...is not at all interested in worms: I swept the floor first thing this morning. Between the living and the dead, I put a dozen millipedes in the trash. With intentions to get the floor mopped last weekend, I waited so long after sweeping a week ago, I had to do it again today. But Yes, It is Clean Enough to Eat On.
I have to go into pick up a man I have never met, and his wife, to get him to an appointment at a doctor's office this morning. It is part of the program I have volunteered for with the American Cancer Society where individuals provide transportation to patients who need assistance with travel. All the other people I have been a driver for were going to the local center for treatment. The name of the facility is the John B. Amos Cancer Center, so it is commonly known by the acronym of Jbacc (Jay-back). I am assuming the man today has a problem with his unmentionables as the appointment is at the Urologist's office.
I expect to devote about an hour or so of my time to this, but have never had a 'rider' go along. It should be interesting. I am wondering how 'chatty' she will be, but expect she will go in with him to the appointment, so I am taking my book while I sit and wait.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
one hundred o'clock...
... was what happened when I woke up in the middle of the night. Naturally I had no idea what time it was, so when I looked at the digital clock I can see on a table at the foot of the bed, the green numbers said it was one hundred. I was so profoundly confused, and could not figure out what that meant. I had never known it to be one hundred o'clock before and was completely baffled as to what I was supposed to be doing or thinking as a result of it being such an unusual time.
Then of course, I figured out what I was really looking at was 1:00 a.m. And now I feel really doofus. There is no telling how many times in my life I have looked at a clock, not necessarily digital, when the minute hand was perfectly on the 12. Making the time precisely on the hour. Not so bad on a clock with numerals and hands that inch around the dial endlessly.
But for whatever reason, I was thoroughly perplexed by the clock telling me it was one hundred. Possibly having something to do with my poor eyesight, and not having vision clear enough to see the dots between the numeral one and the two zeros. I guess it could have just as easily had me believing the time was two hundred or four hundred, but there I was trying to decide what to do about it being one hundred o'clock. Thoroughly confused, and now feeling like a total dimwit.
Then of course, I figured out what I was really looking at was 1:00 a.m. And now I feel really doofus. There is no telling how many times in my life I have looked at a clock, not necessarily digital, when the minute hand was perfectly on the 12. Making the time precisely on the hour. Not so bad on a clock with numerals and hands that inch around the dial endlessly.
But for whatever reason, I was thoroughly perplexed by the clock telling me it was one hundred. Possibly having something to do with my poor eyesight, and not having vision clear enough to see the dots between the numeral one and the two zeros. I guess it could have just as easily had me believing the time was two hundred or four hundred, but there I was trying to decide what to do about it being one hundred o'clock. Thoroughly confused, and now feeling like a total dimwit.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
cookin' at work...
...over the weekend when there was a 'steak fest' on the schedule in addition to the usual recipe to be prepared and served numerous times. There was nothing remarkable about the steaks, per se, but there were a couple of different dipping sauces to accompany the meat. The recipe calls for a New York strip - and you know if you start with a good tasty tender cut of beef, it's pretty difficult to mess it up.
Did you know that the meat department guys love to be helpful? They will prep. your fresh meats to your specifications! What ever you ask, they will attempt to do. If you want to buy the pork loin and have them cut it in half, so you don't have more than a meal, they will package so you can put 1/2 in the freezer. If you want your chicken breasts packaged separately for single servings, they will do that. If you want your steak trimmed off fat before you get it home, they will do that. I am forever taking meats back there to have the icky stuff trimmed before I start my prep and cooking. Saves me time, and effort of trimming off the inedible parts after it is cooked and I am ready to serve.
You coat the steak with a combination of chili powder, brown sugar and garlic salt, so by the time you have cooked it for about eight minutes in the skillet, it has a crusty covering due to the sugar you rubbed in before you put it in the pan.
The dipping sauce recipes:
1/2 cup salsa verde plus 1/4 cup prepared guacamole
1 cup sweet and spicy barbeque sauce plus 2 Tbs. chipotle pepper sauce.
I would have probably liked the green one, but did not try either as I did not have anything to dip, other than my finger, and that would not have gone over very well with management.
After four hours of that, I went back to the pork roast recipe over and over that I had cooked so many times I had it memorized.
Did you know that the meat department guys love to be helpful? They will prep. your fresh meats to your specifications! What ever you ask, they will attempt to do. If you want to buy the pork loin and have them cut it in half, so you don't have more than a meal, they will package so you can put 1/2 in the freezer. If you want your chicken breasts packaged separately for single servings, they will do that. If you want your steak trimmed off fat before you get it home, they will do that. I am forever taking meats back there to have the icky stuff trimmed before I start my prep and cooking. Saves me time, and effort of trimming off the inedible parts after it is cooked and I am ready to serve.
You coat the steak with a combination of chili powder, brown sugar and garlic salt, so by the time you have cooked it for about eight minutes in the skillet, it has a crusty covering due to the sugar you rubbed in before you put it in the pan.
The dipping sauce recipes:
1/2 cup salsa verde plus 1/4 cup prepared guacamole
1 cup sweet and spicy barbeque sauce plus 2 Tbs. chipotle pepper sauce.
I would have probably liked the green one, but did not try either as I did not have anything to dip, other than my finger, and that would not have gone over very well with management.
After four hours of that, I went back to the pork roast recipe over and over that I had cooked so many times I had it memorized.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
a book I recently read...
...though there are no actual trains involved, gives you the feeling of witnessing a train wreck. You know how you hear people talking about things that you don't want to actually look at, but they are so mesmerising in a perverse way that you find you can't Not Look? This book was like that. You knew well in advance, that it would come to a very bad end, but you keep turning pages, with the dim, faint hope that there will be some divine intervention. The predictable, tragic end you expect will not actually come to pass...
"In the Kingdom of Ice" by Hampton Sides. He has published other books, and written articles found in Outside magazine. I'd read a reference to this one, and had it on my list of things I thought I might enjoy reading. I happened upon it recently on the shelves and brought it home. I started it, but it was such a horrific tale of woe, I continually had to put it down. More than you ever wanted to know about early Arctic exploration. You can imagine with no maps or accurate info., they just went dashing off into the unknown - you know the part where you see written: 'there be dragons here' on old, incomplete maps, because no one had actually been and survived to report.
There was a lot of material available for research: journals, diaries, personal correspondence, news articles. It was well written, with plenty of factual history. But still a harrowing tale of lead poisoning, frostbitten extremities, starvation, death by freezing, sinking into the freezing water of the north Pacific without hope of rescue. Adrift in sub-freezing temperatures in small, open, unprotected row boats with insufficient food, water and clothing, in a winter storm. Caught in pack ice for months on end with no one on the planet knowing where they were or if they were still alive. Walking across Siberian marshland with no idea where they were going, or food to provide the energy to travel. But remarkably some did manage to find help, and eventually made it back to the US, bringing the journals and their stories of survival.
I finished it, and though it is pretty gruesome, it is also fascinating. How determined they were to complete their expedition and careful in recording the events as they occurred. They knew about scurvy, and took canned vegetables to prevent health problems - then got lead poisoning from the cans! Melting ice to prevent dehydration, then getting sick from the high salt content of the water.
Desperate enough to boil their shoes to get the nutrition for staying alive, but getting frostbite and losing toes and feet from walking on snow and ice.
Don't read it in the winter, especially if you are some place where there is ice and snow.
"In the Kingdom of Ice" by Hampton Sides. He has published other books, and written articles found in Outside magazine. I'd read a reference to this one, and had it on my list of things I thought I might enjoy reading. I happened upon it recently on the shelves and brought it home. I started it, but it was such a horrific tale of woe, I continually had to put it down. More than you ever wanted to know about early Arctic exploration. You can imagine with no maps or accurate info., they just went dashing off into the unknown - you know the part where you see written: 'there be dragons here' on old, incomplete maps, because no one had actually been and survived to report.
There was a lot of material available for research: journals, diaries, personal correspondence, news articles. It was well written, with plenty of factual history. But still a harrowing tale of lead poisoning, frostbitten extremities, starvation, death by freezing, sinking into the freezing water of the north Pacific without hope of rescue. Adrift in sub-freezing temperatures in small, open, unprotected row boats with insufficient food, water and clothing, in a winter storm. Caught in pack ice for months on end with no one on the planet knowing where they were or if they were still alive. Walking across Siberian marshland with no idea where they were going, or food to provide the energy to travel. But remarkably some did manage to find help, and eventually made it back to the US, bringing the journals and their stories of survival.
I finished it, and though it is pretty gruesome, it is also fascinating. How determined they were to complete their expedition and careful in recording the events as they occurred. They knew about scurvy, and took canned vegetables to prevent health problems - then got lead poisoning from the cans! Melting ice to prevent dehydration, then getting sick from the high salt content of the water.
Desperate enough to boil their shoes to get the nutrition for staying alive, but getting frostbite and losing toes and feet from walking on snow and ice.
Don't read it in the winter, especially if you are some place where there is ice and snow.
more things on that list...
... are pretty commonly enjoyed, but now that I can gracefully decline, I choose to not eat stuff like:
chocolate cake. I don't like it and hope I am polite when it is offered, and will decline gracefully. I could put it in my mouth, but really don't want to waste calories on something I don't care for. Oddly enough, I tell anyone who will listen that I think the bakery located in my workplace makes the best wedding cakes I have ever eaten - flavor and texture wise - if I never ate another bite of chocolate cake it would be too soon.
Buttercream icing. I worked part time in the bakery some years ago, spending part of my week in the floral dept., and three days a week in the bakery, combining the time in the two to create a full time job. When I watched the baker make a huge vat of buttercream I discovered what goes in it, and immediately quit eating it. The bowl they use in the big commercial mixer must hold fifty gallons. You start with a big ten pound block of buttercream 'base', that is shipped from the warehouse frozen. Let it soften to room temperature, and add ten pounds of butter. You will notice that ten and ten equal twenty, so you are looking at twenty pounds of fat. Then you beat it and beat it and beat it some more. To incorporate enough air to make it fluffy so it almost fills that fifty gallon stainless steel bowl. But it is still all fat, though it gets quite fluffy. Similar in texture to whipped topping - and about the same amount of nutrition.
Did I say 'oreos'? I have eaten a lot of them, but never liked them. Not even dunked.
chocolate cake. I don't like it and hope I am polite when it is offered, and will decline gracefully. I could put it in my mouth, but really don't want to waste calories on something I don't care for. Oddly enough, I tell anyone who will listen that I think the bakery located in my workplace makes the best wedding cakes I have ever eaten - flavor and texture wise - if I never ate another bite of chocolate cake it would be too soon.
Buttercream icing. I worked part time in the bakery some years ago, spending part of my week in the floral dept., and three days a week in the bakery, combining the time in the two to create a full time job. When I watched the baker make a huge vat of buttercream I discovered what goes in it, and immediately quit eating it. The bowl they use in the big commercial mixer must hold fifty gallons. You start with a big ten pound block of buttercream 'base', that is shipped from the warehouse frozen. Let it soften to room temperature, and add ten pounds of butter. You will notice that ten and ten equal twenty, so you are looking at twenty pounds of fat. Then you beat it and beat it and beat it some more. To incorporate enough air to make it fluffy so it almost fills that fifty gallon stainless steel bowl. But it is still all fat, though it gets quite fluffy. Similar in texture to whipped topping - and about the same amount of nutrition.
Did I say 'oreos'? I have eaten a lot of them, but never liked them. Not even dunked.
Yay! pie success....
...from a different cookbook. After the disappointing result a week ago, I was determined that I could and would make a successful 'chess pie'. In doing so, and researching several of the cookbooks I have on my pantry shelf, I discover the reason it is named that is the earlier versions would have the cook making a woven pastry top that looked like a chess board. Aha!
This recipe, the one that I made today after having to make a trip to the store for butter since I used all I had in the pie fail recently, came from a big thick paperback: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. The book is the size, length and width of a Reader's Digest, but is as thick as a dictionary. Honestly. It has 1231 pages. I can imagine it being the only cook book you would ever need as a reference.
Chess Pie
I started with a frozen pastry crust/shell, buying a two pack at the grocery, knowing I wanted to make one to take to a pot-luck dinner, and leave one at home.
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs. cornmeal
1 Tbs. cider vinegar
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
1 Tbs. vanilla
heavy cream, whipped, as topping, if desired
Prick pie crust all over with fork. Bake in preheated oven till barely browned. Mix ingredients together, except cream. Bake at 350 for 45 min. Serve warm or room temp. I did not attempt to 'double' when mixing ingredients, but made it twice to make two pies, and cooked at the same time.
I found it got too brown around edges as a result of cooking before adding filling, so you will want to cover the edges with foil at some point to keep the crust from getting too dark. But it was really good, as well as pretty.
So I am satisfied, and can quit trying, now that I have found a recipe that 'works'. I knew I remembered seeing recipes that included a spoonful of cornmeal, not sure why, but this was good, and looks like I think a chess pie should. Full disclosure: I used two tablespoons of self-rising cornmeal that would have had a leavening in it - just what I had on hand - I am really bad about tinkering with a recipe, or just adding a 'glug' without actually measuring.
This recipe, the one that I made today after having to make a trip to the store for butter since I used all I had in the pie fail recently, came from a big thick paperback: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. The book is the size, length and width of a Reader's Digest, but is as thick as a dictionary. Honestly. It has 1231 pages. I can imagine it being the only cook book you would ever need as a reference.
Chess Pie
I started with a frozen pastry crust/shell, buying a two pack at the grocery, knowing I wanted to make one to take to a pot-luck dinner, and leave one at home.
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs. cornmeal
1 Tbs. cider vinegar
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
1 Tbs. vanilla
heavy cream, whipped, as topping, if desired
Prick pie crust all over with fork. Bake in preheated oven till barely browned. Mix ingredients together, except cream. Bake at 350 for 45 min. Serve warm or room temp. I did not attempt to 'double' when mixing ingredients, but made it twice to make two pies, and cooked at the same time.
I found it got too brown around edges as a result of cooking before adding filling, so you will want to cover the edges with foil at some point to keep the crust from getting too dark. But it was really good, as well as pretty.
So I am satisfied, and can quit trying, now that I have found a recipe that 'works'. I knew I remembered seeing recipes that included a spoonful of cornmeal, not sure why, but this was good, and looks like I think a chess pie should. Full disclosure: I used two tablespoons of self-rising cornmeal that would have had a leavening in it - just what I had on hand - I am really bad about tinkering with a recipe, or just adding a 'glug' without actually measuring.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
items on my urpy food list...
...of things I hope I never accidently put in my mouth again will probably surprise you, as some are things that are commonly found to delight one's taste buds. But I have gotten to the point in my life that, finally, after all these years, there is no reason to eat things I do not like. Not even to please other people, or to be a button busting member of the Clean Plate Club.
In addition to not caring if I never eat another chocolate chip cookie (unless someone should offer it in the form of ice cream - also fond of moose track or there is any un-cooked dough sitting around in the fridge), there are other things I can politely decline. I have never cared for coconut, in any form. Cake nor cookies, or that traditional holiday treat: ambrosia with fresh citrus fruit slices. Or, oh horrors: macaroons! I have definitely eaten my share as a child when I knew I should use my manners and not decline but have honestly never liked it.
I have probably eaten hundreds of boxes of Cracker Jacks. I guess because it was sweet, and a treat. Plus there was guaranteed to be something wonderful in the bottom of the box. It's I find just thinking about it to be: nasty, messy, sticky, 'way too sugar-y, and the prizes are sadly worthless junk.
Marshmallows. Not even in s'mores. Not even charred in the ashes of the campfire. I will gladly cook one for anyone who wants it, but I do not want to even think of putting one in my mouth. Too sweet, especially when sandwiched in between Hershey bar and graham cracker, all gooey and stuck together.
There are others - but it is late and I am tired after working on my feets for ten hours today, so good night.
In addition to not caring if I never eat another chocolate chip cookie (unless someone should offer it in the form of ice cream - also fond of moose track or there is any un-cooked dough sitting around in the fridge), there are other things I can politely decline. I have never cared for coconut, in any form. Cake nor cookies, or that traditional holiday treat: ambrosia with fresh citrus fruit slices. Or, oh horrors: macaroons! I have definitely eaten my share as a child when I knew I should use my manners and not decline but have honestly never liked it.
I have probably eaten hundreds of boxes of Cracker Jacks. I guess because it was sweet, and a treat. Plus there was guaranteed to be something wonderful in the bottom of the box. It's I find just thinking about it to be: nasty, messy, sticky, 'way too sugar-y, and the prizes are sadly worthless junk.
Marshmallows. Not even in s'mores. Not even charred in the ashes of the campfire. I will gladly cook one for anyone who wants it, but I do not want to even think of putting one in my mouth. Too sweet, especially when sandwiched in between Hershey bar and graham cracker, all gooey and stuck together.
There are others - but it is late and I am tired after working on my feets for ten hours today, so good night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)