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.
August 31, 2009
food
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I’d mentioned that it is important to have a freezer inventory if you’re doing Freezer Cooking, Once a Month Cooking or the like. You’d think you wouldn’t. Surely you’ll remember all that work you went to when putting up that lasagna or soup, wouldn’t you?
Friends, you won’t.
Here’s a truncated example of the freezer inventory system I have. I have a chart (made it in Excel, don’t snigger) listing the meals I make. I have up to four check boxes for how many full family meals I have frozen. An empty space means there’s no meal of that sort frozen. A diagonal line sloping up to the right means I’ve added a meal. The crossed line means I’ve used that meal, so it’s gone now.
This gets posted on the fridge, so that I can keep the list updated easily rather than wasting time and paper printing up a new one every time I add food to the freezer or heat up a frozen one. Anyone can draw a diagonal line. Anyone can heat up dinner, too. This is a good system if more than one person in the house is serving meals.
August 30, 2009
food
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I’d posted a survey in my LJ about cooking and cooking habits. It’s probably pretty skewed, as anyone who reads my stuff is going to be interested in cooking. They’d soon stop reading out of boredom, otherwise, as household management and cooking is a definite interest of mine. (We all have to eat and live somewhere. How about systems to streamline things so you’re comfortable?)
It got me to thinking. When we go to the beach, we stay in a couple of condo units that are basically a large two-bedroom apartment, complete with a reasonably decent basic kitchen. When we go, we cook in rather than eat out. With 6-12 people together, restaurants are far, far too expensive to be practical for a week’s stay!
This year, my mother did all of the cooking, but one meal my brother made. *wince* I had a project due when I got back, but you know, I really should have made at least one or two dinners. (Don’t let me get out of cooking a couple of meals next year, Mom).
Here’s the thing — I learned about prepping ahead from Mom. Since she was doing the cooking, this means that meals were often put on to cook slowly in the oven, or simmer slowly on the stove while we enjoyed an afternoon at the beach. Come five or six in the evening, we’d come up to the unit and there would be a heavenly smell wafting through the corridors. It brought comment from many of the other people who weren’t making dinner. They would be going out, or calling in for pizza or some such.
I used to wonder why in the world this place didn’t have a crock pot as standard equipment (I’d be lost without mine!) when I realized that 80% of the people there wouldn’t use them.
Honestly? I’d always chalked it up to people not wanting to cook on vacation, rather than a daily habit in their regular lives. When I was growing up, one cooked dinner most nights. Mom worked a couple of evenings a week for a little while. I was old enough (12 or almost 13 when she started), so I cooked. This was a family tradition. When she was a teenager and her mother worked full time, Mom was expected to get her brother and sisters together to make sure dinner was on the table when Nanny got home1. Cooking dinner was what one did. Working mom or not, somebody was cookin’ dinner.
But I have a question: If you don’t cook, how in hell do you afford to feed your family? I am hardly going to claim to be the world’s most frugal kitchen manager, mind you. My family of three spends about four hundred dollars a month on groceries, so you can’t say I’m exactly cookin’ cheap. (Those fresh veggies in the bento do add up!) I don’t shop at dented can stores, I don’t clip coupons (it’s usually for pre-processed stuff I don’t use, anyway). The only really frugal things I do are to look for cheap cuts of meat, eschew canned beans in favor of dry and cook from scratch for the most part.
I saw an advertisement in the grocery store bragging: Meal for Four for Under $15! as if this were some sort of wonderful thing. I started ranting at my shopping partner (I think it was my son that time), “Well, I would bloody well hope so! Good God, what are people serving?”
Wondering if this was a knee-jerk response from sitting on my high horse, I got out my price book when I got home, and figured the price per serving for some of my usual recipes. Understand that this reflects the fact that I don’t pay more than $2.50/lb for meat. I do watch sales. I don’t buy organic food hand-raised by virgin elves under the full moon, either, okay? Making dinner for four usually costs me between $5.00 and $8.00. How can you afford to spend much more on that? My household isn’t poor, but we’re hardly wealthy, either. How can you afford to spend fifteen bucks (or more, apparently) on a typical weeknight dinner?
If I didn’t cook from scratch, there’d be no way I could pull that off.
1Stories about her explosive reaction if dinner were
not ready when Nanny got home are now stuff of family legend.
August 24, 2009
food
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In anticipation of the insanity that is the school year, I just spent some time doing a rotating menu planner. The idea is that you think of some X number of dishes that are reasonably easy to cook (ideally X>14) then put them in a reasonable order and rotate what you’ll cook. I usually do 26. I don’t know why I choose that number, but I do. Ever thought up 26 dishes? LOL. I’ve heard people ask if you get bored when you make such a plan. Well, I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a meal plan, I wind up cooking the same five or six dishes all the time!
It makes shopping easy. You just look at your plan, and make your grocery list from that. OLQ used to do this and I liked it. It cut food costs way down while still having tasty dinners. Most of the meals are either crock pot meals or meals that I can make extra and freeze ahead. In the case of crock pot meals, many of them I can double and freeze an extra night’s dinner for the next time it’s served. I believe in Feed the Freezer Cooking where possible. If you have a busy life, having meals in the freezer reduces the temptation to order carryout or fast food. I’ve done the Once a Month Cooking thing, but I don’t find it sustainable in the long term. I have a detailed article on what I actually did here. It might be useful. I’ll be doing the planned-overs thing mostly, with maybe a cooking session or two on a free weekend if I get a wild hare.
April 3, 2009
food
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I make it a habit to try foods from time to time, especially if I thought it was yucky before — just to make sure.
When I was a kid, the concept of fried rice was appalling to me. At 17, I got a wild hare to try it again, did, and found I rather liked it. When I was in my early 30s, I deliberately taught myself to like broccoli and other cooked vegetables so as to set an example for my children.
I was not a steak fan at the time. There hardly seemed any point to the tough meat (Southerners, in their wonderful skill with barbecue, tend to have a bad habit of applying that cooking method to all meats and overcook many meat dishes). Then I was convinced to try a rare steak. Oh my word, it was like the clouds parted, the heavens opened and the choirs sang hossanahs.
I’ve always liked my eggs hard-cooked — scrambled, boiled or fried. The same person who convinced me to try the rare steak also liked runny yolks on toast and laughed at me breaking the yolks on my fried eggs and cooking them all the way through. On a whim, I made some eggs sunny side up and had them on toast. Oh my… The point of runny yolks isn’t the yolks as such, but as a spread on toast. Tasty.
Of course the next step was buying an egg cup (I found one for $2.50. That was worth the risk even if I didn’t like the dish) to try soft boiled eggs and toast soldiers. I found myself looking forward to trying it today all through my morning swim. I’m so glad I tried it. Delicious, I tell you.
If you’re an American, you may never have heard of the concept of a soft boiled egg in an egg cup with toast soldiers. I tend to think of it as British, having first encountered the concept in Terry Pratchett novels, but I’ve since read that other countries like them, too. A soft-boiled egg is simple: the white is cooked, but the yolk is still warm and runny (don’t shudder yet). You put the egg in an egg cup, cut the top off, shake on a little salt and pepper, then dip strips of toast (soldiers) into the yolk. Afterwards, you just scoop out the white. Ideally you should have an egg spoon for this, but my normal teaspoon with my flatware worked just fine.
It’s wonderful comfort food and doesn’t take much time to make.
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