Eat at Joe's!

Salsa Assousa, or WWRE #3

When I started the "What We Really Eat" category, I intended it to chronicle things I really ate or thought people really ate, but was too ashamed to list as something I'd actually made.  Now I notice I've screwed that category all up.  Oh well.  

Anyway, I'm not much of a Mexican food person, and I sure as hell don't know how to cook it properly.  But I've eaten it a lot of this, er, "salsa" with bags of tortilla chips since my friend, Special Agent "Ass-O-USA," taught me how to do this.  My friend Maura says it's the only thing that makes jarred salsa tolerable.  It also makes me feel better about hauling a bag of tortilla chips to a party, and you can usually find some sort of cream cheese and salsa at whatever grocery store you stop at.  

So....  Salsa Assousa:

• 1 container salsa, pico de gallo, picante sauce, homemade salsa....  The possibilities are endless here
• 1 container cream cheese
• 1 bag tortilla chips

1. Find decent-sized clean bowl.
2. Put some or all of cream cheese into bottom of bowl.  If it's soft, that'll make it easier to grub it out amidst the salsa.  You can buy whatever kind of flavored cheese you want to try, or use some spuriously-generated fat free cheez, or screw this up however you like: you're eating a bunch of stuff out of bags and cans here, so I say go for whatever floats your boat.
3. Pour as much or as little tomato product over the cream cheese as you want.
4. Open bag of chips.
5. Dig in.

If you eat this, I'm wondering what you ran out of first — chips, salsa, or cheese?  Of course you can always make more....  :)

Merry Christmas

Only three foods, two sauces (one of which came with the ham, but wasn't horrible), one more person, and a partridge in a pear tree [click to embiggen]:

But it was special.  :)

Merry Christmas.  Hope it was great.  

Yeah, It's Certified

If any of you had any doubt 10 years ago about why the "USDA Organic" national certification effort was such a big deal and how it was going to turn out, perhaps this NYT article — "Has 'Organic' Been Oversized?" — will, um, assist you in your cogitation.

Hope everyone had a grand 4th of July holiday.

I Want A Doughnut Biscuit With Bacon, Peanut Butter, And Banana, Please

Via our local Special Agent For Gluten-Intolerance Intolerance, code-named "Hor-Hay":

"Rise, a biscuit and doughnut restaurant, on the horizon in Durham"

[Edit] ... aaaand the first commenter at the article is complaining that because of her gluten intolerance, she can't eat there, and it's not local food because folks don't grow a lot of wheat here, so please open someplace that doesn't use flour instead.  I wrote the first sentence above before I saw her comment, but now I'm glad I wrote it.  

In other words: please, get off it.  No one makes salt around here, or grows black pepper (or a lot of other spices).  The ocean is over two hours away by car.  There damn sure isn't any commercial coffee, tea, citrus, a lot of other fruit, or really a large number of other foods grown locally.  Had a banana lately?  How about an almond or some vanilla?  An out-of-season tomato, perhaps?  We're actually lucky we live in a pretty agriculturally diverse state.  But we don't make everything.  Nor can we grow everything year-round.  Nor can everyone afford to eat local products even for the stuff that is local (or even afford, say, organic, non-GMO, or non-irradiated spices).  Take a waltz through Whole Foods, or better yet, Lowe's Foods, and throw out everything made or grown more than, say 100 miles away.   Is there much left?

Tell me, do you buy jeans made of local cotton?   I know of one US company making jeans from US cotton, and their jeans cost around 90 bucks a pop, and they're mail order — oops, not even being sold locally.  Are you going to bitch because someone else opens a clothing store with more foreign polyester?  Of course not.  This state used to have a huge textile base that is pretty much shot to hell now.  Don't you feel guilty?  Somehow, I doubt it.

I'm sorry you're gluten-intolerant, just like I'm sorry a lot of other folks are dairy-intolerant, allergic to peanuts, seafood, or cigarette smoke, made sick to their stomach by the very idea of eating beef, or can't or won't drink alcohol for fear of losing their minds.  I know how hard it is to avoid allergens: I used to cook occasionally for a friend who was actually allergic to casein, not just lactose-intolerant — try avoiding any dairy in anything.   Kashrut symbols help, but it's still a pain in the ass.  I've also baked for folks who are gluten-intolerant.  Making everything without flour is arguably as bad.  

I'd love to see more restaurants catering to individual needs.  For example, Durham needs, and might could support, an actual vegetarian restaurant.  And a lot of restaurateurs bust their asses to both serve local food and cater to individual needs (to name just one, Charlie Deal at Dos Perros springs to mind).  But being a dog in a manger isn't ok just because the manger has wheat, salami, shrimp, peanuts, bananas, or black pepper in it.  And while bitching because yet another restaurant is opening where they use flour you can't eat is probably just dumb and useless, tarring them all with a "not local enough" brush is simply elitist and self-serving.   Even worse, your "OMG we're all going to die of celiac disease" whining does a dis-service to those with a serious auto-immune condition.  Gliadin isn't poison, any more than casein or fava beans are.  And, no, you're not raising consciousness about celiac disease.  You just look like an idiot.  The diseases are serious; it's at best hard to take you that way.  

I think I know what you're really mad about: a restaurant opening that wouldn't even exist in your world.  I can't wish away celiac disease any more than I can wish away racism, televisions in bars, or my own medical problems.  I wish you didn't have celiac disease.  I wish no one ever got sick from eating.  I wish everyone could afford to eat out, and know how to cook well at home.  But I would also like to go to Tom's new place if it opens.  I'd like to eat a biscuit or doughnut there, and I'd like it to be good.  Don't begrudge me or anyone else that, please.  Gluten isn't poison to me, as far as I know, nor is it poison to (by your numbers) well over 99% of the population.  Again, I'm sorry you can't eat wheat and its ilk.  But I like it.  I wish we all could eat it healthfully and well.  You can't, and neither you, Tom Ferguson, nor I can fix it.  We would if we could.

Warning: Shift Work Is Hazardous To Your Health

"Poor Diet Of Shift Workers An 'Occupational Health Hazard'"

Oscar Meyer Braunschweiger: The Missing Product

Ahhhh.  Kids, foie gras, missing pizzerias: I'm on a roll.  What next?  Fava beans and chianti?  How about more roll, and more liver:

What happened to this stuff? (Click image to get product information.) It seemed to disappear off the shelves of all the supermarkets at the same time.  The last place I saw it was King's Red & White.  I should check to see if they have it in now.  But it's gone everywhere else.  It's gone enough that replacement products are showing up: I found this stuff at a Kroger yesterday.

NB:  The bacon seems to have disappeared out of the ingredients for the Oscar Meyer stuff.  I remember its having bacon on the ingredient list, but maybe I'm wrong.

Will Ronald Kick It?

Sheesh:

WSJ: "McDonald's Under Pressure to Fire Ronald"

I assume the next step will be to abolish Saturday morning cartoons and replace them with "reality TV."  

Snow, And Some Ancillary Matters Like Hot Chocolate

For quite some time, I've used Halloween as an excuse to sit on my front porch or moral equivalent, make hot cocoa, provide spiking for it if desired, invite friends — especially friends with kids — and quietly celebrate Halloween.  I'm not into scaring folks, getting drunk and partying, or generating pre-Election-Day propaganda.  But I tried to have fun.  I might get a small buzz on, but not so much that anyone would be scared to bring their kids to my house or the like.  Halloween to me is about letting kids go to strange houses and get candy for free for no reason.  It rocks.  Halloween Haters be Damned.  :)  I've missed a couple Halloweens because of brain injuries, penury, or the like.  But I usually try, and I usually shovel the candy out: maybe 15 or 20 bags or more.  And I don't buy crap: I buy stuff I like or that seems Halloween-ish.

Didn't do it this year.  Not much traffic at the new house anyway.  And apparently there are a few Halloween Haters in the new 'Hood.  Didn't even make any cocoa.  :(  And have you priced a box of Droste cocoa lately? (You might want Google Translate for that last link.)  Between the US$ going in the toilet, food price increases, the price of oil, and — well, $deity knows why, but it was on sale for $13, IIRC.  Oh, and the penury.  

But snow.  Started where I was between 1:30 and 2 this afternoon.  What an excellent reason.  Winter in general is a good reason, so why not snow?  It's not winter, unless you practice that the cross-quarter days are the beginnings of the seasons instead of their midpoints.  (Ever wondered why A Midsummer Night's Dream takes place on May Day?  There's your answer.)  So some people would say it's winter now.  And it's snowing.  And it's awfully close to the date of latest sunrise, which can seem pretty wintry.  

So — hot chocolate.  Go.  Use whatever you have.  Throw in some marshmallows if you like.  Spike it. (I used hazelnut liqueur this time, which was unexpectedly delicious.  I usually use Vandermint, which is not easily obtainable at the NCABC stores.)  Drink it.  Fall asleep looking at the snow.  The Xmas rush isn't full bore yet.  You deserve it.  :)

Creamed Spinach w/ Bacon and Garlic

Creamed spinach is awesome, and doesn't get nearly the press it deserves.  I've liked the stuff since I was 6 -- no kidding -- and it's not hard.  It's also a traditional and sadly disappearing accompaniment with steaks and chops.  

Unfortunately, my attempts lately at c. s. have been lackluster.  Also, I again made the stupid mistake of thinking that a 10-ounce bag of fresh spinach would, when cooked, be a reasonable amount of food.  So I decided to add two other things that usually seem to go with spinach: allium (I often seem to get garlic with sauteed spinach) and bacon (which usually seems to come in the dressing with spinach salads).  

It was not lackluster.  :)  Most measurements are left out, as that's the way I made it: here at EAJ!, we're all about accurate reporting.    

So:

Impromptu creamed spinach

(makes 1 moderate serving or 2 tiny ones)

 

1. Forget to go to the farmer's market earlier in the week to get spinach.
2. Buy a 10 oz. bag of "slummed" spinach at the grocery store.
3. Dice 3 strips of bacon.  Saute; drain; set aside.
4. Mince a clove of garlic; set aside.
5. Meanwhile, put a huge pot of water on to boil for blanching the spinach.  Put a lot of salt in the water.  Stem and wash the spinach (mine had remarkably little sand, but spinach is famous for being gritty).
6. Blanch the spinach for a minute or two. Cool off with cold water and drain thoroughly.  Press out as much water as you can without creating spinach puree.  Chop if you feel it's needed.
7. (I imagine most of you are going to skip [5] and [6].  If you feel like it and skip directly to [8] or [9], let me know how it goes.  Simply wilting the spinach in the pan will certainly speed things up.)
8. Mince half a small shallot; saute in clean pan with a tablespoon of butter.  (I forgot this.  The abandoned shallot, already peeled, was discovered after dinner on the counter.  D'oh.  I also elected to use a clean pan because I thought continuing the saute in some of the fat left from [2] would make things too bacon-y.   But I did save the bacon fat for later use.)
9. Saute the drained spinach in a clean pan with a tablespoon of butter (or in the shallot saute pan), adding more butter if you need it.  Try to get the spinach separated with most of the excess water evaporated, but don't cook the hell out of it, or you won't have any spinach left.
10. Add a tablespoon of butter if you need it (I believe this now puts us at somewhere between 1 and 4 Tb. of butter), and add a tablespoon or so of flour.  Stir and saute for a minute or two.  Hopefully you still have a reasonable amount of spinach at this point, and the spinach is still a pleasant green.
11. Dump in some heavy cream, and cook for 5-15 minutes, uncovered.  The cream will reduce and thicken; the roux you made with the flour and butter will get it pleasantly thick without reducing the cream to, er, butter.  :)  I use the "European" heavy cream the Harris Teeter has, because I'm like that, but please add whatever you have.  I think I used about 3/4 of a cup, but I didn't measure it.  Add more cream if you think it needed, but I'd start with a few tablespoons and add more along.  
12. Add the bacon somewhere in there.
13. Grate in a small amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano.  (I actually did this early in [11]. I think the dish suffered from its being added so early.  But suffering was not what went on later.  It was more like screams of deliciousness.)
14. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, and perhaps a bit of nutmeg.  Feel free to add these anywhere you see fit.  With the bacon, (perhaps) the salted blanching water, and any salt in your butter, you might be fine on saltiness.  The spices can get added where you think it best, but you really should taste the stuff as you go anyway, so you can develop your own sense of what's going on and what needs to be added when.  For instance, adding the bacon after everything is done might appeal to your desire for little crispy bits of bacon.
15. Perhaps you should add some more butter here, but for god's sake, get the stuff on the table before you eat it all with your constant tasting.
16. Serve forth your tiny amount of creamed spinach.  (I had mine with bratwurst.)
17. Enjoy it a lot.  Annoy others by saying how much you like your effort.  Vow next time to double or triple quantities.  

The Salt

How the hell did I write a post about Bojangles' without linking directly to where they sell that seasoning salt they put on their fries?  I must be losing my edge.  ;)  But, to be honest, Bo may have lost a hair of his edge too.  Still good though.  

Never Did Find Out Exactly What That Was

A photo from this year's N.C. State Fair that I almost lost (click it to embiggen):

The only pigs I've ever licked were dead, and I only licked pieces that were cooked, or mostly so.  Please feel free to enlighten me, O fairgoers.  

Wow, I really would love a quarter's worth of Spam squirted thru a little metal tube

http://gastromatic.net/

[Via Wine Authorities, after they clearly had too much to drink.  Dude.]

What We Really Eat

I guess I should start posting again sometime, right?  Right. 

---

I think a lot of what I post about food, and maybe what others post about food too, is sanitized.  When you stop by that fast food place again or come home and heat up some leftovers, in some sense that isn't worthy of mention, right?   Or do you all just eat lovingly home-cooked meals and expensive dinners at the finest restaurants?  I know that's exactly what I'm like.  ;)  Or at least want to be.  

On the other hand, in terms of blogging, I remember a cartoon from Life in Hell where Binky was writing diary entries that looked like "Went to work.  Came home.  Ate microwaved burrito.  Wrote in journal."  Uh... no.  Bo-ring.  

So, what do we really eat, and what do we blog? 

---

Last night, I'd been invited to eat out at a chain Mexican place.  A little before I started to get ready, I found out the dinner had been called off, leaving me with a taste for something I didn't have the foodstuffs for. So....

I sauteed an onion, and started a cheese sauce on another burner.  The cheese sauce got the last of some cheddar, some swiss, and a couple slices of american I had lying around.  The sauce partially broke for some reason, or maybe it was just that these cheeses I've never had any problem adding to sauces like that suddenly decided not to melt into this sauce properly.  

When the onion was translucent, I threw in a pound of frozen ground beef from Brinkley Farms (man, that stuff is nice and beefy tasting -- much more so than when I buy typical grocery store ground beef).   When the beef was browned off and combined thoroughly with the onions, I dumped it in the cheese sauce, and added salt, a little Texas Pete, and maybe some pepper.  

Then I got out a bag of tortilla chips and some jarred salsa.  Voila: dinner.  

Result: really filling and satisfying in a coarse kind of way.  Still took me well over a half-hour to make (partly because the ground beef was frozen).  But it turned out that the cheese sauce texture problem really didn't matter when I tossed in all that other stuff.  

---

I think my motivation here is that I want to post some about things I regularly eat when I don't have time or energy to cook more complicated meals.  (Not that I've ever made the above meat 'n' cheez glop before, but whatever.)  

As usual, we'll see what happens.  :)