Oh dang, HEB sells the amazeballs Adams Reserve line of seasonings online. I'm just gonna leave recommendations here: Just Right Burger Spice - exactly what it says on the tin, mix into ground beef before burgifying it, also good as a rub on chicken and mixed into sour cream for a dip Hickory House all purpose rub - haven't used this one much yet, but it's good on chicken White Wine & Garlic Butter - fffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuck. Mix it into ground beef. Rub it on other meat. Mix it with cream to make pasta sauce. Butter bread, sprinkle on, and broil for garlic bread that is off the hook. Probably my favorite. Chimichurri - The dry parts of chimichurri, add your own wet parts. Haven't bought this one yet but the sample lady made steak with it the other day and it was the bomb. Parmesan Dill - Just got this, have only tried it in cream sauce and sour cream-as-dip, would probably be good on salmon Umami Bomb - If you can only get one, GET THIS ONE. First sampled it mixed into olive oil as a bread dip. Put it on EVERYTHING SAVORY. Mix it into your burgs, rub it on your chicken, sprinkle it into your ramen, just put it on everything, it's so good. Second favorite only because I am a sucker for wine and garlic butter.
All of those sound so good! I'm going to have to try them (Umami Bomb first, I think!) I made two experiments today: a "Tuscan spinach and white bean soup" and brownie-in-a-mug. The soup was very easy and pretty quick for soup! (Recipe here.) I made a few changes based on what I had lying around: Used about a cup of diced fresh tomato rather than canned Used extra garlic Replaced shallot with roughly 1/4 cup of finely chopped red onion Used some extra spinach because it was getting old Used a cup of spiral pasta instead of 1/2 cup shells Didn't bother to cut the stems off the spinach I don't know how Tuscan-flavored it actually was, but it turned out really good. It's a pretty light soup, at least my version (I think the canned tomato would have given it a more robust flavor). Using whole rosemary leaves was probably not the best choice texture-wise. Next time I'd crush them more thoroughly, but I was lazy and just wanted dinner. Definitely a good, basic recipe to build from (subs/additions work well). I'm sure other people have posted brownie-in-a-mug recipes, but the one I followed was from here. I reduced the sugar to about half of what was called for because it seemed like way too much otherwise. Ended up with a "dark chocolate" kind of flavor, very tasty, seemed sweet enough. Next time I need to mix things better, there were some flour pockets around the edges. Past few days have been pretty rough, but at least I was able to make some nice food.
Id post a recipe or something, but honestly my process is "Here are some vegetables, some meat, and a package of Ramen." ADD WOK, OIL AND HEAT. *Magical* (its more elegant than that, but it seriously turns out so good, you guys - best cooking tip ever, cook the ramen, strain, put it in the pan with the whatever, crisp the bottom of the noodles and then pour that action out and eat).
I did Science and tried fontina cheese instead of gorgonzola in the gnocchi sauce of @wixbloom's recipe. Result: nutty, smoky, almost sweet? The nutmeg really makes it. Instead of the eggplant, I went with a sharper flavored spinach side dish - anything with brighter flavors to balance the earthy fontina would probably be tasty!
It was jam making time again this weekend. No pictures, but maybe I should have taken some because I have streamlined the operation to use only a minimal amount of counter space. The golden canes barely produced, so I didn't even bother harvesting them; plus the jam they make is sickly-sweet. I got 15 and 1/2 pints total this time. After picking a few straggler berries to eat fresh, I am going to cut back the canes because they are getting so big they are blocking the path along the side of the house and the one to the garage.
Today was Polenta Day. Polenta is medium-spoons for me - it isn't terribly fancy, but it's more complicated than instant oatmeal. It has the peasant-food advantage of being made out of two ingredients, one of which is water. Other recipes will have you add herbs and flavorings and stuff, but those are optional to the point of polenta. The idea here is: when you cook cornmeal in water for an extended period of time, the water makes its way into the grains of the cornmeal and softens them. The result is pudding-like in consistency with a paradoxical soft/grainy texture, which is why people from the US sometimes call this "hasty pudding". (Not because it could be produced with haste. Because rushing it wouldn't work nearly as well.) Here is how I did it, which drops the two-ingredients advantage for I-can-cook-this-thing-and-eat-out-of-it-for-a-few-days advantage. But if you don't have some of the ingredients I listed, don't sweat it - polenta does perfectly fine on its own. This probably serves one person for two days or two people for one day, assuming you're using mix-ins. That works out to 6-8 servings, which seems about right to me. Spoiler: Breakfast Boil 7 cups of water in an electric kettle or pot (I have an electric kettle with marks on the sides, so I could eyeball it). Put 2 cups of cornmeal in slow cooker (also eyeballed). Slowly pour water over cornmeal. Squash any lumps against the side of the pot with your cooking implement of choice (a wooden spoon works best; a potato masher, despite the theoretical usefulness of its design in breaking up lumps, is a terrible idea), to make sure most of the cornmeal is in contact with most of the water. (Lumps smaller than your thumb are okay - they'll still soften in the cooking process.) Turn the slow cooker to High if you think you can remember to stir it once in a while. Turn it to Low if you will be out of the house, or if you are forgetful. Some cornmeal will stick to the sides of the pot - don't fuss about that too much while doing the stirring. I also snagged a little bit of this cornmeal slush to have for breakfast, with a dash of brown sugar on top. (Note that cornmeal grits seem like the kind of thing that'd be a sensory nope for more people than usual, so this is optional.) Spoiler: Lunch Spoon out some polenta into a bowl. Stir in a fistful of shredded cheese, or a decent amount of another flavoring agent of your choosing (try canned tomato-type things, gravy, chili powder, and/or a bouillon cube). Eat. See if you can stand up a wooden spoon (or other kitchen implement that doesn't usually balance on its business end, which means don't use the potato masher) in the center of your pot of polenta. If it falls to the side, cook it longer. If it stays upright, then it's done. When the polenta is done, proceed to the next step. Spoiler: Afternoonish Turn the slow cooker off. If you can manage it, transfer the polenta into some kind of receptacle that you can cover and refrigerate. If you are feeling like an overachiever, make sure the receptacle is a baking dish. (The porcelain slow-cooker-pot-thingy with the lid will do if you can't, but be warned that you will have to play Fridge Tetris on hard mode.) Cover the polenta and stick it in the fridge. This will make the texture set to jello-ish. If you removed the polenta from the crock pot, fill it with water and let it soak in the sink for now; it takes a long time to hydrate/loosen, and you'll be able to pick it off by dinnertime. Spoiler: Dinner I will assume that you now have a vessel of cold polenta. If your cold polenta is in a baking dish, cut it into squares (or the squaireishiest rectangles possible). If your cold polenta is in some other type of vessel, you can scoop out large chunks, which work just as well. Heat up a frying pan on medium heat, and dump a tablespoon-ish of vegetable oil or butter into said pan. Once the pan is hot, plop a few squares or chunks of polenta into the frying pan. Mind the spattering oil. Theoretically, now you wait until the polenta chunks get crispy golden brown on the bottom. In practice, I found that the browning part peels away, but that's fine - you can scrape the fried bits off the pan at the time you serve it. Now you flip the polenta chunks so that the other side can cook, too. The best implement for this is a pancake turner, but most flat or shallow spoon-shaped things will work. Do not use a potato masher. Once the polenta is hot all the way through, put the polenta chunks on a plate. Scrape most of the crispy bits off the bottom of the pan and throw those onto the plate too. You can repeat the frying for more chunks of polenta if you want. Once you are finished, make sure to turn off the stove. Otherwise the oil might catch fire, which is not good for anyone. I ate these with tomato paste spread on top, but some other sauce-like dish will work too. Cheese is also good. You could probably fry pieces of meat to go with it, too, although I didn't do that. Spoiler: Leftovers Polenta keeps in the fridge for a few days. You can fry chunks of it, or spoon some into a bowl and microwave it. Spoiler: That doesn't look like very much protein. I eyeball out the balance of my food groups and nutrients over the week, rather than per day or per meal. This makes it easier to forgive myself for the days on which I only eat bread out of the bag. My body seems to be able to deal with that. Spoiler: What do you have against potato mashers, VE? A housemate saw me breaking up the lumps in the cornmeal mixture in the morning and offered me a potato masher because "it works better". No. It does not work better.
re: polenta and the stirring thereof: I've found that a whisk can be pretty good for un-lumping/preventing lumps.
i'm not the polenta master, but let me guess as to why a whisk is a poorer choice: doing dishes is bad. a spoon can break lumps, stir and serve. a whisk for de-lumping and stirring requires the dirtying of an additional utensil and the washing of one more thing.
ah yes you do have a point. I just do Not like de-lumping with a spoon because it just Never seems de-lumped enough? and I've always cooked polenta in a pot rather than slow cooker which I think may be a more lump-pron method? Every time I've tried to just use a spoon I've gotten lumps but I think that's probably because of the higher-heat cooking method that I'm using.
Googling had never explained this to my satisfaction, so I'll put it to y'all: what's the difference between polenta and grits?
easy caramel corn, it takes like ten minutes from start to finish and you only fuck up like one pot+wooden utensil/heat-resistant spatula to do it -one bag microwave popcorn -1/2 c sugar (brown works best) -1 stick butter -1/8 c corn syrup (light, preferably) -1/4 c salt - 1/4 c baking soda aight so you pop ur popcorn and get that all done and outta the way first. then you dump everything but the baking soda in a pot on medium heat. stir that shit until it starts bubbling. once it's bubbling, don't touch it for five minutes. when ur five minutes are up, turn off the heat and add the baking soda, stir that in real good. then fold the popcorn into the caramel. once you've done that, get some wax paper or something and spread ur caramel corn out on it. once it hardens, break that shit apart and wedge it in your foodhole. makes enough for two but lbr, it's fucking delicious and you're not gonna wanna share. i make this all the fuckin time and it's gr9
our raspberries failed bigtime, i guess there aren't enough bees in our yard or something. i covet yours.
SAVORY GRANOLA hands up who's tried it? it sounds kind of amazing tbh, like parmesan garlic granola with toasted sunflower seeds sprinkled on ur tomato soup omg i drooled
hominy iirc is made from ground corn that has been alkalinized, whereas regular cornmeal/corn flour is simply ground dried corn. the alkaline process, nixtamalization, unbinds some of the cellulose in the corn, making nutrients like niacin available, allowing proteins to interact which means you can make a kneadable, structured dough, and apparently it tastes better also. I want to get my hands on some masa flour or hominy and try it out for myself sometime soon the Mayans were pro at corn apparently, the introduction of corn as a major dietary staple to other countries often corresponds to malnutrition because it's used as-is instead of nixtamalized
I've put savory snack mixes on yogurt, it's refreshing and it makes the tiny pieces more convenient to eat :P also crumbled cookies, crumbled banana bread, anything that's a little dry by itself and needs some yogurt flavor (so, most things) if you're ok with yogurt sourness, I wanna recommend labneh as a savory idea - it's essentially a yogurt-cheese dip with herbs, veggies and olive oil, but the recipe writer does say that the sour flavor is enhanced.
I copied some recipes from the Necrokochicon (=the mah student's cookbook which is usually utilized during game night) ... a lot of those are "cook until done", so if you've got issues with that, sorry >>_<< i'll probably make all of those over summer, and will add times accordingly. All recipes for 1 person Broccoli Cream Sauce (noodles not included) 1/4 broccoli, chopped 1/2 onion, diced 1/4 packet cheese spread 1/4 litre broth 1/4 tub whipping cream 100 ml milk Heat broth until boiling, then add the broccoli, cook until it's firm to the bite, then add the rest and cook until the cheese spread as melted. Champignon Cream Sauce (noodles not included) 100 champignons (button mushroom), sliced 1/2 onion, diced 1/4 litre broth 1/4 tub whipping cream 100 ml milk Brown mushrooms and onions, then add the other ingredients, heat until it cooks. Mincemeat-Leek-Cheese Soup 1/2 stalk of leek, sliced 100 g minced meat 1/3 packet cheese spread 1/2 onion, diced 1/4 litre milk/whipping cream 1/4 litre borth Brown leek, mince meat, and onions. Add other ingredients, and heat until it cooks. Chicken Rice Pot 125 g chicken meat, diced 1/4 onion, diced 125 g rice 1/4 spring onion 1/4 can carrot/pea vegetable mix 1/4 litre chicken broth 1/4 tub whipping cream Brown meat, onions, and spring onions. Add rice, chicken broth, carrots, and peas, and cook until rice is done. Feta Spinach Sauce (noodles not included) 1/4 packet spinach 1/4 packet feta cheese (diced) 1/8 tub sour cream Toss everything into a pot, cook until done.
instead of bothering with straining, you could just make it with greek yogurt. it sounds super good and i'm gonna do it as soon as i have the energy to cook a thing. :)
