Cooking

 I love to prepare food and cook it.  I find it satisfying to do the knifework, plan the timing, handle the food, and then eat it (and preparing food and eating it are two different pleasures).  I don't know exactly when that started, but I remember being in the kitchen as a young teenager.  Mom listened to Broadway musicals and that probably lured me in to start.  But I've always enjoyed good food.  

So when I asked "can I help?" I got a few minor jobs.  Peel potatoes and carrots.  Mash the potatoes.  Watch the timer.  Eventually, I got to actually cut some veggies.  I got better at stuff.  

It's not like I liked it better than a lot of other activities (golfing, bowling, building simple wood stuff, HO trains, Marvel comic books, reading sci-fi), but it was one.  And both Mom and I enjoyed classical and Broadway music.

I had always been the primary dish-washer (being eldest child) and baby-sat the younger siblings (being eldest child).  But one of the pleasures of baby-sitting was that I was also trusted to make a simple dinner at 12 (Chung King Chicken Chow Mein in the old double cans was my favorite, being easy to manage).

I was a Boy Scout.  And I had this idea that a guy should be able to do anything it took to get by day-to-day.  I would have taken Home Economics in school, but that was reserved for girls (guys took wood-working shop) back then (mid 60s).

I came across a funny phrase back then; "If you like bacon, you have to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy".  Meaning, if you want something, you have to be able to do it yourself.  I liked good food.

I've probably mentioned this before (you blog long enough and you can repeat yourself) but Mom was a very average cook and seldom met a vegetable that couldn't be boiled for too long.  When I discovered stir-frying and steaming later it really opened my eyes to food.

In college, I earned money and/or free meals by cooking sweet&sour pork for other guy's cheap dates in the dorm rec room.  

There's a slight story behind that.  Male dorms never had stovetops in the rec rooms.  Female dorms did.  In 1969, the Univ of MD arranged for a coed dorm by application and approval.  I was approved.  WOW, there was a stovetop (and a bathtub in the shower room BTW).  

Well, I had nothing to cook WITH, so I took a job selling cookware.  Great stuff.  Stainless steel inside and out with a layer of copper in between for heat diffusion.  But if you sold one set, you got to keep the sales kit.  I sold one set and quit and had a full set of cookware that was worth a year's tuition!

So I was able to cook meals at the new coed dorm.  I told the other guys in the dorm that I could cook sweet&sour pork.  The cost was either $5 above ingredient cost or I would buy enough to feed "them and a date and me too.  I had dropped out of the dining hall expense and bought a mini-fridge (good for beer and cheap steaks).  Fed myself better than the dining hall did, and cheaper too.

A business major on my floor of the dorm arranged to sell cheesesteak subs for 2 hours each night for his major.  I cooked a LOT of those.  He offerred better than minimum wage and 1 free sub each night.  So, I love to cook.

Anyway, here was dinner last night.  Cubed smoked pork with smothered onions, broccoli, bicolor corn-on-the-cob, and a nice tossed salad.  With zinfandel wine and leftover cocktail.  I love variety in a meal.  

A bit of pan-frying adds taste and appearance to corn...  Well, there was oil in the pan, so why not use it?

And it makes a salad better when you have variety to choose from.

Dessert was assorted cut-up fresh fruit.

Meal Prep

I enjoy preparing and cooking food.  Slicing, chopping, peeling, etc is relaxing in a way.  I have a good set of Wusthof Classic knives and holding block that I bought from a cutlery store going out of business that was literally putting up the "Going Out Of Business" sign as I walked past.  25% of original price.

I added some individual knives later at regular price online but they weren't worth it mainly.  I find I don't really use the slightly curved "chef knives" often.  But there were 2 real gems.  The "Deli Knife" is great.  Though designed for cutting sandwiches without tearing them apart, the serrated blade and offset handle makes it easy to cut anything.
 

The Santoku knife has airpockets on the sides to reduce food sticking.

I use the Santoku for almost everything, the deli knife frequenty, and my paring knife next most. 

I use the Santoku daily, the deli knife frequently, and my 2 paring knives often (one is a mini santoku).

I have other cheaper sets, some knives of which are not bad.  And a set of Ginsu knives (they are actually decent.  Someday, I am going to built a knife block to hold them all.  The construction is not all that complicated, but it would be about 2' wide.  I would lose some counter space, but gain some drawer space.  But at least that "once in a month knife" would be easily available.

Like that "scary-as-hell-cleaver"...  I almost cut off a fingertip the first time I used it!  Sharp AND heavy with a round slippery wood handle.  What could go wrong with THAT?  I think I should reshape the handle..  It might be safe after that.  Or in case of zombies or werewolves...

But I'm not writing this about knives and prep work.  I'm writing about cooking food.  I'm not really great at it.  I forget to start the timer for simmering spaghetti while I am cutting up my salad.  Or the timer goes off and I turn of the wrong burner.  I do a lot of M/W reheating to adjust, LOL!  It all works out well enough in the end. 

I'm somewhere between the harried parent cooking boxed mac and cheese, that show "Worst Cook", and Iron chef.

Partly, I try to do too much.  When Dad was here in his last days, he said "Wow, you cook Sunday Dinner every night".  Maybe...  I got into the habit of a small amount of meat, a green veg, a red or yellow veg, sometimes a starch, and always a fancy tossed salad.  Yeah, healthy, but I like that stuff.

Dad was a "meat&potatoes guy.  I could give him a small piece of steak and a potato, and he wanted bread with it (starch city).  But he hadn't had green veggies that hadn't been boiled to death before and was a bit surprised by them.  Mom learned to cook from her Mom and she was French, so veggies were boiled within in an inch of their lives. 

The first time I ever had "Chinese Food" a whole world of veggies opened up for me.  "Chewy veggies?"  what a concept!  I learned streaming, I learned stir-frying, and later M/W all of which delivered a "crunch" to veggies.  Dad said the best meals he ever had were here.  Which did lead me to think why he hadn't learned to cook and share that duty with Mom.

But even THAT is not why I'm writing.

I'm writing because sometimes I DON'T cook.  No, not "takeout" or "delivery".  The cold plate...

This was a recent dinner when I was too tired to actually cook.  Sliced hot sausage, cubed cooked ham, cooked shrimp, chicken breast, olives, diced tomatoes, reheated potato, reheated spinach, and the small container has homemade cocktail sauce.  The glasses have Zinfandel wine and a cocktail of gin/pomegranate juice/gingerale (I call it a "Cavebear Sling").  And not a SINGLE thing I cooked that day.  LOL!



 

My Personal CoVid19 Situation

This is partly to organize my own thoughts and partly to keep friends and family informed...

I am prepared for a long stay at home.  Some of it is just routine habit; some of it is in response to concerns about food and energy systems.

I am a homebody.  I routinely don't leave the yard for days at a time.  Granted, "day's at a time" is not weeks at a time, but I could manage.  I routinely have weeks  of home-cooked meals in the freezers (kitchen fridge and older basement fridge). 

When I heard that CoVid19 ad escaped China months ago, I added more canned goods to my pantry.  Nothing I wouldn't use up eventually, but stuff I normally wouldn't eat except in an emergency.  I even bought bottled water for the first time ever. 

As things have gotten worse, I have added to that.  A pack of TP here, a 3-pack of kleenex there, a few more cans of soup, a few cans of fruit, cans of tomatoes.  Bags of potatoes and oinions (I can't cook without them).   I missed out on the antiseptic-wipes, I thought for sure I had several packs of them from when Dad was here.  Maybe I sent them with him.

If the electricity doesn't fail for more than a couple hours, I actually have enough food for 3 months, and I'm not talking about frozen TV dinners.   If the electricity fails for 24 hours, I'm screwed!

One never knows what will happen in the face of social disruption.  I trust that we will all get through this OK with some cooperation.  People in democracies tend to rise to the challenge.

The thing that might challenge me most is not having fresh fruit available.   I like meat.  Small amounts are fine.  But 75% of what I eat is veggies and fruit.  Its not a diet, just my taste preference.

I have mentioned before that I have been immune to influenza virus since childhood.  This CorVid19 is not that virus.  I might be as vulnerable to it as anyone.  That's oddly scary.  After a lifetime of seeming-immunity to viruses, I'm not sure about this one.  It is entirely possible that the genetic reasons I have been free of them in the past makes me equally or more vulnerable to this one.

There is an ancient Chinese curse that say's "May you live in interesting times".  This is an "interesting time".  I don't want to live in "interesting times" like this! 

But I also look at this in another way.  Some bad things happen randomly.  The dinosaurs were wiped out by a random meteoroid.  There have also been other extinction events.  Shit happens sometimes. 

But I offer a word of hope.  This Corona Virus is not going to kill us off.  It is individually- threatening, but not species-threatening.  There will be some unfortunate individuals who die from it  (and probably fewer than from the regular seasonal flu). 

Be careful, but don't panic...  Always keep a towel nearby.

Wasted Food

Sometimes, you just don't finish doing something!

Two weeks ago, I bought a pork Boston Butt, a beef Steamship Round, and a package of 10 chicken thighs.  The pork is for smoking and cutting into cubes for pork stew and stir-fries. I pack the cubes into plastic sandwich bags 4oz per bag and I get enough for several months.

The beef is for roasting rare and slicing for sandwiches and a few 1/2" slabs to cube later with noodles and gravy.  The chicken was for "anything", so I just boiled it.  I normally bread the chicken with Panko bread flakes and bake it or saute it skin side down, and that works well.

What a disaster!  The chicken was mushy, but I did freeze them immediately.  For some reason, I kept putting off slicing the beef and cubing the pork.  Everyday, I saw them in the fridge and said "I've GOT to get at that today".  I didn't.  For over a week...

When I did, the beef had some discoloration.  The pork looked fine and it WAS smoked in 1" thick slabs, so I thought it would be preserved.  But last night, I decided I just didn't want to risk any of it.  I tossed it all into the trash.  $50 worth of meat, wasted.

I hate wasting food, but not at risk to my health.  Better safe than sorry.

I redid the chicken a couple days ago and it all turned out perfectly and I froze each thing individually.  I'll buy another Boston Butt and Steamship Round  next shopping trip (soon, I miss my pork stew and I'm out of fresh fruit too).

This time I'll chill them both and process them the next morning!  But I sure hated to waste all that...

An Awkward Afternoon

OK, so it was about 5 pm last night and time to start preparing dinner.  I do a lot food prep.  Not like sliding a knife guided by my knuckles (as seen on TV), but I slice and dice pretty well.  I'm careful with knives and tools.

I love most veggies and one of those is beets and I mean fresh beets.  I bake them or m/w them, and I've always peeled them first, which works pretty well.  But I decided last night to bake them first and see if the skins would just slip off afterwards.

Well they didn't.  Worse, trying to peel them after baking was like trying to peel a damp sponge.   The beet was hard to hold, and the peeler couldn't get a grip.  In fact, as I was struggling with it, I said to myself "Self, you could hurt yourself this way".  You know what's coming right?

Yeah, one last peeler-pull and it slipped.  It didn't hurt in the least.  In fact,  while I sensed something was wrong, it wasn't until I rinsed off the beet juice that I was sure I was bleeding.  My left middle fingertip  was bleeding and by pressing on it I could tell I had taken a (small) piece of the nail out as well. 

It is amazing how hard it can be to open one of those individual-wrapped specialty band-aids (fingertip-type in this case) when one hand is bleeding.  I had the bleeding fingertip pressed against a wadded tissue, so I had to use my right hand and teeth.  Fortunately, I wasn't worried about sterility, I just needed to stop the bleeding. 

I finally did manage the get the fingertip bandage ready to apply, the fingertip dry of blood, and anti-biotic ointment applied to the finger, and the band-aid ON.  Which was done pretty awkwardly, but it stopped bleeding.

Which was confusing because there was still blood dripping...  It turned out the ring-finger  was similarly-but-less injured.  So I had to go through the whole process all over again.

So then I had the fun of preparing dinner (chicken, tossed salad, M/W potato, stir-fried peppers and mushrooms without getting my left hand wet or oily.   Its like typing with 2 fingers on one hand... 

Now all I have to do is wait to see what things look like later today.  I stop bleeding fast, but I need to look at the fingernails.  I've never damaged one before and I don't know what happens when you do. 

Fun and Games in the kitchen,  LOL!

And my semi-annual Dentist visit is later today.  Sure, why not?  And tomorrow I "get" to pick up my riding mower from the repair shop after 3 1/2 weeks for $350.

It could be a LOT worse. I could have pulled a fingernail partially or completely loose.  The dental visit could be about a root canal.  The riding mower could be essentially unrepairable and require a new one (and the new ones aren't actually as good as the old ones).