Category: cooking

December 31, 2025 – Save This For Later

December 31, 2025 /

I won’t lie, I am a little snooty about my beef. My whole life I have primarily known the source of my beef. When given the choice from the butcher, I would cut up the rib roast or prime rib into ribeye steaks. I am generally not a fan of prime rib because I don’t find it to be cooked particularly well. That being said, when you have a $165 piece of beef, you want to honor the results, regardless of the source.

This was our Christmas prime rib. I calculated 12 people and so I figured that a six plus pound roast was adequate. However, when I looked at it at the store, it didn’t seem nearly large enough, especially considering shrinkage from cooking. We ended up eat about 2/3 of this nearly 13 pound roast so I would gauge one pound per person rather than half a pound. Ideally, I would have sliced it much thinner than I did with a knife. That more than likely would have made it go farther but I was in a time crunch so slices ranged from a quarter to half inch.

This particular roast was bone in. This means that some of that weight was also the bones. I actually didn’t realize that until I was cutting for serving. It came out fine but it was a surprise when I started getting ready for serving. Actually, it came out more than fine. The day after Christmas, I trimmed the bones and made beef stock for Au Jus for our French dip sandwiches. From the rib trimmings, I chopped those up with some potatoes and made a breakfast hash. We gave our newly moved out son a pile of meat to eat on and I still have some leftover meat for dinner.

The hardest thing about prime rib is cooking it properly. You certainly don’t want it over cooked and you definitely want it done by dinner time. No matter what recipe you choose, it is essential to have a probe thermometer. I use the same technique that I use with a turkey. Take it out early and cover first with foil and then with towels. This allows the meat to continue to cook and rest.

In my roast, I turned the oven on at 500 degrees. I put the roast in for twenty minutes and then the temp went down to 325 until the center measured 125. A rough estimate for the timing is about 15 minutes per pound. That made my overall oven time about three hours. I took it out about an hour and a half before dinner and covered it. About an hour later, the thermometer read 145 degrees. I wasn’t paying total attention at that point as I was busy with other things.

If you ask me, it was probably a little over cooked. Portions around the bones and in the middle were still pink. All things considered, it was about perfect given the variables although maybe I would take it out at 120 next time. One of the key steps that almost every recipe gets wrong is the initial rest. Most of them give very silly instructions such as let the roast sit on the counter for thirty minutes to come up to room temperature. I have news, a 12 pound roast will not come up to temperature in thirty minutes after being in the refrigerator. My picture is after sitting on the counter for four hours and it is still 39. If I really loved my family, I would have gotten the roast out about 3AM instead of 6AM to give more time to come up to temperature.

This step is critical to having a good outcome. A nearly freezing hunk of meat is going to cook more unevenly considering how much mass there is to cook. I will also make your cook time shorter, the longer it warms on the counter. If I could let it get up to 50-55 degrees, I would.

Cooking a prime rib is not hard, it just requires planning and attention. Back calculate eating time plus an hour rest, divide the weight by four and add that to your start time. The rest time also acts as a little buffer time if more cooking is required, but I would err on the side of starting earlier and giving more rest time if you are unsure. Just like it wont come up to room temperature in thirty minutes, it won’t come out of the oven to room temperature in thirty minutes.

End Your Programming Routine: Some people like horseradish or mustard or au jus. To me, the meat was the star here and plus I forgot get horseradish and all the stores were closed by the time we realized it. That is Ok because the results were fantastic anyway. Other than the price, you shouldn’t be intimidated to make prime rib. Paying attention will yield better results than any restaurant can achieve.

September 17, 2025 – For Old Time’s Sake

September 17, 2025 /

I have been waiting to write this one for months. What you are looking at is a sour cream pie made from a recipe that was provided by the Pittock Mansion in Portland Oregon. I will admit that the crust was purchased. I haven’t attempted it a ton of times but the ones that I have have not come out very well and I just didn’t leave myself room for error on this one.

One of the stops on our mid-June summer tour was a day in Portland. We had to do all the usual tourist things like visit the Japanese Garden and the Pittock Mansion (which are all adjacent to each other). At the mansion, you get to tour the house and one of the stops was the kitchen. I picked up this recipe card base on an old family story as something to try.

With the links provided, you can read all the history better than I can summarize in one paragraph. But, just for context I will say that the Pittock mansion was built by the successful owner/promoter of “The Oregonian” (Portland OR) newspaper. He wasn’t the founder but the second owner that made it successful. In the period of the 1880’s Pittock became wildly successful on the domination of the newspaper. As a result, he built his family a home reflective of his success. There is a lot more to the story but this at least sets the stage for why and how so much is known like this recipe and why it is so interesting to see this home.

We have an annual family reunion that follows my paternal, great grandmother’s line. About ten years ago, I heard a story from my great-uncle (grandfather’s brother). He said that one time my great grandmother, his mother had made a sour cream pie and set it on the porch to cool. She was a fabulous pie maker having worked in restaurants making pies for years. This is why I get embarrassed to make pie crusts because I cannot compete. But, what is worse, a crappy crust or one that is purchased?

While the pie was cooling my grandfather was out, probably working. By the time he got home my grandmother and great-aunt had eaten the entire pie. When my grandfather found out, he was mad. The story goes that every time the story came up he got mad. This was all news to me but I remember listening to the story and my great uncle just laughing and laughing. I thought that it would be fun to attempt a sour cream pie for this year’s family reunion as an homage to my grandfather who has been dead over thirty years now.

It turns out that there is more to this story. When the old timers were around at the family reunion, sour cream pie was something somebody always made. I had only heard about the pie and not the tradition, so it must have pre-dated me (fifty-ish years). My aunt asked me if I had put raisins or not. I said raisins and she said that was the best version and had not had it in years.

On the recipe card, there were three different versions of the pie. I happened to get lucky and pick the one that had raisins. The meringue is also optional. Because the pie itself uses egg yolks only, it seems like a no brainer to use the whites in meringue. So, that is why my pie got it as well.

I also want to said that I don’t think that the recipe card is really intended to be used as such. It is really an ingredient card. I had to do some research about how to put the ingredients together and what temperature to bake and so on. This is not to mention that I think the card were provided as momentos and focused on the historical record rather than the practical tradition. Nevertheless, I think it was still pretty cool.

End Your Programming Routine: When my dad was a child, his family used to live close and spend time with many of these people. I on the other hand saw them once a year if they felt like attending the event. I don’t have any sort of real relationship or even name/face recognition. All that being said, it makes me happy to make a link between today and the origins with a recipe. I did enjoy the pie but more because of the story.

July 22, 2025 – Tis the Season

July 22, 2025 /

Maybe you cannot tell (or do not know) from the picture that this is a Jenn-Air range. One thing that they had unique was that the burners were arranged in cassettes. Meaning that you could pop out the unit on one side and replace it with something else. They used to offer a griddle option so that one side could make pancakes or whatever while the other side was boiling soup.

We didn’t install this range, it was done in the late 1990s. So, it was six or seven years old when we purchased the house. We never had the griddle attachment, but there was a grill. I never used it because I just couldn’t imagine grease dripping down inside my range. But, there was a significantly older Jenn-Air in the little house. It actually had the griddle. It also had an attachment to screw in a mason jar to catch the grease. Great idea although it significantly cut down on oven size.

I replaced that tired, 1970s range in one of my first remodels and I took the griddle off thinking that I would use it in my house on occasion. But, I never did. My wife purchased a 14″, round pan that looked very much like a paella pan. That was our pancake griddle, tortilla Comal, grilled cheese maker etc. That pan was used to death.

As much as we used it, there was a lot to be desired. For instance, I was limited to warming one flour tortilla. I could get three corn tortillas with overlapping edges and pancakes had to be poured very carefully to get three. It also hung off of the edge of the range profile. So whenever we were using it we had to move all the stuff of the counter to give space for the pan.

One final issue, Jenn-Air is not the company it used to be. It is no longer it’s own company and is owned by Whirlpool. Like all gadgets, appliances, etc. it has a shelf life. Parts are no longer available at least new. Heck, even keeping it running is now cobbling parts together. So, it’s days are numbered. A griddle is not really an option at this point.

I know that my wife has been looking for a replacement. One day, this Made In package showed up. I thought, that is fancy. I have seen them sponsor shows like Top Chef. It looks like cast iron but I read through the literature and it says that it is carbon steel. Hmmm, what is the difference?

In order to be considered carbon steel, it must contain more than 2% carbon in the iron. So, that means that cast iron is iron plus less than 2% carbon. There you go. If comparing two pieces and one has 1.9% and one contains 2.1% carbon, the first one is cast iron and the second is carbon steel. As you can see, there is not much difference.

The internet would have you believe that carbon steel is a wonder material. At the very least that validates the marketing and justifies the significant cost difference. My experience so far has been there is not much significantly different between the two. I have used cast iron for most of my life. I like the no fuss nature i.e. no cleaning just wipe clean.

As far as I know, you treat carbon steel exactly like cast iron. Season before use, don’t use soap, continue to keep oiled, etc. I made blueberry pancakes for dinner the other night. This was a trial run for the product. I can say that the results were as expected. This means that it works, I enjoyed having plenty of space but time needs to be spent optimizing the controls and overall seasoning.

On my range, there is an 8″ burner in the back and a 6″ burner in the front. This means that it heats slightly unevenly. I know, this is not what the literature says but the reality is there is more power to different areas of the griddle. That is just a fact. Even though I had the dials on different settings to try and accommodate, I still found that the back was too hot. I don’t know if it was the temp or the seasoning, but I still had some sticking mostly in the back,

I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a nice piece of cookware that I hope will get a ton of use. I just need more than one session to make a good judgement on the overall capability. The non-burnt pancakes were pretty good and even the burnt ones were alright.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a huge upgrade over the pan it is replacing. Not only is the surface area larger and more useable but it is also not covered with a non-stick coating that is going to fail in a few years. I can’t stand that stuff. Even though I haven’t mastered the pan, which I will assume will get better with time it is definitely going to have a place in my kitchen.

July 10, 2025 – A New Knife in the Kitchen

July 10, 2025 /

Happy Anniversary to me. My wife recently purchased 7″ Santoku by Cutco as a gift and I have been using it quite a bit. I will be honest, it wasn’t exactly on my list. I have been looking for a new kitchen knife, but I was really interested in a carbon steel blade. The reason being is that I wanted a blade that would be easy to sharpen at home.

This Cutco knife is stainless steel and guaranteed for life. They have a lifetime sharpening plan but that supposes that you ship it back to New York. I will more than likely try it at some point in my life but have not had a knife to try.

I am no stranger to the Cutco brand. We have some steak knives and we have some kitchen utensils but nothing that benefits from razor sharpness like kitchen knives. They are definitely high quality and I believe that they will last for a lifetime. No disrespect intended on the brand and I will have years to see if it worth the hype.

When we got married, we got some department, gift store certificates. One on those we spent on a set of knives. They happened to be J. A. Henkel International brand. They are high quality but a step down from the flagship line (not International). They have been good knives and my only problem is that the steel is very hard.

I have spent hours sharpening knives. It is often something I will do in front of a football game or something like that. I can get the knives to a point where they will slice through the sponge when washing if you are not careful. But, it definitely came at a cost of effort. Hence why I was looking for an easier to sharpen knife.

If I knew then what I know now, I am a believer in one quality knife. Ninety-five percent of what I do in the kitchen involves the 8″ chef’s knife. The other knives in my drawer have niche roles. There is one that I pretty much exclusively use for cheese, there is a boning knife that I find doesn’t work that well. The paring knife gets some intricate work, but very little. The only knife I focus on keeping sharp is the chef’s knife.

My first use of this knife came as soon as my wife presented it to me. She got it at Costco and I needed to re-package some pork chops. I slid the tip across the plastic wrap and not only did it cut the plastic but also scored the meat as well. Yes, this thing was sharp out of the box. I was dreaming up dishes that I could put the knife to the test.

The first night, I made some Asian chicken, lettuce wraps. It wasn’t a huge test but it was something. The next night I was planning to make some red Thai curry, now we are talking. After a couple of weeks using it now, I can say that it slices like a house of fire. I think that due to the blade design, the tip is hard to ‘get in there’.

The other thing that I have noticed is that I do a lot of dicing with chef’s knife. I hate to do dishes and so I will take three times longer with the knife than to dirty some other kitchen too. The design of the santoku knife doesn’t have a lot curvature to it. This doesn’t make dicing as easy because that motion is a rocking of the blade.

The biggest culprit for dulling knives is there handling while cleaning. I have to be on guard for sticking in the dishwasher and jamming in the metal drying rack. Once blades get nicked, it takes a lot of sharpening to fix that. That is why I am kind of a Nazi about their handling. Everybody in the house knows it but they don’t spend the hours with the consequences.

End Your Programming Routine: This is my first Japanese style blade. It is a good knife for sure but I am not sure it is the panacea that I was looking for. On slicing heavy meals like a stir fry, I think that it will be a go to. On a dicing heavy meal like tacos, I think that I will stick with the chef’s knife. It is probably a push for balanced prep. Funny as it may seem, this new knife has kind of reignited kitchen creativity. I look forward to more testing.

May 28, 2025 – Air Fryers and Frozen Burritos

May 28, 2025 /

I do these things so you don’t have to. I am still looking for a best use (or any use) for this air fryer. I will talk about some of my other results a little later, but first I thought that a fast food machine might be best used on some prepared burritos. It is like terroir in wine, pair the food with the wine from the region. In this case, pair the food cooked with the method of cooking.

My wife was in Las Vegas during Cinco de Mayo. She kept sending me a bunch of pictures from the city wide ‘street party’ with giant margaritas and festive food. I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit jealous that I had planned beef bourguignon that night. I wondered if using the air fryer with prepared burritos. I liked them in the oven better but it seems insane to bake for 45 minutes.

I thought I would buy some bean and cheese burritos so that we could all eat, meat eaters and vegetarians alike. I would doll them up with some fixings like you see at a Mexican restaurant and they would be something like a chimichanga or fried burrito. So, that is what I did.

I didn’t make much in the way of sides so I had a couple of mangos that were end of their lives, leftover whipped cream and I paired that with some shortbread to make a shortcake kind of desert. I sprinkled Tajin on the top of it all for that flair.

I won’t lie, you can see the picture as well that I thought it looked pretty good. In actuality, the burritos were terrible. The tortilla was like leather. The bean and cheese filling was kind of tasteless clay. The added vegetables and salsa made it somewhat palatable. My mango shortcake was excellent however.

This critique comes with two aspects. The first is frozen burritos are a low quality product. I mean, what would you expect at $1 a piece. Once I get through these, I am done with them forever, unless I am starving to death. I feel like thirty years ago I used to like them as an occasional, inexpensive snack but I am also sure that the quality ingredients has steadily declined in that period as well like everything else in the food industry..

As to the air fryer… For sure, the air fryer didn’t help with the exterior. They turned part of that tortilla into leather and other parts into a cracker. I have used this air-fryer probably half a dozen times now and I am about to give it the pass in my kitchen.

Last night, I made steak fries and the outside was definitely crispier but the inside was potato-y. They were very dry in texture overall and not appealing to me. That pretty much sums up my experience with the air fryer. It does make the outside crispier but is also dry’s out the food, leaving a less than taste.

I won’t say that an air fryer doesn’t have utility. It is convenient when I am using the oven for something else at a different temperature. But if the results are going to be substandard, I don’t know if it is worth the utility. I have also found that I can run the air fryer and the toaster on the same circuit at the same time. I didn’t do the math before I tried it, but I was definitely surprised.

Before I let the air fryer rest in peace I have one more complaint. The overall volume is very small. When I have made something like French fries for dinner, I have to make them in batches. This results in either eating cold food or eating in batches, neither of which is really satisfactory.

End Your Programming Routine: I would confidently say that I have used the air fryer enough to determine that I wouldn’t recommend it. It is fast and convenient but the overall result is less than satisfactory. If it turns out that that my household becomes significantly smaller, then maybe but it would require a lot of experimentation. At this point, I am not willing to suffer through the investment of time when other methods yield better results.

April 22, 2025 – Bear Chili

April 22, 2025 /

Tennis season is in full swing. This means that every Tuesday and Thursday until mid-May are scheduled for tennis matches. My son is a senior and our exchange student is also playing tennis. The matches start at four PM and end when they end so I am going to try and make meals that require zero preparation after we get home. Out comes the crock pot.

I don’t know if we are weird or just didn’t get the memo but we are usually the only parents at most matches. I figure, you watch football, basketball, wrestling and even track. It is odd that parents generally do not come to their kid’s tennis matches. Fortunately, I am done with work with plenty of time to travel if I have to. Maybe it is a match timing thing? Ultimately, no matter how good they are, we support our kids and that means meal planning.

Chili is on the menu today. I would really prefer to use a tough cut that I cut down to a smaller pieces. The other option was hamburger. When was looking into the freezer to figure out how I wanted to proceed, I thought that I did not want to spend the extra prep time to start with a solid piece of meat. I saw this package of ground bear that the neighbors had gave me several years ago and that was the ticket.

I thought that I was saving it for something special, but then I realized that I had no idea what that was, hence it had been in the freezer for several years. My mom didn’t like game meat and she always tried to ‘disguise’ it in highly spiced meals. There were a lot of Elk burritos in my day.

I am no expert in game meat. From what I have heard, all meat is a reflection of how it was handled. You can imagine that an animal shot in early Fall and out in the field for four or five days may not be the best. People I listen to say that ‘gamey’ is not a flavor of the meat but an indication of meat spoilage.

I think that this bear was shot in late August. I could not detect any off flavors in the chili. But, I know that my neighbors ate the meat all year so I imagine that they got on processing it and handling properly. As far as usage, I just substituted one to one with beef.

Conventional wisdom says that a fall bear is a fatty bear. But, because I live in a very temperate climate I don’t think that they do much hibernating which means that there is no need to fatten up before a long winter. This meat had almost zero fat on it.

Most game can be treated exactly like domestic meat. With bear, you do need to use Trichinosis protocol. The means it has to be cooked well done to prevent parasites. Nearly every single bear has it and it is no joke. Apparently, unlike pork (which almost never has it today) freezing does not kill the parasite.

Trichinosis is a parasite that is transmitted by eating dead animals. While the fear of pork having it is real, factory farmed pigs have no access to eat dead animals which is why that fear is largely overblown. I have heard that freezing pork for five days will take care of any potential contamination which I almost always do anyways. Best to be safe and just cook to well done.

The recipe got no special treatment. I wish that I had a super secret recipe but I don’t. I just followed a Food Network recipe that exactly matched others I saw online, so I know that it is kind of tried and true. My wife insists on kidney beans in it. I really would rather use something like pintos instead. But then again I don’t have a super secret recipe so I go with what pleases her.

All the planning was great. What I wish I did better was taste for seasoning. I was very hungry and sat down for a meal when we got home. It needed salt in a major way. It definitely could have benefitted from more depth of flavor, so it needed more seasoning as well. But hey, dinner was ready when we got home.

End Your Programming Routine: We try to plan every meal. What gets us is always the day after a big meal or busy day where we went out to eat. Tennis puts an extra emphasis on that planning unless we want to eat a nine PM. Expect a lot of crockpot cooking in the next month. With that, don’t be afraid of something that you don’t see everyday, like bear meat.

April 8, 2025 – Air Fryers

April 8, 2025 /

We are continuing with food again today. I know that I am late to the game with the kitchen gadget ‘Air Fryers’ but we recently got one. I have messed around with it a little bit and so I am going to provide some insight to all of you holdouts out there. Is it a necessity or is it a gimmick?

About a month ago, my son called my wife and asked for help making a debit card purchase. Their is a large, box store out there that does not take Apple Pay. When I woke up the next morning there was a Ninja brand Air fryer on the counter. My son said that was his belated Christmas gift to us.

I have been an air fryer skeptic from the beginning. Not that I have used one nor have I eaten anything that has been made with one. My opinion is based on the people that I know who love them and rave about them are people that I would consider subsistence cooks. They cook because they have to, not because they enjoy it (or are particularly good at it either). They also tend to be very small cooks, generally for one or two people.

I am not trying to put anyone down, but I suspect that part of the motivation for my son was that he eats a lot of what I would call garbage. There is a lot of frozen dumplings, ‘chicken’ nuggets and things like that. What I have heard about air fryers are that they are faster than an oven and easier on the dishes. It is the perfect appliance for bridging between the microwave and a full blown range of someone that want’s to spend minimal time in the kitchen.

I have used it a couple of times and I have seen it used quite a bit more than that in the last month. I made pulled pork sandwiches a couple of weeks ago and the family wanted french fries to go with the meal. So, I tried out the air fryer. And my verdict – they are marginally better than baking in the oven. But, the volume of the basket led me to have to make two batches causing a lot of up and down from the table.

I find the air fryer, french fries to be overly dry. This is a slightly better texture than the greasy and limp oven baked fries. But, compared to the fry daddy, french fries I made at the beginning of the year there is no comparison. Those would be worthy of paying for from a drive through window, not a compromise of cleaning and mess.

I can only speak from personal experience. Ours seems to be a supercharged convection oven. So, it does a reasonably good job of browning all the way around what is put into the basket. Just like the french fries, I find other things to be overly cooked and dry and not just evenly browned. I am following the package directions, so maybe I just need to subtract a few minutes for model variation.

I do plan on doing more than just french fries. Maybe a frozen burrito would be a good test? That is not something I normally eat, but I remember the oven directions being something like 45 minutes. That is too much effort for a $1 junk food. I know people that cook roast beef, so I would be willing to give it a try for the sake of experimenting.

I will admit that the last time I was in Williams and Sonoma (months before air fryer) that I was looking at the Breville models they had. My interest was to have a second oven that is also an air fryer. I have no idea if the price was worth the performance, but again I was thinking of the extra utility. It is possible that I find this experiment worthy of upgrading at some point.

Let us bottom line it. Is the air fryer a gimmick? No, it does actually work. That being said, I see my kids using it way more than I do for things that I really don’t eat. I don’t find the performance or utility worth the counter space. But, since we have it, I will make an small effort to find what it is best at.

End Your Programming Routine: With family of five eaters, I do not find the capacity of our air fryer adequate. Maybe when there is two of us, I might change my tune if I can find things that it does well. I really don’t mind spending time in the kitchen and doings things traditionally. The speed that the air fryer offers, I don’t consider an attractive enough benefit. My vote would be a no for the air fryer, but to each his own.

February 18, 2025 – Fork and Film? Gumbo

February 18, 2025 /

When I heard about this idea, I figured it was some kind of Tik-Tok fad or something. It did come from a person that is highly influenced by such things. But, when I did research on the subject, I found out that it is really haute cuisine that is served at the point the subject is mentioned in the movie. I looked up local events and the cost starts at $169 per person. What?

Here is the idea. A meal is prepared to mirror what is happening in the movie. At the right moment, a dish is served as it appears in the scene. For our ‘event’, I made gumbo for the movie ‘Princess and the Frog’. We also had hushpuppies and beignets. The truth is I was busy eating and didn’t pay much attention to the movie so I don’t know if we got the timing right or not.

Making gumbo is not hard but has a lot of preparation steps. The prep took much longer than the actual cooking. There are also a fair number of ingredients so be prepared to make a grocery list before the cutting. Aside from buying the missing ingredients, I had chicken thighs and okra to defrost and stock to make the night before.

Is gumbo Cajun or Creole? Yes, I would bet on Creole but it doesn’t really matter. For that reason there are lots of different variations of recipes. My advice is that unless you are one of them, don’t worry about it and put in the ingredients you like. Heck, try some stuff that you wouldn’t normally as well. Just don’t worry if you cannot find file powder (it is on Amazon). Just focus on the larger quantity ingredients.

I was instructed were to use a dark roux. This is flour and fat. It is heated until the flour browns and is used to thicken the soup. The recipe that I based this on called for 1/4 cup of each and I did not see it do any thickening. I am sure that it added an undertone to the dish but it added a lot of time because I did not feel comfortable chopping vegetables and not paying attention. Either make a lot more to actually get the thickening or forget it altogether.

In with the meat, chicken and andouille sausage. The purpose is to render some of the fat out. Just like French cooking uses mirepoix Louisiana cooking uses the trinity. This is equal parts onion, celery and green pepper. The meat came out and the trinity went in. After that was slightly sautéed. put the meat back in with broth and the roux. Throw in the rest of your vegetables and cook fifteen minutes or so an you are done. I added a pound of shrimp with five minutes remaining so as not to overcook.

Serve the soup with white rice and you are done. As near as I can tell, Gumbo and Jambalaya only really differ on consistency. Gumbo is more soup like but the ingredients are basically the same. Pro tip: as I ate the leftovers, it was much better the second day and it was delicious when I made it. For a bang up meal, I would make it the day before minus the shrimp.

End Your Programming Routine: I briefly got the run down on the concept about a week earlier. For most of the week, I thought that we were cooking along with the film. That was the reason I started obsessing about the recipe. It would be fun to cook along with the film but this is a much better dining experience. This was a Disney movie but file this away for Valentines Day next year. Rabbit soup anyone?

February 11, 2025 – Rotate, Rotate, Rotate

February 11, 2025 /

I do this so you do not have to. But, feel free to do your own experimentation. I recently remembered that I had some snacks squirreled away in a bag that I used to keep in the car when I commuted to work. I didn’t think that they were that old, but I guess that they were. See picture below.

At one point, I would travel from work to an event. Sometimes things like track meets would not end until 7pm making snacks an essential comfort item. As a result, I would keep things with me that wouldn’t melt and have a shelf life. I certainly forgot about these otherwise I would have eaten them over the summer when I was at the hospital.

You might be wondering what six years expired almonds taste like? I will tell you that they were stale and not great. The granola bars had a hint staleness but tolerable. The jerky, only three years expired tasted fine. They were dry like the desert and hard but no off flavors. The truth is, I don’t like my jerky sticky and moist like most of it anyway so I actually preferred it this way.

I started carrying snacks when I got really into my preparedness phase. The thought was what if I got stuck somewhere like car problems or natural disaster blocking my way home. Not being hangry would buy some time and help with making clear decisions. Fortunately, I never got stuck anywhere or had to walk home but certainly there were some late night trips from the airport where I would break into the snack stash.

Since I have built my office and finished my stereo table, the bag containing the snacks has lived behind the couch in my office. No wonder I forgot about it. One of these days, I am going to open a 30 year old MRE that I just forgot about. The point here is that stashing food is a good way to forget about it. When you forget about it is a good way to have expired food.

Technically, I have a whole tote of expired freeze dried food. I was surprised to see that the expiration date being only three years in the future. Maybe they also go stale in that particular packaging? I am willing to risk those but I am also eyeing them for my hiking trip as well. I have eaten some of those here and there with seemingly no degradation. If food is not exposed to water, light or air, it is unlikely that it is going to go bad.

There is a reason that the preparedness mantra is store what you eat and eat what you store. That is because if you eat it, then you will likely rotate it. I recently used some coconut water that had a similar best by date. I had bought a case of it when my wife was into making a Caribbean style rice with it. After the novelty wore off, it sat there for years. It tasted fine to me suggesting that best buy dates have more impact on certain ingredients than others.

I know that I cannot convince everyone. If my wife knew that that coconut water was expired, she would have thrown it away. I would advocate for cautiously smelling and tasting it and assuming all was well use it as soon as possible. It is usually those situations that I make a mental note to never buy in quantity again because it is not likely that we will use fast enough. I am known around the house for trying to ‘use things up’ menu planning.

The same day that I stubbed out this post, I heard on a podcast that inventorying your pantry was a suggested idea if you were snowed in. Whether it was force by circumstance or not, it would be a good idea to periodically see what is going on. The larger your supplies the more likely you are going to run into this problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Stale is one thing, spoiled is another. While stale food may be less desirable, it is not going to harm you. I ate all of those almonds throughout the course of a week because I hate to see waste. I am pretty sure that when you are stuck in a snowbank, some stale almonds are going to taste pretty good compared to a grumbling stomach. It would be even better if they were not stale.

February 5, 2025 – Are You Ready… To Rumble?

February 5, 2025 /

Super Bowl is this weekend. Are you ready? Below were some wings I made for division championship weekend and I was so happy despite the fact that it is hard to enjoy with a Taiwanese exchange student and two boys that couldn’t give a rip about sports. In fact, when I was asking the exchange student about football he went on and on how he watched it with his last host family watching the Sponge Bob simulcast. I was silently praying that he wouldn’t ask it today as I wanted to watch the games.

The last time I did wings, I made them in the oven. I tried something that I had never done before and that was coat them in baking soda. They were fabulously terrible. I am sure I didn’t do a good job rinsing off the baking soda and it was just a bad aftertaste. In addition, I didn’t think it really lent anything to the crispiness of the wing either. I would say that it definitely turned me off to making wings for at least a year.

I’ll be honest, I don’t love wings. Making them at home never seems as good. But even eating out, I don’t pan longingly for them. I would much rather have fried chicken and proper dinner sides. But, I thought that I would pull out the stops for the exchange student since Super Bowl is my son’s birthday this year. On the menu is hot pot :(.

This time, I thought that I would actually break out the deep fryer. We bought this thing when we move to South Carolina thinking it was was going to endear us with the natives. What we quickly found out was that it takes a lot of oil and cleaning is a pain, read messy and expensive. When I broke it out to make wings it was probably the first time in 15 years. In fact it was so long ago, I cant even ever remember using it in this house and that has been over twenty years.

This time I really focused on the details. I defrosted the wings to room temperature. I aggressively seasoned them, dried the moisture and I lightly rolled them in flower. Holding my breath, 10 minutes later they looked like the picture. That was the look but how did they taste? They were perfect.

My wife and I have a debate about wings, dry or wet? I like my dry, meaning not overly sauced. The light flour dusting soaked up the sauce but the frying meant that they were impervious enough to not get soggy. This is exactly how I like my wings.

This is what I learned. Baking wings is fine but will never get the right texture. For that, they must be fried. As a result, this process is a lot of work and not cheap. Honestly, if you have a wing place that you like then you would be time and money ahead to buy wings rather than make them. The only real justification that I could see to make your own is if you have some sort of dietary restriction. A distant second to that would be a particular sauce combination that is not commercially available.

While I believe that my wings were superior to any that I could buy, they were not four to five times better based on my effort/cost versus ordering. Also, as suspicious as I am of the food industry I don’t think what I made were any healthier than commercially available options. To each his own. If you want to have the best wings at the Super Bowl party, fry them.

Since the fryer was already going, I went ahead and threw some french fries in as well. I didn’t realize that it only took two minutes rather that the twenty in the oven. Once again, they were the consistency that you would expect from a drive through, not at home. I decided that the fryer still has a limited role in the kitchen and now dreaming of some fish tacos.

End Your Programming Routine: What drove me today was getting ready for Super Bowl. Look at your recipes so you can shop tomorrow, not Sunday. Some things need time to defrost or marinade and it is a bad time to find out two hours before it needs to be on the table. Mise en place is not just for the kitchen but also getting ready for the event. As much as I dislike the home kitchen fryer, sometimes there is no substitute for doing it right.