August 15, 2010
food
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I’m on rather an economy drive lately, but I like to eat well.
I’ve discovered a way to save a whole bunch of money on meat. In my area, a boneless, skinless chicken breast runs over three bucks a pound when not on sale. Even on sale you’ll never see it for less than about $1.99/lb.
I can pretty much count on one of the area grocery stores having a sale on whole chickens for between $0.89 and $0.99/lb most weeks. Now, you might say that you get sick of a whole roast chicken all the time, and fair enough. Sure, I do the thing where I roast a chicken, save some of the leftover meat for chicken salad, then make Garbage Soup out of what’s left every now and then, but it’s not all you can do with a whole chicken.
One thing I’d never done was cut up a whole chicken into its various parts. If I was going to use the parts, I bought the chicken cut up. Noticing how much cheaper the whole chicken often is, I decided I needed to learn to cut up my own.
I tried it yesterday, just because, well, I like learning new things.[1] I watched a video on Youtube about it, then on my very first try it took me something fewer than five minutes. It might not be as cool or as pretty as a professional can do it, but it’s a large enough money savings, I’m all good doing this. Yeah, it’s a little yucky, but I feel like if I’m willing to eat meat at all, I need to suck it up on the yucky anyway and get real that I’m eating an animal.
Now, not everything I make uses chicken with bones in. In fact, a lot of it doesn’t. Next time I find a good sale on chickens, I’m going to learn to debone the chicken. I’ve been given to understand it’s fairly quick and easy. I think Elliot Yan claims to be able to do it in 18 seconds, so I’m sure I can do it in a couple of minutes. The next time I buy a chicken, I’ll debone it and possibly even portion it out already cut up for stir fries.[2]
I’ve seen people talk about the waste involved. We don’t eat the bones! Who eats the wings?
No we don’t eat the bones, but I cook with chicken stock a whole bunch, and not just soups. Rice made with chicken stock is delicious. Beans and rice, jambalaya and many other dishes that use water have a richer flaver, and are more nutritious[3] with the stock anyway. Bones and chicken backs make fine, tasty stock. So, no, it’s not wasted. I just save them in a bag in the freezer for the next time I’m going to make stock.
As far as the wings? Don’t you ever have parties? Buffalo wings, and variations thereof are pretty popular ‘round here. I’m saving mine for the next party I throw.
It does take some time to cut up and repackage a whole chicken, but it doesn’t take that much and it’s not even hard. If you’re looking for a way to save money on meat, I have to encourage you to give this a try.
[1] And next week, it might be a new programming language. C’mon guys, I wasn’t kidding when I said it was my
job to learn stuff then talk about it.
[2] Which will make my son happy for the nights he cooks. He detests cutting up chicken.
[3] If you’re worried about calcium intake and are not big on dairy, this is another great way to get your calcium. When you make homemade stock, it leeches from the bones.
May 14, 2010
Freelancing, Uncategorized, fitness, food
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Ordinarily, I either swim right when I get up, then have breakfast, or have breakfast, then go for a swim. What I don’t ordinarily do is get up, work for a couple of hours, swim on an empty stomach, then eat. But if you want very ordinary food to taste delicious, try it. Makes oatmeal taste like filet mignon.
I really had to push in the pool today. I swam after my shift, which means I have about 50 minutes to get my mile in before I get kicked out of the pool for the aquafitness class.
Now by swimmer’s standards, taking 50 minutes to put in an 1800 is sllooowww. If you can’t do a mile in less than 40 minutes, many triathlons will discourage you from competing[1].
However, since my only real goal is to challenge myself a bit and get my body moving, that doesn’t matter so much. However, I’m sure to get faster by the end of the summer just because my body will get used to it, and I’ll have to push a bit to get my heart rate up.
I treated myself to a short soak in the hot tub afterwards as well as a long, hot shower. So, I’m feeling pretty mellow at the moment.
And now, to write. Working on finishing up one book, starting an outline for another, and writing a few articles. Swimming and writing makes the day good.
[1] This is usually a water safety issue. Swimming against the tide is no damn joke, and if you can’t do a 40 minute mile, there’s no way in hell you’re strong enough to be in serious open water.
March 24, 2010
bento, food
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Maki over at JustBento has written a great article on ready-made food and how it’s used in bento in Japan. Basically it blows a hole in the idea that all Japanese mothers get up at five in the morning to craft perfectly healthy and perfectly beautiful lunchboxes for their families, made from scratch and at the peak of nutritional balance. A busy mother scrambling to feed her kids is going to behave like any busy mother scrambling to feed her kids. This may include pre-packaged food! If you find Bento interesting, do check out the site, by the way. She’s not into charaben (character bento), but is more into bento as a way to have healthy meals on the go.
I have used pre-packaged food in a bento once or twice – a prime example being my Bad Mama Bento at the end of school last year for my son. It’s not something I personally do often, as at least part of my bento motivation is to get away from too many preservatives and go for a better nutritional balance in at least some of the meals we eat.
But it’s hardly like my own bento are the pictures of nutritional perfection. This bento has two itty bitty hamburger patties (ooohhh!! Scawwwy evil fat in ground beef) and a corn muffin. Corn=Evil in some minds. I’ll point out that HFCS and CORN are two different products. (Though the muffin was home-made, so no weird ingredients I can’t pronounce). You can find something to criticize in almost anything if you want to.
That’s probably why a lot of people throw up their hands about nutrition and eating well. You’re constantly bombarded with the message that whatever you’re doing is WRONG WRONG WRONG.
March 22, 2010
bento, food
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This is a breakfast bento I did for tomorrow. I’m opening the gym, so I’ll be up very early. I also need to get in my weight training before I teach, so I won’t have a lot of time between that and getting to the place where I’m teaching a class. Sure, the class has pastries and stuff, but I’m No-Sing and I hate teaching on a sugar high. Hence the bento.
The bento case is actually supposed to be an onigiri case. Yes, onigiri for breakfast is also pretty tasty, but I wanted eggs. So the lower case has two hard-boiled eggs and some grape tomatoes. The other half has some sliced kumquats, a cucumber slice divider, and some sliced strawberries. All in all, a nice breakfast.
It’s not that one couldn’t pack a meal that pays no attention to aesthetics. But I’ve always liked food to look kinda nifty. When I was a Brownie scout, the handbook had a recipe that was basically a fruit salad in the shape of a clown. I thought it was awesome. I used to make a fruit salad with an apple base, where the apple was scooped out and the salad served in the hollow of the apple. (I probably haven’t made that in 30 years, Lord knows why…)
And as goofy as it sounds, an attractive meal is somehow more satisfying.
March 5, 2010
food
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My son came home from school with four pounds of flour, a bowl scraper and a package of yeast. Apparently King Arthur Flour has this Life Skills Bread Baking program.
So there was this assembly where the kids learned the process of baking bread. Then they were given the flour and some yeast so that they could do a baking of bread — one to keep and one to send in to school to be donated to charity.
Now let me make this clear. I am a King Arthur Flour customer. I was a King Arthur Flour customer many years before I moved to within 10 miles of their factory. Its basic grade flour is better bread flour than many basic grades of national brands.
Still, I couldn’t help but think that the real reason they’re doing this is… <drum roll> to create more bread bakers to sell more flour. I know, DUH!
We are going to do a baking of bread this weekend, and I’ll even use the recipe they gave us. But I’ll be using my Kitchen Aid and my dough hook rather than kneading by hand as they say to.
My son thought the whole, “Teach people to bake bread” thing was very funny. He thought all grownups knew how. I’ve had to explain to him that while my skills do not stack up against a professionally-trained chef, for a layman, I’m a relatively skilled cook, as well as a pretty decent baker.
February 7, 2010
food, kids
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I added this to the little cooking manual I’m making for my son. He has an engineer mindset, so I figure that explaining the principles behind some stuff is a good idea.
How to cook so you won’t drive yourself crazy in the process
It’s a good idea to combine complex recipes with easy ones. Don’t make every dish in a meal time-consuming, or you’ll just drive yourself nuts.
Mise en Place
This is a French phrase that means “putting everything in its place”. The way to cook so that you don’t drive yourself to distraction involves setting up everything, as well as having a system of putting things away and cleaning as you go. If you’ve ever watched a professional cook, you’ll notice that s/he doesn’t approach cooking by just randomly doing things. S/he knows in what order he needs to cook to make sure that every dish is finished at the same time.
The Mise en Place Process
- Check your recipes for the meal
This is when you decide in what order you’ll prepare dishes. For instance, if you make a stir fry and you can cut very quickly, you might start the rice before you start cutting up the veggies and meat for the meal. Otherwise, you’ll start your prep work, take a break from it when you think you’ll be about 20 minutes away from finishing cooking, and go ahead and make the rice, so that it will be finished at the same time as the rest of the meal. This step is a thinking step.
- Preheat the oven (if necessary)
Obviously this isn’t always necessary. Not every meal uses the oven.
- Make sure you have the necessary ingredients.
Sometimes you can make substitutions in a dish. Sometimes you can’t. If you can’t, flip through the recipe book to see what we have in the kitchen that you can make. In theory, if we’ve made a menu plan for the week, we’ll have already shopped for all the ingredients for every dish we’re going to make.
- Lay out any equipment you need to prepare it.
Do you need knives, cutting boards or bowls to hold ingredients? Get them out now, and lay them on the counter.
- Lay out the ingredients you need for the meal.
This means everything – spices, meat, vegetables… Anything you need.
- As you finish with a dish or tool, either put it in the dishwasher, put it away, or wash and put it in the drying rack if it’s a hand-wash tool like a knife or pots.
This is the “clean as you go” principle. You’ve probably never seen a kitchen scattered with every dish in the house dirty and waiting for you at the end of a meal. It’s nasty and overwhelming and will make you not want to cook. If you get in the habit of putting away and cleaning up behind yourself in the process of cooking, after-dinner cleanup is no real big deal. If you’re going to be cooking a big meal, I invite you to enjoy the wonders of a sink full of hot soapy water to make cleanup even quicker.
Also remember if you don’t clean up after yourself[1], you will die a horrible death.
Love and kisses,
Mama Noël
[1] And this includes wiping down counters and the stove.
January 20, 2010
food, household
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Because the man of the house teaches at a local college once a week, so really doesn’t have time for a real meal, I serve afternoon tea those nights. I’ll do up some sandwiches, slice up some fruit and/or veggies, and maybe add a little cheese. That’s just so we can sit down for a few minutes and he can talk to the boy. I could make dinner early, but he doesn’t like teaching on a full stomach, so this is what I do.
The cucumber bits are actually cumber slices with some turkey salad between them. I got the idea from Barb, who came up with them for bento. Well, her idea was chicken salad, but we had a turkey Monday night, so I figured a poultry salad of some sort would work out.
It did. Tasty. I pass the idea on to anyone who might want to have fingerfood ideas that don’t rely on bread.
November 2, 2009
food, kids, rant
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I’ve ranted about this before, though I forget where.
There’s a new marketing campaign to sell more crap manufactured food called Smart Choices.
There’s been some discussion on various forums involving health, fitness and eating where one idea came up that boggled me. A parent was expressing the idea that it’s hard to combat the marketing techniques with the children.
You have got to be kidding me.
You control what goes in the grocery cart. You control what you pay for. Yes, little Knucklehead might roll around on the floor screaming and crying for his treasured Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. No, the glares awarding you the Crappy Parent of the Year award from other grocery store patrons isn’t much fun when you don’t placate the child to make him shut up so they can go back to shopping in peace. I get that. I’m a parent. Been there, done that. Dragging a kid along the floor who has gone Gandhi in protest isn’t fun.
Thing is, little Knucklehead probably isn’t that dumb. Screaming hurts one’s throat and cold grocery store floors aren’t really all that much fun to lie on. If you keep saying no consistently, they’ll get the point.
If you can’t handle enforcing a no when it comes to cereal and you’re the one with the checkbook, I don’t even want to think of what it’s going to look like when your kids are teenagers.
October 28, 2009
food, household, kids
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I like the household to eat together when we can.
Thing is, we’re all really busy. Sometimes we have events going on at night where a big meal is really out of the question. Certainly 
greendalek doesn’t like to teach on a full stomach, but will often make himself a wrap before going out to teach for the evening.
So, I’ve adopted the custom of afternoon tea on those nights. If we have to be somewhere too early for a big meal to be feasible, but want to sit down together, I’ll do up a plate of cheese, crackers, fruit and other light but quick to prepare and healthy dainties (for the three of us, this is something that’ll fit on a single dinner plate) and brew up a pot of tea. We’ve done it the last couple of nights and I think it’s been a success. We’ll only sit down for twenty minutes or so, but I think those twenty minutes to have a nibble and a cup of tea are a nice way to reconnect.
A friend of mine pointed out a Time Magazine article from a few years ago about families eating dinner together. Apparently there is a link between eating meals together and how well children do in school and in life.
While we usually do eat together, and are not as overscheduled as many, even we have busy nights. I wonder if some sort of custom of gathering together for tea might not be a good solution for a lot of people. You could choose light, healthy foods that you don’t take much preparation, and the cup of tea for the warmth, and you’re all good. It takes nothing at all to get together, isn’t expensive and is even kinda fun.
September 5, 2009
bento, food
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I did this mostly as an experiment for my No-S Diet, though I was pretty sure of the answer. The plate on the right is what I’d put in a bento box, though arranged in a more compact fashion.
It makes an interesting point about portion control as well as eating a variety. I’m generally much more careful to pack a variety of itty-bitty portions in a bento than I am when I put a meal on a plate1. But it does show that the “one-plate” rule of the No-S Diet is some pretty decent portion control!
So, when you go on about the “tiny” bento boxes, realize it’s just that it’s compact. The plate isn’t a “tiny” lunch to most people’s minds!
1I’ve also become constitutionally incapable of eating an apple without cutting it into something cute. Please don’t laugh at me. I’m helpless in the face of it, and therapy probably won’t help.
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