Today’s Tip(s): “Pre-Cooking & Browning”

KITCHEN & COOKING Department

PRE-COOKING:

I work part-time and have kids involved in various after school activities, so it’s kind of nice to be able to come home and quickly throw something together for dinner. Or, if I’m really thinking ahead, I can toss some stuff in the crock pot and it’ll be ready by the time we get home.

I purchase hamburger in the big economy six pound packages. I brown all of it at the same time (in one pound units) and then put the browned meat in small Ziploc freezer bags. Then, when we’re making something for dinner that requires browned hamburger, like tacos, that eliminates a whole step. It’s super easy to drop a bag of meat in spaghetti sauce, and I do the same with packages of Italian sausage, too. (we like italian sausage and ground beef in our spaghetti sauce).

Not only does this make future meal preparation quick, but it also makes it easier (and safer) if my kids want to make dinner (say if we have a date-nite) like (I know this goes counter to all that good cooks hold dear) Hamburger Helper. I don’t have to worry about them pouring off the grease, getting burned, etc.

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BROWNING:

To make good beef stew in the crock pot, ideally, the meat should be browned first. I purchase a large inexpensive cut of beef, trim off the excess fat, cut it into small chunks, and then brown it along with garlic, seasonings, mushrooms, diced onion, then a bit of red wine to finish it off.

Put all in small Ziploc freezer bags, and pop in the freezer. This makes beef stew preparation so easy in the future because all that trimming and browning is time consuming!

–both submitted by Kimberly

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Tim says: If you are single or a couple, cooking-once-and-using-many-times is the only way to go. Invest in reusable, dishwasher-safe storage containers of every size. I prefer smaller, square or rectangular containers because they stack better and take up less space than circular ones. I also pre-seal each container by pushing a layer of plastic wrap into the food before lid placement and freezing. I wrap smaller portions of cooked food (like chili for hot dogs) separately in single-size servings, before placing them in the same storage container. I use torn-off pieces of 2-inch wide blue, hardware-store “painter’s tape” for labeling all food containers — “What I am” and “When I was put here“.  The tape can be used several times and is easily removed. If I don’t label what I put my freezer, anthropologists centuries from now will have a heyday.

Did you know? “Heyday: ORIGIN late 16th century. (denoting good spirits or passion): from archaic heyday!, an exclamation of joy, surprise, etc.”

For years I thought the word was “hayday”, meaning the hay was ready to harvest — an important day culminating a lengthy process with reason to celebrate. A red-letter day.

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Wasn’t Me

(2006)

Sometimes I watch CNN’s Headline News just to make me feel better. Like yesterday when I read the following news item as it crawled across the bottom of my television screen: “Oops. Visitor who tripped on a shoelace and fell down a stairway shattered. . . “

(Here, I paused,  preparing myself for cracked ribs, a concussion, plus a lawsuit to follow)

“. . . three Qing Dynasty Chinese vases at a museum in Cambridge, England.”

By golly, I bet that museum would rather have had that fellah crack those ribs!

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When More is Too Much

It’s becoming difficult for me to watch TV. What started out as an industry oddity has become an industry standard: I’m talking about the TV “Marathon” mentality.

The first innocuous baby step was taken years ago by the then Sci-Fi Channel, with the ridiculous notion that if you happened to like the Stargate series, you would like it even more if episodes were run back to back ad infinitum, 24 hours a day.

Well, things have gotten much worse since then. Nowadays, nearly all TV channels are running their own Marathon-type programming, and they are doing so more and more frequently; it is becoming an extraordinary bore.

Anaconda, Anaconda I, Anaconda II, Anaconda III, Son of Anaconda, Son of Anaconda I, Bride of the Son of Anaconda XII (all in the same afternoon!), followed by Arachnophobia, Arachnophobia II, Snakes and Pythons I through XXIV, Spiders, Ice-Spiders, Fire-Spiders, Water Spiders, Spiders on Airplanes all night long.

Unfortunately — exacerbating this terrible trend — many TV channels have begun purchasing the rights to other TV channel programing, such that similar Marathons are concurrently appearing across multiple channels, cutting one’s choice of programming even more. For instance, BBC’s popular “Being Human” series is now appearing in full Marathon regalia, scattered across multiple television networks across all time periods.

With all of this said, however, I have come up with a simple solution, and if you happen to be a television programming executive chuckling to yourself as you read this, I humbly suggest you try the following experiment in order to fully appreciate the misery you are inflicting on your dwindling viewership: eat tofu morning, noon, and night  for 6 months in a row, and you will understand!

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A Letter from Sendai

Tim says: I am pleased to be able to post this uplifting letter sent to a friend of mine from Sendai, Japan. At a time when horrific images fill television screens worldwide, it is a “blessing” to see humanity working at its best. Perhaps there is a valuable lesson to be learned here. I certainly hope so. I was asked to remove all name references, which I have done.

–Tim

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A Letter from Sendai

3/14/2011

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful. During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

It’s utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.” Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often. We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time. Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains in Sendai are solid and with the crisp air, we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me, With Love in return, to you all,

(name withheld by request)

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FFT: Pit Stops & Coleslaw

FRIDAY FOOD THING
(Summer, 2008?)

A new PIT STOP convenience-store-gas-pump-place has recently opened nearby, alongside the Food Lion grocery store, which is now several years old; I hate to admit it, but Lake Gaston commerce is growing — not quickly in leaps in bounds, but — in tiny baby steps. The new Pit Stop is a very spacious convenience store, complete with a row of 12 or so gas pumps, and a walk-in beer cooler, which is becoming a refreshing meeting place for local traffic. Sometimes, after filling up my vehicle with ga$ while chatting with the next door pump-mate about this and that, I slip inside the beer cooler just for the thrill of stepping from a 100-degree day into a frosty, living room-sized ice box. More often than not, the persons with whom I was chatting it up at the pumps are in there, too, admiring the stacked cases of beer, pretending befuddlement about beer selection just like I do as we cool down.

“Nice weather, isn’t it?” I ask. After a while — when our lips begin to turn blue and our teeth are on the verge of rattling, one by one we shrug our shoulders and step out of the cooler.

All of which, as you already know, has absolutely nothing to do Pit Stops and coleslaw…

One day (after perusing the beer for a longer than normal period of time), I decided to warm up a bit with the purchase of two chili dogs, one of my all-time weaknesses. “Light on the chili,” I said. “Heavy on the onions.”

“You want coleslaw on those?” asked the little-old-lady clerk.

“Huh?” I grunted, not particularly liking coleslaw and being somewhat of a hot dog purist — and because my brain cells were still battling beer cooler-induced hypothermic ice crystals. I made a face. “Why would anyone want to put COLESLAW on chili dogs?” I asked, incredulously.

“Child,” she said, “folks been puttin’ slaw on chili dogs long before you were in diapers. Coleslaw on dogs is some kind of — magic.”

“You mean, like a peanut butter and banana sandwich?”

She made a face of her own. We looked at each other for a few seconds. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll put coleslaw on a chili dog after you’ve tried a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Fluff the banana into the peanut butter with a fork. It’s some kind of — magic.”

“Deal,” she said, and we both laughed. “Next time you come in here I’ll let you know.”

“Deal.”

I sat down at a table and ate my two chili dogs. I will be back for more. Perhaps with a dab of coleslaw.

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Today’s Quote

“Well done is better than well said.”

–Ben Franklin

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Today’s Quote

“There are only 10 types of people: those who understand Base 2, and those who don’t.”

–Roberto Sandberg

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Today’s Quote

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

–Sir Winston Churchill

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Today’s Tip: Upstairs/Downstairs

SENIOR’S DEPARTMENT

My mother-in-law lives in a two story house.  To make house cleaning easier for her we make sure she has the right cleaning supplies upstairs as well as downstairs so there is no need to carry toxic things on the stairs.  We also bought her a used vacuum to keep upstairs so she doesn’t have to lift heavy things up and down the stairs.  This minimizes the amount of things that need to be carried on the stairs leaving only laundry, cleaning rags, or an occasional book or craft.

–submitted by Renee

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Tim says: this is a great tip, kind of like putting a can of Comet cleanser and a spray bottle of Windex underneath every sink. Or trash bags in the bottom of every trashcan. Dual vacuum cleaners really makes a lot of sense.

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Today’s Quote

“I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn’t find any.”

–Anon

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