Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Black-eyed peas

It's a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cornbread on New Year's Day. The store sales flyers are full of ads for fresh (shelled), frozen, and canned black-eyed peas. We eat them rather frequently, so I have a fully black-eyed-pea-stocked pantry already.

The thing is, I don't really just love black eyed peas. I like 'em well enough, and I do eat 'em when they are served. I even serve 'em from time to time, especially when I have some with jalapenos.

What I really, really like is purple hull peas. These delicate little peas are small and green when fresh, turn a pale taupe color when cooked, and taste delicious with very little seasoning. Their shells are just what the name says: purple (and green).

Wasn't I just totally surprised when My Prince's Stepmother (AKA #2MIL) informed me that these were really young black-eyed peas? That would be why they are smaller than a regular black-eyed pea and why they have that tiny little eye. The purple and green hull is an immature stage of growth. #2MIL knew this, of course, because her #2Son is a truck farmer in New Mexico and raises, among other fine things, black-eyed peas. She brought me a nice bag full of purple hull peas a couple of seasons ago, and I sat on the couch in the den and shelled them all in one go. They made a perfect "mess o' peas" for dinner that night.

While we don't have any fresh purple hull peas at this time of the year, we sure do have some cans of Allen brand purple hull peas hauled in from Houston. I'm thinking that that will be close enough for the old tradition, and that's what I'll be serving on New Year's Day. With cornbread, ham, fresh tomatoes, and iced tea. Mmmm.

Kitchen Food Safety

The dishcloth has me worried right now. Looking for more information about "dishcloth safety," I ran across this list of no-no's for kitchen food safety from the University of Nebraska.

I pretty sure that I'm okay on most of this, but I'm still thinking about some of the others. F'rinstance:
  • I don't use brown paper bags or garbage cans for cooking, although I have used a paper bag to coat fish with cornmeal. I think we tend to think of our own kitchens as clean places, but maybe saving that Sonic bag to use for coating some fish is not the best approach to food safety. Still, I hate to think that I would have to use a fresh ziplock bag to do the coating right when I'm trying to figure out how to recycle the ones that I am using already. On the good side, I haven't used film canisters or plastic garbage sacks for food storage. The latter, however, are great for storing Christmas pillows and some of my winter sweat suits. I'm just saying.
  • I am so-so on re-using the one-time use items. I re-use the plastic utensils to serve cat food (and thereby avoid using people utensils for the cat food). I have also re-used drinking water bottles for water and tea mixes. I now wonder about washing and re-using chopsticks. I know that bamboo is a renewable resource, but some of my chopsticks are pretty (like the ones BKC gave me for my birthday). I want to keep them around AND use them for a long time. There are some issues with disposable food service items that need to be balanced with food safety, but it does involve risk. Risk for oneself is, to be sure, different from risk for others, so re-use should, at the very least, be limited to personal use and not presented to others.
  • OK, I'm good on materials in the microwave and getting rid of old mercury thermometers. It only takes one or two microwave fires to learn those lessons, and My Prince is our family hazmat expert. He disposes of old batteries and other dangerous things in the appropriate manner. *proud look*
  • "Mis-using hard to clean items" has some pitfalls. I rarely use a whisk, so I will have to go have a look at what is on hand and how it works for cleaning. The basting brush, however, has long been a challenge. I have never liked them. They just look like the perfect place to grow crud. For years, I just used a spoon to dip and spread, instead of basting. Then I found some silicone basters that look like one of those squiggly ball things that kids play with. I got a bunch at the dollar store, toss them in the dishwasher after using, and no longer worry about the crud. Vegetable brushes go in the dishwasher also. I avoid sponges like the plague they surely carry. The dishcloth, however, remains a worry.
  • "Re-using items that should be laundered" might have addressed that dishcloth worry, but it doesn't really. I use a dishcloth and dishtowel several times before tossing it to the laundry. Yes, I do dry them out before hand. I even dry them between uses. My Prince has lately installed one of those old timey racks that my great grandmother had over her sink; it has three arms that swing back out of the way and allow you to hang three cloths for drying. Instead of spreading the dishcloth out over the sink divider to dry between uses, it now hangs there. This allows it to really dry out and inhibits the growth of mildew (when I use soap to give it a quick wash and then rinse before hanging). I'm not entirely sure that this is entirely safe, but it is safer than the way I had been handling the matter.
  • Cutting boards, we've discussed. It all goes in the dishwasher.
What I'm wondering is, how dangerous am I in the kitchen when I reuse the dishcloth or the dishtowel? Do you change them out after one use or one meal or one day? I have a cousin who managed to get loose in my kitchen a couple of times. She used up every single dishtowel that I owned--in one meal prep. Those were the days when I used terry cloth towels, so there were fewer in the drawer than now, but still I was amazed at her ability to use them up so quickly. The same thing happened with all of my hand towels in the bathroom. There might have been a little OCD involved--or there could be something that I am missing. I'm still wondering.

I should point out that one reason I wonder is that the recent energy crisis is not really going away. We have to think about how much paper we are willing to use to dry our hands or wipe up spills and such and then toss away. How do we balance the need to conserve against the need to protect ourselves from the risk of disease?

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Food Politics

Something I want to look at when I have more time is the politics of food. Somewhere in my checkered past, I have some (OK, a lot) of experience with political activities of one sort or another. I've seen the system from the inside as well as the outside. Let that suffice as enough reason to read this post about Food Politics by David Spero and take it as a foretaste of things to come.

Safe water after flooding or power loss

Much travel back and forth, little time to blog, and now I'm home again and seeettttttlllling in. Still unpacking. Still getting my bearings in the house after too much absence. But already having fun in the kitchen. Now to get myself back into blogging mode . . .

One place to start is my ongoing concern for food safety. Ike left his mark on my psyche, for sure. I often find myself rethinking what we did to survive and what we can do to better prepare ourselves for the next storm. Since it looks like climate change (AKA global warming) is in full swing, I think we have to count on another storm hitting Houston sooner rather than later. If not Houston, then some other part of the Texas coast will be devastated. More than a day or two without power is serious hassle, even trouble, for a family; any level of flooding is a disaster.

I often turn to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration for food safety information. Although the agency has become more politicized over the years and has, I believe, let us down on more than one occasion, I do know that there are some fine Americans serving us there, people who are dedicated to protecting the public and helping consumers identify safe and effective products.

The FDA has produced a flyer on getting safe drinking water and protecting food supplies in the event of power failure or flooding. I think it's worth printing out and studying to see where our storm preparations can be improved. I can already see a couple of areas that I need to work on: adding refrigerator thermometers and elevating the water supply.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Rosemary Salt

Here's one of those homemade food gifts that ought to please just about anyone who eats: Kalyn's Rosemary Salt. I intend to make some for home use (it's good on tomatoes, grilled vegetables, and chicken), and I may as well bag some up for my foodie friends.

Finding this recipe will now spur me to invest in my first herb plant, a rosemary bush. Mmmm.

A good old-fashioned potlatch

I'm reading various articles about "how to green your Christmas," "living green," and coping with the declining economy this holiday season. Part of what I have been thinking about is the whole over-commercialization of Christmas that we have all been decrying, lo, these many years and the sense that now is the time to begin to dial back on some of the crazy consumerism that has been going on.

As it is, we over decorate, over eat, over spend at the end of every year and spend the next year trying to recover from it. Much of this excess is really that--unnecessary consumption of goods in order to impress others or feed our own need to feel "wealthy," "important," "with it."

After all, just how much do we need to decorate our homes--inside or out--to convey the spirit of the season?

Sometimes, when I think of Christmas in the USA, I think of potlatch. This a tradition among Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast. It varies among the various tribes and is nowadays depicted (and probably practiced) as a means of redistributing wealth while accumulating prestige. I first encountered the concept some years ago in a description of potlatch as practiced by the Kwakiutl. The Kwakiutl potlatch, thanks to the rich environment in which they lived, was a massive display of wealth which was then destroyed as a demonstration of, well, wealth.

The Peabody Museum has this to say about potlatch (among the Kwakiutl and others in the area):
It is commonly portrayed as extremely competitive, with hosts bankrupting themselves to outdo their rivals and aggressively destroying property.
That sounds about right for the situation in which many find themselves after any given Christmas in post-World War II America. Here's a bit more from one of the oldest (non-Native American) authorities on the Kwakiutl, Franz Boaz (from The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians ):
The rivalry between chiefs and clans finds its strongest expression in the destruction of property. A chief will burn blankets, a canoe, or break a copper, thus indicating his disregard of the amount of property destroyed and showing that his mind is stronger, his power greater, than that of his rival. If the latter is not able to destroy an equal amount of property without much delay his name is broken. He is vanquished by his rival and his influence with his tribe is lost, while the name of the other chief gains correspondingly in renown.
This, too, resonates in our contemporary practice of Christmas, if not, indeed, in our whole way of life in which we draw endlessly on the resources of our country and our planet to consume (almost literally) conspicuously and wastefully. If we are not competing directly with our neighbor or some other rival, we are competing against a goal set for us through advertising, movies, and other media that says we must (lavishly) decorate a tree, host (extravagant) parties, give (expensive) gifts, and otherwise display--and consume--our wealth--even if we have little wealth.

I'm still trying to come up with some better ideas for edible gifts this year, but, the more I think about it, the more I see a need to come up with those ideas--and act on them.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

The lowly lentil

I hit the wrong button when I first started this post, and the darned thing published itself--without any content! I will continue trying to gather my thoughts and get this article written, but who knows how it's gonna post again. I sure don't.

What I intended to write about--The Lentil--was actually just a riff on a soup that I made a few weeks ago for Mama and The Girls (in this instance, Little Sister and Big Kid Cousin). I had tossed a few items together with a bunch of sausage and then added some lentils, which became the big focus of our discussion of what we were eating. For some of them, adding lentils was introducing a whole new food to their diet.

Lentils were certainly not something that I had while growing up. I don't recall anyone in our greater family circle mentioning cooking them. I don't think I had one until maybe 10 years ago, unless, of course, I ate them while in Africa (which was so long ago I have probably forgotten).

Indeed my acquaintance with lentils seems to derive from the search for new tastes and healthier eating, not from any family foodways. While I had heard of lentils most of my life, they were in the context of Bible stories and some vague idea that this was food for "poor people" or "foreigners."

Imagine my surprise to discover a high protein, low carb vegetable that can be cooked into a variety of dishes. Imagine how happy I am that it's a legume that doesn't take as long as most dried beans to cook. Lentils are also fairly inexpensive to buy and easy to store, so they make a good addition to the basic staples that should be stocked in the pantry.

Happily, my lentil stew was a hit with Mama and The Girls, so much so that instead of sending some of the leftovers home with Little Sister, I ended up freezing a container of the stew. I pulled it out yesterday and served it with some cornbread for Mama's lunch. Sometimes, Mama is a tad reluctant to eat leftovers. She saves them, of course, but she often doesn't want a "do over" on yesterday's lunch or dinner. That was one reason for freezing part of the leftovers--so there would be some time between the meals when the stew was served. It worked--the stew was a hit once more. Too bad it was Mystery Lentil Stew, cuz I have no idea how to make it again. *sigh*

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Healthy treat: Frozen berries

The day's "healthy eating tip" is a gadget that I have on my home page. Every day, I get some "word to the wise" about healthier ways to eat. "Smaller portions" seems to crop up a lot (thanks, Mayo Clinic, I had no clue). Here's today's tip:
Fresh berries are kind to the waistline; they are naturally high in water and low in calories. Dried berries also provide excellent nutrition, but since most of the water is missing, their calories are more concentrated and you'll usually wind up eating more of them.
Aside from the annoying italics, which were in the tip when I cut and pasted and which seem to spread like a virus, the tip seems useful. Berries generally the lowest carb counts among fruits, but I keep seeing high counts for the dried versions. While the dried fruit is easier to keep and, sometimes, to eat, I keep going back to the fresh (or frozen) version to help my blood sugar.

Here's one of my favorite treats:
  • One half cup or so of frozen mixed berries
  • One fourth cup or so of heavy whipping cream
The cream freezes around the berries when you pour it over them. I used to have frozen blueberries and cream for breakfast. Now I like mixed berries as a treat. As an added bonus to the low carb goodness, you are forced to eat the dish slowly because the berries are frozen. Let them melt in your mouth so you can enjoy both taste and feel.




Monday, December 1, 2008

Mystery Stir-Fry

I've taken to calling my various stir-fried (and sorta steamed) concoctions "Mystery Stir-Fry." For years, I've been cooking Mystery Casserole. In the last year or two, we've been eating Mystery Meat.* Now my stir-fry has taken on the characteristics of these mystery dishes.

In this case, I'm simply thinking of how I end up preparing one of the dishes--a little this, a little that, whatever is on hand and might go together more or less well. I plan the dish by going to the freezer to find a meat that will thaw in the time I have available and then, later, to the vegetable bin to see what I (a) have and (b) feel like messing with. Then, once the saute pan (no wok available) is ready and the veggies ready to be covered (a little steaming helps things cook faster when I'm tired of standing in the kitchen), I drag out the spices and herbs and start seasoning. Sometimes I want a curry flavor, sometime soy sauce, sometimes Italian, sometimes it's just a mystery.

Once the dish is done, I can eat it as is or add it to rice. Usually, I am quite satisfied when the "mystery" resolves itself to a delicious dinner.

A recent "Mystery Stir-Fry" came about thusly"
  • I had a small package of frozen scallops thawing out. I've never actually cooked scallops at home, so this was sure to be an adventure.
  • I tossed the scallops in the pan with a little vegetable oil, added a few stalks of fresh asparagus (which I am only just now learning to cook), and some slices of fresh button mushrooms.
  • A little water, sea salt, coarse ground pepper, garlic powder (my irritation with fresh garlic is something for a later post).
  • I covered the pan, waited a few minutes for the asparagus to get tender and the scallops to turn opaque.
  • Served over brown rice, I spooned on some of the pan juices for the flavor.
  • Usually I make a mystery dish and then never remember how it is done. I hope I remember this one. It was delicious--and very simple.

*This, I should point out, is not a reference to the unknown protein that appears in school cafeterias but to odd--and largely unknown--cuts of meat that we sometimes get at an especially good price. My Prince has occasionally come home with 10 or 20 pounds of excellent pork (sometimes beef) that could have been intended for chops or roasts or who knows what. Either the trainee butcher got to it or the master butcher was hung over. Seriously weird cuts. Seriously challenging to figure out how to prepare it. And more fun that way, to be honest.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Green bean casserole



One of the staple dishes of Thanksgiving dinner seems to be green bean casserole. That would be the one made with cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions. I don't remember this dish from my childhood, so I'm thinking it's something that has been popularized in recent years by one or the other food manufacturer. It has become so popular that grocery stores in this area regularly fill up one of the end caps of a food aisle with all of the ingredients in one convenient spot.

It's a tasty dish, to be sure, and a handy way to get kids to eat green beans. Unfortunately, it's overloaded with sodium and carbohydrates and is roughly the consistency of glue.

Happily, I found a recipe for green bean casserole that is none of these things. It appeared in the same place I found the Frog Eyes (My HEB Goodness, Holiday, 2007). I haven't actually made the recipe as of this writing, but I have all the ingredients at hand and hope to have prepared and tasted it by the time this post is published.

Here's the recipe:
___________________________________________________________

Splendid Green Bean Casserole
Prep Time: 10 minutes/ Cook Time: 15 minutes
___________________________________________________________

  • 2 large shallots, peeled and sliced thin
  • 2 cups fresh sliced mushrooms
  • 2 tablespoons HEB Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  • 2 bags (12 oz. each) HEB Ready Fresh Go! Green Beans
  • 1/4 cup HEB Texas Twist Ranch or Caesar Dressing
  1. Heat oven to 500 [degrees] F. Line small baking pan with foil and spray with nonstick olive oil cooking spray. Spread the shallot rings evenly in the pan and bake for 5 minutes or until golden. Remove and cool.
  2. Combine mushrooms and olive oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 2 1/2 minutes. Set mixture aside.
  3. Prepare green beans according to package directions, drain, and place in large serving bowl.
  4. Top green beans with mushrooms, dressing, and shallots. Serve warm. You can also cover the dish with plastic wrap, refrigerate, and microwave for 5 minutes on high before serving.
Makes 10 servings

___________________________________________________________

Nutrition Facts:

One serving = 3/4 cup
80 calories, 2 g protein, 5g total fat, 1 g saturated fat.
0 g trans fats, 7 g carbohydrates, 1 g dietary fiber, 2 g sugars,
0 mg cholesterol, 70 mg sodium
___________________________________________________________

I'm having to make some substitutions, especially in brands (sorry, HEB, all your stores are across town here in Houston). That's gonna make some difference in some of the nutrition numbers, but, since I'm watching carbs, I'll be sure that those are not adversely affected by the change. Your mileage may vary.

*crossing fingers*

UPDATE: Made it. Ate it. Loved it. The only seasoning, however, came from the salad dressing that we added before we served the dish. We used Newman's Own Ranch Style dressing. While the dish tasted good, I felt that it needed more flavor. Everyone else seemed to manage it without anything else, but I had to hit the salt shaker. In any case, I am now confident enough about the dish to start playing with the recipe. Mmmm.

Thinking about squash

Little Sister found a recipe for stuffed acorn squash a while back and brought it for Sunday dinner a week or two ago. It was so yummy, stuffed with brown rice and apples and cranberries and who knows what else. I enjoyed the taste even as I knew that I was loading myself with carbs.

There's a difference between summer squashes and winter squashes, and that is carbohydrate content. Summer squashes have fewer; winter squashes have more. But is it enough to matter?

Here is the 100 gram serving (less than a cup in most cases) of raw, sliced summer squashes:
Here's the same serving set up for winter squashes:
One hundred grams is not equivalent to one cup in all of these squashes, so serving size will vary. I have avoided the winter squashes for years because of their comparatively high carb count, but I might want to rethink that. Smaller portions is, at some point, going to have to become as big a concern as carb count. Perhaps sooner rather than later? In the meantime, a little winter squash might be okay.

Of course, I will have to figure out which one is a hubbard squash, won't I?

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Mock yams

One cup of diced sweet potato (raw) is 23.42 grams of carbohydrates. One cup of chopped carrots (raw) is 12.26 grams of carbohydrates. All orange veggies are not the same, but they look close enough for my purposes. We are substituting carrots for sweet potatoes this Thanksgiving.

My Prince loves sweet potatoes, preferably candied with sugar and smothered with marshmallows. Ditto for Mama. I have fooled My Prince with carrots before, so I'm going to try it with Mama. He liked it enough to ask for more. He even (pause to absorb the shock) liked the carrots so much that he asked to learn how to cook them for himself when I'm gone.

Here's what I do:
  • Boil some peeled baby carrots until very tender. You can put a little sea salt in the water if you want to. The important thing to put in the water, however, is your sweetener. I use Splenda, but you may have other thoughts about what works best for you. Use maybe 1/2 to 1 cup. You want the carrots to taste really sweet.
  • If the cooked carrots taste sweet enough, just drain, add some butter, and serve. If they need more sweetness, drain most of the liquid and add more Splenda until you think you've got the taste you want. Then butter and serve.
  • To get a brown sugar taste, you can use Splenda's version of brown sugar or just splash in a bit of sugar free maple syrup. I use the maple syrup because it doesn't have as many carbs as the Splenda brown (I'm serious about the splash bit).
If you really want to fool everyone, mash the carrots. My Prince was happy to have the whole ones, but we may have to be a little more devious with Mama. Still, we tend to eat less when we are served an intact vegetable rather than a mushy mound (I think).

Thanksgiving dessert

We are trying to avoid the traditional pumpkin pie this year, although it is a struggle. It's one of Mama's favorites (at this time of year). It happens that I also like this pie, so I want to avoid having one within range of my (sadly lacking) willpower. Maybe I can buy her a pie before I leave, with instructions to eat it all before I return (like that will go over well).

Big Kid Cousin came up with a recipe for pumpkin cheese cake but decided against adding to the workload by trying a complicated new recipe. I volunteered my Dreamsicle Pie, and that is what we are going with.

Originally, I "invented" this pie to serve as a pumpkin pie alternative solely because it was orange. The main ingredient is: sugar free orange Jello (or whatever the house brand equivalent might be). The important thing for this occasion is orange color and sugar free. I also "invented" this as a pie, so I made a "crust" for it. This year, we will skip the crust because of food/teeth issues for the elders.

Here's the pie:
  • Make the sugar free orange gelatin according to package instructions. I use one large or 2 small packages. Allow to set in refrigerator.
  • Remove your now fully set orange gelatin from the refrigerator and dump it into a blender. Add a small amount of heavy whipping cream and blend it until you have a smooth mixture that is a pastel shade of orange. Keep adding cream (but not too much) as long as you think the mixture will not become runny and still needs a lighter color.
  • Pour the mixture into a glass pie dish, with or without a crust. Cooking spray might be needed if you don't have a crust. (I guess I will find out on Thanksgiving.)
The crust:
  • Mix chopped pecans and a small amount of melted butter or margarine (just enough to lightly coat the pecans).
  • Place the pecans in the bottom of a glass pie dish and press into shape to form a thin crust on the bottom (and up the sides if you have enough nuts).
With or without the crust, cover the pie with plastic wrap and return to the refrigerator for some more setting time. Cut and serve as proudly as you would a homemade pumpkin pie.

The whole pie tastes like a dreamsicle ice cream and is delicious. It has zero carbohydrates without the crust and very few with the crust. The dreamsicle taste with nuts just goes to a whole new level of yummy.

You can make this pie with other flavors of gelatin. Try something red for Valentine's Day, even green for St. Patrick's Day.

I've not tended to worry about garnishes nor bothered with any topping. You might try try it with whipped topping of some sort (mind the carbs!) or sprinkle a few nuts in the middle of the top, but the pie is certainly tasty enough without anything extra.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Too salty

I made one of my "usual" Mystery Stir-Fry dishes a couple of days ago and almost couldn't eat it. It was just way too salty.

The ingredients were not much different than what I have used in the past: chopped white onion, chopped celery, diced chicken breast, chopped broccoli, sliced carrots. I did throw in some leftover smoked ham, but that came to maybe half a cup and the overwhelming taste there was "smoke" (which happily disappeared in the cooking process).

I used the "usual" spices: sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper (reminding self to refill that bottle), garlic powder, curry powder.

What I was experimenting with was Knorr Caldo de Tomate (tomato bouillon). I bought the chicken flavored kind. Since I want to try to make sauces without thickeners, I thought this would be a good addition to my Mystery Stir-Fry. I added two heaping teaspoons to my stir fry and stirred and fried (mostly steamed actually) away.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww!

After I burned out the salty taste buds in my mouth for at least a week, I checked the label on the tomato bouillon. I was shocked to find that I had just added 2 x 38% (+ heaping) of my daily requirement for sodium.

I'm cooking with less salt these days and using sea salt whenever possible. I wonder if that has not only reduced my sodium intake but changed my taste for saltiness. Whatever it is, I don't think that tomato bouillon is going to make it onto my pantry shelf as a staple unless I can find a salt free version.

I did actually try to find a salt free or low sodium version of this bouillon by looking at the Knorr corporate web sites for the US and for Canada (there isn't one for Mexico, but the Canada site is way cool). There is no mention of tomato bouillon on either site. I didn't do too well with the Latin American sites since they were written in Spanish and Portuguese. Going to the home company (Unilever) brought me to the environmental/healthy eating brag page where, assuming that this bouillon is manufactured somewhere in South America, the brag is that "soups" for that area have seen an average 7% reduction in sodium.

Well, whoopdeedo!
  1. I can't find the bleeping product on any of the company's many web sites. Do they even claim it in public? Are they ashamed of it? They should be because . . .
  2. 910 mg of sodium per teaspoon is a crying shame. Indeed, given the ingredient list which shows salt as the first ingredient, the whole product is probably mislabeled. This is not chicken-flavored tomato bouillon but tomato-flavored salt.

Thinking about Christmas

There's a quite a bit of thinking yet to be done about our Christmas celebration this year even though I haven't finished thinking through our Thanksgiving celebration. However, I was just doing my round of blog reading (this is mostly how I get my news these days) and ran across yet another discussion of the economy's effect on Christmas. That made me think about my birthday. LOL!

The discussion included some thoughts about giving less for Christmas, commiserating with those that would have little or nothing to spare for Christmas in this economy, and the joys of giving homemade gifts. I've been making many of my gifts for years since I make jewelry and seem to be able to please most of my female relatives with my creations. Indeed, the stand out presents for my birthday this year were a trip to my favorite bead shop sponsored by (and shared with) My Prince and a kick ass pile of beads from Big Kid Cousin. I am delirious with all the fun I will have with these treasures.

I did, however, get the biggest laugh out of a present that a couple of family friends gave me, since it was most peculiar to reach into the tissue-stuffed bags and feel . . . limes. Once I got through mugging about those, I began pulling out a half dozen limes, a large jicama, and not one but two bottles of hot sauce: Del Primo Green Sauce and La Costena Taquera Salsa Hot. This has to be one of my most memorable presents. The occasion and the company surely helped make it so, but I was also struck both by its simplicity and it rightness. The gift will be used (indeed it has already been partially consumed). The gift will be appreciated (I love spicy jicama and know that I will enjoy these sauces). The gift will not be a burden (it's not something that will take up space for years to come). I do have to recycle the bottles that the sauce came in, but otherwise there is minimal waste from this gift. (There would be less, of course, if I could compost, but that ain't gonna happen at Mama's house. My Prince is not too fond of the idea either. *sigh*)

Just to re-emphasize the value of this sort of gift, BKC did her own version of hitting the sweet spot. Not only did she give me the beads with which to make what will become one of my favorite necklaces (once I get it made), she had some chopsticks sticking up of her bag. I was delighted, of course. I love to eat with chopsticks, especially well formed ones that don't threaten me with splinters. These were lovely to look at and will be lovely to use. They are also a renewable resource, being made of bamboo. Maybe BKC should be MGC (my green cousin)! Down in the bottom of the bag, there was yet one more present to be discovered: Red Monkey Organic Cayenne Pepper. I may carry this one in my purse, diguised as "medicine," to sprinkle on my food whenever the need arises. :) As BKC knows, I already set a bottle of it out on my table along with the regular seasonings.

So, yes, I had a fine birthday and, yes, I got some wonderful presents. These were not cheap presents, especially in combination. Groceries are not such a bargain these days. But I'm thinking that this is both the season and the time to start looking at food gifts as a way to lower the cost, the wasteful consumerism, and general greed of Christmas in the US. I will, no doubt, tell myself that a girl just can't have too much handmade jewelry, but the truth is, she can't have too many spices either. We may not have time (or, in my case, skill) to do the carb-laden baking that some will do this season. We may not be able to sew or make jewelry or do carpentry or any of the many other skills that would allow us to make a special present for those on our gift list, but we could, I think, figure out something that will make good eating better.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Thanksgiving hors d'ouevres

For our shared Thanksgiving this year, we have all sorts of appetites coming to the table. A couple of these appetites are in danger of being too small, as in they don't eat enough unless we put something in front of them and get a little pushy about eating. A couple of these appetites are on their own timer, not necessarily related to "meal time," and, when they gotta eat, they gotta eat.

Not knowing exactly when we will be able to get it all on the table, Big Kid Cousin and I have decided that a small plate of appetizers would not be amiss. Indeed, since we've decided that we aren't going to have a salad, some raw and pickled vegetables might even take its place. At least we'll have something that our various "appetites" can nibble on if we take too long getting everything set out.

I'm thinking right now of three items that we "premiered" at the last birthday party. They are tasty and low carb and really made a hit.

Marinated mushrooms was the most popular of this trio. Monterey brand mushrooms has been available at Sam's Club for several years, and I've been buying them for years in Austin. They make a nice appetizer for My Prince. I notice that they are more expensive at my home club than here in Houston, so I might just buy here to take with me. Four of these mushrooms have 1 gram of carbs/1 gram of fiber. As far as I can tell, it's a free food. They were also a big hit at the birthday party; several people asked where to get them.

That's exactly what I'm doing with the marinated asparagus that I found here in Houston but couldn't (didn't) find in my Austin club. This the same asparagus that I used for my version of Frog Eyes the other day. They have a slightly sweet taste, which is not surprising once you discover that there is some sugar in the marinade. Still, 8 stalks has only 2 grams of carbs, so you will be sated by the taste (I am) before you hit your 2 carbs.

The relish plate will also include Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Petites. I will just use one of the PicklePaks, since that quantity will suffice for our purposes. I first picked these little packs out just prior to Hurrican Ike because they made for a convenient low-carb snack. During the hurricane aftermath, they were useful since they didn't need to be refrigerated. (You might be able to find out more about them at www.mtolivepickles.com, but I'm not gonna provide a link to the site. I went there to confirm the nutritional information, since I don't feel like climbing the step ladder to get to the pickles on the shelf right now, but the web site just annoys me--music, broken links, excessive decorative (as opposed to useful) graphics.) My recollection is that the pickles have 0 carbs per serving. In this case, one serving is the whole picklepak.

So, one relish tray/plate will have:
  • marinated asparagus
  • marinated mushrooms
  • kosher dill petites
One serving would be 8 asparagus spears, 4 mushrooms, and all of the pickles on the plate for 3 total carbs minus 1 gram of fiber (if you count that way). Since I'm not climbing a ladder to find out if pickles have fiber (and Mt. Olive messed up on filling in the blank there), we'll have to leave it at 1 gram of fiber. Not too bad for an appetizer, especially when it sneaks in some more veggies for our picky eaters.

A shared Thanksgiving

Our thoughts are turned to Thanksgiving now as, along with the rest of America's foodies/moms/persons-with-appetites, we ponder what might be served and enjoyed on our overladen tables of autumn bounty. This year's turkey day will be very different from years past, and, I must say, I am quite looking forward to it.

For my nuclear family (i.e., My Prince and our real and fictive children), there has been little opportunity to have a Thanksgiving Dinner at our own home with just our own selves to please and serve. Instead we have had to divide ourselves among three households of our parents' generation and consume at least two massive turkey dinners within the typically four-day holiday period. These dinners have been prepared (his side of the family) by some wonderful cooks and served in mass quantities or consumed (my side of the family) at various buffets in hotels and restaurants. This was (a) expensive, (b) food coma inducing, and (c) occasionally stressful.

This year will be different in that we have removed My Prince from the struggle. He will stay--peacefully and happily--in Austin while we put together a version of Turkey Day here in Houston. Instead, for him and the grandkids still in Austin, we will share a meal on the Sunday after Thanksgiving (when I hope to be back there to prepare it). We still don't know what that meal may be, but we've all agreed that it can be as simple as Mystery Casserole just so long as we can be together and express our thankfulness for each other and the good things in our lives. I look forward to it.

Meanwhile, here in the Bayou City, Big Kid Cousin and I have collaborated to have a shared Thanksgiving Dinner, which we will prepare for our mothers and her aunt. The youngest person in the group will be >60; all of us have our own handicapped hang tags for the cars. Needless to say, BKC and I are concentrating on simple and easy fixings at the same time we are striving mightily to keep everyone from slipping into a food coma for one reason or another.

Our biggest concern in this meal is carbohydrates, of course. Three of the five participants in this feast need to avoid carbs like the plague. Getting the sugar out of the menu is pretty easy--we are opting for sugar-free on just about everything. Getting the starch out is an altogether different matter, so we are going to have to sacrifice some traditional items from the menu or seriously reinvent those items to get rid of the starch.

There are other challenges to be overcome, of course. We have picky eaters who like simple foods which would do well on the Children's Menu of a restaurant. We have menu restrictions related to gout and colitis and some concern about phosphorus levels. We also have traditionalists who can't quite see a Turkey Day without "the official Thanksgiving menu." It's gonna be fun to try to work our way through all these problems.

I look forward to it.

Monday, November 17, 2008

World Diabetes Day

Friday, November 14, was World Diabetes Day. Who knew? No one at our house anyway. It's my bad, I guess, for not paying more attention to the news stories on the home page for this account, but we might wonder how much coverage the day actually got in other news outlets (snark intended).

In the meantime, the good news was that we had a party on that day. With two diabetics in the group, menu planning was something of a challenge. Fortunately, Big Kid Cousin had a big (kid?) hand in making sure that most everyone involved had a clear understanding of the need to pay attention to the dietary issues that the diabetics (and others) faced.

And it was a success!

There were two birthday cakes (birthdays being the occasion for the party). One was an animated "cake" that had what looked like a Cabbage Patch granny popping in and out, singing "Happy Birthday." The other was a sugar free concoction, made with a Sweet-and-Low cake mix. Everyone got to enjoy some cake one way or another.

The rest of the table was delicious and (mostly) low carb. I made frog eyes (yes, they turned out fine). BKC assembled some impressive hors d'ouevres of cocktail sausages, cherry tomatoes, and cubed Colby Jack on a toothpick. Little Sister brought not only the cake, but some fried chicken sticks (they looked like french fries) with a beef and cheese dipping sauce for them. Family friends brought queso and chips. An aunt brought her special "pie" with hash browns for crust and assorted veggies for pie filling. We set out some cashews and a plate of pickled items (the pickled mushrooms were a big hit).

While there were some carbs on the table, it was possible to avoid them and still fill your plate. The funnest part was Mama, who opined that this was the "best ever" table of refreshments. If Mama's happy, we can all relax.

Let's hope that we are more aware of World Diabetes Day next year. It's a good opportunity to educate others about the issues. We did have a little discussion about some diabetes issues (especially hypoglycemia) at the party, but that was mostly because one of the diabetics started having problems because she didn't get to eat soon enough. We need to do better, and that starts with education.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Frog Eyes



Rhonda Schaefer of Victoria (Texas, where else????) didn't win last year's contest for holiday recipes, but she got a picture of her appetizer in HEB's holiday food thingie (My HEB Goodness, Holiday 2007) and her recipe on their web site. Sadly, I saved the picture but never went to get the recipe from the web. Sorry, Rhonda!!!!

Still, the frog eyes look yummy. As I look at the picture, what I think that I am seeing is something like thin sliced ham, spread with cream cheese, rolled around asparagus, and then sliced for spiral wraps. If that is not what Rhonda Schaefer intended, oopsie and so-sorry and I'm-sticking-with-my-interpretation.

Indeed, I'm planning a practice run to see how this will work for an upcoming par-tay.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

This is a "transition year" for my family, so we won't be having a "traditional" Thanksgiving, whatever that is. Instead, while My Prince and the grandkids get through with all their stuff and I finally get back to Austin the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day (when we will have a meal for giving thanks), Mama and I will join Big Kid Cousin and her crew for the Big Day. It will be kinda fun, with an age range from 62 to 91.

The challenge of the day, however, is all of the food restrictions we have among us. The biggest one is the need to go low carb. Two diabetics and one quirky digestive tract pretty much dictate that we kill every carb we can find. Still, there will be an abundance of sweet tooths (teeth?!) at the table, so we are gonna have to be creative as well as careful.

I've found a nice little treasure trove of recipe and other ideas that HEB published for the 2007 holiday season (My HEB Goodness, Holiday 2007). I might just write about those if I can get a chance over the next few days. In the meantime, I'm quite interested in the page they devoted to "Tips for Diabetics During the Holidays." Here they are:
  • You can control your diabetes by eating small portions.
This, I am told, is how to control a lot of things, including weight. Sadly, it's hard to turn away from something that tastes really good. That's why I find it easier to avoid the dark side of large portions by making something that needs a lot of chewing, that is filling, and has as few carbs as possible.
  • Use smaller portions of bread, potatoes, and dressing (which contains starch). The vegetable dishes should be free of sauce and excessive butter. Always include fresh fruit and vegetable salads on your plate.
Or, like, don't serve bread, potatoes, and dressing--or anything else that contains high amounts of starch. Butter doesn't scare me, and (hello!) it contains no starch. Sauces are an important part of cooking and flavoring food, so why not think of sauces that contain no starch or (if you are really afraid that olive oil is going to bite you) fat. Why does everyone try to shove high carb fruits down a diabetic's throat? I eat them now and then, but fresh fruit is a serious argument for "small portions." Berries are different, of course, and I do love avocado and tomato, but I'm guessing that that's not what the HEB foodies were thinking about.
  • Vegetables served with low-fat or salsa dips make good appetizers.
Or serve with salad dressings. I learning to make my own viniagrette (or what I call viniagrette). Tossing a bunch of carrot slices in a small bowl of that or using it for a dip is quite tasty and filling. It's harder to find things that I might like to dip into salsa.
  • You can make a lot of healthy desserts by replacing sugar with products such a H-E-B's BetterSweet.
Duh! Just as big a problem, however, is getting rid of the other carbs in desserts--like flour or pre-sweetened fruit.
  • Skip the crusts of pies and the icing on cakes to cut down on fat and carbohydrates.
Indeed. Or make your crusts of nuts (all nuts), and ice your cakes, if you have to have cake, with sweetened cream cheese.
  • Take a long walk after a holiday meal. It will help control your blood sugar level and you'll feel better.
Word! I especially like the part of the walk that involves letting someone else do the dishes. ;)

Big Kid Cousin and I are already having great fun trying to figure out what we can cook that will satisfy the traditionalists among us and keep us all healthy.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Cole slaw

One of the frustrations of shopping with My Prince is that he sometimes gets these wild notions of what he thinks he will eat. We go through this all the time with apples. He wants apples, they sit around in the kitchen and shrivel up, and all the time he is saying that he's gonna eat 'em. And then I throw them away.

Recently we had one of those discussions when he wanted to buy a bale of cole slaw. The local warehouse store often has cole slaw in 5 lb. (I think) bags. This is way more than we would normally need if I were going to use cole slaw as a side dish. This is way more than My Prince would ever remember to dig out of the crisper and consume in some other bizarre way (cooking is so not his forte). I let him buy the bag of cole slaw, thinking, however, that we would just have another object lesson a la the apples.

Then I had a brain flash. I recalled those dismal days in Dar es Salaam when the only Chinese restaurant in town served those odd stir-fried dishes that were heavier on cabbage and carrots than anything else. Could the cole slaw be stir-fried, I wondered?

Yes.

I began adding it to stir-fried veggies not long after we got the bag home, and went through the whole thing fairly quickly. I'm trying to wean us away from rice and pasta as part of the stir-fry dishes that I have been concocting. The cole slaw serves as a cheap and low-carb filler on the dish. I can't tell that it affects the flavor much, since the shreds are so thin, but the dish is nicely bulked up so that there is no need for the carbs.

The best news for our home economy is that My Prince's aversion to cooked cabbage (it's a digestive thing apparently) seems not to be a factor here. He's digesting nicely, so we will surely continue to use this ingredient (unless I am just dying for some brown rice).

Home again, home again

After two weeks with Mama, it was time to come home again. Seems like I barely get here before I have to reload and return to Houston, but it is always good to come back home.

That fact really hit me last night when I was cooking us a late supper. The kitchen counters were cluttered with things My Prince had not put away and more clutter that we had just dumped in the kitchen while unloading the van, so I had to do a little shuffling to make room to work. Suddenly the thought just popped into my head that I was glad to be back in my own kitchen.

The kitchen is small. Not enough cabinets. Not enough drawers. Not the best arrangement in the world. Don't even get me started on the tatty old carpet on the floor. (I would prefer bare concrete to that carpet!)

BUT . . .

I know where stuff is, and the stuff is arranged more for convenience in cooking than for how it looks. Porque it is my stuff, my space.

When My Prince and I finally got hungry enough to stop talking, it was easy enough to go in the kitchen and start grabbing utensils and vegetables and whack away for a little stir fry. I had been gone for two weeks, had been cooking in someone else's kitchen, and had to move some clutter out of the way--but the basic arrangement that I had created and was used to working in was right there, accessible, easy, and--yes--comforting.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Another use of jicama

Friday night is party night at Mama's house. It's been that way since I was a teenager and had my own crowd of friends (four or five teenagers is a plenty big crowd!) come over for pizza and talk-talk-talk. Nowadays, Big Kid Cousin and Little Sister make up the "usual crowd," but this past Friday added a young(ish) couple from Mama's church to the group.

While the menu didn't start out as pot luck, it sure ended up that way. The young(ish) bride brought chile con queso, with ground beef and mild flavoring. Little Sister brought big slices of jicama with a couple of dressings for dipping sauces. Neither of her dressings were the traditional lime and cayenne flavors, but they held up well for giving the jicama a little taste.

Toward the end of the evening, I was nibbling around and just dipped a slice of jicama in the queso. Wowee zowee! Nice flavor combination. I'll certainly try that again. A low-carb, high-fiber substitute for chips is a good discovery any time.

Another shopping strategy

Back in Houston, no hurricanes in sight, and it's "if I don't actually want to scrub floors, I don't have to--today." So there's time to dink around on the interwebs and even do some blogging. I am somewhat stunned!

So here's what I found today: The Simple Dollar. The relevant post for me today talks about saving money on grocery shopping in 6 more or less easy steps, but the whole blog is quite interesting because of the various discussions of different ways to save money on all sorts of things besides food. I think it's worth spending some time meandering through The Simple Dollar. You're sure to pick up at least one idea that will help survive this tough economy that we have right now.

The six steps to saving money at the grocery store are:
  1. Get a flyer.
  2. Find sales on fresh ingredients.
  3. Do some recipe research.
  4. Create a week-long meal plan.
  5. Make a shopping list from the meal plan.
  6. Go grocery shopping--and stick to your list.
As it turns out, I only do one of these things: get a flyer. From that point on, I'm a bit of a failure (as far as this list goes).

I look at all of the sales, not just the fresh ingredients. I am tending to cook more and more with fresh ingredients these days, but, frankly, my dear, I am so not going to make my own tomato sauce, ergo, it's gonna come in a can. So are many of the other ingredients that I use--for some menus, if not others.

I have been known to do some recipe research, but I am admittedly bad at following recipes. I actually enjoy reading cookbooks, but I tend to think of this as inspirational reading, not specifically educational or practical. I read recipes (and sometimes even clip them) and then kinda sorta make something that has a few points in common with what I read but, of course, several points that are not. (Hey, it's how I roll!) If I were going to do some research prior to shopping (and I often do), it will more likely be for the nutritional value of a specific food or for a list of foods with a particular nutritional element (fiber anyone?) or getting a better idea of how an ingredient that interests me might be used. The latter might be considered recipe research, but half the time I get my use info from Wikipedia and go from there.

Now meal planning is something that we should all do, I'm sure, but, well, I don't. I mean, I do plan what I want to have for Christmas dinner and shop to make sure that I have everything that I will need. For non-holiday meals, I tend to think about entrees: chicken something, something with ham, broiled steak, and so on. But that level of planning usually happens on the morning (if I'm lucky and don't forget until the afternoon) of the day I'm cooking. The rest of the menu will follow based on what experience, tradition, or availability-in-my-pantry pretty much dictates. If I planned a whole week at a time, I doubt that I could stick to the plan for the whole week--but I have no doubt that I would lose the list well before the week was up. Still, here's the meal planning sheet that The Simple Dollar provides to help you out if you are a better planner than I am.

My shopping lists are often heavily based on the sale flyer that we are using. Since we shop at three stores in Austin, that's three lists (but only two flyers since not all stores publish flyers). The lists also include staple items that we have to buy regardless of what's on sale (although we look for bargains and buy them at the cheapest store). Our lists also include items that we can stock up on but might not use for several weeks (or longer if we are really building up our stock of that item). Our meals for the week might come out of that list, but more likely they will come out of what I have purchased on past shopping trips and combine with some fresh items from the current trip.

Sticking to the list is also a tough one, not because we are inordinately prone to impulse purchases (I am more so than My Prince, but still not a "problem shopper"), but because there are unadvertised specials to be found, forgotten items to add when we are reminded by seeing them, and--in my case--the need to be creative. This creativity may come with the menu planning that I sometimes do while in the store ("I want to cook that ham this week, and I think I want to serve it with hominy"--which is not one of the items that I would stock up on). The creativity may also come later on when I have made sure that I have an array of items to choose from in the pantry when I want to toss together a stir-fry dish ("Ah, I do have bean sprouts!"). Sticking to the list is important for efficiency and for economy, but it can't be a straightjacket.

So I'm thinking that there are probably several ways to be frugal in shopping. Perhaps first step is to realize that the grocery store is not a cheap place to hang out and that you have to be actively responsible for keeping your money in your pocket--where it belongs. And then make a list!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Edamame (2)

Well, I repeated the stir-fry using edamame, celery (3 stalks, finely sliced), carrots (handful of miniatures, finely sliced), and packaged cole slaw (3-4 cups). A few spices to taste, and I had a healthy, low-carb, and, well, tasty side dish. Without the rice. Woot!

My stir-dry technique involves some steaming since I don't like to have to stand too long in the kitchen. While that helps move things along, there is still plenty of crunch when I am too impatient to let everything cook to a pulp.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Cucumber snack

My Prince and I just returned from another adventure in Grocery Land. We were both well and truly tired out by the experience. As dutiful as we were in eating a bit (leftover cole slaw stir fry) before we went to the store (so as not to be piggish in our purchases), we were still ever so slightly ravenous when we got home.

My solution: fresh sliced cucumbers and cream cheese. I gave My Prince a small bowl of cucumber slices, a glob of cream cheese, a knife, and left him to it. Then I made my own bowl of goodness. Mmmm, real goodness. This is one of my favorite snacks. And low carb?

1 c. sliced cucumber with peel = 1.66 grams ECC
100 g, cream cheese = 2.66 grams

The problem is, of course, how much did we eat? Can't really say, but way less than that. Nice crunch, good chewing, excellent flavor, satisfying snack for less than 5 grams of carbs? I'm happy.

Edamame

"Edamame" is the Japanese word for boiled soy beans. Yup, the same stuff that my Louisiana cousins (you thought I only had cousins in Houston? LOL!) grow for animal feed, it would seem. Only yesterday I bought it (Imperial Gourmet All Natural Edamame) in a big box with 8 little (frozen) packages for a little over $7. I am not thinking that that was such a good buy, but, since I've never actually had this food (other than a little taste at a salad bar), I thought it would be worth the investment to try it out.

I thawed out the first package (not enough room in the freezer for all 8). When it was getting time for dinner, I actually read the box. I didn't realize that the pods were not edible. That makes even more of the packaging a waste, since there was really no need for plastic bowls for these beans and, indeed, not too much justification for taking up all that space in shipping and storage.

Looking for more information on this product (there is no "Imperial Gourmet" website that I could find), I did find a web reference on the package to JYC International. J. Y. Chung and his company apparently import these packages directly from China for Sam's, Costco, and others. The website is not well developed, but there is some more information about the history and cultural context of edamame in the Orient and in the States.

I also spent some time trying to figure out the nutritional value of these beans. Not that I doubted that they were good for me. The problem was the packaging. The nutritional panel said that there were 12 servings in the box, but there were only 8 little bowls. In order to get 12 servings, I would have to divide 6 bowls in half and the remaining 2 bowls in sixths and then redistribute the beans from the two bowls to the half-bowls and . . . what a mess!

And then there were the inedible pods. I had to assume that the pods were not included in the nutritional information, but their size (one-, two-, and three-bean pods) and probable random distribution would affect what was left in each bowl after shelling. *snarl*

I ended up ignoring the nutritional information and winging it. The whole problem just aggravated me. Fortunately, after a couple of minutes in the microwave, a little (not nearly as much as the package provided) sea salt, and a dash of soy sauce produced a nice little bowl of beans to snack on. They were labeled as a snack, so I had to try them as a snack. I shelled them all at once instead of squushing them out into my mouth. I seasoned the bowl of beans after shelling. And it was good. A lot of work and worry for a small bowl of beans, but not so bad.

I ate a few beans and liked the crunch and the taste. Nothing overwhelming as far as flavor is concerned, so I figured the bean would play well with others. I dumped the remainder in a stir fry of celery, onion, cabbage from a package of fresh cole slaw, and leftover rice from the previous day. Very nice when served with salmon. The flavors, even with a little garlic and soy sauce did not overwhelm the salmon, so I had to admit that I was proud of my cooking last night.

I will also look for edamame now in other kinds of packaging with clearer nutritional information. It is very likely to become a frequent addition to my vegetable stir-frys.

Monday, October 6, 2008

National Pizza Month

Oh, cool! This is National Pizza Month. And here's some pizza history to help celebrate.

I guess this justifies our lack of willpower when My Prince and I went shopping at the local warehouse store yesterday. I drove my electric cart past the display case of take-me-home-and-bake-me pizzas with hardly a flinch, but My Prince just couldn't push his buggy past the display. His face took on this pitiful look, and, of course, I had to say "Pick one!" At least he went for the all meat one--fewer carbs, doncha know?

Figuring out carbs and glycemic index: Brown rice

I'm struggling now, trying to figure out which foods we can keep in our "inventory" of healthful, low-carb edibles and which needs to be eliminated. We've been stocking the pantry pretty steadily in an effort to feed a grandson, who is a bottomless pit, and My Prince, who is much too old to be a bottomless pit but seems to be, and my own metabolically impaired self. Part of that effort has also been intended to weather the economic storm that has been brewing for some time, with higher food prices and the potential for some shortages to occur. Sadly, this has allowed us to slip into some less-than-desirable eating habits. (Not to mention all these trips to Houston and the storms that we've had lately.)

As I've followed some leads on the internet, mostly starting with "can I keep the X" food item, I've picked up on a couple of things. Most likely this has moved me into the "dangerous knowledge" category, but I'm gonna try to work my way through some of this anyway.

So . . .
  • Starch that is stored as amylose is higher in density and slower to be metabolized. That means that high-amylose rice, for example, would have a lower glycemic index than one that was not high-amylose. How much lower is a question. My guess is that it not much lower, since rice in general has a high glycemic index, but high-amylose rice would be "better" than other rice if one were thinking in terms of harm reduction.
  • Of the various types of rice that are grown, indica rice is higher in amylose than japonica rice. Indica rice appears to be long grain rice, whereas japonica is short grain (and javonica is medium grain). OK, so we stick with long grain rice, including basmati.
  • Brown rice is simply a stage in the processing of rice in which the inedible outer husk has been removed. This stage has gives us a large grain because the brown part (bran) would otherwise be removed in milling. It's the bran that has all the fiber and nutritional goodies that our bodies need.
This makes me think that long-grain brown rice is the best choice (yea, I so love it!), but not a good choice if carbohydrates need to be counted and its glycemic index puts one in the danger zone. *bleah*

We have a lot of basmati rice hanging around and a fair amount of brown rice. The rice cooker was a lot of fun, but now I've learned to use it to steam vegetables, so it's not going to be thrown out. Nor is the rice. We are just going to have to eat less of it when we eat it and be mindful of where we have spent our "carb allowance" on the days that we eat it.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Tuna-stuffed Eggs

Just for a change from Hurricane Ike, I'd like to highlight an online cookbook that I recently found. It's actually part of Dr. Richard Bernstein's book, Diabetes Solution. I found a PDF file of the book's recipe section on D-solve (a solution until there is a cure). To download the 344 pages of low carbohydrate recipes, click on the link for Additional Resources and then the link for Free Recipes. That will start the download of the PDF file.

This recipe for Tuna-stuffed Eggs is found on page 227 of the file.

TUNA-STUFFED EGGS

Makes 8 halves
Per egg half.
Effective carbohydrates: 0.3 g
Carbohydrates: 0.3 g
Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 7.4 g
Fat: 6.9 g
Calories: 93

I love the combination of tuna with anchovies and capers, but you can make one or both optional.

Ingredients:

4 hard-cooked large eggs, peeled
1 3 1/2-oz. can olive oil-packed tuna, well-drained and mashed
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 anchovy fillets, cut in half lengthwise
16 capers

Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and use a thin, sharp knife to take a tiny slice from the bottom of each half so it will sit firmly in place after stuffing. Scoop out the yolks with a small spoon and place in a small bowl. Set the whites on a platter.

Mash the yolks with a fork until smooth (or press them through a sieve). Stir in the tuna and mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Using a small spoon, stuff the whites with the yolk mixture. Cut each strip of anchovy in half crosswise and crisscross the pieces on top of each egg; garnish with the capers. Serve immediately or chill.
I tried this recipe today. I didn't have any anchovies, so I used bacon. I didn't read the garnish instructions (I am so bad with following recipes); I just chopped the bacon up and mixed it in. I liked the flavor pop from the capers, which meant I had to use more than two per egg.

The recipe is basically an inversion of tuna salad (putting the tuna in the egg instead of vice versa). It's a tad more sophisticated than my normal tuna salad, but, if I couldn't have pickles, I could at least have cayenne. The egg was nice and tasty, and then the cayenne kicked in. Mmmm.

Ike and the scrounge for ice (1)

When the power went off during Hurricane Ike, we began the countdown that would end with rotten food from the refrigerator. Since we had prepared for the loss of power by using up as much of the frozen items as possible, we didn't lose $1000 worth of meats. Still, the loss was significant. Even things like mayonnaise and salad dressings cost a fair chunk of change, and we had to throw out more cheese than I could bear to part with.

Some foods could be given a bit longer life with ice. We had already started bagging ice from the ice maker the day before the storm. Since Mama sometimes forgets how the ice maker works, we had to keep checking to make sure that the thing was still running after she had loaded a glass with ice. Sometimes it wasn't. That kept us on our toes the day before.

We stayed in touch with Next Door Cousin while we prepared for the storm and got the idea from her to freeze bottles of water. These solid chunks of ice would help keep freezer and fridge cool longer, while we waited for the power to be restored, and we could drink the water after they melted. NDC did a fine job of getting lots of bottles into the freezer; I only put in a few. Big mistake.

NDC also found that her neighbor on the other side had an old chest freezer. They turned it on and tried to freeze zip lock bags of water. Sadly, while the old freezer was willing, there just wasn't enough time for this idea to work before the storm knocked out the power. Still, it's an idea for the future.

When the power didn't come back on (sounds like I was depending on magic, doesn't it) after a couple of days, things became desperate. Our ice supply would give out on the third day (as NDC kept us in little bottles of frozen water). Food was going to spoil faster than we could eat it; drinks were going to be on the warm side. While My Prince and I were already well used to room temperature soft drinks (seriously no biggie, people), Mama doesn't drink her soft drinks without ice. Cold isn't good enough; ice is essential. So she began to really feel deprived at that point.

One ray of goodness came when Big Kid Cousin, who lives a couple of miles away, got her electricity back. No magic there, just the power of politics. BKC lives in an old folks reservation (senior citizen apartment complex) which also happens to house a lot of people who came to Texas in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. Cheers for the Mayor of Jacinto City (Mike Jackson), State Representative Ana Hernandez, and others who went to bat for the old folks . . . seniors . . . at BKC's apartment complex. While these folks got their power back 10 days ahead of the rest of the area, a lot of suffering was eased, not to mention the potential complications for those with health problems.

Another bit of goodness about that restoration of power is that, for a few days, we could put more bottles of water in BKC's freezer--and use her stove to cook. For the first few days after the storm, there was no place to buy ice. Without power, there was no way to find information on television about the location for ice distribution. The newspaper was useless on the subject and the radio was less than useless. We were on our own, and thanks to BKC and her freezer, this was going to be doable . . . until our car broke down.

(to be continued)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Ike left the water on

When Mama and I were preparing for Tropical Storm Edouard, we spent some time working on the water supply. We were so very lucky when Hurricane Ike hit us that we did not lose our water supply. We stayed in Houston even without electricity--and we still don't know that that was the best choice--but we clearly could not have survived for two weeks without being able to turn on the tap and get clean water.

Some things did, however, go well, and some of our planning and preparation worked as it was supposed to. More did not.
  • We ended our two weeks of no power with 5 gallons of drinking water still in storage, so we had enough for three adults to drink plenty of water on some very hot days. The Red Cross should be proud of us!
  • I filled the bathtub with water the night the storm hit. It all leaked out before the storm was gone.
  • I had begun saving gallon water jugs to fill up, but then read that we should find jugs that have screw tops rather than the little snap cap that we were getting. The only screw caps were were getting were on two-liter soda bottles. So we started saving those. I only got about 9 saved and filled up before the storm, so that was some incomplete work that might have hurt us.
The first thing I did the morning after the storm was turn on the tap to see what we had. I was so relieved to see that water. This gave us water for showering, toileting, cooking, washing, and all the zillion other things that we need water for on a daily basis.

Sadly, we often combine water and electricity in order to accomplish many of those things. The dishwasher didn't work without electricity, so I spent a lot of time washing dishes by hand. True, we often used paper plates, but we did try to avoid it when we could. We had to borrow the use of a generator to wash clothes after a week. I had made sure that all of our "water work" was done before the storm hit, but I was, after all, supposedly on a short visit and didn't have a lot of clothes, especially cool and casual clothes that would see a lot of dirt as we did after-storm clean up. It was even hard to do general housecleaning--the water was there, but sometimes I just couldn't see what needed to be cleaned without electric lights.

Houston issued a couple of "boil water" alerts, but we usually didn't hear about them until too late (emergency information really stank as far as I am concerned). We had good drinking water, but the dish washing and hand washing and such were probably questionable a few times. We all ended up with tummy issues, but nothing too serious, so I guess we handled it all pretty well.

One thing that we did throughout the time after the storm was fill up every plastic drink bottle we came across with pure drinking water and stash it in an ice chest. Water was good for us to drink at any temperature, but it always went down so much better when it was cold. We reused water bottles and even Coca-Cola bottles. For the trip home today, I filled up some of the small water bottles with water and froze them to help keep our canned drinks cool on the road. I also filled up some Coca-Cola bottles with cold water. I ended up drinking more of our "homemade" bottled water than I did soft drinks. I think we may have developed a new behavior!

43 days and 3 hurricanes

Holy mackerel! What was supposed to be a short trip to Mama's house morphed into a forty-three-day stay. The long stay was because we kept anticipating hurricanes, especially Gustav and Ike.

We did some serious preparation for Gustav and breathed a sigh of relief when he passed us by. There's no ill will in that. Everyone on the Gulf Coast knows that the best outcome is for these storms to just fizzle out. No one ever hopes for a storm to do damage anywhere. But we can't help hoping for a shift north or south just a tad, to dodge the bullet so to speak.

We dodged that bullet with Gustav, but Ike hit us dead on. That was several hectic days of preparation, one night of heavy thumps and scary thoughts, two weeks of no electricity, and who knows how many weeks of recovery.

There will be lots of foodie stories from the storm, but, for now, we are pleased to say that the whole family is safe. Mama's home suffered comparatively minor damage. Our cars fared somewhat worse. And My Prince and I finally made it home today. We had some sick plants, a huge pile of mail, and the every welcoming dust bunnies to greet us, but it was all a beautiful sight. I get to sleep in my own bed for a while, cook in my own kitchen, and maybe even send some of those dust bunnies back where they belong.

Now let's hope for no more big storms for the rest of the season.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Yams Julienne

I guess I should have written that as "julienne yams," but then I'd have to figure out whether to make it "julienned yams." Not gonna do that. Besides this way kinda sounds more specialerer.

What it was, however, was just more or less "shoe-string" sweet potato. I picked up a sweet potato on my last trip to the store to experiment with. Today's experiment led to cutting it up to look like french fries. I did not fry them, however. I steamed them.

Backing up a bit, we accumulated a large (23 lbs. large) supply of pork shoulder ribs (at 99 cents/pound we took all we could). I barbecued a pan full last night and made some more or less traditional sides: crowder peas, sliced tomato, cornbread.

I had intended to try the sweet potato in some sort of stir fry dish, but last night's menu demanded something other than stir fry. I did not want to boil the thing to death and then smother its dead body with butter, which is the traditional way to cook a sweet potato in my family. The alternative is to bake it to death, peel away the resulting "shell," and smother the dead innards in butter. Given the high fat content of the ribs, I was hoping for something a little leaner.

I've never actually used my rice cooker for a steamer, but the occasion seemed right to try. After cutting (and cutting) the sweet potato, I had enough strips to fill the steamer basket on the cooker. I had no idea how much water would be needed to cook them or how long they needed to be steamed. Of course, I over did it, and the result was not as firm as I would wish. It would hold up on a fork if you were careful and the strip was not too long. Next time, I think I'll try only half as much water. I can always add more for longer steaming.

There will indeed be a next time. The flavor was nice and delicate and all sweet potato--no extra seasonings or fat. It complimented the stronger flavors of the meal very nicely, making me think that I'll need to look for other ways to use this vegetable.

Baked beans strike out

Baked beans have not been part of my family tradition. Maybe Daddy didn't like 'em. Maybe Mama couldn't make 'em. For whatever reason, I can only remember encountering them at one of our wonderful family reunions when I was a kid. There was, however, too much potato salad, fried chicken, and banana pudding to think much about baked beans.

Nowadays, however, I have begun to dabble in the baking of beans. This mostly involves grabbing a can of this or that bean and seeing what develops. A couple of days ago I did some of that dabbling and came up with disaster.

It all started out really well. I partially drained cans of:
  • pork and beans,
  • black beans,
  • pinto beans
and dumped them all in a pan. They looked yummy, and I knew they would taste yummy when I took them out of the oven.

The problem started when I opened the can of plain diced tomatoes instead of the can of tomatoes with chiles. I had to compensate with red pepper flakes, since I didn't want to use a whole can of chiles to go with the tomatoes. Oops! I overcompensated. Too much red pepper.

Strike two came when I thought some celery might be good to add. I had already chopped about 2/3 of a large onion and added that. More chopping didn't appeal to me. I was already tired of standing, so I opted for celery seed. I've been using dried celery flakes for some of my stir frying, but am not very experienced with celery seed. Who knew how much flavor those little buddies carried? Again, too much of a good thing.

Strike three came when I took the beans out of the oven. I had baked them for 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Then, when it was time to broil the pork ribs, I switched the oven over to broiling, raised the temp, and placed the ribs above the beans to keep the beans from burning. That wasn't strike three. Strike three was when I realized that I hadn't put any meat in the beans. I had been thinking about it, wishing I had some sausage to throw in. It was only when I took the pan out of the oven that I realized that I had plenty of my old standby (bacon) and could have used that for flavor. *sigh*

As it turned out, the peppers didn't kill us, and the celery seed was tolerable. I dipped out pan juices from the pork ribs to add some extra taste to the beans. We did well enough, but next time I think I will do more chopping and pay more attention to what I'm putting in the pan. Or not. :)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Soaring food costs

Not too long ago, USA Today did its part to offer some suggestions for surviving the increasing cost of food. Nancy Hellmich, the article's author, cites "government statistics" regarding those costs:

Overall, food prices climbed 4% in 2007, the biggest annual increase since 1990, and prices are projected to rise 4.5% to 5.5% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,016 adults, 46% said the higher cost of food is creating a financial hardship. They said they have noticed an increase in the cost of milk, fruits and vegetables, meat, bread and eggs.

I found the article interesting if a little long on "grow-your-own" solutions. I do, however, wonder at those "government statistics." I hope to do some more delving into them, mostly because the price increases that I have seen are much higher. Almonds at Sam's Club doubled in price in four years. Milk has almost doubled in price in the last few years; it is no longer economical to buy a gallon of milk if there is any risk of not using it all before it spoils.

I did find a couple of ideas I hadn't already thought of:
Instead of buying packaged instant oatmeal or fancy rice pilafs, she [Linda Vance] now gets those foods in bulk and packages them in small plastic bags. She also buys fresh vegetables in bulk, and to make sure that none of the produce goes to waste, she roasts the vegetables right away and stores them in the refrigerator.
For the first idea, I was already thinking of doing something like this. Not that it was my idea in the first place. Alton Brown (I love this man) did a Good Eats segment on making your own "instant" pancake mix, which gave me the idea of making my own "instant" cornbread mix (see my practice run in "Cornbread"). Ms. Vance is apparently applying the concept to other favorites for her family. A related issue that needs consideration is food storage for all of these "instant" mixes, but more on that later.

The second idea is, however, one of those hand to forehead moments when I wonder why I didn't think of it myself. We are buying more fresh vegetables these days in order to get more fiber and generally better nutrition. Some of it is going to waste when I cook fewer meals than I thought I would or travel sooner than originally planned. I hadn't thought about just cooking them up and storing them. I already do that for ground beef and sometimes for other meats. The problem will be storage space in the freezer (if I'm leaving town, the refrigerator won't be an option because I'm not leaving an actual cook behind in either my home or Mama's home).

Another problem will be what on earth to cook with these leftover veggies. One solution is soup: I made a big pot of it before I left Houston last week, intending for it to be used for the Friday night gathering. I heard that the "girls" didn't feel like soup on Friday and turned it into Sunday dinner instead, but either way we got a good meal for Mama and used up the veggies. Except for the broccoli, of course; Big Kid Cousin don't like no stinkin' broccoli!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Green Giant product codes

As I mentioned earlier, I picked up some cans of Green Giant veggies on sale. When it came time to store them away, I got ready to write the expiration dates on the cans. Imagine my surprise (not) when I found that 16 out of 20 cans had no expiration date printed anywhere on the cans!

Happily, GG provides a toll free number for consumers to call. I called it.

A nice lady named "Jo" explained the codes to me. For my purposes, the important numbers in the long product codes stamped on the bottom of the cans were the first two. The first number, actually a letter, stands for the month. A is January, B is February, and so on through L (for December). The second number is an actual numeral, and it stands for the year. A 7 would mean that the product was manufactured in 2007.

The next thing we need to know is how long the cans are good for. According to Jo, the whole kernel corn and green peas are good for 3 years, the cut green beans for only 2 years.

It took a little longer to get these cans labeled because of having to decode the product code and calculate the year, but it turns out to be a good thing that I took the time. The 4 cans that did have an expiration date printed on them were cut green beans, and all 4 cans were manufactured this month with an expiration date in 2011 (not 2010, as one would expect). This is another question that I will now have for GG consumer affairs. Also, while all of the cans were purchased at the same time from the same store, they had several manufacturing dates, and some will have an expiring shelf life in less than a year.

Now I just have to figure out how to store them!

Trip to Shiner (2)

Aside from the brewery, there is quite a bit to see and do in Shiner. Not that we old folks were quite up to doing much of it. We thought about going to the drive-in or even driving over to Yoakum for Country Music USA. In the end, we settled for the local museum and several naps.

But we didn't miss any meals!

While we were not as adventurous as I would have wished, i.e., we didn't try every single eatery in Shiner, we did find a couple of jewels--and went back again for another meal.

Our first discovery was the Country Corner Cafe.

We first went there for dinner, expecting to see a lot of, well, country food on the menu. We were a bit nonplussed by page after page of Tex-Mex with only a tiny corner for chicken fried steak and that sort of thing. There was, however, a large assortment of hamburgers, all given monster names, perhaps to indicate their size. My Prince managed to find the belt-buster Tex-Mex meal (which made my mouth water--I was jealous of every bite), and I, having had a high blood sugar reading, decided to try the taco salad. My Prince shared his nachos, which I nibbled very slowly, but he managed to handle everything else all by himself. This was not quite the tragedy I make it out to be, since my taco salad was quite large. Happily it was mostly lettuce (that's my story and I'm sticking to it), so I could eat it all. Well, I left most of the salad shell behind and felt quite virtuous about it. My blood sugar readings were much happier anyway.

Our second trip to the Country Corner was for lunch. As promised, there was a sizable buffet that included all sorts of meats and veggies. This time, the place lived up to its name: fried chicken, pulled pork, chicken fried steak, turnip greens, green beans, and on and on. A nice assortment of salads and desserts plus some big pots of soup provided ample variety and opportunities for most everyone to maintain their diet (sorta). At $6.25 per person, lunch was a bargain.

The Country Corner Cafe was not all that much to look at. Inside and outside, it was fairly ramshackle. Getting in and out of the ladies room was a challenge, given the way the doors bumped into each other. But the food was good, the staff friendly, and the place filled up nicely for lunch.

Our other find was Mary's Tacos. This was a tin-roof building, nicer than a shack, with corrugated parking. Mary's was only open from 6:30 to 1, so her trade was for breakfast and lunch. Both mornings that I went there, a steady stream of customers walked in and out. Inside, the place was clean and bright, with several small tables for those who chose to dine in. Most seemed to just grab and run off to work or wherever.

The tacos themselves seemed overpriced at $1.75 and up--until I saw them. They were huge. One was quite easily a meal in itself. The breakfast plates were also filling. I ordered huevos a la Mexicana and huevos rancheros (on separate days) for My Prince. Both of us were more than pleased with our food. My egg and bacon taco had the extra benefit of little green chiles, which left me with nothing to complain about. Both mornings, breakfast for two cost about $7.00, which we decided was a good deal, especially in terms of value for the dollar.

There were a few other options for eating out in Shiner. Maybe we can check them out on another trip. We did decide to stay in for dinner one evening, since we had brought along some summer sausage and crackers. What we lacked was cheese, so I went out to find it. I tried one of the (national brand) service stations which seemed to have a convenience store attached to it. That turned out to be a good place for junk food (nachos, hot dogs), but no cheese. One of the teens who had popped in for grease and calories directed me to the local grocery store. I had seen it before as we drove past, so I had no trouble returning. Sadly, it was closed (at 7:00!), highlighting one of the difficulties that come with rural life--lack of goods, services, and amenities. We found others, which we could easily survive for a couple of days, but all these little "annoyances" made us appreciate Austin (and its traffic) even more. Luckily, I found another convenience store (no national brand), complete with domino table, that had some cheese. I loaded up and went back to the Shiner Country Inn (well, we were in the country) for a nice meal of sausage, cheese, crackers, and the Olympics (we weren't that far in the country).

On the whole, we ate well in Shiner. You sure won't starve to death if you go there for a couple of days--and you will get away from every national chain you ever ate at. There is nothing Generica about Shiner, except maybe that Exxon station.