Cooking Goals for 2011

One of the reasons I don't think of myself as a good cook is that there's so much basic stuff I don't know how to do. Here are a few things I'd like to accomplish by the end of 2011:

1. Understand my options for thickening a liquid and be able to use at least some of them without resort to a recipe. In particular, I'd like to be able to make/use a roux on the fly and be able to do a white sauce without doing more than referring to a note card for a ratio. I have Christmas Day planned for Project White Sauce.

2. Prepare more of my own food during the summer months. Kansas City isn't exactly the Amazon, but it does get hot here, and the hot weather sucks me dry of any culinary ambition. So things go generally to heck. I need to develop a plan.

3. Learn to clarify a bouillon by using a "raft" of vegetables, meat, and egg. OK, I'm lying: I have no need for beautifully clear bouillon. But I saw this done on TV the other day and it's a cute trick. :)

4. Learn the uses for more of the seasonings in my spice drawer. A lot of that stuff I can't even mentally 'taste'.

This seems doable to me!

D-Feast Friday: The Soul of a Recipe

I have a love-hate relationship with recipes. I love them when they teach me what I want to do, but I hate referring to instructions as I cook. Alas, unless I'm just making something up as I go, I do need the recipe.

Here's my main quarrel with most recipes: they tell me too much and too little at the very same time. The lists of ingredients and detailed procedures usually fail to convey what the recipe is really about. What ingredients and steps are necessary to for the dish work from a chemical standpoint, which are necessary for a pleasing flavor, and which just give the dish that extra something?

What is the soul of a recipe, its essence? If the recipe went to Nepal to find itself, what would it learn? When I experimented with breadmaking a decade ago, I learned from my reading that all you need for yeast bread to work are yeast, some kind of sugar for the yeast to much on, flour, and water. I haven't made bread in ages, but I'm reasonably sure I could bake acceptable bread just from those ingredients, using no recipe. All the other ingredients you find in bread recipes are there to enhance flavor, texture, shelf life, nutritional value, etc. I'm not saying those thing are unnecessary, because they are necessary if you're after the characteristics bring. But the SOUL of yeast bread is flour, water, yeast, sugar or something, and the steps needed for the yeast to make the dough rise.

I once tried to make a curry sauce by stirring curry powder into unflavored yogurt. The result was incredibly bitter, one of the worst things I've put into my mouth: I can almost taste it now. Today, I used the Internet to track down a number of yogurt based curry sauce recipes. The first few I looked at didn't seem to be quite when I wanted. When I pulled up the fourth one, I almost fainted from the length of the ingredient list. Once I resumed breathing normally, I deduced from the list that the author was basically asking you to build your own curry powder from whole spices - a fine idea, but not a process I would find necessary. When I had mentally crossed off the curry-powder ingredients, what was left was pretty much this: yogurt, curry powder, and sugar. I had been on the right track, all those years ago: I just needed some sweetener.

These days, I'm working on growing as a cook. As I do so, I find that I'm getting better at reading recipes and finding the soul that I seek. And that, in turn, makes the recipe easier to cook from. Because I'm not doing anything very elaborate, I start cooking knowing what I need to do: I just need the recipe as a memory jog. Why? Because I know that recipe's soul.

Thinking About Blogging: A Pop Quiz

OK, class, now I'm going to give you a pop quiz about blogging. This is an open-book test, so I encourage you to consult your own hearts and minds.

Please note that all answers are correct.


Posts to a blog that's mostly about a particular subject should be:

1. Informational - readers should go away from the post more fully informed about the subject at hand.
2. Experiential - readers should go away from the post better understanding the blogger's life and heart, and perhaps relating part of their own experience to the blogger's.

2. Ideally, a blog's post should feel like:

1. An entry in a journal or diary.
2. A letter to a trusted friend.
3. A very small work of literature.

3. True or false: No matter what the normal subject of the blog is, it's a good idea to occasionally include pictures of and stories about cats:

1. True: Yes, absolutely.
2. True: Of course this is true! How could this possibly be false?

4. In most kinds of writing, the writer should have the needs of the reader foremost in his or her mind. In blogging, the writer should:

1. Put the topic and the blogger's relation to it first. The blog is a journey of sorts, and readers are welcome to come along or not as they choose.
2. Seek first to serve and nourish the readers. If the blogger is not serving readers, the risks of putting one's words online outweigh any advantage in having the blog at all.

Please pass your exam books to the center aisle for collection. And congratulations: no matter your answers, you get an "A".

D-Feast Friday: In a Pickle

As is typical with my cooking posts, this is the report of an amateur playing around than a dissertation by an expert.

I've been pickling some veggies lately. There are various advantages to this, such as getting some additional life out of a cooked veggie that needs to have something happen to it, as with the beets I put in a brine the other night. But the main reason I'm doing it is that the little flavor bombs are delicious, and eating them feels like I'm treating myself luxuriously. Fairly often, when I want a bedtime snack, a few bites of a good pickle does as a fine substitute for alternatives that would be much higher in calories.

The pickle world sort of divides into two main approaches: processed pickles add a brine to a veggie in a jar that is sealed under sterile conditions: this is often called canning. If it's done right, the results are stable at room temperature almost indefinitely.

My experiments, though, have been with what are called quick or refrigerator pickles. The veggie is placed in a brine and then in the refrigerator. It's ready to eat in a few days and typically lasts for a few weeks. (If you resist eating them for that long.)

The brine is typically a combination of water, salt, vinegar, often some spices, and some sugar. (I haven't tried this yet, but I was reading yesterday that Splenda or the like can be used in quick pickles though not for processed pickles.) Brines differ in the proportions and in the type of vinegar years, because different veggies vary in the level of acidity that work best, and different tastes may be sought.

Basically, following the recipe, you build the brine in a saucepan, chop your veggies and place them in the jar. Pour the brine over the veggies, put on the lid, and refrigerate. It really is easy-peasy.

I've done a mild version of kimchee, beets, bread-and-butter pickles, and pearl onions. My very favorite, though, is pickling roasted red peppers - I've used the Food Network recipe here. This recipe also teaches you how to roast peppers, which is pretty easy and (if you like roasted peppers) is a HUGE savings over buying them at a deli.

If you're interested in playing with this, check your favorite markets for a spice blend called "pickling spice". When I got in a toot to use it, the store I used most didn't have it, and made my own blend out of a bunch of stuff. This may be fresher, but the packaged blend would be easier!

Go on. Get in a pickle.

Aging Mind, Young Memory

Today, picking up my prescriptions at the pharmacy, I saw a young woman who looked so much like someone I knew that I almost spoke to her...could it be her? Then I realized that the young woman I'd known would now be in her 40's.

I tweeted the experience, as part of my "This is what aging is" series. My friend Jess, who blogs awesometastically, responded (translating from Twitter), "So your brain is aging but your memory isn't? :)"

I thought that was beautiful. I haven't seen the woman the girl in the pharmacy reminded me of in many years. I don't know what her life has been like, though I hope she's happy, or if she ever wishes to again be the age at which I knew her. In a sense, though, she'll live as a young woman, preserved in the amber of my memory, for as long as I live. So, too, will all the people that inhabit my memories, wherever life (or perhaps death) has taken them since we last met.

Something to be Grateful For

The fabulous Mike Durbin has challenged his fellow diabetes bloggers to post each day of Thanksgiving Week to acknowledge blessings we've received as a result of diabetes.

I don't know that I'm going to make it to seven: I don't know that I'm going to make it to two. (I've written several posts in the last couple of days, and I feel the hot breath of laziness close upon the back of my neck.)

But, this one is a big one.

See, one of the things I think a person needs for a full life is something to be involved in, a way of doing good that absolutely nobody in authority expects you to do. To qualify in my mind, the "cause" would be something that no employer, family member, or even church leader that would attempt to make me do. Purely voluntary, done solely from belief and passion. Political or social movements, charities, community organizations, teaching kids to read - there are thousands of things a person could do along these lines.

Now, I've got diabetes. Diabetes provides a focus for my efforts. I tell my story as part of my efforts, and I try to provide a little support. Some of what I do is intended to help the larger Diabetes Online Community better understand Type 2, but mostly I just seek through blogs and tweets to lighten peoples' loads just a little bit. While I may someday do more to represent diabetes to society as a whole, what I'm doing now feels productive and worthwhile.

I'm grateful for something to do.

I went a long time without finding something that fit for me. Sure, I've done a whole bunch of little things, but I've not have a specifiec

Fake Diabetes Statistics

We read many statistics that are faked or exaggerated. Here, there's no mystery: I'm telling you I made them up.

73.6 -- The number of hours of sleep I lose in a year while putting off loading my pill sorter.
2 -- The number of test strips per container that, once used, escape and try to make it to the border.
0 -- The number of members of the "diabetes police" sent to the hospital each year by enraged diabetics.
12,873 -- The number of members of the "diabetes police" sent to the hospital each year in the imaginations of enraged diabetics.
6.2 -- the percentage of health information sites on the Internet that are actually run by people genuinely interested in the health of others.
95 -- the percentage of 'finger wipers' who think that 'finger lickers' are a little bit disgusting.
98 -- the percentage of 'finger lickers' who think that 'finger wipers' are a little overly fussy.
1 -- the number of blood tests per lancet encouraged by lancet manufacturers.
17.6 -- the average number of blood tests per lancet by anybody that's been testing for more than a week.
99 -- the percentage of diabetics who've secretly wished a high blood sugar episode on some officious carb pusher.
15,872 -- the number of new diet books published each year.
3 -- the number of new diet books published each year that actually help a significant number of people achieve meaningful and lasting weight loss.
9.8 -- on a scale of 1 to 10, the amount of fun I've had making up these statistics.

Bob Pedersen