean pot that I purchased especially for use in my Sun Oven. It's of a type often called "granite ware." I wanted it for making Pasta Fagioli because tomorrow is the Winter Solstice and I've been planning to test the oven when the sun it at its weakest. But where did I put that pot?

I searched the shed. I searched my cupboards. I searched the shed again. I must have searched for an hour. And then I noticed a plastic bin clearly labeled "Sun Oven Accessories." Duh! Or is it Doh!

Wednesday 2020.12.16

Mission Accomplished

I mentioned in Sunday's blog a recent update to ths web site. For more than ten years there was a Contact button in the left column of every HTML page. That includes all the recipes and the blog archives. This web site currently has about 2,000 files, not all of which had that Contact button. Many are food photographs or recipe PDFs. I had to edit nearly 650 files to remove all the Contact links.

The reasons for the change were 1) I was getting way too many spam emails and 2) my email account was getting troll attacks, several each hour. It was time for a change.

The updates went smoothly enough. Along the way I found more than 300 small cosmetic issues to fix, none of them affecting the operation of the web site. And, pleasantly and surprisingly, a quick check with the Broken Links function found only two, which were easily fixed. As I said on Sunday, I expected the project to take days, maybe weeks. However, it was all done in a few hours. By 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday all the files were updated and uploaded to my web site's hosting service.

Since then, I have been watching my email account closely. What has been the result?

  1. The number of spam emails received since Saturday afternoon: Zero.
  2. The number of troll harassments received since Saturday afternoon: Zero.

There was one misdirected email, for "Marian" who is a voter in Georgia — something about how to apply to vote by mail. Other than that, my inbox has been free of spam and troll messages.

It feels like blessed peace and harmony. I love it! Sunday, therefore, became a day to celebrate. I hadn't made a Skillet Pizza in a while; so that was my choice.

Is it bad form to have a web site with almost no means of contacting the proprietor? Maybe. But I am not totally incommunicado. There is now only one Contact button, on the Home Page, and it explains how people can leave a comment on any of my YouTube videos. I monitor those daily.

Rice Pudding?

With all this rice on hand, I started to wonder about making rice pudding. The last time I ate it I think I was in junior high school. I never liked it. To me, rice should be savory, not sweet. However, I really like tapioca pudding. Is there a way to make rice pudding taste as good as tapioca pudding? That was my challenge this past week.

My first attempt with jasmine rice was a failure. It tasted good, but the texture wasn't right. I think it needed more starch, but I was out of sweet rice flour.

Some things I learned about rice flours in my research: Ordinary rice flour is made from long grain or medium grain rice. Sweet rice flour, which is not sweet, it made from starchy short grain rice like Arborio rice. It's also called glutenous rice even though there is no gluten in it.

I ordered sweet rice flour, along with some tapioca starch (to experiment with), from Amazon. When they arrive I'll try again. And, by the way, I have a package of Arborio rice, but I'll keep that for another time. I want to find a way to make delicious rice pudding with some of that jasmine rice I bought in a 25-pound bag.

Sunday 2020.12.13

It's True

You know you've suspected it. So have I. Now I know it's true. I saw it in print. Jessica Booth, a writer for the web site Mashed, revealed the reason Costco keeps relocating popular items in the store. It's to make us go searching for them, with the expectation we'll see other items along the way and purchase them on impulse.

We're all guilty of impulse shopping, at least some of the time. Case in point: A few months ago I bought an aluminum nonstick stove top grill/griddle at Costco because I liked the looks of it. I already have one in the cupboard, albeit with a slightly different look. I also have a similar All‑Clad griddle out of the shed. And I have a cast iron grill/griddle, an electric grill/griddle, a cast iron grill pan, and an aluminum nonstick grill pan. Why do I have seven of them? I almost never use them. Impulse shopping.

True story: I might have written about this one before. When I had a job I would sometimes stop at Costco on my way home from work. I was almost always on my bicycle. I would go to the liquor aisle first (wherever it happened to be located in the store at the time) and look for an empty box, one that had held six bottles of liquor. That was my shopping cart because everything that fit in that box would fit in the basket of my bike.

I came out of Costco one evening with my box of groceries and there was a young woman — I'm guessing a college student — standing next to her bicycle with a full shopping cart, one of the big ones they have at Costco. She was telling someone on her cell phone, "You have to come get me. I can't get all these things home on my bike."

I know better. I tape to the back of a door four shopping lists, one for each of the local stores where I typically shop. Every time I know I need something, I add it to one of those lists. Or when I want to make something — I'm thinking of making Chicken and Spinach Pie again soon — I add the ingredients to a list.

That's the way to avoid spending $200 at the cash register when you went into Costco only to buy some eggs. Bring a list and only buy the items on your list. And if something catches your eye and you think, "I'd like to have that," give it a day to think about it. You'll probably change your mind. I do.

And as soon as it's safe to go out again, I'll make a trip to the charity thrift store and donate some grill griddles. (I never liked that All-Clad griddle anyway. It was supposed to be made in the USA, but the box says "Made in China.")

Cast Iron

The mention of those cast iron grill/griddle things made me think of something. Cast iron cookware, if properly seasoned, is supposed to be nonstick.

When I made the Seafood and Rice dish featured this week, I used my cast iron skillet to sear the scallops. I wanted to get the pan smoking hot. You don't do that with cookware having a nonstick coating. At high temperature the coating can give off an unhealthy chemical that gets into your food. That's why the manufacturer usually says to cook over medium-high heat.

I wanted to get the pan above 500°F (260°C). I also, therefore, used safflower oil, which has the highest smoke point of all the common frying oils. The scallops, however, stuck to the pan a little. I don't know how to make cast iron cookware as "nonstick" as the claims I read about on the internet. But I do like cast iron. I should use it more.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes surprise me. Here it is December and they're still on the vine. The largest one is clearly ripening. The other four are still green, but maybe they'll ripen eventually.

I've seen bees visit the flowers and there is one itsy-bitsy tiny tomato developing. It's the cutest little thing you ever saw. Okay, if I seem like a proud parent showing off his baby pictures, please forgive me.

Of course, this is also Southern California — no frost, no snow on the ground. Although the days and nights are not warm, they're not cold either. The lowest I've seen is the upper 30s at night. The warmest days have been in the high 60s with a few odd days in the 70s and low 80s.

Dilemma

What do you do when a neighbor, who goes out several times a day with her Down Syndrome son despite the stay-at-home order, brings you a handmade Christmas card? I put the card outside on my back porch and then immediately washed my hands with soap and water. I'll wait several days before I open the envelope. She also promised to bring me some homemade macaroni salad. Hopefully she'll bring it on a Friday. That's trash pickup day.

A Little Maintenance

Maybe not so little. Yesterday I made a change to this web site. There is no longer a Contact button in the left panel. I get only a few friendly emails each year from the contact. Mostly I get spam and troll annoyances (lately, several per hour). People can still send me messages, but now they can do it from within my YouTube channel.

The updates went quickly. I was expecting the updates to take weeks — there were more than 1,000 changes to make. But thanks to Dreamweaver's Find and Replace function, I did everything in about three hours. And I even found several cosmetic issues along the way that were easy to fix.

Finally, a Regret

I have one little minor regret. Before this stay-at-home order from the governor I wish I made a trip to the fabric store down in Ventura. I should have bought several lenghts of cotton fabric to tailor more shirts. It would have been a project to help pass the time.

Wednesday 2020.12.9

I Love SoCal

I love living in Southern California. I grew up in Connecticut and I didn't appreciate the winter months. When I was a child, playing in the snow, sledding, or ice skating on the frozen pond was fun, but I didn't care for the cold as I got older. My dream was to live in California. An advisor told me the best way to make the move was to transfer to a university in SoCal. I attended the University of California Santa Barbara and made the area my home.

I say this because yesterday the forecast was for sunny skies and temperatures in the low 80s. This is December! You might have seen in the news a lot of people are leaving California. Houses are too expensive. A friend of mine is moving to Kentucky at the end of this month. He and his wife have a home there. And it's already paid for. No mortgage.

I, on the other hand, own a mobile home. It's good enough for me and it's paid for. No mortgage. Yes, I do pay a monthly rental fee for the space, but I live in a rent-controlled area; so the rent is easily affordable. And it's worth the price, given the climate. Yesterday I went for a bike ride without wearing a jacket. A shirt was good enough.

Cooking Idea

With a lot of rice in my storage, I've been looking at recipes that use rice. And I got an idea I might use for an experiment.

Rice cooks quickly in an Instant Pot (IP) — 3 to 4 minutes with 10 minutes of depressurize time (to finish with quick release of any remaining pressure). I have shrimp and scallops in the freezer. What if I were to thaw those, prepare them in advance, but only a little? Cook the rice. Then, when the pot is depressurized, toss in the raw seafood and seal the pot again. Wait another ten minutes. Would the residual heat in the IP be sufficient to cook the seafood? Seafood cooks so quickly, the heat might be enough. And, it might give me some ideas for other Instant Pot seafood dinners.

I'll do my experiment this afternoon, while shooting a video of the process. If all goes well, it will be Sunday's feature. Plan B: If the seafood isn't completely cooked, I'll use the IP's sauté function for a few minutes to finish the cooking.

What should I call the dish? It doesn't come from an internet recipe or a cookbook. Although inspired by recipes I saw, it's pretty much my own invention. I'll probably just call it Seafood and Rice.

And that makes me think of another idea. I wanted to use this cooking project to test something I bought (actually, ordered from Amazon) — Better Than Bouillon Roasted Garlic Base. I have a bulb of garlic in the kitchen, and I have garlic growing in a pot outside, but the idea of this easy garlic base intrigued me. And I thing a little garlic flavor goes well with shrimp. So that will be part of my video experiment.

A Kitchen Vlog Idea

The friend I mentioned above and I did a sort-of gift exchange. I had three movie copies on DVD he wanted and he had a plastic model kit he didn't want to take with him to Kentucky. So we called it a Merry Christmas gift exchange.

Here's the idea we talked about: What if I were to build the model in a Kitchen Vlog video? Maybe it would generate enough interest for me to buy other models on Amazon or elsewhere and build them in videos.

This first build won't be fancy. Although it's a Ferrari Testarossa Convertible, it wasn't an expensive kit. The price tag was still on it; about $8 at K-Mart. I won't paint it. The project will only be an experiment. The problem is that my hands don't move as precisely as they once did.

When I was a lot younger I repaired typewriters. Although I've done some tedious repairs in my videos, including precise soldering, I'm not sure I'd have the control to build a model. I don't have Parkinson's. No tremors. But I am getting old. However, the glue is ordered (and should arrive next week) and I think the kit might make a fun Kitchen Vlog video project.

I won't show the entire build. That would take too long. I'll show stages and then either my finished build, my failure, or I'll just abandon the video altogether and erase it. If anything funny happens along the way, that might save the video.

Sunday 2020.12.6

Rice Recipes

With a 25-pound bag of rice to use, I again searched the internet for more recipes. And, again, I found some that looked promising. I also found some that, well, looked awful. One included "Contest-Winning" in the title. It was a casserole and I couldn't help but wonder if the "contest" might have been a trailer park cook-off. But's that's just me. I've been cooped up too long, avoiding the pandemic.

This week's feature recipe and video, Chicken and Rice Soup, is a modification of one found on the internet, as I discussed in Wednesday's blog entry. One new recipe is another soup that uses wild rice. I haven't tried that one yet. It looks like a vegetable and rice soup, which could be good.

California Covid

Parts of California are under a "Strict Regional Stay-At-Home Order." Where I live the lockdown starts at midnight tonight. It's expected to last at least three weeks. At least means the restrictions could continue longer if hospital intensive care units remain in short supply.

It won't affect me too much. I've been hunkered down inside my home since February/March and I have plenty of food. I might work outside in the yard or sit on my deck and read, but that's about it. I try to limit my shopping errands to only one per month and I check my mailbox only once a week. In both those cases I always wear a mask.

Uh-Oh?

I was thinking about the movies I typically watch each December. They have a Christmas theme. It occurred to me that I have only one copy of each.

To explain, I have more than 200 movies in MKV format. I won't attempt to explain MKV, other than to say I like it. The movies are stored on a hard disk drive I can attach to my computer. If that drive should fail, the loss would be too significant. So this week I have been backing up those files.

One current issue is that I recently got all the James Bond movies. I've been watching one every evening; so that tosses a wrench into my routine of watching Christmas Movies. Yesterday evening I watched the 10th 007 film, The Man with the Golden Gun. There are 23 James Bond movies and I have them all.

Container Gardening

Surprisingly, the tomato plant continues to survive, if only to ripen its fruit. The largest tomato is turning orange and the others are not far behind. They'll be small, but it appears they might ripen. The leaves continue to turn brown.

It's a Roma tomato plant, a "determinate" that won't survive the winter. That's fine by me. As I've repeatedly reported in previous blogs my next project is to buy an "indeterminate" and carefully train it around a tomato cage. On Friday I ordered the last soil enhancement product I need for tomatoes. In February/March I'll purchase the plant and cage.

Purchasing that plant might be a problem. I stated above the stay-at-home order from our governor. I will need to buy the plant in early March. What will be the pandemic status at that time?

As for the carrot: It didn't make it. The green fronds that grew from the top all withered. I removed the carrot from the soil and there were no roots. Evidently, the greenery was surviving only on the food in the carrot. I'm thinking I might look for a carrot with green fronds already attached. They sell them in the store, but maybe they're seasonal. I'll look when I go shopping later this month. If I find one, I might just stick the whole thing in soil.

The garlic, by the way, continues to thrive.

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em

This week I discovered another possible source of entertainment — BattleBots. I knew about the shows. The late great Grant Imahara (MythBusters) used to design and compete them. However, I never saw any of the contests. Thursday evening I happened to be channel surfing cable TV and discovered the show. I watched it. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. I think I'm hooked.

Wednesday 2020.12.2

Got Rice?

I needed to go shopping and I was outside my schedule of going to the store only once a month — and at Costco, no less, a store where I don't feel safe from the coronavirus, even though everyone here wears a mask. I needed rice. I prefer Jasmine rice. So I chose Sunday morning when only the older folks would be present — sometimes known as the blue-hair crowd. The university students would still be in bed (and probably stay there until noon).

I wanted to go into the store and get out as quickly as possible; so I grabbed the first bag of Jasmine rice I saw, without thinking. I came out of the store with a 25-pound sack. Thankfully, I have a side basket on my bicycle large enough. Unthankfully, it wasn't secured very well. My baskets are held in place with plastic zip ties. Thankfully, the basket didn't break off until the bike was in my yard. I now have better zip ties — "Heavy Duty Ties," tensile strength 200 pounds — so I replaced all the old plastic ties with new ones.

I portioned the entire sack into 2-pound heat sealed pouches. I've been putting those in the freezer, a few at a time, for a day or two to kill any insects that might be inside. Then I will store them until needed. And something new I learned this week: White and wild rice can be stored for ages. Brown rice, on the other hand, has a shelf life because of its fat content. It will go rancid. Sniff your brown rice before you use it. Your nose will know if it's rancid.

What do you do with 25 pounds of rice? I've been researching chicken and rice soup, and I found very few promising recipes. Even people who say they do things the "classic, old fashioned way" used ingredients like chicken bouillon cubes, chicken-flavor granules, or Better Than Bouillon (which I have in my refrigerator) chicken base. Some used canned or boxed chicken broth. Okay. But I have real homemade concentrated chicken stock. I make it for soups.

Chicken soup is one of the easiest things to make, whether Chicken Noodle Soup or chicken and rice soup, or whatever. You don't need to go as far as I go. For that Chicken Noodle Soup I made my own pasta — benfatti.

Benfatti has a story. When making pasta from scratch the scraps cut from around the edges were saved and chopped up for soups so that they wouldn't be wasted. Eventually they were given the name benfatti, which means "well made" in Italian. However, this cut of pasta appears in only one of my pasta books.

As I said above, you don't need to make it complicated. Purchase dry noodles or rice. The other ingredients are simple — besides the chicken stock, cut up pieces of chicken, chopped onion, carrot and celery. Salt and pepper, maybe a little fresh thyme, and maybe some chopped fresh basil or parsley for garnish at the end. It's that easy.

For me, the real secret is the stock. Start with a good homemade chicken stock and the soup will be delicious.

Not Another Witch Hunt!

Yesterday CNN reported: "Justice Department investigating potential presidential pardon bribery scheme, court records reveal." The top of the article says, "The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon."

A Politico headline seemed more dangerous for the president: "Unsealed court ruling discloses bribe-for-pardon probe related to Trump White House." The article didn't say for whom the bribe was paid to get a pardon. The name in the court document was redacted.

This has been said already: Before January 20th Trump might resign his office and let Mike Pence be the interim president. He can then pardon Trump for all federal crimes. It would be suicide for any future political aspirations Pence might have. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if the Republicans nominated him as the presidential candidate for 2024. The GOP isn't well known for their scruples, especially after four years with Trump in the White House and with Mitch McConnell in the Senate.