trombonish

I might get in to actual recipes later, but I feel like writing a response to the constant "HOW DID YOU MAKE SO MUCH FOOD given that budget?". It's flattering (especially coming from the board of directors), but I'm not actually magical here.

1. Sourcing
- learn the prices for common foods at grocery stores you frequent. I am now quite familiar withthe main ingredients I used at both Winco and Kroger. Winco is somewhat lower on canned/frozen food, noticeably lower on dairy, dry bulk, and onions, but charges half again as much per pound for potatoes. Since I was making things in bulk, it was frequently worth it to shop at both stores.
- when reasonable, buy the large size - assuming you're going to use it all (and that it's actually cheaper)! The 20 lb bag of rice was was $10, only $2 more than the 10 lb bag of rice. In the rice case, I did expand my ingredients and actually used it all up, but the idea is there. Similarly, I needed 15 lbs of flour for the baking. Since the 20 lb bag cost less than the 10# plus the 5#, I bought it, and will enjoy the leftover flour myself after saving the con some money
- learn what makes sense to buy in which section! Corn comes fresh, frozen, or canned. Since this is all getting cooked together and texture won't matter so much, which way is the cheapest? Also, beans - yes, $0.60/can looks cheap, but that's like a cup and a half of beans. A pound of dry beans costs about a dollar and makes maybe 6 cups of beans. Definitely worth the time to prep.
-Think outside the grocery store. This is especially true for storable bulk comodities, like flour/grains, rice, beans. Since they can be stored dry for a long time, you can buy larger portions if you're going to use it later. I did not have any on hand for this, but I've found a local supplier sselling 25 lb bags of rice, beans, wheatberries, etc, for about $15-20.
- Think outside the grocery store part 2: use what's availible. As it is late july/early august, if you stand still too long, you will find yourself holding zucchini. That goes great in soups or stews! Cabbage is also incredibly cheap right now, and is a great source of fiber and bulk!

2. Methods
- you can get away with a lot more if you make meals with everything mixed together! Most folks won't eat cabbage, but use it to bulk up red beans and rice, and no one even notices. Miss "I hate onions" was a bit alarmed to learn that there were onions in every dish, "but it doesn't taste like onions!" Mixing everything together gives it the flavor of the dish you are aiming at, even if it's similar ingredients
- on that note - vary your flavors and you can use the same ingredients over and over! The spaghetti sauce, red beans and rice, chilli, and chicken choweder, all used an astonishing amount of the same few veggies - cellery, corn, carrots, onion, peas (give or take a couple). But they didn't seem repetitive because they used different flavors - tomato/beef base with herbs, pork/stock based, tomato/beef based with spicy flavors, chicken/cream based. Respectively.
- meats: they don't need to be the feature! This was the hugest cost savings - meats are the most expensive part of the average meal. This is another part where soups/stews/mixed meals come in handy. If I served everyone 2-4 oz of meat on a plate, they would be seriously disapointed. But that same meat as a flavor/protine element in a stew goes a long way.
- also with meats: learn to suplement them. Three of our dinners were based around hamburger and beans, because beans are cheap (and good for you. And if you soak them, it eliminates a lot of the, urm, unpleasant aftereffects). Barley isn't a great source of protine, but it helps make meats go further too (mind, it isn't friendly to those who are gluten intollerant).

That is the advice that occurs to me now!

Judging by the speed at which these are disappearing, this is one of my most successful cooking experiments yet! Pizza is DELICIOUS.



How to make:
Soaked Whole Grain Pizza crust recipe from a fairly interesting home/life blog, mommypotamus (even though we are long way from kids, I find these blogs interesting). Apparently whether or not to soak your grains is one of those internet arguments that can get people all riled up. I am advocating it at least because it makes the dough WAY easier to work with!

Begin the day before
Whisk together
1 Tbls olive oil
1 Tbls honey
2-4 Tbls vinegar (acid medium for soaking - I use 4 because my vinegar is low acidity (4%)... cheap stuff)
1 1/2 cup warm water
Tip: use the same tablespoon for the honey and the oil. Measure the oil FIRST. Then when you measure the honey, it slips right out of the tablespoon!

Add 4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour. Stir to combine. It will be in lumpy particles, not a solid dough mass, and this is ok! It is like that mysterious step in pie making, "cut in til size of small peas" (though this will be like large peas. Or green beans. Whatever). Trust me, if you mush it into a solid dough mass, it makes tomorrow more difficult - I did this the first batch.

Put it someplace warmish for 12-24 hrs - I warm up the oven to 200, then turn it off and put the dough in.

Day of Pizza:
In a cup, whisk together
1 pkg (a smidge less than a tablespoon) dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (not too hot or it will kill the yeastie beasties. Like skin temperature warm) [edit: I originally said 1 cup. This is consistently turning out way too wet]
Let stand for 15 minutes or so

Open your container of flour and get out something to use as a scoop (I use white flour for this part), because soon your hands will be very gloppy.
Pour the activated yeast/water (it should be somewhat foamy, from happyyeast) into the soaked grain bowl. With your hands, smoosh the yeasty water and soaked grain together. It should absorb most of the water, especially as you work with it. Add white flour as necessary to make it cohesive.

Once it is staying in one mass, dump it onto a floured surface, and knead knead knead! Again, white flour to keep it smooth and not too sticky. I find I use about half a cup to a cup through this whole process. The recipes usually say "smooth and elastic" is the goal. I knead usually 8-10 minutes or so. It is somewhat therapeutic.

When you are done with kneading, grease the dough with olive oil all over, and plop it in a bowl. Let rise in a warm place for an hour.

Now prepare the rest of your pizza stuff! Shred cheese, cook meats, cut veggies, whatever. Cook sauce (recipe below). Preheat the oven to 350.

Sauce recipe:
In a saucepan, stir together:
1 can (15-16 oz) tomato sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
garlic powder, onion salt, pepper, or ground fennel to taste.

Bring to simmer, stirring. Turn off the stove so not too much boils away (but leaving it on the burner even off, helps keep it warm).

When the hour is up, your dough will be VERY BIG. I used a rice serving spatula to scoop out lumps about the size of a raquet ball (or a small tennis ball, if you'd rather). It sorta deflates as you do this, that's ok!

Roll out the dough lumps into vaguely circular shapes less than 1/4" thick. Place on cookie sheets sprinkled with cornmeal, or parchment paper. Or be brave and just put them on a cookie sheet (I didn't...). Bake your naked!pizzas for 5-8 minutes.

Remove from oven. I used a measuring cup to deflate the middle, leaving the edges tall, to make a crust.

Top as you wish!
Tip: put sauce, a bit of cheese, your toppings, and then more cheese on top of the toppings. This makes things stay together SO MUCH BETTTER. I had mozzarella (about 1.5 lbs for all my pizzas), semi-frozen onion and bell pepper strips, mushrooms, dried basil-tomatoes, pepperonis, and sausage, in various combinations.

Bake for 25ish minutes more, until cheese is browning especially on the edges.

Ding! Pizzas are done! Repeat for MANY PIZZAS. I made 21. It was a challenge to get a dozen of them squirreled away before being consumed!

I just had one of those irritating internet arguments with a pseudo-friend where neither of us has ~proof~, because the studies haven't been done, but each of us have our own strong opinions. Which happen to disagree. Now, he's entitled to his opinion, and I'm entitled to mine. I'm going to have a reasoned argument over ~here~ with myself, to try and explain my position. And also to walk away from that argument.

Topic: Whole Foods is requiring label on all GM food in it's stores (the US government doesn't require this). I think this is a step in the right direction (though I don't really like Whole Foods). I think consumers should get to know what they're eating. I personally am opposed to GM food (others may disagree). I find it telling that the producing corporations persuaded the government not to require labeling, it seems an indicator that they know what decision most people would make.

His response: Why would people be opposed to genetically modified food?

My reasons:
A very few corporations own most of the food source (and sell a very few varieties).
I think this is not good news, because part of what makes food work is biodiversity. Large scale "efficient" monocultures are what is currently feeding most of America, but they are not the only option. I believe they are the lesser option. To make monocultures work requires huge energy inputs, and right now most of that energy comes from (pretty unarguably) nonrenewable resources. Nonrenewable bugs some people more than others. I think it depends on how far a person perceives we are from the bottom of the barrel.
Besides the energy problem, monoculture also reduces the gene pool. I am going to refrain from getting into this deeply, at the moment (I'd mostly be regurgitating my readings into this entry, and there's going to be enough of that already), but I would just like to point out that, when everything is the SAME, you're reducing the number of tickets you have in the natural lottery of Bad Things. See the Irish, the Potato, and the year 1847.
Finally, I'm not sure I ~want~ profit driven corporations to be the ones controlling my sustenance. What is best for them is not necessarily best for ME. Or a lot of other people. Which leads me to my next opposition:

Those corporations are doing very terrible things to farmers.
Going to stick with two examples:
One: in a very high-profile case, seed company Monsanto sued a farmer for "theft" of their genetic property. He didn't buy it. He actually didn't want it. But his corn cross-pollinated with a neighbor who had their GM corn, so he got it. Monsanto now demands compensation, and he can't sell his (previously non GM) corn to many markets which were previously available to him. I think Mr. Farmer would argue this is an unappreciated thing. I also argue that it brings up containment issues.
Two: On the subject of things which are good for corporations but under-appreciated outside it- one of the GM companies' Favorite Things is making seeds that don't make viable seeds later. Yay! Now the farmer has to buy their product every year if he wants to keep farming! Never mind that seeds making plants to make more seeds is the whole POINT of plants. I really hope this one transmissible plant to plant.

I don't want to eat a potato or corn partially composed of insecticide.
Yes the insecticide is "generally regarded as safe". No, there has never been proof that it is bad for you. I just say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and I am choosing to not eat it.

His counterarguments (and my non-replied replies, instead I came to rant here):
Genetically modified food has saved hundreds of millions from starvation
This is, I think, one of the few potentials of GM food. I have no idea of the accuracy of the number, but yes, I know there are efforts to install genetically modified foods in impoverished countries to better withstand drought, provide better nutrition, etc. But again, in a battle between nature smarts vs. human smarts, and I would argue for a system that the locals could maintain on their own over one that requires inputs from a human's limited understanding very far away. If this were all the GM companies were up to, I would be more tolerant, but of course charity work is less profitable, and these ~are~ profit driven organizations. Very little of their work is in this direction.

You make it sound like the plant is secreting some sort of hazardous chemical. I doubt that's what it does.
I don't know the mechanism, I don't know what constitutes "chemical" (can there be natural chemicals?), and I don't know if it's hazardous. As mentioned, there is a lack of data. I know that previously, a potato I might eat did not kill bugs. And now it does. I would like to be able to choose to not eat that potato.

Show me the research that shows what effects the consumption of GM foods has on a person. There is no conclusive research. However, there is a few million years of research showing that non-GM foods keep us alive very well, thank you very much (with the possible exception of the modern western diet). I think I will default to the old fashioned kind of food and decline to be the guinea pig in that experiment.

"I also distrust the movement to eat only organic, natural, gluten-free, unprocessed, unbleached, sea salted, cage-free, low carb, koom-bai-yah tofu madness."
So, disagreeing with my lifestyle is what got my back up. Mind, I'm not into tofu or sea salt, and I love carbs too much to swear them off (I also wish he wouldn't include gluten-free in there, it has nothing to do with the rest). I certainly don't mind that he chooses to not follow that method. But the "distrust" bugs me. Where is the risk?

So, as this week we actually started eating contents of the pantry, instead of fresh veggies and ADDING things to the pantry... I declare it Start of Winter (and Pantry season)


( Food in the Pantry )

So the woggy and I have been meaning for a while to buy a bulk cow-portion, and have it in our freezer. Since the freezer finally happened this weekend, the cow buying happened today!

It is amazing how fast people want to bring things to your house when you are buying it from them, in both cases, I went, "Hi I'd like to talk to you about obtaining ____", and in both cases they said, "sure! can I deliver it this afternoon?"

What 232 lbs of meat looks like in our living room (considering the 100 lbs ground beef is still in the two boxes on the right):



Breakdown coming after I feed the EVERY YOWLING YOWLYBUTTS.


Ok, Breakdown list:
6 chuck roast
2 rump roast
2 cross rib roast
2 brisket (looks like a flat roast)
6 ribeye steaks
8 top sirloin steaks
4 big, 2 little sirloin tip steaks
6 top round steaks
2 back rib sections (4 ribs)
4 short rib sections (2 ribs)
2 skirt steak
2 blade meat
2 flat iron steak
2 flank steak
2 eye round (roast?)
2 hanging tender
2 tri tip
2 shoulder tender
8 beef tenderloin
8 new york strip steak
4 packages "beef for kabobs"
6 packages "beef for stew"
6 "Osso Bucca style" beef sliced shank

Plus 2 boxes (about 100-1lb packages) ground beef

I took pictures of all the different kinds, but to be honest they look like a lot of packages, red blobs, and labels.

I am SO EXCITED to make all the food. Over the next year. And JERKY.

And yes, it all fit in the new chest freezer (with room to spare. But maybe not room for a herd of chickens, which I was also debating buying, but then we bought the half instead of the quarter beef).

TWO experiments in food today. It was a good day.

Dinner was Thai Pasta Salad, adapted from owlhaven.net, adapted from Casual Kitchen
(I have spent an unreasonable amount of time this weekend on cooking/kitchen/food/living websites full of housewife/mom types, some of it is really good/interesting, some of it makes me go arg)

Original recipe: Thai Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1 lb box of dried linguine
• 1 red or green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 4 cups finely chopped green cabbage
• 2 carrots, cut julienne-style
• 1 zucchini, cut julienne-style
• 1 white or yellow onion, finely diced
• sesame seeds, optional

Directions:
1) Season the chicken pieces with cayenne and/or black pepper. Heat oil in a large non-stick pan and then sear the chicken on high heat for a few minutes. Cook it through, but try not to overcook. Set aside.
2) While chicken cooks, mix up ingredients for the dressing, below. Add 1/4 cup of the dressing mixture to the cooked chicken and stir to evenly coat chicken. Let sit a few minutes, to allow the dressing and chicken flavors to combine.

Dressing Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce (optional)
3) Cook linguine according to directions. While water is boiling/pasta is cooking, chop all the veggies. Combine pasta with the chopped veggies and the rest of the dressing mixture. Add the chicken and stir well. Top with sesame seeds if desired. Can be served warm or cool.

Content Variations:
- Well, originally I was going to make this as I need another cabbage recipe besides coleslaw (which is good, but... once you add that much mayonaise to something, it loses any semblance of "healthy"). Starting with cold noodles might have helped (I started dinner last night about 10, got the noodles done, and decided maybe we didn't really need dinner). Today I went to the vegetable drawer... and discovered my cabbage was moldy. Ick, plus I hate wasting food. Oh well. I had some rainbow chard I'd been wanting to make something interesting with. Sliced it into strips, and it tastes just fine.
- I only had half a pound of diced chicken, so it was a half the suggested amount, would aim for a full pound next time.
- I dislike the taste of raw zucchini, so even though I have a foot-and-a-half zucchini-club in the fridge, I left out the zucchini.
- And then I guess I was just feeling lazy, because I left out the carrots too (juliening is hard! my carrots are old and crusty (but still good for stew)! plus, laziness)
- food processor-ed the onion, and the garlic cloves in the sauce recipe, added straight to pot
- Next time I'll try some other kind of pasta, the spagetti is basically being bulk, not really interesting to the recipe.

Sauce Variations:
- The lemon juice is surprisingly good. I added sesame oil instead of the sesame seeds, added a nice taste. Also a scosh of white wine vinegar.
- Didn't have red pepper flakes, so I put in some sort of pureed red pepper paste. ~may~ have gone overboard on the pepper paste. I am a spice wuss, but it was on the "barely edible" end of my spice tolerance.
- I had a yummy parsley/cilantro dried mix from the foodbox, that worked well instead of fresh cilantro (I'm not nuts about cilantro anyways - too peppery)
- Added almond bits on top, for texture

B+, would nom again

Long story still kinda long, my Domino kitty has narcotic painkillers for the next week. Aparently she is prone to stress induced sicknesses, because she's developed a new one (well, stress combined with us leaving her for 3 days and she refusing to drink out of the two water bowls that weren't her favorite). At the risk of being TMI about my cat, wonky body chemistry and too little water lead to urine precipitates that crystalize inside the kitty. Ow. So, painkillers while she works everything out, and a prescription food to fix the chemical balance.

Anyhow, purpose of long explanation is so I can giggle at someone about my drugged cat (woggy's out of town for a while, so I can't share with him)

Me: "Domino, do you want to come upstairs with me?"
Domino: "Nah, I'm good"
Me: "Dom, you're mushed with your head in a corner half way up the stairs"
D: "No, I'm good! See! Floor on 3 sides!"
/me scoops up kitty, sets her on the bed
D: "ooooh comfy!"
Me: "now, lets give you a brushing, since you are loopy as all get out and also don't bathe when you're drugged, aparently"
D: "No brushing! I am a cat! I have perfect grooming habits! Ooooohhh yes that prickly petting you're doing, more of that please.
/me brushes
/dom rolls
/dom rolls more
/dom rolls off the bed
*whomp*
D: "whadaya know! The bed moved! Help me back up there would you?"
/me lifts the kitty back on the bed
D: "you know what we need? An adventure! I'm going to go find an adventure!"
/dom leaps back off the bed and trots off

It is what it sounds like. A delicious use of squashes, amongst other things.

Link to cooks.com recipe

My edited recipe:

1 lb. fusilli (corkscrew) (they suggest tri-color, I only found green ones...)
1/2 c. olive oil
2 green onions, thinly sliced (farmer's market green onions are BIG)
1 red sweet pepper, finely chopped
4 carrots, peeled & coarsely shredded
1 yellow crookneck squash, coarsely chopped (no idea how they got 3 squashes into this, maybe their squashes were MUCH SMALLER than mine, which were about 3 lbs EACH)
1 lb. fresh broccoli florets (broccoli in October? well I got lucky, and found a ziplock of it at the farmer's market, it worked!)
1 tbsp. dried chives
2 tbls. dried basil
1 c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 c. balsamic vinegar (I used a delicious "balsamic vinegarette", it was delicious, don't know if that's the same thing)
2-3 cloves garlic (1 clove elephant garlic >> 3 standard garlic cloves >.> but elephant garlic is AWESOME), minced
1 tsp. granulated sugar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
red (cayenne) pepper

+ 6oz cubed ham to make it a meal! (or... if not a meat person, it could be a meal already)

1. Cook pasta al dente, drain and toss in a large bowl with 1/4 cup olive oil

1b. steam veggies. my cheater-steamer way: put veggies in a BIG microwave tupperware bowl. add some water (about 2 cups?). put a flat microwaveable plate over it, hold the tuperware and plate together, and flip over. most of the water should stay inside with the veggies. microwave for 4ish minutes, viola, steamed veggies!

2. stir veggies, chives, basil, Parmesan cheese, and ham into pasta

3. Whisk together vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt, pepper and red pepper to taste. Continue to whisk while slowly dribbling in the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil. toss with pasta

4. they suggest chilling overnight or at least 2 hrs - I find this salad is good either warm or cold, so eat however you like! adding a little more Parmesan on top is yummy

The Sunday after the farmer's market adventure (that, and Eggs in a Nest were last Saturday), I indulged in one of my favorite hobbies, bread baking. Depending on how my bread experiments go, I hope to be making the weekly bread for us (I was rather dismayed at how much sugar goes into store-bought bread).

Bread Recipe (Better Homes and Gardens, though the same as about any bread recipe)

1. Combine 1 tablespoon yeast with 2.5 cups flour in a large mixing bowl
2. In a small saucepan, heat 2.25 cups milk with 2 tablespoons sugar (honey) and 1 teaspoon salt til warm (not yet bubbling, but hot to the touch - about 120 deg.) If it bubbles and foams let it cool before adding to the yeast/flour, or you'll kill the yeast!
3. Stir together milk mix with flour mix it should still be liquidy, like cake mix)
4. Stir vigorously for 3-4 minutes! I usually skimp on the stirring/working steps, but if you do your bread won't be as chewy and delicious! Stirring makes the gluten do its thing.
5. Stir in as much flour as you can
6. Dump on floured counter, knead for about 8 minutes adding more flour as you go (by the time you're done, this bread should use a total of 5-6 cups of flour). Don't skimp on that kneading time even if you're done with flour! Work that gluten!
7. Cover with a towel, let rise in a warm place for about an hour (I put mine in the oven set to "warm")
8. Punch down, divide in two, shape into loaves, let rest for 10 minutes (no, I don't know why it needs to "rest")
9. If you're cooking in loaf pans, put the loaves in the pans. Put back in the warm oven to rise. I cooked my loaves on a pizza stone (basically a big ceramic tile), so I just set them on the pizza stone and set that in the "warm" oven. Cover, rise for another 40 minutes
10. After rising, bake at 350 for about 50 minutes (take off the towel first!)

Viola! Bread!

First time attempting bread without loaf pans. I was hoping it would allow the bread more freedom to expand (when I bake in the loaf pans, it can only expand UP, and it usually doesn't even do that, it just gets crusty on the top and very dense inside due to crusty on the top not letting it expand!). Indeed, they grew OUT and a little bit UP but mostly out. So they were fat, not very tall loaves. I think I still need to work on them not getting so crusty hard on the outside so they can expand even more - next time I'll try cooking in a slightly cooler oven, perhaps. Hooray experiments!

So,
Asked Leanna about an Eco Pass. She said our company doesn't do those (which I think is kinda dumb, as we are in the HEART of downtown. Definitely asking about an eco-pass during my interview if I ever interview downtown again.)
CU summer bus passes are not buyable unless you're an enrolled student in the fall. I'm asking, but I'm pretty sure CAETE doesn't count either as a summer class, even though I'm paying $2000 for it.
So I need to sit down and figure out if it's worth it to pay the $170/month for a bus pass (which works out to $7.80/work day, the cheapest option, or I can buy smaller blocks for more), or if it's cheaper to drive and park... *grumbles*

But I actually did EVERYTHING on my to-do list yesterday! (and this morning)

Today:
1. Work
2. Email EMEN coordinator, make SURE I will have my certificate at completion of this class, BEFORE I pay $2000.
3. Fill in paperwork (if the CAETE people get back to me)
4. Job Hunt Work: Update my resume
5. Job Hunt Work: Help Woggy with his resume
6. Sewing: Start Woggy's Starfleet pants.