Mar 11

In Search of Vehicle

I HATE car-shopping. This is one reason why I tend to keep cars for years after finishing off the loan. Having a root canal without novocain would be less painful than going from dealership to dealership looking for a new ride. While the sexist good ol’ boys wearing brown plaid suits and bad toupées have mostly retired, the younger generation of car salespeople have new ways of driving me crazy. Two examples are below. I won’t divulge the dealerships or the particular salesmen (they were both male).

The constant calling and emailing. There’s a reason these guys want your cell phone number and email address when you test drive a car: Some of them will badger you incessantly in an attempt to wear down your resistance. In my case, this tactic has the opposite effect: I want nothing to do with the dealership, even if the car would meet my needs. I test drove one model last week, and got two phone calls and two email messages from the salesman. One call came while I was at church today. Luckily, I left my phone at home; however, I’m sure Julian was awakened by the call.

“Let me speak with my manager”. This either indicates that the salesman doesn’t have a solid knowledge of the cars and options he’s selling, or he’s using a delaying tactic to keep you in your seat at his cubicle as long as possible. One salesman today had at least three conversations with his manager in response to our questions.

I’ve only owned four cars in my life, so each car-shopping experience is an adventure in avoiding new hard sell strategies. With luck, I can keep car #5 until I have better transit options.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/03/11/in-search-of-vehicle/

Mar 05

Provisioning a Pantry

One of the challenges of setting up a kitchen is knowing what supplies you need. Start by asking yourself a few questions:

  • Am I really going to cook, or just bring home food to eat? If you’re going to use your kitchen to microwave takeout food or brew coffee in the morning, you’re not going to need much.
  • If I’m going to do any cooking, what am I going to make? Simple stuff or complex? Will it be ethnic food (which type and how adventurous) or standard American chow?
  • Will I be doing any baking from scratch, and if so, what? This will influence the types of sugar, flour, and leavening you’ll need.

Now that you’ve answered these questions, you can begin to write a shopping list for staples. You don’t need to get everything at once, but you want to have enough on hand so you can cobble together a quick dinner. Much of what you’ll purchase will depend on any dietary preference or restrictions you may have. Here are a few basics:

  • Starches: Rice (long grain white or brown), pasta (spaghetti and another shape)
  • Flour, sugar, salt (Kosher), cornstarch, baking soda, baking powder
  • Broth (chicken or vegetable)
  • Canned and/or dried beans
  • Seasonings: Black pepper, cayenne pepper, oregano, basil, cinnamon
  • Cooking oil (neutral flavored and light olive oil)
  • Extra-virgin olive oil for salads
  • Tomato products (sauce, whole or diced, paste)
  • Condiments – mustard (Dijon or yellow), ketchup, pickles or olives, soy sauce, peanut butter

These days a freezer can be considered a pantry. Have a few bags of frozen vegetables on hand. In addition, buy a few quick items for nights when you’re too tired to cook but too poor to eat out. Potstickers are a popular no-brainer meal here.

Finally, only buy what you’ll use in 2-3 months. While buying 10 pounds of chicken wings at Costco seems like a good idea, consider how many people you feed at a given time. This rule of thumb goes double for spices and condiments. And date what you buy.

 

 

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/03/05/provisioning-a-pantry/

Feb 25

An Idea that Deserves to Die

In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, the idea of arming a small proportion of teachers has been floated by the President and others in the thrall of the gun lobby. This is wrong on multiple levels. For example:
Kids are not stupid, part one. It wouldn’t take much effort to figure out which teacher is packing heat. If a student wants to create mayhem, he (and 99% of mass shootings are committed by males) can do so in another classroom.
Kids are not stupid, part two. A firearm can easily be appropriated from a purse or drawer when the teacher is not paying attention. Or a student could overcome a teacher with a “concealed” firearm when the teacher is washing hands or using a urinal.

Gun carriers can be careless. Less than a week after the Parkland shooting, a police officer visited a kindergarten class. A child came up behind the officer and managed to discharge the firearm while it was in the holster. Luckily, nobody was injured. Why the officer didn’t make sure that the firearm was unloaded before he went into that classroom is beyond me.

Arms asymmetry. Someone with a handgun doesn’t have much of a chance against another person with an assault weapon, regardless of how good a shot s/he is on the firing range.

Liability issues. If a firearm discharges by mistake and kills an innocent bystander, who pays? The teacher? The school district? The state? The NRA?

While the “good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun” concept may sound good as a television plot, it fails miserably in real life, especially when our children’s lives are at stake. Arming teachers is the wrong way to protect students.

Addendum: An editorial in, of all places, The Weekly Standard agrees with what I wrote above. This may be the only time such an alignment occurs.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/25/an-idea-that-deserves-to-die/

Feb 25

Lost Recipes

Sometimes recipes have a finite life span. Food that was popular back in your mother’s or grandmother’s youth are no longer in vogue. Some of it may be due to fashion or access to ingredients. Rationing during World War II required some ingenuity that wasn’t needed afterward. Then there are recipes that just fell out of fashion.

Chicken marengo seems to be one of these recipes. We had this from time to time at the sorority when I was an undergrad. Julian thought it might be a good option for the upcoming French dinner. I knew there was a recipe in my 1970’s era Joy of Cooking. When I looked at other cookbooks of the era, I came up dry. Julia Child? Non. Craig Claiborne? Rien. Jacques Pépin? Non encore. I found a recipe in Michel Roux Jr.’s book, but it required crayfish and soft boiled eggs. So I tried the Joy version. Suffice it to say that we were disappointed. Maybe chicken marengo deserved to stay lost.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/25/lost-recipes/

Feb 18

They Are OUR Children

My heart sank on Wednesday when I heard of another school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida. As I’ve written before, I have a friend who was seriously injured in the Jewish Federation shooting twelve years ago. In that same post, I mentioned that I have family members who go duck- and deer-hunting every year. While I don’t begrudge anyone the right to own a rifle or shotgun for hunting purposes, I do draw the line at assault weapons with high-capacity magazines. These weapons are only useful for mass murder.

Here are my suggestions for common-sense legislation to avoid further mayhem, in schools or other settings.

Keep people under 21 from purchasing assault weapons. If legislators don’t have the cojones to ban assault weapons entirely, they can at least keep youngsters from purchasing them.

Repeal the law passed last year that makes it easier for mentally ill people to purchase firearms.

Persons who are under restraining orders should not be allowed to purchase firearms.

People who own assault weapons should be required to store them safely, preferably in a locked gun safe with the ammunition stored separately. If not, and the weapon is traced to a mass shooting, the owner should be held civilly and criminally liable.

Voters should hold their elected representatives responsible for introducing and voting for sensible gun legislation. If you haven’t heard the words of Emma González, one of the high school students who survived last week’s attack, you can do so at this link. We owe Emma and other students the right to attend school without fear. They are all our children.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/18/they-are-our-children/

Feb 17

Singapore Chili Crab

When we first moved to Washington 15 years ago, Dungeness crabs were often $5 or $6 a pound. Nowadays they’re almost as expensive as Maine lobster is hereabouts. However, we splurged tonight for one of our favorite dishes, Singapore chili crab.

The average Dungeness crab weighs about 2 pounds, of which about 1/4 is meat. One crab serves two people quite amply. Our favorite Singapore chili crab recipe comes from Anya Von Bremzen’s Terrific Pacific cookbook. First you boil the live crab briefly. Some folks will buy a precooked crab or one that’s been killed and eviscerated at the market. Cooking it yourself assures that you’ve got a fresh crustacean. After boiling, take out the gills and guts and quarter the crab.

Preparing the rest of the dish is simple. First you stir-fry a mixture of garlic, ginger, shallots, and dried Thai chilis. A ketchup-based mixture gets stirred in, followed by the crab. Toss and cook the crab in the sauce for several minutes. The crab is taken out of the pan/wok, and the sauce is thickened with cornstarch paste and an egg. Turn off the burner before you add the egg to make sure that you don’t wind up with scrambled egg. Pour the sauce over the crab pieces and start eating.

Eating any crab is a messy affair. You’re cracking, cutting, and/or hammering the sucker to get at the meat. Shell and sauce are bound to land on your lap and anything stainable. Most crab restaurants will have butcher paper on the tables. Ample amounts of paper towels are recommended.  We served the crab with rice to sop up any excess sauce. I also made a cucumber salad to cut the richness of the crab. An India Pale Ale works as the beverage. A fine mess.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/17/singapore-chili-crab/

Feb 17

The New Computer Begets

My current laptop is getting long in the electrons, so I purchased a new one. As we’re preparing to migrate items to the new laptop, a few things have come up. Since a single purchase often snowballs into multiple outlays of cash (as in the Homeowner Begets), here we have the New Computer Begets.
My current version of Microsoft Office is no longer being supported. Since this company is going to the subscription model, I need to shell out $ for updates.
The new operating system is incompatible with my older version of FileMaker Pro. Not only will I have to buy a new version (cha-ching!), but I’ll need to convert my current files to the newer format. FileMaker warns that the conversion may result in “errors”. With nearly 3000 recipe records and over 500 cookbooks (see this post), correcting said errors could be a full-time job. (Oh boy, another one!)

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/17/the-new-computer-begets/

Feb 15

Unless You’re Poor

There’s a streak of mean in the other Washington and in many state capitals against people who are at the low end of the income scale. Consider the following:

Unless you’re poor, medical insurance often will be combined with dental insurance.

Unless you’re poor, the items in your grocery cart won’t engender much scrutiny.

Unless you’re poor, there will be no work requirements to receive government largesse.

Unless you’re poor, you won’t get jailed for not paying a parking ticket or possessing a single joint.

Unless you’re poor, you’ll get empathy for your struggles with alcohol or drug addiction.

Unless you’re poor, you won’t get flak if you choose to stay home with your preschool children.

And finally, unless you’re poor, your vote will be eagerly solicited by politicians.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/15/unless-youre-poor/

Feb 15

Fun with Home Repairs

It’s a design feature.

No, Julian did not put his fist through the wall after reading another article on the fracas in the other Washington. I noticed a wet spot on the floor below this. The repair contractor came out and diagnosed a leak in the flashing on the upper deck. Now we need to wait until we get an estimate on what it will cost to fix this. Fortunately, this is the homeowners’ association problem.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/15/fun-with-home-repairs/

Feb 07

Ta-Ta, Tesla

Elon Musk sent a Tesla roadster into space yesterday. Today Tesla sent me an email revising the delivery date on the Model 3, for which I’d plunked down a $1000 deposit. It’s been moved back to early 2019. This is too long for me to wait, since I have to sell Die Frau (the Jetta not-so-clean diesel) back to Volkswagen by the end of this year. So I canceled my order. I hope the deposit didn’t go into space with the roadster.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/02/07/ta-ta-tesla/

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