Category: cooking

November 20, 2024 – Maybe I Was Wrong?

November 20, 2024 /

I am a big boy. When I did my review of my Greek Table, I admitted that I had only read half of it. It was the salads, sauces, breads and appetizers section of the book. I was not really inspired and didn’t want to invest more. But, with our meeting coming up tomorrow, I had to make an effort to try something.

This last weekend, it was nasty. My wife had been gone all weekend and I wanted to do have a nice dinner prepared for Sunday night. I picked out a few recipes to prepare a Greek dinner. While it was raining buckets, it seemed like a stew night to me. The picture below is the beginnings of Greek Beef Stew.

What you see is fennel and red onion being sauteed together. Beside the beef it had red wine, cinnamon, thyme, rosemary, carrots, allspice, molasses, honey, tomato paste and prunes. What else have you got? I have to say that it wasn’t my favorite but it was definitely hearty and unique.

I made the stew to go with what I really wanted to make. That was a squash pie in-between some phyllo. We have had several packages of that hanging out since the failed phyllo pizza experiment. This recipe had a phyllo sandwiched with walnuts. The filling was made with butternut squash, raisins, ricotta cheese, cinnamon, clove and onion. There was phyllo placed on top and baked. It kind of came out as like a mild pumpkin pie.

Finally, I made a spinach salad for the second time. It has feta, Olives, spinach, red onion, oranges dressed with Olive oil and lemon juice. Clearly I liked it if I have made it twice now. We had to toast with some Ouzo I bought for some future recipes and a Pinot Noir that paired beautifully.

All of the recipes call for things like Greek olive Oil, Greek Wine and Greek molasses. Where I am at, I would be lucky to have a few choices but Greek is certainly not likely. So, I made do with what I could find. It is hard for me to imagine a better pairing of Oregon Pinot with these exotic recipes.

This meal was some work. Besides having to go to the store for ingredients that I don’t normally keep around like fennel I started at one and most of the cooking was done by four. I wasn’t completely done until six which included doing most of the dishes and setting the table. So, it wasn’t a meal for a weeknight.

So, I probably judged the book and a cuisine prematurely. I really didn’t get into the heart of Greek food even with my experimentation. The seafood and the small plates. I sure went through a lot of olive oil on this dinner, about a quart. My next attempt will probably include spanakopita and some sort of fish. I have got to find something to put Ouzo in.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess the lesson here is that you can’t judge a book by the cover. I didn’t think that I was going to like it, but because I was forced by necessity to try, I found the silver lining. That is an experience that can span a lot of different genres and activities. Ultimately, I don’t think that I am ever going to crave Greek food, but I can probably find something intriguing to try.

October 24, 2024 – Another Grape Juice Method

October 24, 2024 /

This is another thing that I have been procrastinating this year. I cannot believe the yield of grapes this year. Now, I am almost at the end of the season. I should have done something with the grapes a month ago. The same malaise that is effecting my writing is also afflicting my chores around the house.

It gets to be after dinner time and I have lost motivation to do anything. Part of it is I know that I should be training but it is dark or cold or raining and so I sit on the bed and scroll through the news while my wife watches TV. It is ‘just a break’ that turns into ‘too late to start anything’. I know some of it is seasonal, I also take it as a sign that I need some rest. But really, I can’t afford to check out after dinner.

This is the forth different iteration of juicing hat I have tried. Year one I used inexpensive crank juicer. It worked well but it plugged up the screen something fierce. I would take hours of trying to get all of the fibers out the screen. The next year I tried the cider press. That worked pretty well but it required hours of machinery cleanup. The third year, I tried steaming. This was OK, but I really didn’t want to cook the grapes. This year, I thought I would try the juicer.

I know that wineries just crush the grapes, stems, good and bad ones. The fermentation process is a preservative method. I don’t like the thought of raw bird poop in my juice. I pick out the bad ones and wash the clusters. Then I destem all of the good ones to put in the juicer. Washing the grapes is a step that I do for all of my juicing by the way. In fact, this is the amount of prep I would do for the old juicer too but not for pressing or steaming. Get settled in for a long evening.

I found the Breville juicer to be the easiest to clean up of the methods that I have tried. Nothing got plugged. It was like washing a food processor, lots of plastic parts and some sharp ones. My observation of the leftover pulp was that it wasn’t very effective. It is amazing that two sticks of celery can yield half a cup of juice but a gallon of grapes was about 16oz.

The juice itself was probably the lightest I have tasted. I suspect that has to do with the overall yield plus the amount of air that is whipped into the process as the liquid is centrifuged from the solids. There was a fair amount of striation of the resultant liquid. This indicates that for pure juice, you would want to let things separate and skim the lighter level off.

Based on the four methods I have tried, the one that has the least amount of prep as well as best yield is the steam method. You cannot underestimate how much effort is required to prep and clean. The product was so-so by comparison, but it beats going to waste because you don’t want to deal with it. I would use the Breville if I was dealing with a small amount of grapes, like making a daily juice due to easiest cleanup. Ultimately, it is too much work and too much loss to make this a primary method.

End Your Programming Routine: Experimenting is in my nature. It is why I studied science in the first place. It is a real shame that I am going to let so much of a bounteous crop go to waste. But, we have plenty of grape jelly and it doesn’t make good wine even though I have made plenty of it. I guess that is why our modern food system is kind of marvelous. It takes hours of work and distills the result down to a couple of dollars. It doesn’t pay for my efforts, only as a labor of love.

October 16, 2024 – Taking Care of Business

October 16, 2024 /

This is a takeoff from yesterday. If you didn’t listen to the podcast, then you will miss a little bit. Back when we would have those successful fishing trips, after eating a dinner or two, the rest was up to my dad. Smoked fish is one of those things that he has always had a passion for and still guards to this day.

I have heard it said that fish is best eaten fresh. To that end, I have even heard that they continue to degrade in the freezer. That is bad news because I have a salmon in the freezer that is dated 2019 that came from my in-laws freezer. The point being is that even the fish eaten two days after catch seemed to be developing some ammonia flavor, so unless we were going to eat them for four days straight, I needed to get on to some preservation mechanism. I chose smoking.

I can get the smoking down, what was scaring me was the fillet process. I know that I can learn that too, but I also know that I need practice. Unfortunately, seven fish is not enough. But, once I got over the hump of I have to do it now or it will be too late, I hacked away. I am not proud of the results, but I think I made some technique observations that will be helpful for next time.

The carcasses went into the stock pot. I have always wanted to make some fish broth. If it is anything like other stocks, this is a key component to moving dishes from OK to great. I will be working with that some other time, it was still time as the key component to what I was doing now.

I chose a dry brine. That is covering the flesh with a sugar/salt and other spices for a period of time (like overnight). That covering is to be rinsed off before smoking. I chose that because that is what my dad has always done. I also preferred the dry brine to a liquid, it seems more right to me for smoking.

The flesh was almost goopy while I was filleting. After the brining, things firmed up quite a bit. This re-enforced my decision on the technique. I made another questionable decision when the smoking was happening. The only charcoal I had was mesquite. I added some cherry for smoke, but I think a better choice would be apple or alder with plain charcoal. These heavier woods are better for almost all meats besides fish.

The smoking process took about three hours. I know that my dad uses a dedicated smoker and those fish get a lot more time under controlled conditions. But, as you can see from the picture that the fish look like leather at this point. Any more time would serve no purpose, probably they were over cooked.

The taste… I will temper this a bit by saying that I have only tried one piece to date. It was salty and dirty. Clearly, I did not rinse the brine off well enough. Dirty, I don’t know if it was my charcoal or my fish handling or the fish itself. I didn’t taste dirty when I ate the fish plain, so I have to believe that it is something that I did. Don’t worry, I am going to eat it all no matter how bad it tastes. But there is clearly room for improvement.

End Your Programming Routine: It was probably the last glorious day of the season. There is nothing better than sitting next to the smoker, in the sunshine, scrolling through the football scores. I was just pleasant and seemed like the perfect cap of a great couple of days off. Regardless of the outcome, I am looking forward to the next fishing trip and trying this all over again.

September 5, 2024 – Peter Piper Picked a Pack Of Pickled …

September 5, 2024 /

Cucumbers. One of the things that my new approach has freed me to do is write more complete posts. In the recent past, I would have written an article starting something and then maybe I would have come back to it a few weeks later. Because I have released my pressure to write everyday, I can now save up and get out what I really want to share in the format I want to use.

One of the things that I wanted to do with my crock is make some pickles, the original way. I love vinegar and quick pickling but I want the preservation skill of anerobic fermentation. In fact, I have heard that fermented salsa is the bomb. It makes me want to get another, smaller crock to satisfy all of those itches of things I want to try.

A few weeks ago, my son wanted to make some Korean military stew otherwise known as Budae Jigae. This was perfect timing because I used copious amounts of kim chi in the dish so I could clean out my crock and get prepared for the pickles I was going to make. The neat thing about budae jigae is that it was perfect for the wilted baby bok choy and a couple of stray hotdogs in the fridge. You literally just throw things in that you want to use up.

I went to the farmers market in search of fresh Kirby cucumbers at a good price. I found them, minus the good price but hey I appreciate them making money and continuing to be there year after year. Pickles are pretty simple: cucumber, dill, garlic and salt is all that is needed. I threw in about half a cup of pickling spice because I had it and I like a little extra kick.

The one thing I couldn’t find was fresh dill. I see it in the grocery store around this time of year, but I happen to know someone that has copious amounts of it, my parents. I haven’t seen them much this summer since most of it I have been holed up in Portland. So, I thought it was good to go see what was going on with them and collect as much dill as I wanted.

Unfortunately, it took me a couple weeks to get this project going after I had everything; still having hangover events to being gone all summer (like everyone else’s doctor appointments). I washed and sorted through the suspect cucumbers that stayed in the refrigerator too long. From the recipes I read, it said that day of pickling will yield the crispest results. I had to deal with the situation that I had.

Prep you ingredients and cover with 3% salt solution. That translates to two tablespoons of salt per quart. Wait three to six days and you have pickles. It seemed a little improbable to me that it would be that fast. However, the picture below is after six days.

The real results are how do they taste? I thought it was pretty good considering I really didn’t know what I was doing. I thought that they were missing a hint of sweetness but I don’t know where that would naturally come from. My wife said that they were way too garlicky. I deliberately put more in because she said that she wanted lots of garlic. Oh well, she is highly subject to strong tastes and smell right now anyway. Maybe as she heals, she will like it more.

Something I would do differently next time is not make so much. I bought 11 pounds of cucumbers. It filled my crock for sure but what happens if they are not good or turn? That would be $20 down the drain. It is always better to make more next year than bear the sting of failure or waste.

Speaking of turning, like all fermenting it continues until it is done. So if you are happy with the current results it is hard to stop. The concept of cold crashing or cooling them to halt the fermentation is in order. That presupposes that you have a fridge or somewhere cold to put the crock. I do, but I think I will leave it in the basement in the name of science this year.

End Your Programming Routine: I am looking forward to a late summer burger soon. I can have all the pickles I want without feeling guilty. In fact, it would probably be best to get on eating these fast before they get forgotten in the basement. I would definitely call this a success with an eye on perfecting the recipe in future years.

June 26, 2024 – Proving That I am Not a Purist

June 26, 2024 /

Not that I care about judgement, but I do want you to know that I am a normal person. I don’t always hold true to my beliefs. One of my beliefs is avoiding processed foods. We were experimenting with a ‘boxed dinner’ as they say in Canada. This was to see if this was something that we wanted to use to get by when we are staying up in the hospital.

Back in my early life, before I really started to challenge myself cooking we used to eat these boxed dinners. They were right sized for the two of us, the were cheap and easy to make. I shifted away from them as we started to work toward healthier choices but I remember thinking that they tasted pretty good.

I am a big fan of Crocodile Dundee. He has a famous line ‘you can live on it but it tastes like shit’. After eating one of these, I kind of know what he means. Mushy noodles, thin sauce with a slight chemical undertone. It certainly was easy to make and it definitely filled us up but boy it was not good.

Unfortunately, I bought several of these. Maybe the kids will eat them while we are gone? I doubt it since they didn’t grow up with it and my younger son is a vegetarian. But I will continue to side with Crocodile Dundee.

As I stated on the title, I am not a purist. While I would not like to recommend this as a diet plan, I think that there is a time and place. A good time would be a camping trip or being stuck at a hospital with limited facilities and options. Based on my exposure to freeze dried meals, I don’t think that this is any less bad. This was another thing that I used to think tasted much better.

One of the things that we used to consider gourmet in the early years was a boxed pasta. We would also buy some fish parts that were off-cuts of salmon considered cheeks and odd bits. I would grill them on a tiny barbeque and then serve them with fettucine. We thought that was kind of high society. At least it wasn’t ramen like we were eating in college.

Talking to my wife’s insurance company, they have a benefit for meal planning and food drop off. There is more on that to come but it sounds like they are going to suggest a menu and then drop off the food too. It will be interesting to see what they suggest. One of the restrictions on her recovery is that food cannot be over two days old. So, there is only so much planning we can do. I am thinking maybe those frozen stir-fry packages might be a better option than boxed dinner.

End Your Programming Routine: Well, we have this in our back pocket as an option. I am hoping the meal planning provides a better solution but I am also glad that we tried. It just reminds me why we left these behind. Sometimes we need reminders of why we make the decisions that we make. It is almost like you remember why taking tequila shots on Thursday night is not a good idea on Friday morning.

June 11, 2024 – Cooking With Cast Iron

June 11, 2024 /

Amongst cooks, I would say that cast iron is a standard. Everything product seems like to compares with it. We have a number of pans and skillets but I always gravitate to cast iron first. A lot of it is because I don’t really clean it but just wipe it out. I have always liked cast iron because I have only had electric cooking elements. I won’t make you read all the way through it to know the secret. It is the mass. Yes, it makes it harder to heat and make incremental decreases in temperature. But when you want a hot searing cook, you cant beat cast iron.

Cast iron has been with us for literally thousands of years. The first cookware dates back to England in the early 1700s. I suppose in our culture, I think of cast iron as Americana. It was inexpensive, but more importantly durable.

There has been a lot of todo about old cast iron versus new cast iron. Old cast iron would be cookware made before 1950. From what I have heard, it is primarily about the surface milling. Old surface milling was done by hand and yielded a visibly smoother looking surface. Whereas today’s cookware is mechanized and can have a ‘grainy’ looking surface.

The second thing you hear after cast iron is the word ‘seasoning’. This is the process of putting a coating on the metal. This coating helps prevent sticking on a hot surface. I have observed a lot of seasoning over the years and I think a lot of it is overblown. It is true that you don’t want metal on food contact. But the coating is and can be only so thick. Most of the ‘seasoning’ is the remainder of food stuck on the surface.

When cooking things such as bacon, it should be fatty enough to not stick to any surface. When the bacon in done, there is always a lot of residue which look like black bits. This is the sugar that is used in the cure. Sausage does the same thing. It is almost impossible not to have the sugar stick to the surface no matter how ‘seasoned’ it is. This happens to all cookware, not just cast iron.

Scrape off what you can with the spatula and the rest contributes to ‘seasoning’. After cooking the bacon, you are in the magic zone. Most people mistakenly think that it is the bacon fat that keeps the eggs from sticking. You need any kind of oil be it oil, lard, butter or whatever. But, the skillet has finally gotten to the proper temperature to cook an egg without sticking. You can literally pour all of the fat out of the pan and it still wont stick.

Common lore says don’t cook high acid foods in cast iron. The reason being is that acid will dissolve iron causing a potential metallic taste. In my opinion, I don’t really consider tomato sauce high acid. It probably doesn’t benefit the pan or the sauce too much from a non-stick point of view, but I have done it a lot of times with no ill effect. Wash the sauce off the pan at the faucet and go on with life.

Certain scrubbing pads, like chain mail are favored for cleaning cast iron. I don’t have one and I don’t really worry about it. I just scrape whatever is stuck with the spatula or wipe it out with a paper towel. I store the pan in the oven so I don’t have to fuss about it being greasy.

End Your Programming Routine: I talked a lot about traditional cast iron. The skillet in the picture is not the only piece I have. Enameled pieces like Le Creuset are fabulous as well. This is truly lifetime cookware unlike Teflon coated aluminum or every junky fad that has come along. Take care of it and it will take care of you,

May 8, 2024 – It’s Not the Time…

May 8, 2024 /

In December, one of my culinary book club peers gave me a sourdough starter. He is a tremendous bread maker and everything that he has shared seems nearly perfect. He says that the starter is over forty years old. Clearly, his efforts are the result of years of effort.

I didn’t ask for it, so I suspect that my wife did. Because as far as I knew, it was unsolicited and therefore I felt a sense of duty to keep it alive. Since December, I have made probably ten or so loaves of bread. All of them pretty marginal if I say so myself.

Like many of the things I do, I push the boundaries. I also don’t like waste. About a year or so ago, I accidently purchased some whole wheat flour. People in my house refuse to use it for anything, so I have been doing a half bread flour and half whole wheat flour loaves. The thing about whole wheat is that it does not develop the same gluten reaction and it comes out dense.

As a result, I have been messing around with the rise variables. The problem with sourdough is that left too long, it becomes gummy and thin, not bread at all but pancake batter. If not allowed to rise enough, it is a rock. Neither are desired results.

Ideally, this loaf would be 50% larger. I didn’t have time to let it sit for extra days nor did I actually have time to bake it properly. Hence, chock it up to another failure. But for every failure knowledge is gained. In this case, I used the oven off function because we had a doctor’s appointment to go to. All the while, the oven wasn’t on it continued to slowly dry out. It wasn’t a total puck but a 1/4″, rock hard crust all the way around.

Now to my point about time. Looking at the recipe, the only time listed as the bake time. It needs to bake at 400 degrees for approximately an hour. But, bread by its nature is way more complicated than that. Let us look at the variables and conditions.

First there is proofing time. This has been what has mostly been burning me. I find that in the winter, the kitchen temperature is not warm enough for dough to rise properly over night. This in turn puts it in jeopardy before I get started with meal planning. I think commercial operations use a proofing device or room for more consistent results.

Baking time is pretty straight forward. Some variability is expected but it is more or less along the time of the recipe. Another thing that burns me is bread needs to be done at least an hour before dinner. You cant just take it straight out of the oven to the table. I think if you are planning to eat by 6:00, bread should be done by 4:30.

Working backward, to be done by 4:30 it needs to be in the oven by 3:30. And don forget that the oven needs time to heat, so that means the oven needs to be turned on by 3. This means that the bread has to be risen by 3. If you check your progress at 12:00 and you don’t have the proper proofing, you are likely out of time to make perfect bread. So, you need to know whether you are going to gamble or throw in the towel for another day.

End Your Programming Routine: Now that I have written this all down, it seems simple. Hopefully, I can get my timing down such that all I really need to be concerned about is the proof. I am still working on that too. It is a good thing that I have to waste sourdough starter every week and I still have five pounds of wheat flour. Maybe I will get this figured out.

May 7, 2024 – Will It Juice?

May 7, 2024 /

When you start to get some age on you, unfortunately some people we once new are no longer with us. Also some people that we know are also survivors. In this case, one of my wife’s friends is a cancer survivor and she said that juicing was a key part of her treatment process. The first couple of weeks she brought some juice by and then she bought my wife her own juicer.

This is a nice piece of equipment. It is Breville which means that it is pretty high dollar (and well made). My first thought is where is this going to be stored? Then looking at it a little more, how much of a pain in the butt is this going to be to clean? It is my opinion that a healthy life tips the balance more towards a diet of whole foods. I think juicing is a short cut in a sense, but it certainly must be better drinking things that came from a can or bottle.

Putting my reservations aside, my wife wanted to use it so I set out to find some recipes to try. I found two that were advertised as ‘Energy’ and ‘Anti-Cancer’ so that is what I set about to do. Will it juice?

These recipes are for one batch which seems to produce about a cup worth of juice. The first one is Energy.

  • 1 stalk celery
  • 1 apple
  • 1 lemon
  • 4 leaves of kale
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1 inch of peeled ginger

The second one is cancer fighting.

  • 2 carrots
  • 4 stalks celery
  • 1 lemon
  • 1/4 head of cabbage

This is the output of the second one. Once everything is stirred together it is a very vibrant orange. Left to its own devices, it will separate again in about a day. It appears that a very fine degree of solids is allowed to pass through the screen and those solids float to the top.

I tasted both of them. Neither were bad. I have to say that the green grass taste of the ‘Energy’ was less appealing, but not horrible. I could see having a glass of this every breakfast or something like that. I would probably want to try some other recipes to find what I really like. There were some recipes that contained rhubarb and that stuff grows like a weed from my plants. It seems like a good strategy when gardens start to become prolific.

I made a couple of batches with the thought that they might last the week. I have to say committing to this uses a lot of produce. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some might say it is the point of juicing. Just be prepared that finding a steady stream of vegetables are going to have a financial impact.

After trying things, there are still two downsides. The first is to find a home for this machine. I don’t want it living on the counter for the rest of my life. The second is cleaning. The catch barely holds a double batch and there are a lot of parts to wash. The filter screen has to be scrubbed because the fine fiber tends to plug the screen with each use. It definitely takes more time to clean than to use. Not ideal. There is a fair amount of waste generated. This makes excellent compost fodder or even chicken food. Since I have neither at the moment, I feel bad about throwing it out. But beware, you will have to deal with that as well.

End Your Programming Routine: Will I ever become a juicer? Probably not. I could definitely see making some custom Bloody Mary mix though. Think about it, the possibilities are almost endless. I am committed to making juice while my wife goes through treatment. I am going to sneak in a few things that I want to try while I am going through the effort to do this. I have to say that it is kind of fun and amazing to see the amount of water in celery.

March 19, 2024 – Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit…

March 19, 2024 /

I like beans. They are inexpensive and store well. They are culinarily versatile and bridge the gap between the omnivore and the vegetarian. So, what is not to like? The people that eat beans, know beans. The process is not hard but it can come with some hidden variables. Let me explain.

The thought of a good pot of beans and a hunk of bread makes a good thought for a winter’s dinner. The last couple I have made didn’t go so well. The reason being is that the beans were from old stock. After a standard amount of cooking, they were still hard. After double amount of cooking, they were still hard. After another day’s worth of cooking, they were edible, but still harder than I would like.

Dried beans are just that. They are shelled after the pod matures and then dried for later use. Old beans are more thoroughly dried. They don’t change materially, they just continue what is natural. My failures were the result of not knowing the status of my beans and mis-planning accordingly. When beans are part of the menu, you want to make sure they are done before your planned dinner.

For this reason, many of today’s cooks just go straight to canned beans. I can certainly understand the consistency factor, just heat. I find canned beans to be easily overly cooked. They also don’t take up the broth and can be a little lifeless as a result. For weeknights, canned beans can help alleviate planning problems. The place where I find the best use is when quantities are small.

In certain ethnic circles, beans are well known. It is not just for Latin and Texmex foods, but African and European foods use different beans as well. Asian foods tend to use the sprouted form because beans are seeds in reality. You are not going to do that with canned beans.

The thing I always think about is the phrase ‘beans, bullets and band-aids’ that refers preparedness minded people buying a bunch of beans for their potential future. It is true that they are inexpensive calories that store well and can be neatly packed. However, if they are not getting rotated, when that time comes to actually eat them a rude surprise is awaiting. This goes back to me saying, those who eat beans, know beans.

One technique that I wish to try is cooking beans using a pressure cooker. If I owned a pressure cooker, then I would. There are two techniques commonly used (on the hard beans, not lentils). One is soaking the beans overnight with a one-ish hour boil. Anecdotally, dump the soaking water the next morning. I swear that it reduces the amount of flatulence that comes with beans. The second is a hard boil followed by a rest and a second boil. I tend to use the first method because when I make beans, I usually use the crockpot. I have heard that the pressure cooker combines the steps into 15 minutes or so.

As I alluded above, not all items found in the bean isle are the same. Lentils, split pea, garbanzo and black eyed peas are some that do not require so much cooking. These are ones to be looked to for the weeknight or days that less planning has been done. Pinto, black, kidney, navy or white beans need that more aggressive and longer preparation. In fact, the former will turn to mush with too much cooking. So, you have to know your beans.

End Your Programming Routine: My black beans turned out great. I got lucky that they weren’t too old yet and had plenty of flavor to go with the tamales we bought from a fundraiser. I started them with four hours to spare, just in case. Learn to cook beans and it will open a whole culinary world.

March 6, 2024 – Did I Invent Something?

March 6, 2024 /

A couple weeks ago, we had our culinary book club dinner. I didn’t plan this on purpose, but I decided that I would bring some of my kim chi to share. It was kind of an easy out for me since I had already made it, I didn’t have to rush to cook before the meal. Predictably, people took a courtesy serving leaving me with a lot of leftover kim chi. I don’t mind, I want to get this superfood lifestyle anyway. It is why I made it after all.

My wife has had some interesting food cravings lately. One of them is that she wants to eat a lot of hotdogs. We bought a pack at Costco at the beginning of the month. She was off with her friends one night and so I decided that rather than investing a lot of time cooking, I would just heat some hotdogs for myself and my son.

I am a fan of lacto-fermented foods. I love sauerkraut on my hotdog. And being a practical person, I was going to take a healthy serving of kim chi because I am going to be the one that eats it all anyway. All of the sudden I got the idea that I would have a bite of hotdog with kim chi. Wow.

It is almost better than sauerkraut. It is not just acidic but has crunch and the chili adds a zing to it. I had never heard of kim chi on a hotdog and my mind started going. It is nearly perfect, but I think adding some kind of sweet plum sauce as well would be the perfect combination of sweet and sour balance.

I did a quick internet search and certainly there is something for anybody out there by now. The truth is, there is very little on the subject. That means that very few people have ever put this combination together. This is a perfect fusion/food truck idea. I know that sauerkraut is not for everyone. But for those that like it, I think this is a twist worthy of consideration. It is also worthy of some experimentation for perfection.

Mind you, my kim chi is a modified version. I didn’t add fish sauce nor did I add extra rice starch liquid. My plan was to dress those things later at the time of serving. I actually think this version is a better compliment for a condiment than the traditional version. Nobody likes a soggy bun and the fish sauce umami is un-needed. But again, those could be added at serving.

End Your Programming Routine: I often find that my best results are the repurposing of ingredients. The more I experiment, the more free my mind wanders. This is a perfect fusion of east and west. It doesn’t look like I invented it, but it sure appears to be unknown. Give it a try.