Cornbread

Long ago and far, far away, My Prince and I were not in another galaxy but on the other side of the planet. As it happened, we managed to get hold of some corn meal, which was not a common foodstuff in that area. With no cookbook and limited experience with cornmeal, I had no idea how to make cornbread, even though we were longing for the taste. I sent an urgent message back home and asked for the recipe. As near as I can remember, this is what came:

• 2c cornmeal
• 1c flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• milk to make pourable
• bake at 425 degrees until done

I've been thinking about making my own cornbread mix so that I can quit buying the pre-packaged mixes and still avoid all the measuring whenever I want to make a batch of cornbread. I did a trial run the other day, mixing up a double batch of the above recipe to see what I came up with. I used half of the resulting batter to make regular cornbread and the other half to make something more exotic.

The cornbread turned out dry. I may need to up the flour a bit. I might need to add oil, but I 'd like to avoid that if I can. More milk might also be good, but I will have to measure that to see what I'm splashing in there.

The other dish was more interesting. I decided to add (1 can of) pinto beans to the cornbread batter along with (1 small can of diced) jalapeno peppers, (1 can of ) whole kernal corn, and (1 can of) diced tomatoes. The bread was still a bit dry on the outside, but moist on the inside, maybe too moist. I cooked it in a large glass baking dish at 425 degrees until the center was firm and browned.

The taste was quite nice. Served hot with grated cheese, it was good; served with crumbled brisket and cheese it was delicious. I might make this dish again.

In the meantime, I'm going to tinker with the cornbread recipe so that I can get that "instant" batter made. And, no, I will not add sugar to the recipe. Putting sugar in cornbread makes cake. I don't care who calls it "southern" to put sugar in there, that's just immoral and should be illegal.

Allens

While doing research on my piece on can bottoms, it was all-too-obvious that the Allens brand was "doing the right thing" with its round-bottomed cans. I ended up at their website (conveniently mentioned on their labels) and learned a bit more about the company that provides some of our favorite canned goods.

In 2006, Allen Canning Company changed its name to the simpler Allens. Headed by the third generation of the Allen family, the Arkansas-based company is the source of all sorts of country-tasting goodies. Many of these goodies are canned with other brand names, such as Sugary Sam, Popeye, Trappey's, and so on. Some of these brands were purchased (e.g., Veg-All) rather than representing new product lines developed by the company. Since I was familiar with the East Texas Fair brand, I always thought of the company was Texas-based. *sigh*

The foods that they offer are still well within the tradition of my family's East Texas roots. (Okay, I have some Louisiana roots as well, but the foodways are still roughly the same.) Allens talks about these foods as southern foods, but I tend to think of them as country foods. No doubt this is because, when I was young, I was making a distinction not on region but on urbanization. In the city, we had no garden nor, because of circumstances, did we have a lot of access to fresh produce. When we went to visit grandparents--either in East Texas or in Louisiana--we pigged out on veggies and hauled as much fresh produce as we could back to the city.

My favorite memory from childhood is driving back from Louisiana, sitting in the back seat of the old Chevy, with Mama in the front seat shelling purple hull peas. All the way home, I would be thinking of the incredible meal that awaited us:

• fresh purple hull peas cooked with bacon
• cornbread
• sliced tomatoes, fresh from the garden
• corn on the cob (sometimes)
• fried okra (sometimes)

Even today, cornbread, any variety of country peas, and sliced tomatoes is comfort food for me. Purple hull peas is just heaven.

If anybody else besides Allens cans these peas, I don't know about it. HEB stocks their field peas and crowder peas. Kroger also stocks their purple hull and lady cream peas. You can guess what I buy in Houston and haul all the way home.

Return to Central Market

A friend talked me into meeting her at the central Central Market in Austin (38th & Lamar) for lunch on Friday. I was game to try to it, since I hadn't been to a Central Market in many years. Indeed, the only time I ever went to one was when HEB opened one a couple of miles from my home, and I wanted to see what it was like. I didn't like it. The fake-feeling meandering aisles were apparently intended to make you feel like you were in an old-time market place, so that you could get high-priced prepared and exotic foods while "experiencing" the "authentic" shopping experience of the olden days--or something like that. I just felt trapped by the maze and wanted OUT.

Times have changed and so has Central Market. I found a handicapped parking space near the entry to the produce section and entered what felt like the North Pole. HEB keeps that section very cool to help keep the produce fresher. It made sense, but I couldn't wait to get out of there. I skipped the opportunity to check out the fruit and other treats and made my way as fast as the restricted paths allowed over to the warmer part of the store. I did, however, take the time to look at some of the veggies and was more than impressed by the array. "So that's what a fingerling potato looks like." "Does purple cauliflower taste the same as white cauliflower?" "Did they really import that from France?"

Still thinking about the experience several days later, I have to say that the produce section was clearly not a case of buying locally, cooking seasonally. As interesting--and even tasty--as all those options looked, I can't help but think of the cost in oil for all of these goodies. I don't have answers, of course, but I am one of many, I believe, who are starting to think about this. Sadly, these thoughts come just as I am finding new foods. *ack*

On to the tour. I meandered a bit through the bulk foods area. "Many" and "exotic" again apply. I didn't have time for a really close look at price and variety, but the sheer number of bins was (seemed) greater than anything I'd seen at Whole Foods. I did note that there were more "normal" aisles in the store, so that I didn't feel quite so oppressed by artificial ambience, but there were still some forced paths and cul-de-sacs.

One cul-de-sac (the salad bar) was where I met my friend. We had our choice of getting hot food from a snack bar (although the menu choices were no way snacky) or serving ourselves from a nice selection of sandwiches (which all seemed to be priced at $4.99) and/or the extensive salad and soup bars (sold by weight). The line was too long for the hot foods, so we decided to serve ourselves. My friend chose pasta, which she could heat in a microwave near the snack bar. I took a couple of small salad portions for sampling and then built a nice green salad and chose a tarragon chicken salad sandwich.

I noticed that my friend did not eat all of her pasta. She did, however, approve of one of the sampling salads: quinoa with fruit and nuts. I thought it had a nice enough sweetness, but didn't fall in love with it. I came closer to loving the second sample, which my friend actively disliked: couscous with sliced black olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and green onions. My own green salad was pretty standard for me, although I did add some edemame for a new taste. Nice crunch, okay flavor. The chicken salad was also tasty, although I loved the bread more than the salad.

My lunch, including the sampling salads and a bottle of water, set me back $13.01, more than I would normally want to pay for lunch. I was, I think, making up for the "pain and suffering" of that clear liquid diet, so I was making sure that I had plenty to eat. As it turns out, I was not overfull after cleaning my plate. What drove the price up was the sampling salads, which turned out to be surprisingly heavy for the amounts that I took for sampling (half a cup or so).

Time was our enemy for this adventure, so my friend and I agreed that we should come back to do more looking around and shopping. I only had time to grab a dozen roses ($6.99 for the bunch) and did no further dawdling. I think there is still quite a bit to see at the Central Market before I know whether it needs to become a place for me to shop.

Pantry Project, Part 2

There's never enough time on these trips home to get all of my organizing done. Some trips, I don't even get everything unpacked before I have to turn around and head back to Mama's. I haven't done any more to organize my pantry, except to add more canned tomatoes and try to whittle down the bean and soup supply.

If, however, you looked closely at those pictures of my stacks, some of them look crooked. The tall boxes were specifically intended to help me stack cans three high, but some of those stacks lean--or wobble--or worse: fall over when anything gets bumped. This is because of how the cans are made, not because I can't stack one item on top of another.

The problem is with the bottom of the cans. The cans that are flat don't stack so well. It takes more time to try to position them so that they are exactly aligned, the top of one holding up the bottom of another. If any alignment is off, the "tower" of three will lean or fall over or misalign the adjacent tower. Cans with rounded bottoms nest so that the bottom of one can fits handily into the top of another. I haven't tried to stack any of these four high, but a tower of three is quite stable. Stacking also goes quickly because there is less effort given to alignment.

Here's a tower of flat-bottomed cans:

I deliberately stacked this tower so that the top can was out of line. (I couldn't stack the middle can out of line without toppling the whole thing.) This shows, in exaggerated mode, the pantry problem that flat-bottomed cans can cause.

Here's another view of the misalignment. What this shows, among other things, is that I need a new camera. (Note to self: Time to stop procrastinating.)

Here's a tower of round-bottomed cans:

There seems to be a slight lean here, but the same angle shows up in the flat-bottom stack. I think it's the camera angle. This tower was stable enough to be moved aside with one hand holding the bottom can, whereas the flat-bottomed tower needed two hands to cover the points where two cans meet.

Looking at my pantry, I found two kinds of what I am calling round-bottomed cans. As it turns out, one of the cans that fit into the top of the lower can isn't rounded at all. The can on the left has a distinct rim on its bottom, in the same manner as flat-bottomed cans, but this rim is slightly smaller than its top rim. The can's bottom rim will fit nicely into the top rim of another can when it is stacked. The can in the middle is the typical flat-bottomed can. The one on the right is a round-bottom can with no rim.

I tried to find out more about how these cans are made so that I could be (a) more precise in my terminology and (b) get ready to advocate for the process that led to better stacking in my pantry. So far, I haven't found the information I need. No doubt this is because I still don't know the terminology for what I am looking for.

In the meantime, the history of cans is semi-interesting. Check out Wikipedia's discussions of tin cans and aluminum cans. And ponder this:

• In the US, we recycle more food cans than beverage cans (by percent).
• In the US, we could save the equivalent of one day's worth of oil consumption by increasing our recycling of beverage cans to 100%.

Clear liquid diet

Three guesses what I got to do yesterday and today. One of those days was spent consuming a clear liquid diet. The instructions for doing so were rather terse, so I went to Google to find something more. The Colorado Center for Digestive Disorders lays it all out in this discussion of what, why, and how. Particularly helpful was the nutrition information that they prepared for their sample menu.

Breakfast	Hot tea with lemon juice and 1 tsp sugar (no pulp); Apple juice (8 oz); Gelatin 1 cup
Lunch	Hot tea with lemon (no pulp) and sugar; Grape juice (8 oz); Fruit Ice (1 cup); Consommé (8 oz.)
Snack	Fruit juice (apple, cranberry or grape, 8 oz); Gelatin (1 cup)
Dinner	Hot tea with lemon and sugar; Apple juice (8 oz); Consommé (8 oz); Fruit Ice (1 cup)

Yikes! That's only 1000 calories but it's 237 grams of carbohydrates. Being clear liquids, there was no fiber to subtract, so this is the whole deal. Obviously, I managed to eliminate the added sugar and sneak in lots of sugar-free Jello. The juices had to be the real thing, since I had to have some blood sugar to measure.

All's well that ends well--(absolutely no pun intended; don't even go there!)--and all is well.

Grocery sales

In our part of the country, the sale papers for the area grocery stores used to arrive on Wednesday for a sale that lasted through the following Tuesday. In Mama's area, they seem to arrive on Tuesday for a sale that begins the next day. These days the sale flyers in our area arrive late, and they are getting thinner.

I find it somewhat ironic that I never used to read these flyers. For years, My Prince would bring them in from the mailbox and then hand them over. It was almost as if he expected me to actually read them and then shop for what was on sale. Not I! I thanked him for the papers and then, once he was gone, took them to recycling. I knew what I needed to buy and how to find it, so I didn't need no stinking sale flyers.

A couple of years ago, My Prince began doing the unthinkable: he went grocery shopping! It appears that he decided to read the sale flyers, make a shopping list, and hit the stores. Indeed, he read all the flyers and then went to all the stores in our area. The day he came home with 20 cans of salmon, each purchased for $1, I decided to pay attention to what he was doing. He was, after all, filling up my fridge with things I didn't usually purchase, and we were running out of room in the pantry. Who knew the man would eat that many grapes?

When I began to have more time, I joined him in reading the sale flyers. For a while doing so was to help him decide what to buy (as in "Don't bring any more of that home!"). Eventually, we began to divvy up the stores, and now, he being an apparent descendant of Tom Sawyer, I'm back doing the shopping alone.

We did try to go together a few times, but his belief that you only buy what is on your list and therefore only go down the aisles where those things are located combined with his hearing problems was a bit of a disaster. If it wasn't his face turning red when I tried to divert the shopping expedition down an "unlisted" aisle, it was me talking at a pitch he could hear with everyone else staring and thinking what a fishwife I was. Not a pretty sight.

These days I still leave the actual sale flyers to My Prince. He goes through them to find the things he thinks we need now or should buy for the future. I prefer to go to the web sites of the grocery companies and check off the items that I want to buy electronically. I still have the old-fashioned paper list. I also have the much-circled flyers (that I double check to make sure we really need that much shrimp). But the basis for all my shopping these days is the print out that I get when I have created an online shopping list from the weekly ads on a company's web site.

Not every one has these handy web sites, tho. HEB is my main store in Austin; it has everything I need online at www.heb.com. We often shop at Randall's; once again, it has all I need at www.randalls.com. At least once a month we make a trip to Sam's Club, which, sadly, has neither weekly flyer nor online shopping list. It's a paper list for Sam. As it happens, we only buy certain things there these days, and we generally stick pretty close to the shopping list. Whole Foods is where I get bulk items, but the nearest store is several miles away. It's a rare trip, so we don't mind that there is no sale flyer and no online shopping.

In Houston, things get a bit trickier. HEB, Randall's, and Whole Foods are all on the other side of town from where Mama lives. "The other side of town" is one thing in Austin. It's a whole other state in Houston. On her side of town, we have several shopping options, but almost nothing on line. Fiesta, Food Town, Sam's Club, Sellers Brothers all have nearby stores. All but Sam's Club mail out weekly flyers. None of them have online shopping lists. Indeed, only Fiesta even has a web site (that I can find).

Kroger is the only store in the area with the online shopping list. Happily, I can go online while still in Austin and see what I need to pick up at the Kroger in Houston before I leave home. Once again, Kroger has everything I need online: www.kroger.com.

As prices go up and up, we'll be taking a closer look at sales. Nowadays we only buy meat when it is on sale. Many of the canned goods that we buy are sale items on which we stock up. We are at the mercy of the market on fresh fruit and vegetables, but we do tend to buy more of what is on sale and less or none of what is not. It's easier for me to find the best deals when the sales are available on line. I can organize my trips and plan meals from home rather than on the fly. I can only hope that more stores get their stuff up on the web sooner rather than later.

Paper or plastic

Or neither. I've started using my own bags for grocery shopping. I bought one of those "green bags" for $1 at a store and then realized that I had a closet full of regular old totebags. I didn't have a whole lot of use for that many bags, and they were just in the way. Indeed, when Hurricane Katrina brought a lot of refugees to Austin, I happily unloaded several years' accumulation at the convention center, glad to get rid of them, glad that someone could use them. Like tribbles, totebags seem to multiply in my closet. Why spend money to buy new ones when I have so many already?

I've wagged these bags around to all sorts of stores in both Houston and Austin. Once in a while a young'un will not quite know what to do with them, but mostly the sackers have been very helpful and cooperative in getting my stuff loaded up. Even with a heavy load of cans, the totebags are easier for me to carry than either paper or plastic since I can use my shoulders to help carry the weight.

The down side of all this green shopping is that we are not getting as many paper sacks as we used to. Those sacks were useful for trash, for taking loose items to Good Will, for sending home extra groceries with the grandkids. I've even used grocery sacks for moving, finding them handy for packing towels and some clothing. We can see our once huge stock of paper sacks now dwindling. We have to think twice about letting go of one.

We still seem to get a lot of plastic bags. I sometimes do forget to bring the totebags in from the car. My Prince doesn't have a supply of totebags yet and doesn't seem inclined to borrow mine. Some stores get alarmed when you come in with an armload of bags that are not clearly shopping bags. Fortunately, HEB (here in Austin) will recycle plastic bags; we have been gathering them up and taking them to the bins at HEB for some time now. I can see, however, that there might come a day when these too are scarcer.

I wonder if we will then start reminiscing about the "good old days" when we had abundant plastic bags for table scraps and shoes and impromptu diaper bags?

Combining errands

The cheapest grade of gasoline is about to hit $4 a gallon in Texas. I've never seen anything like this in my now longish life. I even remember the "good old days" when a gas war would give us gas at 19 cents a gallon. I was a teenager then, so I'm sure that it was even cheaper while I wasn't paying attention.

But now . . .

I have tried for a long time not to burn unnecessary fuel. The key words there are "tried" and "unnecessary." These days, we are limiting our trips out from the house by really thinking about what is necessary. If we have to go, then we try to add more errands to the trip so that we will save a little bit of gas.

Many times, our jaunts about town center on grocery shopping. Tuesday is the day that the weekly grocery sales end. By the time that Tuesday rolls around, we have checked all the sale flyers to see if there is anything that makes the trip worthwhile. Then we start adding stops to the trip and planning the day so that we can balance the most efficient route against the need to get the cold stuff home fast. That is sometimes nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

One other strategy that has begun to emerge while I am in Houston is to shop with or for the cousins. BigKidCousin and I have gone shopping together several times. I pick her up and we both get our errands and shopping done on the same trip. NextDoorCousin is good about picking up something that I need when it is more convenient for her route than for mine--and I have been making an effort to reciprocate. I'm guessing this will work for neighbors and friends as well.

Healthy lifestyle changes

Had a visit with my primary care physician earlier in the week with the usual long wait. Isolated in an exam room, you have plenty of time to read all the posters on the wall, and my PCP makes sure that there is much to read.

One poster explained the effects of high blood pressure on the body. Yikes! Down in the corner at the bottom, the poster listed several healthy lifestyle changes that a person could make to help lower blood pressure or keep it under control. These included:

• reducing body fat
• restricting dietary salt
• increasing fiber and decreasing fat in your diet
• not smoking
• avoiding excess alcohol
• exercising regularly
• developing relaxation techniques

My Prince and I have accomplished two of these. Neither of us drink alcohol very often. We like a beer now and then, but for the past several years, we've picked up a six pack of something Shiner (and light) around Memorial Day. We would then each have a cold one to celebrate that holiday, and then have another one for Independence Day and Labor Day. I was the only smoker in the house until I quit a year ago. I think we are good for these two.

We are actively working on another two--those dealing with salt, fiber, and fat. Restricting salt is harder for me than for My Prince, but I've started using less salt in cooking. Rice, for example, gets tossed in the steamer with no salt at all. I still add salt at the table, but I'm trying to do less of that as well. Fiber is a major focus in my explorations of food now. As for fat, my doctor's advice was to try for more vegetable fats and less animal fats. We are working on adjusting our diet to accommodate that principle.

That leaves losing weight, exercising, and developing relaxation techniques. If blogging about food can be considered relaxing, we might say I'm working on that one. I have, however, always been successful in finding ways to relax--reading, playing games, visiting with friends, even sleeping. My Prince has yet to learn what the word "relaxation" means, so we still have challenges here. Weight and exercise are major concerns, but we have not yet buckled down to making the right changes.

The thing about lifestyle changes is that it took years to develop the lifestyle that one now lives. Something as ingrained as foodways is also difficult to change without concerted and continued effort. I do not, however, see how we are going get by without making all of these changes--sooner rather than later.

Home Sweet Home and Baked Beans

How sweet it is to be home again--a chance to see My Prince, a chance to settle down into my own comfy space, and another chance to see what's happening in my own cupboards. Before I went out my first morning home, I rummaged around in the freezer to see what I might use for dinner and came up with some pork loin. I spent most of the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do with it.

Come supper time, I finally came up with a menu:

• leftover salad
• steamed brown rice
• baked beans
• sauteed medallions of pork loin
  

I started preparations by putting the brown rice in the steamer. No salt.

For the baked beans, I sauteed rings of a large onion until they were translucent. Putting them in a glass baking dish, I added a can of black beans (undrained), a can of garbanzo beans (partially drained), a can of kidney beans (partially drained), and a can of diced tomatoes (undrained). I seasoned with garlic powder and red pepper flakes. I figured the cans had enough salt not to need more. I gave this a quick stir and put it in the oven at 375 degrees. After a while I decided to turn it up to 425 degrees so that the liquids would cook down faster.

The next activity involved checking the refrigerator for leftover vegetables that My Prince had avoided in my absence. Sure enough, there were a couple of cucumbers, some tomatoes, onions, and a few small carrots. I pulled out enough for a decent sized bowl of salad and began chopping. I diced a small onion, cut up half a large cucumber (julienne style), sliced a handful of the small carrots, and hacked around on the tomato until I got it into small but nondescript pieces. I mixed all of this in bowl with a splash of olive oil and a bigger splash of apple cider vinegar (it's all I had). I added some salt, powdered Splenda, and a little garlic. Measurements are vague because I didn't actually measure--just splashed and sprinkled. This salad, however, got the best raves of the lot from My Prince, who especially liked the dressing.

I decided to slice the pork loin into medallions for breading and sauteing (yeah, I checked; that's how you spell it). I used some seasoned bread crumbs and a small amount of vegetable oil over fairly high heat. The medallions cooked quickly and crisped up nicely.

We still have some baked beans and rice left over, but the salad and the pork medallions disappeared quickly. The whole meal took less than an hour of prep time and cooking. Between the raw veggies, the brown rice, and the beans, I think we did very well on fiber tonight.

Carbs are another issue. I made an effort to try to figure out the carbs in the bean dish since the labels on the cans could help on this.

• Garbanzo beans, ~3 servings with 17 g carbs and 6 g fiber per serving (3 x [17-6])= 33 g
• Kidney beans, 3.5 x (16 - 5) = 38.5 g
• Black beans, 3.5 x (19 - 5) = 49.0
• Diced tomatoes, 3.5 x (5 - 1) = 14.0
• Onion, 16.2 (maybe)
  
• garlic powder, 0
• pepper flakes, 0

That means that the whole bowl of baked beans would have 150.7 carbs. It looks like it would have 13.5 servings at about 11 g per serving (fiber has already been subtracted). What, however, is a serving? By the time I pulled the baked beans out of the oven, My Prince had finished his salad and was standing in the kitchen, filching tastes of the pork medallions. Who's gonna start dividing a hot bowl of baked beans in to 13.5 parts at that point? Not I.

So I had to settle for healthy. We'll have to figure out some other way to start calculating carbs and measuring servings. We want healthy meals, but we also need to work on portions and blood sugar control.

Review: Captain Tom's Seafood & Oyster Bar

Went to lunch with Big Kid Cousin on Friday. She is one of the Big Kids we little ones all worshiped back in the old days. (There are only about 7 years difference between us; what a difference a few more years can make, hunh?) After some discussion, we decided that we would try Captain Tom's Seafood & Oyster Bar on the East Freeway (13955 East Fwy [I-10], Houston, 713-451-3700).

I have wanted to eat there ever since I saw it being built, but never had the right company. BKC is seriously game for just about anything, and we toddled over after a midday matinee (oh, yes, go see Mamma Mia).

I did expect a somewhat nautical theme, since the building is shaped like a boat. I did not expect for the floor to slant as if we actually were on a boat. And the tables? What tables? The whole "boat" had a bar the went all the way around the outer perimeter of the, well, boat-shaped dining room, a fairly narrow aisle between the stools at the outer bar and those at the inner bar, and an inner bar that surrounded a well where you could watch oysters being shucked, drinks being prepared, and general mayhem.

To get served, you place an order at the cash register near the door, but you don't pay. Then you find yourself a bar stool. We managed to get two empty stools at the part of the perimeter bar that was clearly designed for standing and drinking; it was just a narrow shelf. In a very few minutes, we found two more empty bar stools a little further up the shelf in an area that was more suitable for dining. At the same time our drinks were passed from the inner well from server to fellow customer to us.

As we sipped and continued to rave about the movie, I got my bearings at the "table." A big pile of paper napkins, an open container of horseradish, several bottles of different brands of hot sauce (and ketchup), big bowl of sliced lemons, overflowing basket of saltine crackers. There was likely more, but I was beginning to get a "feel" for our upcoming dining experience.

In another short while, we found two stools at the inner bar and scrambled over. This allowed us to watch the show: three or four guys at a time shucking oysters, making drinks, taking orders on sticky notes, and keeping a lively movement going. We did our part by passing drinks and food over our shoulder to other diners.

When our food arrived (we both ordered Texas Minis), we each had 3 fried shrimp and 2 fried catfish fillets with a decent pile of french fries. Our plates came with little paper cups filled with tartar sauce and red sauce.

I prefer the red sauce, so I, of course, did not have enough. It was easy, however, to use the supplies at hand to mix up more. I only tasted the tartar sauce when everything else was gone and I was just absently stealing BKC's french fries for a nibble. We had to leave so I wouldn't start drinking the stuff; it was delish. As we left, we stopped by the cash register, reminded the fellow there about what we had ordered, and paid. No fuss, no muss.

As for our meal:

• The french fries were so so. If thinner and crisper, I would have liked them better, but Captain Tom would then have had to pay a royalty to McDonald's.
• The shrimp was so so. Butterflied, battered, fried--it had a taste that wasn't all shrimp. That didn't keep me from eating every bit, but I didn't think they were wonderful.
• The catfish was fine. Thin, crisp, battered with cornmeal. There was nothing outstanding there, but they certainly did no harm to the catfish (yes, you can cook catfish badly).

The prices were just fine. The service was friendly and fun. I liked the ambience, including the slanting floor and the challenge it presented for stool sitting. The food is good enough for a return.

Other reviews suggest that we missed a lot by not trying the gumbo or the raw oysters. I imagine that they are correct. I look forward to trying Captain Tom's again--soon.

Morning grilling

Tuesday was a weird day. How I ended up grilling pork chops at 3 a.m. this morning may be due to the chaos of my schedule on Tuesday, but it may just as well be due to being next door to one of my more chaotic cousins. (Staying with Mama puts me right in the middle of CousinLand.) Next Door Cousin caught me as I was about to make a mad dash to the grocery store for a last minute grab of a sale item and invited me to come visit when I got in. That all of this was taking place after 10 p.m. puts both of us in the chaotic category.

Once I made it next door, we had a fine time talking and visiting. One thing led to another, and I started working on her old computer to try to get it to work. Two or three hours later, the computer was still laboring away, and I was hungry.

Next Door Cousin didn't suggest we pop some corn or offer me some little carrot sticks. Nope, she fired up her propane grill and threw some pork chops on after slathering them with butter and Grub Rub. I had hardly managed to switch out the CDs the comp was calling for when our impromptu breakfast of grilled pork chops and steak fries was ready.

I had not known how easy such a grill was to use nor how fast it could cook such delicious chops. This tells me that I need to look a little close at this way of cooking. It was nice not to heat up the kitchen, not to have more utensils to clean. It was also, I have to admit, kinda fun cooking at 3 in the morning and sharing tears and laughter with such a sweetie.

Low carb food pyramid

As we all now realize, the USDA Food Pyramid supports the consumption of mass quantities of carbohydrates. If you have metabolic disorder or diabetes, following the guidance of the Food Pyramid can be disastrous. I was happy to find a "low carb food pyramid" on About.com. Here's their image:

The discussion of the various elements was quite enlightening, especially given that I first attempted low carb eating nearly 40 years ago. It was called the Air Force Diet back then (or the Drinking Man's Diet), but it's all--even today--some version of Banting.

Since there is such as thing as too much protein in one's diet (who knew?), I've been looking for more balance. I'm going to look this food pyramid over, read the articles that accompany it, and see what else I can do to keep from killing myself with food.

Secret veggies

Eating green things has never been a happy occasion around our house. When our daughter was younger, I actually put green food coloring in pancakes, thinking that I could convince her that green didn't taste horrible. I can't say that that was a success, but she will (as an adult) occasionally allow a green bean to pass her lips if it's solidly encased in all the glop that goes into a green bean casserole.

My Prince has had his own unhappy relationship with green foods, but he will, at least, eat it if I put it on his plate. Having seconds is a little more iffy; there are always more green leftovers than other colors. As I've tried to cook and eat a healthier diet, some of this effort has spilled over to his plate. Thus we had the comment a few days ago, in a distinctly amazed tone of voice: "We sure are eating a lot of green vegetables these days." Ya think?

Mama has always been a vegetable eater. She's losing words these days, so it took us a while to figure out what she was referring to when she talked about having "that veggie dish" the other day. She meant the chicken pot pies that she consumes almost daily. What she likes about them, aside from all that crust and cream sauce, is the vegetables. She enjoys being taken to Cracker Barrel and having a vegetable plate. It's just that the veggies should not be too green, please, and if they have to be green they should be English peas or green beans (preferably cooked with bacon).

How can I feed these people??????

At one point, the solution for My Prince was to cover the green with bacon bits or cheese or both. I think he'd eat anything if I put cheese or bacon on it.

My new strategy is to hide the vegetables. A fun place to hide spinach, for example, is in marinara sauce. Let them think we are having spaghetti and meatballs, yes, but get a good serving of spinach in there as well. This works very well for My Prince, although he did give me the Evil Eye when I put a little broccoli in his omelet. Tricking Mama is a little harder, but I did manage to sneak in some spinach when I served spaghetti and meatballs on Friday night. She only ate a little bit, but she may have been full. It's hard to tell sometimes whether she's had enough or she's just not telling you that she is really sorry that she put that on her plate.

Anyone else have good hiding places for vegetables?

Isn't we supposed to be having a fiesta?

I love that line from Shrek 2. I just happen to think it's funny. And it makes a nice segue to talk about today's shopping adventure at Fiesta Food Mart (#10) in Houston.

I had passed the thing for years before I ever stopped to shop. A visit to the Fiesta store in Austin actually broke the ice, so to speak. It was a special errand that showed me whole new options for shopping. Not that I ever get to shop at Fiesta in Austin--it's really too far away to be a practical option.*

The Fiesta here in Houston, however, is so close that I have no excuses not to try it out. Once I finally did, it has become a regular stopping place for fresh vegetables and certain canned goods.

Today's visit came at the end of a series of errands that had left me limping. I was just too tired to go any further, but I still had to get enough food for a couple of important meals. This is usually the point at which I start looking for an electric cart.

I've used one once before at this Fiesta, so I knew where to look. There were two available, but one was out of order. The second looked like it had been through a war. I asked for assistance and--as usual--promptly got it from management staff. She checked the machine, assured me that it worked, and then left me to it. I had to take a moment to reorient to the quirks of the controls, but enjoyed sharing that moment with a little girl who was taking her first ride on the mechanical pony. I waved as I pulled out and said, "Ride 'em, cowgirl!" She waved back, having shed her initial tears for a happy grin.

I should point out that the ambience of this store begins on the sidewalk outside. There is a small trailer that sells roasted ears of corn and other delights. There is a long outdoor clothing shop with everything from cocktail dresses to jammies for the kiddos. The piped in music is lively, usually vintage rock and roll (I'm not the only one who has felt like dancing in the aisles at Fiesta).

Inside, there is a snack bar, an ice cream stand, and other amenities which make this grocery store more like a mall. You can, after all, buy more clothes inside as well as dishes and other household items, including refrigerators!

It's the food that attracts, however. Fiesta does the best job in this part of town in stocking a wide variety of fresh vegetables. There is more emphasis on tropical and south-of-the-border fruits, veggies, and peppers (lots of variety there), but zucchini and other "regular" items are available. I have been pleased with the quality as well as the variety. I even like the plastic bags that Fiesta provides for your produce--easy to open gets a gold star in my book. (Yes, we recycle or reuse the plastic.)

Two "treats" awaited me in the produce section today. One was hearing a cricket while I was picking out new potatoes. I know that the thought of critters in a food store is a major "ick factor," but crickets make me happy. If Sam's Club can have birds flying around the rafters, I guess it's okay for Fiesta to give us a little serenade among the vegetables. The second "treat" was seeing a bin of Black Diamond watermelons. This watermelon has always been "it" for me. I grew up with this variety, indeed didn't know that there were other varieties until I was a teenager, and miss its sweet flavor every time I am disappointed by whatever else is being made available these days. These melons were on the small side and priced per melon ($4.99). I would have bought one regardless of the size or the price if I hadn't been so tired.

My other "mission" at Fiesta was to snag some of their canned tomatoes. I have been quite satisfied with their house brand (Fiesta) and delighted with the wide variety of tomatoes available in the house brand: Italian style, southwestern style, diced, diced with green chiles, sliced, whole, and the list goes on. I picked up several of each variety. Why shop in Houston to haul back to Austin? Even with gas prices what they are, Fiesta has the best price in the state. At 2 cans for $1, we are still saving money. So I loaded down the basket on my cart with as many cans as I could.

At check out, yet another manager stepped up to help me unload. The people at this store have been uniformly friendly and helpful to me. On a day like today, they were appreciated more than they knew. Jose's help to the van was especially helpful on such a hot day.

One issue that did arise was trying to figure out the expiration date on the canned tomatoes. There is a code on the bottom of each can but no clear date. Even the manager was stumped by this one. I will have to call Fiesta's corporate offices to get the key to the code--or at least let them know that these codes are not appreciated.

I guess I will take the opportunity, when I call, to let them know that I really wish that they could get their sale flyers up on the internet. That way I can make a printed list of sale items that I want to get before I go to the store. (More on this subject later on.)

*It seems there is now a second Fiesta in Austin. Sadly, this new one is too far east for us. An occasional visit is not out of the question, tho. I'm glad to see that Fiesta is expanding in Austin again.

Cutting board fever

Or salmonella. Or botulism. Or some other crud. These are all the things that I keep thinking about when I look at my cutting boards.

When I was younger, the butcher block cutting board looked like the height of culinary sophistication to me. To own one of those would probably instantly give one +5 skill in the kitchen. That My Prince owned a butcher block cutting board may be one of the reasons I actually married him (never connecting his -12 skill in the kitchen with said cutting board).

Then one day I saw a print ad that showed a knife laying on a cutting board. I don't know what was being advertised, but the text of the ad pointed out that the cutting board was more likely to kill you than the knife. It made me think--and made me paranoid.

As I get older, I think more and more about the real war that we are in, the one where the microbes are winning. So food safety gets to be an issue around our house. And the pretty butcher block cutting board is long gone in favor of plastic boards.

The issue has arisen again here are Mama's. Mama hasn't cooked in forever, so she doesn't really have a lot to work with. I bought a cheap wooden cutting board to have something to use while I am in her kitchen. I didn't think much about it until the day I started to cut up some raw chicken. I couldn't do it, not on that wooden board. I had to take out a pottery plate to finish the job.

The next day I went out and started buying plastic cutting boards. I got multiples because I use the boards and then put them into the dishwasher (after a pre-wash with hot soapy water). I try to use a separate board for veggies and meats, and I use a clean board for each meal.

As with many things related to food and health, we seem to have conflicting opinions being batted back and forth. The debate over wood versus plastic for cutting boards seems to be a lively one, and the research just goes back and forth about what material is safest. All I know is that heat kills those little microbe critters, the more the better. As long as I can put it in the dishwasher, turn on the sanitizing feature, and throw in some soap, I will tell myself that I am "safe."

Now about that dish cloth . . .

Yet another discussion of "foodie"

Having owned up to being a foodie, I am now concerned with protecting the brand, so to speak. There really is an ongoing debate (here's another episode) about whether this is a good label for people who are interested in food or whether it is pejorative. I'm starting to think that those who consider it pejorative would rather fancy themselves to be on the "epicure"/"gourmet" end of things, which then leads me to think of them as the very snobs that foodies would not want to be. More precision in definition, however, is still beyond me.

One thing I do know: Mama is not a foodie. Yes, she is interested in food. Yes, she talks (endlessly it seems) about what she has eaten recently. Yes, she spends a lot of time considering where her next meal is coming from. Her interest, however, is in getting something tasty and filling to eat in a timely manner, not in how it was prepared, what its ingredients are, and what variations might make it better. Indeed, Mama is pretty much locked in to the children's menu in most of her food tastes. Chicken fingers. Chicken pot pies. Sausage and biscuit. Cereal. Pigs-in-a-blanket. Hot dogs. That sort of thing.

Since I am staying with Mama more these days, we have had some food wars. Or at least some battles. I need healthier foods. Her menu would (a) kill me in under 10 minutes and (b) make me fatter before it did. She, on the other hand, is wasting away. She's lost another 5 pounds in the past month.

We have reached something of a detente lately. I will fix whatever she wants, if she will have it. Many times she just says she is not hungry. I will fix whatever I want and offer it to her. Most of the time she will refuse it. Oftentimes, however, she will sneak a taste of what I have cooked. If she likes it, she will get a bowl and serve herself. If she doesn't, well, there's always another pot pie in the freezer.

The battles were bad for both of us, so it's not just a matter of giving up on feeding her. I do worry about that weight loss. Indeed, it was one of the things that made me decide that I would spend most of my time at her home rather than my own. At her (great) age, this sort of weight loss is not a good thing.

My solution (aside from hoping she will eat something that I have cooked for myself) is to try to get some of those kiddie foods to carry a little nutritional value. My best success so far is nachos with fresh veggies. It's not much, I admit, but I added diced tomatoes and green onions to the chips and cheese along with some shredded baked chicken. She would so much rather have the gloppy version from Fuddrucker's, but I have managed to con her into my semi-homemade nachos a few times. I'm not sure she'd touch a tomato otherwise.

On the other hand, I had no luck whatsoever in getting her to accept carrot chips instead of corn chips with her grilled cheese sammich. *sigh*

Eating on the road

Er . . . I'm not actually talking about roadkill here. I'm thinking of the places where My Prince and I have tended to stop for food while traveling between our home and Mama's. Usually we take HWY 71 and I-10 from Austin to her place. After more than more than 30 years of making this trip, it surprises me that we have not been more adventurous in trying out places to eat. Maybe I need to change that.

In the meantime, one of our favorite stops is Weikel's in LaGrange. Their website says that they have been around since 1984, but I sure thought they were older than that! Weikel's is just about a mandatory stop if you are traveling HWY 71, and it seems like we've been stopping there forever.

The two main attractions at Weikel's are the pigs and the kolaches. The pigs-in-a-blanket are little sausages baked in a sweetish tasting bread. This is not my favorite taste, but I have to buy a couple of packages for Mama just about every trip. She would live on them if she could. The kolaches are all good, of course. I don't much care for the poppy seed variety; the cream cheese version is my favorite.

What I buy for myself, however, are Weikel's homemade sandwiches, which they will make to order while you wait, and (sometimes) a slice of apple strudel. You can get a half sandwich if the whole thing is too much for you. They use their own bread (white or whole wheat) and offer a variety of meats and additions to your sandwich. I generally get the roast beef and then all of the toppings they can pile on. The apple strudel is sold by weight. It's pretty dense, so a small slice is more than enough for most folks, I would think. The oddest thing about the strudel is the use of crumbled cornflakes for the top (and likely on the inside as well). Both items suit my taste, but they are not driving foods. I only order them when I can take the time to sit and enjoy eating them.

Well, I do sometimes sneak a cup of coffee and a piece of strudel and try to drive with them. Messy but definitely tasty.

The people are friendly at Weikel's. The food is fresh. When they run out, it's gone for the day, but don't give up. If the pigs and kolaches are gone, try the strudel, the cream cake, the honey bee rolls, the . . . well, you get the picture. It's all good.

Jicama for fiber!

I have been searching for fiber lately. Soluble fiber turns out to be one of your best friends in this life. It absorbs cholesterol. Eat enough soluble fiber, and your cholesterol levels will (probably) make your doctor happy. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, is what makes good food good to eat--because you can subtract the insoluble fiber content from the carbohydrate content and get a guilt-free number.

You could, of course, get your fiber in a pill or a drink, but where's the fun in that? Better to find it in food, I say.

So I'm looking for fiber and what did I find? Jicama!

A cup of this Mexican root veggie has 6 grams of fiber out of 11 grams of carbs overall. It's not exactly a free food, but one cup of jicama can go a long way--which makes it the next best thing to a free food. (The fiber appears to be about evenly balanced between soluble and insoluble.)

Finding recipes for jicama is easier said than done, however. Most of what I've run across involves eating it raw, using it in a salad, or using it as a substitute for water chestnuts.

• Slice, julienne, or coarsely dice the jicama; douse it with lime juice; sprinkle salt and powdered cayenne over it; eat. Great snack. (Easy on the cayenne until you know how much you can handle.)
  
• Finely dice or julienne the jicama and put it in whatever salad floats your boat. The jicama will pick up flavors from the surrounding foods and add crunch to the salad.
• Slice, julienne, or finely dice the jicama and toss it in your stir-fried veggies. It absorbs surrounding flavors and crunches just like water chestnuts.

I'm not doing so well with finding recipes for jicama as a cooked vegetable or side dish. Maybe it is not used that way in traditional Mexican cooking or in its new international role (jjicama is apparently quite popular in Australia!). It looks like some kitchen experimentation is called for if I want to see what else jicama can do besides crunch. Not that crunchy is a bad thing. It's just that I wonder what will happen when I boil jicama . . . or roast it . . . or toss it in the crock pot.

In the meantime, I now buy jicama every time I buy fresh veggies. At Mama's home, my first errand is going to the grocery store for fresh vegetables--and jicama. Now my cousin and her running buddy are hooked on jicama. Maybe enough people will start buying it that the price will come down from its current 89 - 99 cents per pound; maybe enough people will start demanding it that more stores will sell it.

Travel day

Today is a travel day. I'm off to the Bayou City for a few days of elder care. Some posts are ready to go and will show up throughout the day. There may nonetheless be a gap in posts while I get re-oriented to the new setting. There are always surprises . . .

Pantry Project, Part 1

At our house, we've been doing a lot of sale shopping, buying in bulk, and generally stocking up. Nope, we are not hoarding for the revolution. We have always been thrifty shoppers, but we've stepped it up a bit since food prices have begun to soar. All these extra boxes of food are the result of shopping for items on sale and at bargain prices. Organizing them better will help efficiency in the kitchen, but it will also help prevent waste.

Food storage has now become a significant problem. How do we keep track of what we have? How do we use things up before their expiration dates? How do I even know what I have to cook with? How do I get to it when I need it? The answers to these questions were all moving into the Annoying Range on the Exasperation Dial.

Aside from some limited counter space and a small closet-sized and -shaped pantry in the kitchen, we have no room to store extra food unless we put it in the laundry room. The laundry room is, of course, where the washer, dryer, and water heater live, taking up half of the floor and wall space. The room connects the kitchen to the garage and serves as a major passage way for the house. It gets limited cooling from the kitchen (when that door is open) and serious heat from the garage (when that door is open)--and the reverse happens in the winter, when the garage is cold and the house is somewhat less so. (I haven't come up with a solution for temperature control, but it's on my mind.)

That leaves some built-in shelves over the washer and dryer and two free standing shelving units on the remaining walls for storage. The laundry room has doubled as a mud room for many years, but those days are going fast as we try to find more (accessible) space for food. Shelves that used to have "outside shoes" and gardening supplies are getting cleared out and refilled with bottles of water and other beverages. Even shelves that held mass quantities of TP and paper towels are getting new loads of chili and canned tomatoes.

One major problem has been how to stack the cans so that shelf use is maximized and still keep the cans from falling all over the place when a shelf is jostled. Right now, my solution is four-sided cardboard boxes, open at the top and the front. These allow me to stack cans three levels high and to maintain stability on the sides. The open top accommodates uneven can heights.

I have been getting the boxes at stores where I shop, especially at Sam's Club. Whenever I see a display box that looks like it will work on my shelves, I just add it to my cart. This keeps it out of the landfill and saves me from having to buy or make something that does the job.

Some boxes are better than others for "the job." The Mrs. Butterworth's syrup box was already closed on the bottom and three sides and worked very nicely for stacking cans of beans.

The display box for Bakers & Chefs brown sugar needed to be cut down a bit in front to give more view of the soups that I stacked in there, and the cardboard was much thicker than the other boxes, making some cans wobble on the folded edges.

Crest's toothpaste display box was perhaps the best designed for my purposes, but it was a tad shallow for the shelving unit that I needed to use it on. It was also shorter than the other boxes and would not have been as stable for No. 10 cans stacked 3 high.

I still need to accumulate more boxes for this project, but I can already tell that we have more than enough beans and soups stored. I hadn't realized this before, so we just kept buying more. I can also now see that I wasn't just imagining a canned tomato shortage in my kitchen. Apparently I can't buy enough of those! I also took this opportunity to make sure that there were no cans with an '08 expiration date lurking about on the back of a shelf where it could get overlooked until 2011.

Pretty, it's not. Still, it works, and that's what matters. I didn't retire to spend all my time digging through cans to find what I need.

I, Foodie

At lunch with a friend recently, the discussion centered (for a while) around the term "foodie." One of us thought it was a proprietary term, and the other thought not. What we did agree upon is that we are foodies, even though the "official" definition of "foodie" has not caught up with us and how we talk about food. Take out the "gourmet" part and the "epicure" part, eliminating thereby the snobbery of choice and sensuality of eating, and you have us--gals who cook, eat, and shop for food, who talk about it fairly often, who get together to share it whenever we can, and have opinions about everything. Well, I'm the more opinionated one; my friend is a little more circumspect.

Just to settle the "proprietary" issue I did a little research (i.e., I googled "foodie"). What a surprise to find that one Paul Levy both claims to have originated the label and posted a recent article asking "What is a foodie?" I myself tend to side with those of his readers who think the label useful, non-elite, and decidedly non-pejorative. Indeed, the moment I heard the word, I knew that it described me--at this stage of my life, at least.

As a foodie, I am rather late to the kitchen, finding the foodie in me only after semi-retirement allowed time for food preparation that did not depend solely on a microwave. As a new-to-cooking foodie, I am living in a whole new world of possibilities that I am looking forward to sharing with you. If you've seen parts of this world before, no doubt you can help me enjoy it even more.