Fat and Crafty.com

I have a kitchen aid. It sits in the front hall, in its box under the mail table. It’s been there since we moved in. Seems an inefficient way to use it for baking, truth of the matter is it’s broken.

Not only has my kitchen aid been broken for over 2 years, but I haven’t missed it… much. A recent post on a foodie community got me thinking about gadgets we rely on , and the disservice we do ourselves when we become over reliant. A fellow cook was looking for advice on how to make cheese straws without a food processor. She lamented that she didn’t have a food processor, was it going to be possible to make them without one?

It took a number of people assuring the original poster that yes it would work just fine with a pastry blender or a couple of forks, that yes cheese straws would work out just fine. I don’t blame the poster for her hesitation.

Even in the baking I do, I see so much encouragement to pull out the stand mixer that I question if I will be successful working by hand. I wondered with the marshmallows from the last Daring Bakers challenge. It was the one thing folks insisted I needed a stand mixer for, but the cookies came out ok anyway.

The plethora of recipes, the popularity of food network, and the rise of the superstar chef make me wonder if we are shortchanging ourselves. Instead of looking at a recipe, identifying the process and looking for alternatives, we feel like a lame duck when we are short a tool. Those cheese straws are simpler then you think. If you look closely enough at the recipe and the process you’ll recognize that this is close to a pie crust recipe. If you know how to handle a pie crust, you know how to handle a cheese a basic straw.

This is true of a number of recipes.

Let’s step back and look at the Milanos. While following the ingredients and process for the cookies. I realized that I was making a variation on a tuile, a “batter” cookie that gets piped onto a nonstick surface. It can be molded dipped or filled. The base cookies for the pinwheels turned out to be close to a basic piecrust or shortbread cookie.

Of course, it takes experience to get here. You have to have an awareness of what you are making and what properties different processes impart. You have to have experienced making pie crust to see the similarities, and for it to have any value. With that experience you’ll find it easier to cook, easier to bake. Is there help out there? Of course, Alton’s Baking book helps, I’d also recommend “The Ratio” by Michael Rhulman (While not bullet proof, it is a good start)

Even easier, when you do cook step back and observe your overall process, not just the tasks you are doing to create food. . Look at what you are making it, what steps you take to make it and what results. Then look at the next recipe and do the same thing, comparing similarities and differences. Think about recipe history and hypothesize how else a food might have been produced.  Kitchens haven’t always been stuffed to the gills with the latest gadgets, and good food still came out of them.

Fewer Americans are cooking these days. Who’s fault is it?

Well beyond FoodTV and food corporations selling us yummy premade foods it’s the women’s fault.

It’s generally assumed that the entrance of women into the work force is responsible for the collapse of home cooking, but that turns out to be only part of the story. Yes, women with jobs outside the home spend less time cooking — but so do women without jobs. The amount of time spent on food preparation in America has fallen at the same precipitous rate among women who don’t work outside the home as it has among women who do: in both cases, a decline of about 40 percent since 1965. (Though for married women who don’t have jobs, the amount of time spent cooking remains greater: 58 minutes a day, as compared with 36 for married women who do have jobs.) In general, spending on restaurants or takeout food rises with income. Women with jobs have more money to pay corporations to do their cooking, yet all American women now allow corporations to cook for them when they can.

Micheal Pollan in the New York Times.

See if the women don’t get back in the kitchen and cook, how can we expect to eat at home?
Right?

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about Thanksgiving dinner here. Precooking will commence today, though I’m at a loss as to where I’m going store things that are done, as the fridge is more then a little full. Anyway, so here is the run down of what thanksgiving dinner will look like at our house.

Theme : A Midwestern Thanksgiving

Appetizers :
Beef Summer Sausage
Cheese ball
Ritz Crackers
Ranch dip
Carrot Sticks
Relish Tray (pickles and olives)

Dinner:
Turkey (smoked?)
Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Cornbread sausage  stuffing
Green Bean Casserole
Brussels with peppered bacon
Cranberry sauce
Sweet potatoes with orange
Brown and Serve rolls

Dessert
Pumpkin Pie
Cheesecake bars
(Something else, maybe snicker doodles or brownies.)

Its a  lot of food for 6 isnt it? I assume we’ll be eating leftovers for ages.
One of the reasons we have so much is that we all have our show stoppers. It’s not Thanksgiving for me without  homemade cranberry sauce, For Leah its the Green bean casserole, for Jasmine its rolls, for Patrick it’s Brown and Serve rolls. For Aron, its the brussel sprouts.

So we will have lots of food and will indulge in lots of left overs. Yum.

What are your Thanksgiving showstoppers?

It was a bad night in the kitchen. Everyone has them, I’m sure, but I  don’t have them often. See yesterday Miss Bit had requested pizza for dinner. My response was to make my pizza dough and gather all the ingrediants for pizza night.

I set the dough in a pot on the back burner of the stove to keep warm and rise, and turned the oven on to warm up. This was mistake 1, as the dough sat it was too warm and kind of cooked a bit. This left me with dough that took a lot of flour to roll out and was almost like a batter. I warned people that it was off, and warned that there would only be 1 round of pizzas out of the dough.  Patrick ran out and bought french bread to make french bread pizzas for seconds,.

*sigh*

I was also making black bean soup for lunches, and  decided I wanted to puree some of the soup to make it thicker overall. So I poured about 2 cups in the vitamix, into the wet container. The base had already been out from grinding wheat flour. I flipped it on …

and was immediatly drenched with steaming hot soup. I’d turned the dial back down to 1 but hadnt flipped the switch to low from high. The soup hit the cabinet, the floor, the cats food dish, water, the counter and… me.  The soup was hot, so hot that I immediatly stripped my shirt off in the middle of the kitchen to prevent the burns from being too bad.  Aron brought me a back up shirt, and leah helped me clean up the soup, which now looked like black bean barf splattered around the kitchen.

*sigh*

When pulling Patricks pizza out, I stumbled and dumped it on the floor, nearly dropping hot sauce onto my barefeet. Barefeet because i’d taken off my black bean barf soaked shoes.

Lastly I realized that i had cut the pizza on two of my Silpat mats and will need to replace them.

*sigh*

A good cry and a shower later I felt better, though  and kept repeating “It happens to everyone”

Right? You’ve done something stupid in the kitchen ? Share it with me and make me feel better.

I recently taught a class for Seattle Free School  at the Broadview Library about meal planning and grocery shopping and wanted to share the information to my blog audience as well. Meal planning will be put forward in four sections, this introduction, part  2 for meal planning basics for everyone, part 3 for smaller families, and part 4 for larger families. Grocery shopping will  be its own post. Feedback is always welcomed.  General information on the teaching aspect and how it went will show up in Seattlejo.com shortly.

Meal Planning, an introduction.

This is not meal planning for dummies. Not because you need to come into this class with previous knowledge but because I don’t consider anyone a dummie for not knowing this. My mom was great about teaching me how to cook. From the time that I was three  I was in the kitchen. Mom taught everything from the family kolatchkies to her spaghetti sauce and chili. By the time I was a teenager, I was able to make meels on my own at home. But no one ever sat me down and said “Here is a budget you need to feed 3 people for 2 weeks, and here are the allergies you are cooking around.”  Even if you had that happen in class in highschool, thats still a simulation, and as we all know, real life is different.

Why am I qualified to “teach”? Because i’m experienced. Part of the beauty of Seattle Free School is that you don’t need to be a certified instructor, you just have to have enough expertise to feel like you can share.  At this time, I’m feeding a family of 6 for a total of $500 a month. That includes breakfast, lunches and dinners.  It works out to about $83 a person a month and we’re feeding 4 adults and 1 child, and 1 teenager. I’ve done this or a variation of this for the past 5 years. 

Why plan meals?
It all comes down to three basics, health, time and money.

• Health : Planning meals is healthier because you know what you are eating. You can plan indulgencies, and you know what is going into your diet. Even if you arent planning a “diet” meal plan, you’re going to do better then eating out all the time.
• Time: Having a plan means there is less of the “What am I having for dinner” dance each night. There is less incentive to stop by the local thai place to pick up dinner (adding to health there)  Planning ahead means you are cognizent of what you are cooking and the time involved.
• Money: Planning saves money because you are eating out less, you are working through your pantry foods regularly and you don’t have to stop at the grocery store for every meal. Stopping at the store for every meal is crazy expensive.  I stop to pick up items for 1 meal and it runs me $40, but shopping for 2 weeks worth of dinners runs me only $250.

You’re never going to eat all your meals at home. You’re never going to avoid eating out entirely, but having a plan will help!

Part two will cover some planning basics, including a discussion of different planning methods.
Part three will cover specific information for smaller families
Part four will cover specific information for larger families.

Dear Reader,
I hope you realize that i think of you all the time. Whenever I cook something new, different, fun or interesting I pull out my camera and snap some photos. The problem? I’m much better at snapping photos of the beginning phases then i am of the end. So today you get a peek into a half photographed post.

Goat it’s what’s for dinner
The goat came from the University District farmers market. During the drizzly rainy March “We have more proccessed goods then fresh goods” season at the University District farmers market things are a little be slower. There are fewer vendors, there are fewer customers. There is no need to run to your dairy purveyor to get th eggs before they sell out, and there is time to linger and talk to the farmers a little longer then the brisk sales of summer allow.

People paused at the Goat stand, took a look and moved on. Goat doesnt have the best reputation. i stopped for a few minutes to talk with her and look over the price list. The meat was local, and fairly well priced The only problem is that goat doesnt have the best reputation at my house either and i knew the easiest way to get folks to eat it would be stew. The purveyor promised that in a couple of weeks she would have stew meat for me

I went back in early April, though it sure felt like Februrary. It was rainy and wet and gross. I picked up my 2 lbs of stew meat and while i bent over to write th check was drenched with ice cold water draining from the tent, Gah.

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It took even longer for me to make the stew. I don’t work as a short order cook very often, and I knew at least one person would be giving it a pass. (With 6 people in the house this happens occasionally. Very rarely do I turn into a short order cook.)

So I gathered my ingredients together, see?

And started a very basic stew recipe. Brown the meat, brown some fresh garlic and onions. Add carrots and potatoes, then the meat, finally some beef broth and cook
. And then, I got so into the cooking of it and the biscuits meant for it, that i forgot to take pictures! Sure I thought about it when it was all over and after I had eaten , but before that i was just too busy.

And that fact makes it hard to share with you dear readers, I feel odd sharing only the beginning of the story and not letting in come to yummy fruition.

I only hope that you will forgive me dear reader and i promise I’ll work harder in the future.

(The stew? Was fantastic. Lower in fat then beef, i cooked it slowly and it was mouth meltingly tender.)

We’re in a rental , and we are very much enjoying having a full size fridge. It’s got some small problems, some water leaking, some ice buildup.  It also runs pretty cold. The side affect to this? Things stay fresh longer then you think they would.  Sure vegetables that get dripped on go beyond the bend a liuttle sooner then they should, but other things  well, they are good well after they should be. Its lettuce thats still fresh and crisp over two weeks later.  It’s going through the back and finding a tupperware of chicken and rice and thinking when did we have that? 3 weeks ago? 4? eww!  Instead of opening up the container  and finding a new colony of intelligence that rivals the cat, it looks fresh and pristine like i had just packed it away. Dairy products are that way too. Cottage cheese, that seems good still a month later? Sour cream too. 

That said, we’ve put a new system into place. When groceries get unpacked I’ll place a colored sticker on all the dairy products, and a corresponding sticker on the day we did shopping. then we can rotate properly. Milk is never a problem, with a 6 year old and a 15 year old we go through it too quickly. And Eggs  we finish quickly because every time i go grocery shopping i make hardboiled eggs of what are left. I’m sure this is all just a side effect from the fridge running really really cold. Its kind of creepy though.

So I had a Tupperware party this weekend.  When we were in the planning stages, my Tupperware pal Barb shared with me  a clip of Ice-T talking on Conan O’Brian Basically what he said was that Tupperware is old school real, and that rich people don’t understand Tupperware because they don’t eat left overs. 

Having a Tupperware party really is old school, but not just because Ice-T says so. To be honest, I wonder if the whole party genre is on its way out. Other then a Pampered Chef party that I was invited to years ago, I can’t remember the last time I was invited to this kind of party. Whatever happened to Mary Kay and Tupperware, and even Party lite? Do I just not get invited or are folks just not doing it anymore? 
My dear friend Jerilynn (Stampnig up Demo) was lamenting  with Barb about the difficulty they have in getting people to come to parties.  I wonder if the trend is that we don’t want people to feel pressured to come to these sort of events? I wonder if part of it is the passive northwest, where we have a hard time committing to events?

Anyway I find it interesting, and I found hosting a Tupperware party to be enjoyable.   I’ve considered signing up, but with other recent changes, my budget just can’t take the hit. Maybe in a couple of years, then you all can host parties for me, right?

Last night was the holiday party for  Patrick’s office It was a lavish event held at  Joey’s   a Mediterranean  grill on South Lake Union.  It’s upscale casual I guess,  a variety of steaks, sandwiches, salads.The venue has a large bar and its clear that they do a brisk bar/appetizer business. 

We ordered dinner, I indulged in the steak and prawns and was intrigued by the “Crispy Mashed Potatoes”  I expected maybe a little ceramic dish with mashed potatoes tossed under the salamander to get a little texture. Instead, I was served mashed potatoes rolled in a tortilla and then deep fried. They were ackward to eat,  somewhere between floppy and crispy and while “innovative” it didn’t really add anything to the dish.  The bacon bits, onions and sourcream meant to augment the mashed potatoes just littered the plate after being tossed on top of our  “egg rolly mashers” I cant stand innovation for innovations sake. It should add something to the experience, not detract.

The other big complaint I had was that it was clear that  whomever picked the plates for the place had never eaten there. We were at a small table set for five, and  the tables were these honking huge things. For our meals we were brought out plates the size of platters and given a second plate for our sides of mushrooms that were ordered. Lucky enough person number 5 at our table abandoned us to sit with the other techs.  Anyway, advice to any restaurant creating their table top? Sit and have  a typical meal using the dishes before you decide which dishes to go with.

Over dinner last night Leah asked me where the lamb came from. I shrugged my shoulder . “New Zealand? Australia?” The lamb came from Cash and Carry, where I get most of my meat. The prices can’t be beat and the quality is pretty good. The lamb had been a spur of the moment purchase and checking the label this morning I learned it came from Australia.

“mmmm I like my meat soaked in diesel fuel” The birthday boy spoke spearing another chunk of meat. Sunnie the other guest for the night gave a funny look, and then I went into my speiel.

It’s not that I don’t believe in eating locally. I believe in patronizing local businesses and buying local when you can. But I also believe there are times when buying a non local product are as practical as buying a local product. Perhaps its the quality of the product, sometimes its the cost, and sometimes its just more sensible.

Lamb is cheaper from Australia and New Zealand because that is what they do there. If you go there you’ll find pork rarely on the menu, because it’s just as expensive. You can take it further. Should I no longer eat citrus because oranges cant grow in Washington? Should I give up coffee?
Should they be growing apples in Florida?

Should this be like the Canadian purity law where we eat what we have based on the fact that is local and not on the product quality? I like to eat mindfully, not from a 100 mile rule.