I haven’t blogged about food lately, which is kind of dumb, since I’ve had some good times with food lately. Here are a few items:
:: I’ve used my wok more the last few months than in the first twenty years I owned it. (Wow…I’ve owned my wok for 20 years. The only reason I might see to get another one is to get an all-metal one, as mine has wood handles. But that’s low priority. I love the wok!)
So far I’ve done mostly stir-fries with it, although in the past I have used it for deep fat frying. I made a wonderful spinach fried rice last week, from a recipe in a Martin Yan cookbook (Chinatown Cooking). Here are the results:
The only problem I had with this dish was that the result was a tad too salty, but that’s easily corrected next time out. I could very easily live on fried rice. (Well, rice in general.) The only other change I made is that I used brown rice, instead of long-grain white. I know, the white rice is what you’re supposed to use for fried rice, but I really prefer the flavor of the brown. Plus, it’s better in terms of nutrition.
(Funny thing about that Martin Yan cookbook: I bought it at The Store, because I like Martin Yan and I wanted a new Chinese cookbook. When I got it home and thumbed through it in more detail, I found, inside the frontispiece, that it had been signed by Mr. Yan. He signed it, “Good food, Good wine, Good health — a wonderful life!” How cool is that!)
:: The biggest food development at Casa Jaquandor was my Father’s Day gift from The Wife and The Daughter: a new Weber grill, to replace the old one that served well through the years but rusted away (partly due, I must admit, to my somewhat lackadaisical care for it over the seven or eight years we owned it). The new grill has a 22.5 inch cooking surface, with a grill whose side panels are hinged so that I can add charcoal to the fire when slow-cooking something or when cooking with indirect heat. And it has a nifty pan beneath the kettle to catch ashes! Ash removal is the most annoying part of grilling, but now, I just let them fall into the pan and dump the pan when it’s full. Awesome!
And the gift came with something else: a charcoal chimney, so that I can finally graduate from lighter fluids or fluid-treated briquettes. Now I can use good quality lump charcoal, ignited with only two sheets of newspaper! Huzzah!
And of course, our first meal on the new grill had to be steaks. Nice, thick, New York strip steaks. Yum, steak.
So far I’ve used the grill for steak, chicken, sausages (twice), and, just last night, burgers!
Here is a blue cheese burger (blue cheese mixed right into the patty), topped with green leaf lettuce, a slice of tomato, and instead of ketchup or mustard, a lovely Greek yogurt dressing. I served it with a halved white peach (which is my favorite of all summer fruits).
You know what the world needs now? I mean, besides love, sweet love. The world needs someone to go on a self-guided tour through the wonderful world of frozen pizza and report on his or her findings. Of course, come to think of it, this is 2012, so I’m thinking that somebody out there in Blogistan is already doing this. Well, dammit, I’m gonna do it too.
Frozen pizza makes me happy. Always has. Now, I won’t maintain that frozen pizza is ever as high-quality a product as the best freshly-made pizza, but I absolutely will maintain that there are frozen pizzas out there that are frankly preferable to quite a few places that do the fresh thing. I mean, we have to be realistic here, don’t we? Not all pizzerias are wonderful. Many are. Many more are not, and many only manage to keep churning out their disappointing pizza by being cheap and/or conveniently located near a population of people predisposed to value cheap and convenient pizza (such as, say, college students).
I am no ‘expert’ on pizza, but I do love it and I think I have a fairly decent handle on whether something tastes good or whether it’s (as some frozen pizzas really are) crap-on-toast. And since I tend to have frozen pizza for dinner a couple times a month at least (hey, it’s an indulgence), why not blog about it?
I grew up eating frozen pizza. Not all the time, but my parents would keep a few in the freezer on a regular basis, so that I might have something quick and easy to feed myself in the event that Mom didn’t much feel like having any kind of real answer to the question “Whatsferdinner?” (Especially when I asked this question as soon as she walked in the door after work without so much as a “Hi Mom!” first, and I couldn’t get away with running it all together so it came out as “Himomwhatsferdinner?” either.)
During the 1980s, there were, as far as I recall, only two or three brands of frozen pizza available. My preferred brand back then was Totino’s, which came in a red box and which was called a ‘party pizza’. The pepperoni was not in discs, but tiny cubes all over the thing. I haven’t seen one of those in years. I think that Tony’s was the other one; Tony’s is still going strong, actually. And then there was a generic, store brand. These were pretty disappointing, generally. And that was about it. (Actually, not quite: late in the 80s a new brand showed up, called “Mr. K’s”. This was some kind of higher-quality item which came with its own metal baking dish in the box. I recall these being pretty good, but from what I can tell, the brand has not existed in years.)
Of course, frozen pizza has exploded over the last couple of decades. There’s DiGiorno, obviously, and a whole bunch of other brands. Paul Newman’s is now on the scene, and the store brands tend to be a lot higher quality these days than when I was a kid. The frozen pizza section at any grocery store is now significantly larger than it used to be, which is pretty cool. It used to be a couple shelves in one door. Now it’s four or five doors…or more.
So, time to get to tasting. First, on method: I will prepare all pizzas I write about in these posts according to the directions on the box. It’s tempting to figure that what works for one frozen pizza likely works for all of ’em, but that’s just not the case. I discovered this the hard way a number of times; I would get used to baking one brand at 400 for fifteen minutes and then not realize that the next brand called for ten minutes at 425. Some pizzas instruct you to preheat the oven; others specifically say not to. Ignoring these directions results in disappointing pizza. So, I’ll be following directions to the letter.
Second, on brands I’ll try: I’m up for nearly anything, but because of obvious conflicts of interest, I won’t be writing about any of the frozen pizzas currently produced (or produced in the future) under the label of The Store. (I will offer up a blanket statement that I do like our brand frozen pizza.)
Third, a couple of general statements: Look, we’re talking frozen pizza here. I’m not trying to compare each pizza to something made by a skilled pizzeria cook or deepdish pizza baker. I hope we’re clear that I’m not claiming any high standards of food quality here. Frozen pizza tends to be very different in terms of texture from what you get from a pizzeria, no matter where; cheese in a frozen state behaves differently than freshly-sliced or grated cheese, for one thing, so frozen pizzas will rarely give you that ‘cheese pull’ that’s familiar to lovers of fresh pizza. Also, frozen pizzas are frozen food, and frozen food tends to be higher in sodium. Some of these pies can end up tasting very salty indeed. I’ll make note of it when it happens, but in general, saltiness is to be expected from frozen pizza.
I think that’s about it for preliminaries. Time to talk about the first pizza!
Palermo Primo Thin Ultra-thin Crust Cheese Lover’s Pizza
Although I’ve come to like fewer and fewer toppings on my pizza over the years – no more than three toppings, usually – I rarely go the whole way and just have a pizza with nothing but sauce and cheese. But this one seemed like a good place to start.
‘Cheese Lover’s’, huh? According to the box, this pizza sports a blend of cheeses as follows: “Mozzarella, White Cheddar, Provolone, Parmesan, Romano cheeses.” OK. That sounds promising, actually. I can’t differentiate all the various cheese flavors in any cheese blend on a pizza, but a blend is still desirable because a cheese’s characteristics tend to change a lot when melted, so a blend of cheeses gives a balance to flavor that is hard to achieve with a single cheese. Other than the cheese blend, this pizza is very basic. Here’s what it looks like out of the box:
Yup. Basic indeed: just a thin circle of dough with sauce and cheese on it. And yes, this thing is thin. Palermo has a whole line of these ultra-thin crust pizzas. Super-thin crust doesn’t tend to be my favorite, but if done well, I like it quite a bit, if not really loving it. Thin crust can turn out too brittle and crispy, and I don’t like a great deal of crisp to my pizza. So what would happen? It’s been my experience that thin crust frozen pizzas tend to get overdone at the edges.
Anyway, into the oven: 450 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. I checked at 8 minutes and decided that it wasn’t quite done, so I left it in the full 10. (Frozen pizza manufacturers always give a time range in their directions, to accommodate people’s differently-performing ovens.) When I took it out, it looked like this:
Yeah, a little but too crispy around the edge – but not horribly so. And the cheese all melted into a pretty attractive top, with brown spots and little visual evidence of the cheese’s former dry and frozen state. This one came out of the oven looking really tasty, though. And here’s the bottom of the crust:
That impresses me, to be honest. At that high a temperature, that low in the oven, I feared a burned crust. Instead, no burning – just too done around the edges. But what about the taste?
Well, this pizza was actually pretty good. It had the frozen-pizza saltiness, but it wasn’t overwhelming and I didn’t feel as though I needed to down several swigs of water every other bite. The crust here really does turn out to be really thin…but not as thin as, say, the Thin-and-Crispy at Pizza Hut. (Horrible dough to work with, by the way. Just horrible.) It’s just thin enough to give you a stiff slice of pizza and a definite crunch when you bite into it, but just thick enough to give that crunching bite some body. Again, aside from the outer rim (which was overdone), the crust was fine.
The tomato sauce? Very nice, actually – just enough so you know it’s there by taste, but not overwhelming, either. The sauce is more tangy than sweet, and it works very well with the cheese blend. And as for that: the cheese is probably the best thing about this pizza. Frozen pizzas generally won’t give you that elastic quality to the cheese, like fresh pizza will – generally when you bite into a slice of frozen pizza, you don’t get long tendrils of molten cheese dangling between you and threatening to detach and flop onto your own chin. Frozen pizza cheese tends to stay where it is.
And yes, the cheese here does just that: stays where it is. Within reason. I had a couple of ‘stretching cheese’ moments whilst eating this one, and the cheese really did start to trail away from the slice. It snapped back, but still, that was a nice thing to see in a frozen pizza. And while I did notice the saltiness of the pizza, the main flavor here was of cheese, not salt. I appreciate that.
So, I give this one a fairly high grade. Nice job by the Palermo folks on this one!
Well, I have a new weapon in my kitchen’s Arsenal Of Condiments. It’s this stuff:
I ‘discovered’ jalapeno jelly at a local Mexican restaurant (Arriba Tortilla in East Aurora, NY), where a ramekin of the stuff is served as a side condiment with some menu items. I fell in love with the stuff almost at once. It’s not hot at all, but it tastes like peppers anyway…there’s a tiny amount of hotness to offset the sweetness. It’s a wonderfully bright and intriguing flavor. So I bought a jar, and the other night I tried it for the first time on something I made myself. Not a taco or anything like that…but on a burger. I cooked a nice, thick patty and melted three slices of pepperjack cheese on it. Then I served the burger on a bun with several large leaves of leaf lettuce, with the hot pepper jelly (this very brand) spread on the bun.
This made for an amazing burger. Just wonderful. I generally tend to be fairly minimalistic with my burgers these days; I don’t like piling on tons of toppings and sauces. I’ve had burgers in restaurants that slather on cheddar cheese and bacon and lettuce and barbecue sauce and several full-sized onion rings…so much stuff piled onto the burger that the flavor of the beef itself all but disappears. My approach to a burger is only a few things other than the meat — at most, I’ll put lettuce, cheese, onion, and a tomato slice on there, with ketchup and mustard. But another favorite of mine is mayonnaise, black pepper (a liberal amount), and onions. But this combo? Yeah, this one’s going into heavy rotation.
A Facebook friend suggests cream cheese instead of the pepperjack. That sounds intriguing…and frankly, I may try that on a bagel first. Like…tomorrow!
:: Beth Howard, who has become one of my favorite bloggers, has been working on a book called Making Piece, which is about how she dealt with awful grief (her husband passed away suddenly at a terribly young age) by, among other things, throwing herself into pie-baking and from there to pie evangelism. Her book is now available for pre-order. I’ll definitely be getting a copy. I’ve found that learning new things, and becoming a bit obsessive about them, is a good way to (at least partially) deal with grief.
:: On the making of pie…I do love a good pot pie, although I hadn’t made one in quite a long time until last week, when I did what pot pies are for and made one as a way to use up some leftover meats. In this case I used leftover ham from New Year’s and leftover smoked beef sausage. The result was like this:
I thickened some beef broth with a roux and added some onion and sauteed mushrooms, in addition to the meats. The crust? Well…I really need to start making my own. This was a store-bought crust, one of those ones you unroll. The resulting pie was tasty, but a bit on the salty side. I’ll be revisiting the pot pie concept again soon, though — next week I intend to make some pulled pork, which I think would make an interesting pot pie!
Part of my problem with making pie crust is that we only really have one spot in the kitchen area suitable to the rolling out of a dough, and that’s our dining room table, which isn’t always free of obstruction. (Translation: we tend to pile an awful lot of clutter on our table.) Not that clearing the table takes very long, but it’s just a whole extra step, you know?
:: Speaking of baking pie, I wonder if this gizmo, which Roger Green e-mailed to me, actually works? It seems…well, it seems odd. Why not just bake two pies? How strange!
:: My favorite pie for eating has always been apple, which cries out for a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and some caramel sauce drizzled on top:
I just can’t get behind that whole “cheddar cheese on apple pie” thing, though. Cheddar cheese and sliced raw apples are great together, but…I can’t make the leap from there to cheese-on-apple-pie. Sorry!
:: Roger also e-mailed me a while back a couple of posts by Mark Evanier, on the subject of pies as comedic props (i.e., pies for forceful application to people’s faces). It makes for interesting reading, as Evanier spells out some techniques (here and here) for what he considers ‘proper’ pie-throwing. Basically he says that pies for throwing should consist of a crust outside of the tin or pan, filled with shaving cream. I suppose he may have a point, if your pie-throwing is part of some kind of performed skit of stage show or something like that. Quick clean-up and the lack of any souring-milk aromas are certainly desirable factors. But as for myself, well…I’m not a stage actor, and I sure don’t want to get hit with something that tastes like soap because it basically is soap! Nope, if it’s going in my face, I want the real thing.
:: Finally, some funny behind-the-scenes photos. Here’s Natalie Wood on the set of The Great Race, whilst shooting that film’s pie fight:
(EDIT: I couldn’t remember where I got that photo from…but now I do. And contrary to Mr. Evanier, it turns out that all those pies in that pie fight were real! No shaving cream at all!
And here is actress Mia Sara, on the set of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. For some reason she’s getting pied. No idea why.
Whilst on break at The Store today, we observed our coffee bar employee making a smoothie that looked particularly tasty. When we asked her what flavor it was, she told us, “Peach and raspberry. It’s a Peach melba”. This got us on the topic of the word “melba”. What does that mean? Is there a flavor called “melba” that pairs particularly well with peach? And is this flavor any relation at all to those little slices of dried bread, called “melba toast”?
So in a moment of downtime later on, we did some Googling and found out that in the late 1800s, there was an opera singer — a soprano — named Dame Nellie Melba. Apparently Dame Melba had quite the career, and she was especially beloved in her native Australia, as she was that country’s first international music superstar. A French chef invented four foods in her honor, including a dessert called “Peach Melba”, and, believe it or not, Melba toast (which he created for her during a time of illness, when her diet was restricted).
Here is what Dame Nellie Melba looked like:
And there you have it. There really was a person named Melba, much beloved in the musical realm in her time, but whose name lives down to us today in culinary terms.
So, last week was my 40th birthday, as I noted at the time. Because of work schedules, we rarely celebrate birthdays on the dates on which they fall; instead we schedule some time off as near as we can, and celebrate then. It was a great week, though, it really was. Of course, it got off to the perfect start, with this happening:
And the week really did stay about that good! I worked a short work week before taking a five-day weekend (which includes today, so I’m back to work tomorrow), and I wasn’t unproductive during that work week, either. Then The Wife and I had a nice couple of days off together, during which we took a little trip, and as several people asked me on Facebook and in e-mail, there were pies.
But more on those in a bit…random thoughts and stuff first.
:: Autumnal weather has at last taken hold in Western New York…which, for me, means “time for overalls”. That’s just one of many reasons why this time of year is my favorite. Cool weather means overalls, and time off means naps!
Of course, naps are always welcome, but there’s something about naps in fall and winter that makes them so much better than naps in spring and summer. Sometimes naps in summer feel like wasted time. Of course, that’s just humans, I suppose. Cats never feel like napping is a waste of time. In fact, I wonder sometimes what the evolutionary benefit is to cats of getting all that sleep!
I also wonder where cats slept before the invention of the cardboard box.
:: Car repair places irritate me. We had to take The Wife’s van in for some work, and wouldn’t you know it, they found other stuff wrong that really needs to be fixed soon soon soon! We’ll get those things fixed, but not at that place, which is almost certainly overpriced. The only reason we went there is that we needed to get the tires rotated, which is free since that’s where we got the tires. We also had them check the oil and find out what the “Check Engine” light was all about, which is where it all started. Luckily it’s not super-pressing, so we can save up money and then get the fix done. But ye Gods, I hate the “Hey, we found some stuff on your car!” stuff.
But hey, at least we’re not this guy:
Ye Gods, indeed! This, folks, is why I maintain a state of deep suspicion of other people when I’m driving.
:: The Wife and I made our annual excursion to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this weekend. We discovered this festival quite by chance in 2007, when we planned a getaway sans destination. All we knew was that we were going away, but we had no idea where. I did some Googling and found out about this Festival, and aside from 2008 (when The Wife journeyed to see her ailing mother), we’ve gone every year since. But Ithaca’s quite a long drive from Buffalo (two-point-five to three hours), so we always stay someplace in Rochester overnight and then take the remaining drive the next day. This year we stayed near the Eastview Mall, and we had dinner at PF Chang’s, where we’d never eaten before.
We loved the meal we had there. They have a nice “dinner for two” menu which made the meal more reasonable than we’d even expected, and the food we had was really quite good. No, it wasn’t as good as the best Chinese I’ve ever had — that honor goes to a dim sum place in Toronto, and the Shanghai Restaurant, also in Rochester (Henrietta, specifically) — but it was certainly better than the local takeout joints we like to frequent at Casa Jaquandor. I took some photos of our food, and I put them on Flickr, but…they’re not very good photos. Too dark, really. I was taking them with my phone, and I had the flash off as the phone flash is an LED that makes everything look slightly unnatural. Sometimes I like that effect, but not with food. Anyway, we shared an appetizer of crab-filled wontons (pretty much the same idea as any “crab rangoon” you’ll get anyplace else, although much better prepared), cups of hot-and-sour soup (again, same idea, but terrifically prepared), and then we split Kung Pao Shrimp and Orange Peel Chicken. It was a wonderful meal.
And the place was packed when we arrived, so we put our name on the list and then went to wander the mall for a bit. It’s been several years since I’ve walked a mall. I remember the Eastview Mall from when I was ten years old — the place has been there for many moons — but it has more than doubled in size since then, and now it is positively massive, with several wings added since then that are actually larger than the one wing that used to comprise the entire mall. Lots of folks think that malls are dead, but they’re not; they seem to be accreting, though, so an area with a bunch of small malls eventually becomes an area with one big mall.
Oh, and for ten bucks I got a set of Star Wars cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Score!
:: The next morning we departed Rochester (OK, Victor) for Ithaca. Someday I want to have more than just a single overnight trip for this journey, because really, I just love that part of New York State. It actually starts right in my own town, with the start of Route 20A, which is my favorite drive anywhere. It’s just a gorgeous drive, through the hill country that rests about ten to twenty miles south of the flat I-90 corridor. Sure, since we were going to Rochester I could have saved at least half an hour by taking the Thruway, but why do that? The Thruway has zero personality…and to drive it, you have to pay tolls. Ugh.
After spending the night in Victor (a southeastern suburb of Rochester), we drove the next day first through Pittsford and some of Rochester’s eastern suburbs and then farther east, through towns like Phelps, Palmyra, Waterloo, and Seneca Falls. I always love driving through these towns, with their central business districts lined with brick buildings, occasional crossings of the Erie Canal, and out in the country between towns, driving past farms and properties where the houses often look like they were built before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, some of them were. There’s a real sense of driving through history, I find, in those old towns. Waterloo bills itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Seneca Falls played a role in the women’s suffrage movement. And Joseph Smith originally hailed from Palmyra…which means that in the space of less than fifty miles, we drove through the birthplaces of Memorial Day, womens’ rights, and the Mormon church!
And then there’s the drive south to Ithaca itself. Because of the presence of the Finger Lakes, each one running north-to-south, between Buffalo and Ithaca, there is no ‘straight line’ route available. You either drive south, and then east; or you go east, and then south. We always do the latter, so we can drive along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Finger Lakes are just stunningly gorgeous, all year. I adore that whole region…and at last, it was into Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, huzzah!
:: On our previous trips to the AppleFest, each time it’s been a gorgeous, bright, crisp, sunny Fall day. This time…not so much.
Yeah. Brrrr. Luckily I wisely dressed in layers.
Cold, rainy, and dingy.
As usual, there was a pilgrimage to Autumn Leaves Books, with their nice stock of F&SF. I could spend an hour here, easily. Autumn Leaves is not your “typical” used bookstore, with dim lights and stacks of books teetering everywhere; this store is bright, spacious, and organized. This time I wrote out a list of books that I wanted to look for — mostly space operas, of course — and I actually found one. I also bought an SF book by LE Modessit Jr — I’ve never read him before — and a fantasy trilogy by an author I’d never heard of before at all. Why not?
It wasn’t all bookstores for me, though…we looked up a knitting/crocheting store for The Wife, and she loved the place. She’s developed a real love of crocheting over the last couple of years, and she’s always on the lookout for good places to buy supplies. She liked the selection, the bright organization (some yarn stores can be dark and depressing, she says), and the pair of women who worked there were very gregarious and helpful. Of course, I know next to nothing about yarn, so while she was looking at stuff…
…I was taking photos of myself in the mirror and of cool-looking yarn.
Eventually we warmed up with some hot cider…
…and had a lunch of waffles and fried chicken. Now, I had expressed some skepticism of this food combo when I first encountered it, but I must admit…it’s a terrific match! Loved it. Next year we’re getting two of ’em. There’s this wonderful little restaurant in the middle of the Downtown Commons in Ithaca that features waffles in what must be dozens of permutations.
Finally, after touring all of the craft tents (where we bought The Daughter a bracelet and where I bought The Wife a necklace-and-earrings set), we decided that it was time to start heading home. And it was a good time for that, too, because this is what the weather turned out like an hour or so later:
On the way home we stopped for dinner at a joint in Avon, NY called Tom Wahl’s, which is a burgers-and-dogs drive in…but the burgers were really very good and their onion rings are fantastic. It’s a chain in the Rochester area, and their root beer is awesome.
:: And finally, there was my favorite part of the week: the coconut cream pies. Four of ’em, thick and gooey and creamy. Mmmmm, pie….
Then to blow out the candles…
…and, finally, splat!
Here’s the video I made of this pieing.
Yeah, I know, it’s weird. So what? It’s also fun. Life is just too short to take oneself seriously all the time. Maybe I’ll get five pies in my face when turn fifty! A pie in the face isn’t exactly a birthday tradition for me — we do it once or twice a year whenever, depending on opportunity — but maybe it will be now. Pies in the face rule.
So, to recap: the Bills beat the Patriots; I get to wear overalls again (which, I might add, are all fitting better since I’ve been losing weight!); an overnight trip with my wonderful wife through the finest parts of New York; used bookstores; yarn stores; new jewelry for the ladies in my life; dinner at PF Chang’s; Star Wars cookie-cutters; waffles and fried chicken; burgers and onion rings at Tom Wahl’s; and I get hit in the face with four coconut cream pies.
:: Everybody hates on Mondays, but for my money, Tuesdays are far more likely to offer up a Giant Bowl of Suck. Tuesdays are just irritating. Everybody gears up for Mondays, because they’re depressing by definition, but Tuesdays? They just sit there in the tall grass, waiting to ambush you. Tuesdays are the nadir of the week. You’re still close enough to the previous weekend to remember whatever good times you had to see end to go back to work, and you’re too far from the next weekend to take solace. Tuesdays are just nothing but grind.
:: I don’t know if I’m going to bother watching the finale of Hell’s Kitchen. The show is just awful, what with the continuing, and increasingly inexplicable, presence of Elise.
:: In the “Hey, that’s never happened before!” department, I got blocked by someone on Flickr! This was really odd. I’ve never been blocked before, ever. I only noticed because I added her as a contact just the other day, and today I noticed she wasn’t showing up on my Contacts page. Weird! I’ve been defriended on Facebook and I’m sure I’ve been unfollowed on Blogger, Twitter, and Tumblr, but I tend to not notice these things…I have no idea what my numbers are, in terms of followers, on any of the services that have followers in the first place. I’m kind of intrigued as to what it was about me that turned this person off; I can only assume she took a cursory look at my photostream and concluded that I’m some kind of creepy fetishist. Oh well!
:: I have zero idea of what I want for my birthday this year. And I feel like I should be taking advantage, because I’m hitting one of the Nice Round Numbers.
Specifically, now, some food thoughts:
:: I’ve been consuming fruit smoothies in a big way of late. My method is this: I throw in a cup or so of ice cubes, followed by a scoop of protein powder (if I’ve just returned from working out, otherwise I omit the protein powder), then roughly half a cup of milk and half-to-two-thirds a cup of vanilla yogurt. Then I add fruit: usually I throw in a banana, followed either by a peach or two or a blend of berries, mostly strawberry or blueberry. Then I let the blender work its magic, and drink.
My problem, of course, is that the stuff I’ve been making my smoothies with will very shortly be out of season, and thus either unavailable or too expensive to keep on hand. We’re heading into apple season…so, do apples make decent smoothies? I will report back once I’ve found out, but an apple cinnamon smoothie sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
:: I’m also giving more and more thought to vegetarianism. Not as an entire lifestyle, but I’m liking the idea of going meatless one or two times a week. I am already eating several vegetarian meals each week, so doing this won’t be a problem. I imagine that beans will have a major presence. I need to start reading some recipes!
:: But no, I won’t be giving up meat entirely. Never! And by way of evidence, here’s a recent meal I had: a pancetta, Romaine, and tomato sandwich on a sub roll:
Oh, this was heavenly.
:: I have officially come around on fresh tomatoes. I love ’em now. I hated them when I was a kid, but I gradually learned to accept them on sandwiches and burgers and tomato slices on pizza. I’m not sure I’ll ever sit and eat tomato slices all by themselves, but otherwise, I’m becoming tomato-obsessed. It’s too bad our balcony gets so little sunlight during the summer; we can’t grow any tomatoes!
:: Oh, and I discovered hummus last week. I had a hummus, tomato, and leaf lettuce sandwich for lunch one day that was amazing.
Spoilerific musings on Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef!
:: Elise is freakishly annoying. She’s not a bad cook, but she’s lazy in the challenge loser punishments and just a generic loudmouth. And I frankly don’t understand why people don’t learn that taking the “I’m not here to make friends!” approach to a reality teevee competition never works.
:: If a favorite is emerging — and it’s not a strong favorite — it’s probably Will, from the Men’s (Blue) team. He doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time during services, which is a good thing, because screen time during services tends to go to the people who blunder. Will’s main screen time comes during challenges, when he does well. I don’t think he’s had a dish criticized yet, and he did a 4-for-4 performance in the “cook four cuts of beef to specific doneness” challenge.
:: They made a big deal out of the ‘balcony tables’ overlooking the kitchen, but nothing’s happened up there that I know of. Odd.
On MasterChef:
:: I like Jennifer a lot. She definitely has cooking skill, and…well, she’s pretty. I’m shallow.
:: I wonder if the producers worked on Joe Bastianich’s personal skills or something, but he is not nearly as obnoxiously arrogant as he was last season. He’s still an occasional hard-ass, but he actually looks like he’s enjoying doing the show this time out. There’s a lot less of the “I shall now descend from Mt. Olympus to mingle with you groveling monkeys” air about him this season.
:: But then, it could just be that Bastianich is simply the second most insufferable prick in this year’s edition of MasterChef. This guy Christian is just a complete douche. He’s also a very good cook, obviously, but really — douche. He’s so convinced that he is carrying around giant bags filled with Awesome that it’s been noticed by the chef judges, who are starting to take shots at him for it. Which he is ignoring. He reminds me of the awful Benjamin from two seasons back on Hell’s Kitchen, a bullying toad who doubled down on his own screw-ups when one of the world’s greatest chefs told him he was full of it.
:: I’d love to see a Mystery Box Challenge where contestants are not given a bunch of “the most amazing” ingredients, but rather, a whole bunch of crap. I’d like to see a challenge where they’re told to make something decent out of beef kidneys, regular old American white bread, Velveeta, and stuff like that. Now there would be a serious Challenge!
I’ve been remiss (!) in noting that MD Jackson of Skylarking has awarded me one of those blogging award things, this one called the “Versatility Award”. This is because I’m a versatile blogger. (I know, it’s just like the title of the award!)
So, as is usual with this type of thing, I’m supposed to provide seven facts about myself and then give the award to several other bloggers. I usually skip these steps, but what the hey…only problem is, after nine-plus years of blogging, I’m almost at a loss as to what facts I still can ‘reveal’ about myself that aren’t common knowledge to those who read this blog on any kind of basis, regular or not.
By way of a bit of navel-gazing, I’ve noticed a substantial drop in traffic round these parts lately. What I think has happened is that Google may have shuffled its image hit results, because those seem to be the hits that I’m not getting as much of anymore. I don’t expect traffic to ever jump here again, really — it may fluctuate upward a bit, but I suspect that my average number of viewers is pretty much calcified in place. That kind of bums me out, but as I’ve noted, it’s also a bit liberating in a way. I’ve wondered occasionally over the years if it’s my blogging versatility that’s kept this blog from ever becoming highly trafficked, but now…well, who cares.
Anyway, seven facts!
1. My first-ever job, as I’ve noted before, was as a technical-services assistant at the library at St Bonaventure University. I was one of several people who did things like put new card pockets in the backs of books, weeded cards from the card catalog, and stuff like that. I don’t imagine very many of those tasks are the same now…but that was my first real job. I went from never having worked to suddenly working eight-hour shifts during summer after my senior year. That was quite a shock to the system. I probably should have had a part-time job at some point before that, but in high school I was a social stick-in-the-mud and thus didn’t really need a whole lot of money over and above my allowance from my parents.
2. My current job at The Store, as I’ve noted before, involves the use of a lot of power tools, and I’ve grown quite proficient and knowledgeable about tools and their uses in seven years. I can do a lot of stuff, and it’s been a thrill learning it all and continuing to learn. I’m enormously lucky to have scored a job that provides literally years of learning opportunities and skills which will serve me well in other areas of life. And boy howdy, did I have a lot to learn. When I first got hired, in my first few days a manager asked me to put some paper towel dispensers up on several walls. He handed me a drill with a driver bit and some drywall screws and sent me off…but I had to go back to him for help, because the screws were Philips head and the bit in the drill was for slotted screws, and I didn’t know how to change a bit in a drill.
3. I have an odd fascination, as I’ve noted before, with pies in faces. I think a pie in the face is all kinds of awesome…but I hate seeing newly-married brides and grooms smearing wedding cake all over one another. This irritates me to no end. It strikes me as godawfully inappropriate and never makes me laugh. The Wife and I did not do this. Neither of us wanted to do it.
4. I’m not a fan, as I’ve noted before, of mashed potatoes. I don’t like the flavor or the texture, and gravy doesn’t save them, either. But mashed potatoes do fall into that odd category of “Foods I don’t like but yet always look really good to me when I see them”. Mashed potatoes on someone else’s plate look so yummy! So does pineapple on pizza, and so does sauerkraut. But I’m not a fan of any of these. (I do think that cooking meat in sauerkraut does wonderful things to the meat. The ‘kraut itself, I can take or leave. Like it on Reuben sandwiches, though. And just today I tried some on a hot dog, and that was OK.) And no, broccoli does not fall into one of those categories. Broccoli looks, to me, like it tastes: the Food of the Devil.
5. I realized a while back that in my current work-in-progress, the space opera novel, I’m envisioning one of my characters as Nichelle Nichols in the Star Trek III-IV-V era. I thought that the older Uhura really had this sexy, “Don’t make light of my opening and closing hailing frequencies because I can kick your ass without so much as reaching for my phaser” thing going on.
6. Vegetarianism isn’t for me, but I do like to explore vegetarian options now and again and am planning to do more of it. Veganism strikes me as an approach that makes some fairly odd assumptions regarding the suffering and ‘exploitation’ of animals. The ‘raw food’ movement? That’s the one that makes me want to eat a bacon cheeseburger out of spite. Judgmental? Sure. Hey, I’ve got limitations, same as everybody else.
7. To this very day I have never attended a single rock concert. The closest I’ve come was “Classical Mystery Tour”, a Beatles tribute band that performed with the BPO a year ago. (Which was, truly, a wonderful concert.) In all honesty, I don’t really think I’ve missed anything — except for Van Halen.
OK, there are seven facts about me. All of them are certified true, or your money back. Now to give the Versatile Blogger award to others! As always, this comes with absolutely no obligation to play along.
Jason Bennion of Simple Tricks and Nonsense blogs about his difficult relationship with his father, his sadness over the space shuttle program ending, his thoughts on movies, and occasionally his experiences as a fairly liberal guy with a beard living in deeply conservative, facial-hair-free Salt Lake City. I just wish he could post more, but judging by how often I see him post things on Facebook like “Yeah, it’s 7:00 and I’m still at the office”, I can totally understand why he is limited.
Lynn Sislo of Violins and Starships has been a daily read of mine for years, and I see no sign of that ending. She’ll put up a post about a sewing project and then blog about the science fiction book she’s just read, and other topics in between. Endlessly fascinating blogging from the wilds of Oklahoma!
SK Waller of Incurable Insomniac is also a fantastic blogger from the wilds of Oklahoma. She’s had a tough go of it through life, but she writes openly and honestly about it all. Hers is a musical soul, and she’s got a lot of songs to sing. I constantly wish for her to have a big success story.
Roger Owen Green of Rambling with Roger is the very picture of intellectual curiosity. He’s one of those folks who engages with the world in such a way as to always have something new and interesting to say. And he blogs every day. That’s amazing in itself, these days in Blogistan!
In truth, I could pass out two dozen of these and still have room for more; most of my favorite bloggers now are the “versatile” types. Single-subject blogs have to be very fascinating or well-written to keep my interest, and I’ve almost completely given up on political blogs entirely (I still have four favorites that I check in on, once or twice a week). I get the sense that blogging is settling into a niche hobby, like all others. But it’s still my hobby! Thanks for all the versatility out there, Blogistan!
