Category Archives: Food

2022, Food, Uncategorized

Hateful Twizzler Boxes

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Husband continues to volunteer every Thursday at our local food pantry. He helps distribute meat, and then cuts up the boxes that all the food comes in preparatory to taking it to the city cardboard recycling bins.

Husband is the only male volunteer on Thursday who drives a pickup. They depend on him to help cut up the boxes and take them to the city cardboard recycling bins in his truck. They often get large boxes of Twizzlers from Walmart and the local grocery stores. He says the Twizzler boxes are really hard to cut up due to their shape, construction, and design. They are about the size of shoe boxes. The volunteers hate to deal with them. I find this fascinating.

What is your favorite candy? What have people depended on you for in your family or at work. Ever driven a truck? What do you recycle?

2022, Food, Uncategorized

Something New!

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Well, we learned something new this weekend. Husband and I are pretty facile navigating our way around Tex-Mex and Mexican cooking, but we ran into a spice mixture we had never heard of-Sazon. It is a combination of Achiote (ground annatto), ground cumin, ground coriander, garlic powder, oregano, and salt. We made a Dominican red bean recipe in the Instapot that called for it, and, what a surprise, there it was in Cashwise grocery store! Unfortunately, the main ingredient in the Goya version was MSG, so we decided to make it at home. I wasn’t disappointed, as I don’t like the Goya company’s politics. I also don’t like MSG.

Who else but us would have a jar of sorely neglected annatto seeds in their cupboard? They ground up well, and we made our own Sazon seasoning, and the beans were delightful. Further research indicates it is a staple in Puerto Rican and Cuban cooking.

What new things have you learned lately? What Tex-Mex or Hispanic recipes are your favorites? How do politics influence your purchases?

2022, Family, Food, gardening, Uncategorized

Don’t Give Me Any Sauce!

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We now have all our seeds for this summer’s garden. Husband told me last weekend he wants to grow 24 sweet peppers plants and 9 hot pepper plants. This alarmed me. I took him to the basement to show him that we currently have 30 pints of red chili pepper sauce in our freezers, made from a combo of both hot and sweet peppers. We use it in enchiladas and other Southwest dishes.

I asked him to imagine just how many peppers we could potentially harvest with 33 pepper plants. Last year we only had 15 plants. He assured me that he would use up most of the sauce in the freezer by the time the new peppers were ripe. He would bring extra fresh peppers to the Food Pantry next summer. I am doubtful. I remember churning out all that sauce last year, and I really don’t want to be making sauce all summer and fall. We renegotiated to 21 pepper plants. I still think we will have way too many peppers, but we shall see.

What do you have too much of? What is your favorite pepper dish? What are you growing in your garden this year? Any favorite sauce?

2022, animals, Food, Travel, Uncategorized

Vermin Of The Sea

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Well, I must confess that I am becoming an increasingly fussy eater. I find myself being very picky at potlucks, and I never eat fast food. I wasn’t always like this, but time, experience, and my non-existent gallbladder have changed my preferences. I will no longer eat for the sake of conviviality.

I have to go to New Orleans in April for a regulatory board conference, and I am dreading all the shrimp I imagine that will be available. I despise shrimp. I heartily dislike its texture and flavor, and I equally despise the environmental impact of shrimp harvesting. I imagine there will be other things to eat there, but I am anxious. I may have to survive on beignets. My absent gallbladder may protest, but I can live with that. At least beignets are sweet.

I have tried to be an open, accepting person in my life, but there are times you just have to put your foot down and say “Enough “!

When have you uttered the ultimate “No!” How hard is it for you to put your foot down? Any suggestions for dining in New Orleans ?

2022, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

Creative Addresses

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Daughter’s BFF is in grad school in a southern state getting her MFA in vocal performance. I have known her since she was in Grade 1, and consider her a second daughter. She has a beautiful voice, and recently sang in a lead role in a production of The Bartered Bride. She is a cook and loves to bake. She didn’t get a Christmas box of goodies from us, but I baked some of her favorite cookies and sent her a Valentines box yesterday filled with the cookies as well as cocoa mix, interesting pasta, pasta seasoning, fancy pizza crust flour, and a Mr. Rogers figurine who speaks in his actual voice about being wonderful for who you are and asks about your neighbors if you push the button on the trolley.

Her street address is IOOF St. I think this is one of the oddest street addresses I have seen. The clerk at the UPS store sure thought it was odd. I am curious if Baboons know what IOOF stands for, and what other odd or interesting streets names they are aware of. I have my grandfather’s OF sword.

What are some interesting street names you have encountered? What street names would you like to invent? Know any OF’s? What are your memories of Mr. Rogers?

Family, Food, gardening, Travel, Uncategorized

Hotsy Totsy

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Last week I made Joanne’s Southwest Salad, a corn, black bean, sweet red pepper, jalapeño, and quinoa mélange that tastes like health and purity. The recipe is in our Kitchen Congress folder.

I usually add the whole jalapeño, seeds and all, but this time I scraped the seeds out of one half of it with my fingers, and added some powdered Chimayo to the mix. It was nicely warm, but not too hot. The Chimayo powder is hot.

I am a life long nail biter, and I was surprised how the jalapeño oils got under most of my fingernails on both hands and made my typical daily nail biting an unpleasant experience the whole rest of the day. I had a choice of being a nervous wreck or having an unpleasantly hot tongue. I opted for the hot tongue.

Our son and Dil love spicy food, and put Sriracha in much of what they eat. Son toyed with Ghost peppers for a while, but decided habaneros are just the right amount of heat for him, and they are easy for him to grow in pots and freeze so that he can throw them into dishes all winter.

We are rather enthusiastic pepper growers and will grow a variety of hot peppers (Chimayo and New Mexico Joe Parker mild red Anaheims), as well as four kinds of sweet red peppers this summer. I am a medium weight for heat. The hottest food I ever ate was my first introduction to East Indian cooking at a Pakistani restaurant in London. I was 21, and the food was so good but so hot I cried all the while I ate it, but I couldn’t stop eating as it tasted so wonderful.

What is the hottest food you can tolerate? What are your favorite curries? Are you a nail chewer?

books, Food, home, Media, Technology, Uncategorized

True Grit

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I usually consider myself a good cook but every now and then I think maybe I shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen.

This adventure started when I looked to see if there were any Instant Pot recipes for one or two for Clyde and found an actual cook book: I Love My Instant Pot For One.  You know me, I promptly checked it out from library.  As is my habit, I flipped through and marked a few recipes that appealed to me.  One of them was for Sweet Breakfast Grits.  Believe it or not, I’ve never had grits; I don’t have anything against grits, it just has never come up.  So I thought maybe it was time to try.  Ordered grits from the store, picked them up.  Printed off a copy of the recipe from the internet (I don’t EVER cook from library books with those books in the kitchen) and waited for a good morning to try out yet another hot cereal.

Mixed the ingredients, set the Instant Pot and 10 minutes later I was looking forward to my nice warm breakfast.  In order to get the little pan out of the Instant Pot, I grabbed my rubber-tipped kitchen tongs.  These are made to withstand heat but as I pulled the pan out, they seemed too pliable and in trying to hurry the pan to the counter, of course I spilled it.  Not too much, but I completely ruined the recipe which was sitting there (which is why I don’t EVER cook with a library book in the kitchen).  I scooped the spill into a bowl and when I went to scoop the rest of the grits to the bowl, I realized they were overcooked on the bottom.  I tried to break up the lumps, but not very successfully. 

As I ate my extremely lumpy grits, I decided to look up how people normally cook grits; there are TONS of these videos online.  Apparently how to cook grits is on a lot of people’s minds.  It took about ten seconds to find out that there are regular grits and instant grits.  (Grit purists detest instant grits it turns out.)  A quick check of my grits container told me where part of my mistake originated – I had instant grits – my recipe was meant for regular grits.  However, after watching a couple of quick videos, I realized that my biggest mistake was using my Instant Pot to make grits.  What a waste of time and electricity when you can just whisk grits into milk and water on the stove top and “voila”.. breakfast!

So Clyde, if you do find this cookbook, you can skip the Sweet Breakfast Grits recipe.

Do you make a mess when you cook? (Or do you have a favorite grits recipe?)

2022, Business, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

One Smart Cookie

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I saw a headline last week that Oreo cookies are now 110 years old.  To celebrate, they have come up with another flavor of filling – confetti birthday cake.  I was surprised because I figured there already WAS a birthday cake Oreo.  After all in the last few years we’ve seen caramel apple, jelly donut, mint chocolate chip, pb & j, even Peeps – according to Oreo, there are actually 85 varities INCLUDING birthday cake.  But apparently Confetti Birthday Cake Oreos are different than regular Birthday Cake Oreos. 

Thinking about all these cookie varieties reminded me of a conference call I was on the week before on which one of my co-workers asked my boss what she takes for her headaches.  Boss said Excedrin because a couple of years ago, she compared Excedrin to Migraine Excedrin and they appeared to have exactly the same amount of whatever it is that kills headaches.  To avoid the marketing hoo haa, and the additional expense, she sticks to the original.

And this makes me think about the sixteen (at least) kinds of Crest toothpaste on the shelf at Target.  One variety for every possible thing that could be an issue with your teeth.  I’ve never compared ingredients but if I had to bet my own money, I would imagine there’s not a lot of difference.

When I was a kid, there was just one Oreo, just one Crest, just one Excedrin (actually I don’t remember Excedrin as a kid, although their website says they launched in 1960).  I’m not advocating going back to a “simpler time” or anything like that, but it is a very interesting evolution of how products are now brought to market.  It’s like many companies are trying to bring every niche market under their own umbrellas. 

I guess I’m not even sure how I feel about this but I will say that I think 85 varieties of Oreo is rather silly, especially with 2 kinds of birthday cake cookies.  You all know that I can’t stay away from Oreos with holiday colored filling (orange at Halloween, red in December, yellow in the spring) but those are the regular flavored filling.  The couple of flavored Oreos that I have tried over the years didn’t appeal to me at all; I was expecting that the peanut butter one would taste really good – it didn’t.  I don’t even like Double Stuff that much.  So I’ll stick to my original Oreos and pass up the birthday day variety, although truth be told, I prefer Hydrox (if you could actually get them anymore).

Do you have a niche product that you like? (Alternate question: dunk or no dunk?)

2022, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Stealth Baking

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It’s a little hard to plan a surprise when the person you want to surprise lives in your house.

Today’s is YA’s birthday (27!!)  Her gift was actually purchased a couple of weeks back; she wanted a case for her new iPad and I agreed to pay for it as her present.  I took off on Friday to celebrate with her; we went to the Minneapolis Arts Institute.  There was also going to be a birthday brunch at one of her favorite places but they have discontinued indoor dining (again).  So the celebrations are a little low-key.

I have a banner that says “Happy Birthday” that I made last year and I picked up a “2” and a “7” big mylar balloon but I still wanted to do a bit more – maybe cake?  YA is not a big sweet eater, but I know that she likes carrot cake, so I decided on cupcakes.

I’ve been thinking how I could get this done and about a week ago she announced that she was going out with a friend to the Walker and lunch.  Yesterday!  This was a perfect opportunity for me to do a little stealth baking.

YA is fairly observant.  She doesn’t go snooping but she does notice things.  While I was working on the cupcakes, I was extremely careful about not leaving any trace of my work.  I cleaned and dried every utensil and pan so that nothing in the drainer would catch her attention.  I wiped the counters twice, making sure to get every little shred of carrot.  Butter and cream cheese wrappers went underneath other trash in the container.  I used an “altered box” recipe, so the boxes went underneath other recyclables in the bin.  The finished products went on the front porch table behind the last of the cookie tins.  I put some pretty party picks in them earlier this morning.

The one remaining problem was the aroma in the house.  I turned on the fans in the kitchen but they didn’t do the job.  And I was worried that if I sprayed Febreze, she would ask why.  I decided that maybe she wouldn’t notice.  WRONG.  She didn’t even have her coat off when she said “what did you make – it smells like cinnamon.”  Having worried about this beforehand, my answer was ready.  “I made cinnamon toast for lunch.”  This is a common enough occurrence that she believed me!

The banner and balloons are up, the cupcakes are on a pretty platter waiting.  She has taken today off as well but probably won’t be up until 9 or 10. I’ll let you know how the surprise goes!

Have you ever been to a surprise party?

Family, Food, Uncategorized

Any Excuse Will Do

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Husband is a compulsive baker of rye bread. It seems that every Friday we agree that we aren’t going to bake on the weekend and will just use up what we have.

We really have a hard time keeping to our bake-free agreement. Husband is very adept at finding an excuse to bake something. Last Saturday he was cleaning out the pantry when he came across an almost empty bag of old russet potatoes. They were shriveled and had stems growing out of them. Just the perfect things to boil and mash and use in rye bread! We couldn’t possibly let them go to waste! The rye bread was delicious, but we really didn’t need more.

What do you look for excuses to do or buy?