Tinfoil Chef

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After spending some time reading through a host of goodies of all kinds I’d have to say that not only does The Pioneer Woman Cook, but she’s also got a way with words that’s really refreshingly “just folks” and often funny to boot.

She also uses a lot of pictures to illustrate every step of a recipe, something I’d like to do but up until recently haven’t had access to a camera with enough system memory to take a decent number of sufficiently high resolution pics that still look good when you crop out everything but the star of the food show.

A great example is a recipe my wife found there for Biscuits and Gravy. This down home favorite is one that has eluded many an otherwise good cook for a long time in spite of the fact that it’s actually pretty simple (sometimes simple isn’t enough is it?).

She takes the whole thing step by step with a picture or two for each one. I honestly believe that most, if not all, of the people who have difficulty with making a basic white gravy would do a lot better after reading that recipe. It’s definitely a site I’ll be revisiting as there’s a bunch of great looking dishes that my wife and I would like to try.

Btw- The only changes I’d make with the Biscuits and Gravy would be to crumble the sausage into the gravy and use good old fashioned homemade cat-head biscuits to host generous ladles of the sausage gravy.

Technorati Tags: biscuits and gravy, easy directions, pictures, biscuits, gravy, recipes, cooking blogs

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Sometime back I ran across a page, probably via StumbleUpon, that had an interesting variation on the concept of the garden. I only wish that I had bookmarked it or could find it again. Instead of doing something ordinary like plant things in his yard or a window box, this guy decided that his garden had to be where he could keep an eye on it… or maybe he didn’t have any other place to put it.

Anyway. He got one of those big plastic car covers and put it on his car. Then he cut out pieces of it for the windows and made other cuts so that the doors, hood, trunk and gas cap could all open. That’s when he got out the glue and glued the thing to the car.

Once that was set he applied another layer of glue to the outside of the car cover and packed it with topsoil. Along the sides of the car he had grass planted and on the roof, hood, fenders and trunk he had various vegetables planted. Instead of washing his car he would have to water and weed it. He also had to make sure that he didn’t grow anything that needed a lot of depth or would get very tall.

I know this sounds like one of those “yeah, right.” kinda things but it was there, complete with pictures of the “greenest” Towncar anybody’s ever driven.

If anyone happens to run across the site please let me know the url.

Technorati Tags: vegetables, gardening, green, green towncar, unusual garden

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Every once in a while I like to take a “normal” recipe and try to see what changes can be made to it that will either improve it or just make it different. My wife sent me this video that I think does a great job of showing how somebody really did a major job of changing the basic spaghetti recipe. I can honestly say that I’ve never tried making it this way.

Technorati Tags: spaghetti, video, cooking video

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Not too long ago in what, to us, would be considered a parallel universe. A race of aliens visited the Earth and spent a lot of time studying the planet it’s people and most importantly, the foodstuffs they ate. Finally, they found what they had been searching for: Cheese.

They desperatley needed it because strangely enough, it was an important reactant in their stardrive system and their ship’s systems had been damaged and were no longer able to synthesize this most important fuel component. They were more than a little relieved when their science officer reported that on the planet below there was a more than plentiful supply of many varieties of cheese.

Captain Cheddar, the head cheese, ordered landing parties to explore and locate a cheese for their fuel supply. Mr. Parmigiani, not the cheese, was on the party that discovered that Parmigiano-Reggiano was the ideal match for their cheese fueled stardrive.

The order quickly went out and fuel gathering parties were sent down to collect what would ammount to the entire world’s supply of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and refuel the ship as Mr. Parmigiani watches over the process to insure none is missed.

Meanwhile, back on the alter-Earth, cheese lovers everywhere had varying reactions. Some decided that it didn’t matter to them so long as they could still have their Cheddar, Swiss, Monterrey Jack and so on. Others didn’t like that any cheese would be completely unavailable for the years it would take to produce a new supply.

The most militant of these was the group that revered Parmigiano-Reggiano above all cheeses. They mounted first a defensive measure, guarding as many supplies of their beloved cheese as they could. They followed this with an attack that was intended to recover as much of the stolen cheese as possible.

This single battle over a ship needing an emergency refueling eventually escalated into a huge conflict on a galactic scale. The chronicles of which were eventually written in a twelve volume set of books known collectively as “Cheese Wars”, six of which were used as the basis for an immensely popular series of movies.

Technorati Tags: humor, weird, aliens, fuel, war, cheese

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It’s interesting some of the ways that food is used other than as something to eat. I was looking around at some of them for the heck of it and saw a load of ways in which foods are used as part of a beauty regimen. I can’t honestly say if any of them qualify as the best wrinkle cream but it is interesting just the same to see the extremes that people will go to avoid looking their age.

Here’s just one example of a home made anti-wrinkle treatment that I ran across in my surfing. Note, I make zero claims as to it’s effectiveness since I really don’t know anything about that sort of thing and why this or that works. Although in one case I suspect that the effect is derived from enjoying the silliness of smearing smashed banana all over your face.

Beat the white from one egg, mix in 2 tablespoons of Cucumber juice, a teaspoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon of Rum or Brandy and a teaspoon of Sodium Benzoate

Keep the mixture refrigerated and apply it as needed.

Technorati Tags: recipe, beauty treatment, anti-wrinkle cream, anti wrinkle recipe, beauty aids, wrinkle

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Birthdays are one of those family celebration things where you know ahead of time that there’s going to be at the very least a cake, loaded down with frosting & goodies. However when three birthdays happen at once, complete with a cake and several cupcakes for each person at the same time, you almost want to arrive packing a toothbrush & toothpaste, some mouthwash and some acne treatment.

That was kinda how it felt in our family recently. Mind you, the birthday celebrations themselves were great. We’d had a much worse time than usual getting schedules coordinated and ended up celebrating three birthdays at once that ordinarily would have been spread out over a couple of months.

The big day finally arrives and everybody is in one place at the same time, gifts are first stacked up and then we made the usual big deal about opening them. (It’s only right really, a person deserves to be special on their birthday, even if it is celebrated late.) Then sometime afterward, out comes the cake.

There were one for each birthday being celebrated. My wife’s was chocolate, my brother’s was lemon and my mother in-law’s was red velvet. Each cake was also accompanied by several cupcakes that were the same kind as the cakes.

It’s funny actually, time was I used to be known as something of a sugar fiend, anxiously scarfing up anything loaded with sugar and icing. I still love it but now there’s times when it makes my teeth ache or that I spend an hour or more getting the super sweet taste out of my mouth.

Be that as it may, I still wouldn’t have it any other way. Even when three (or more!?!?) birthdays get packed into one day.

Technorati Tags: celebration, birthday cake, sugar, sweets, birthday, cupcake

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Anyone that knows me will quickly agree when I say that my tastes are not always what you’d call “mainstream”. It’s not that I actually like genuinely nasty things, however some of the concoctions I’ve come up with over the years has left more than one family member shaking their heads in … um … wonder. Yeah, wonder.

This little breakfast treat is something I came up with a few years ago because I thought the taste combinations would be interesting and I was right. However few have dared to give it try. That’s ok I say, more for me. “You can have it!” they declare in unison.

Ok, enough of the drama, now to unveil a little gem I call the “Tunafish Omelete“.

It’s pretty much a normal (for us) made in the microwave oven style omelet. I like to start out by dicing some onion (about half to a quarter of a medium small onion per serving you’re going to make) and saute that in some olive oil with a bit of diced green pepper.

As the onions begin to caramelize, dice up about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of whatever kind of mushroom you like. I’m partial to Portabella when we have them but the basic white button mushrooms are great too. Once this is done crack an egg into a microwave safe bowl, add a dash of milk and the onion, mushroom & green pepper mixture. Add in some shredded cheddar cheese or grated parmesan cheese.

Now comes the part that has made family members shudder and go “Ugh!”. Open a can of tuna packed in water and pour off the water. Take about half a can or so, give it a rough chop to break up the pieces and add this to the bowl. Stir this vigorously to mix everything up and work some air into the egg mixture.

Put it into microwave with a loose cover on it and cook on high for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 minutes. When it’s done all of the egg should be cooked through with no raw spots. I like to add some cheese to the top and give it another 30 seconds in the microwave and then let it sit for a moment with a cover on it for the cheese to melt.

I like to have this with a variety of condiments on it ranging from ketchup to spicy brown mustard or horseradish sauce. I’ve even used the sauce packets from Taco Bell or Arby’s.

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Remember Space Food Sticks? They were all the rage back around ‘70 - ‘73 or so. I’ve no idea what they actually had in them and right now I’m feeling a little to lazy to bother looking it up.. maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, they came wrapped in a paper covered foil package and were about five or six inches long. I don’t recall that they were offered in any kind of flavors, although I do remember that they were on the sugary side.

The advertising for them was all about taking advantage of the fact that a LOT of kids (people my age) were seriously into the space program (even if they didn’t want to admit it) and wanted to be astronauts, pilots and so on.

Then almost as quickly as they appeared, they vanished. Right about the same time you stopped seeing ads for Tang I think.

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Honestly, I’ve never actually been into things like “tailgating”, A.K.A. Tailgate Parties but it’s that time of year again…. It’s almost time for the Superbowl and it’s also the season of the Bowl Championship Series for college football. Personally I can’t see wanting to spend a lot of time outside in this weather for a game when I can watch it at home on the tube, but there’s plenty that are more than willing to buy the pro or college football tickets, brave the weather and get the tailgate party going in the stadium parking lot when they arrive on game day.

From what I’ve seen on the subject, the key to successful tailgating is making sure that there’s plenty of everything. The idea here is that it’s better to risk having leftovers than to run out of stuff while things are in full swing. For example when making sandwiches ahead of time, make up at least six or seven more than you think you’ll need because there’s always at least one “bottomless pit”.

Whether you spend time watching Food network drumming up ideas from the likes of Emeril lagasse and Bobby Flay, or going with the basic ingredients such as everybody’s favorite types of sandwiches, loading up on different kinds of chips and drinks, potato and macaroni salads.

Then of course there’s the drinks. As much as it can be a tradition to have alcohol at something like this, it’s better to avoid that. The last thing anyone needs is for game day to end up with a DUI or worse yet, dead or injured in a wreck because somebody just had to have one more in the heat of the partying.

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This isn’t REALLY a bomb of course, it’s food. I’m also going to say that this is not really a great idea and I haven’t done it in years… anyway.. A long time ago in a kitchen far away. ok, it wasn’t a kitchen. It was a one room apartment wannabe that had, as it’s one culinary grace a small refrigerator in the corner with a similarly small microwave oven on top of it.

I destroyed prepared a lot of food in that thing while I was there and that’s when I discovered the “hot dog bomb” by accident. I had a frozen package of hot dogs and couldn’t wait for them to thaw normally so I figured I would just put the whole package in the micro and let technology do the work for me.

Well, I started it going by giving the timer a twist and promptly got distracted with something else and forgot about it. Suddenly I hear a pop, almost loud enough to be a small “boom” coming from the micro. I jumped up, shut it off and opened it to see what was destroyed.

To my surprise If found that the frozen package of hot dogs had not only thawed, but they had in fact cooked through and produced enough steam to burst the plastic package they came in. For several years after that this became my preferred way to heat hot dogs.

I had it worked out that on an average oven it took about two and a half minutes or so if thawed and three and a half to four if frozen.

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