Oct 14

Picadillo

We’re in the midst of what could be a serious rain/windstorm for the next few days, the remnants of a typhoon. I got some hamburgers out of the freezer for dinner last night. The last thing I wanted to do was to stand on the upper deck in the rain and grill them. So I made picadillo, a classic pan-Latin American dish.
Picadillo is very easy to make, and cleans out the produce bin quite nicely. Start by breaking up that ground beef (or pork, turkey, chicken–hell, you can even use tofu if you must) and browning it in a frying pan. Chop up some onions and garlic, and throw them in the pan once the meat has started to brown. You can also add chopped bell pepper, jalapeño, celery, or whatever else needs to get used up. I had one whole bottled pimiento that I chopped and added to the pan. Once the onions become translucent, stir in a can of diced or stewed tomatoes. I used a can of tomatoes with green chiles. If you have them, you can use a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes, but that may be a bit strong for chile wimps. Add a little oregano and a bay leaf. No salt needed, for reasons that will become clear shortly. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then simmer while you make the rest of dinner. I made a pot of rice and roasted some parsnips and carrots (snips and rots, as we call them at Casa Sammamish). About 10 minutes before you’re ready to eat, stir in some sliced green pimiento-stuffed olives, capers, and a handful of raisins. The key to a good picadillo is a balance between salty and sweet. The olives and capers will supply the salt. The final picadillo should be fairly dry, not soupy. The raisins will absorb some of the liquid. Once your sides are done, dinner is ready. You can garnish the picadillo with parsley, cilantro, or cheese, roll it in tortillas, or serve it atop rice.

This recipe is very scalable. For the two of us, 1 pound of meat and a 14-ounce can of tomatoes gives us enough for a meal and leftovers. For a larger household, double those main proportions and add as many accoutrements as you have in the fridge. ¡Buen provecho!

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/14/picadillo/

Oct 13

Good News, Better News

I went to the hand surgeon yesterday to get the results of the MRI on my poor pinky finger. Good news: I don’t need surgery. I will need physical therapy to get the finger back to normal. Better news: I can go swimming, provided that I put the splint back on afterward. So this morning I got back in the pool. I swam in the slower lane, since it’s been 6 weeks since I did much of a swim. The best part was getting back in touch with my pool pals. Next week I’ll get back to the twice-to-thrice a week routine.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/13/good-news-better-news/

Oct 08

Rainy Saturday Activity

It was cool and raining this morning. What to do? Make some bread. Next question: What bread to make? I went to my trusty copy of Bernard Clayton Jr.’s New Complete Book of Breads. I found a garlic bread recipe that I’d made years ago. The garlic cloves are peeled, blanched, run through a press, and mixed with butter. The garlic butter mixture is kneaded into the dough. The kitchen was redolent with the aroma of garlic. Let’s just say that Casa Sammamish is safe from vampires for a day or two.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/08/rainy-saturday-activity/

Oct 08

Debate Prep

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Julian has collected his supplies for tomorrow’s Presidential Debate.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/08/debate-prep/

Oct 02

Are We in the End Times, October 2016 Edition

I’m not talking politics. This concerns the state of college and professional sports. Let me count the ways:

  • The University of Washington whupped Stanford on Friday night;
  • Washington State University (winless two years ago) shellacked Oregon yesterday;
  • The University of North Carolina beat Florida State yesterday;
  • Cornell has won two games in a row, including their Homecoming bout against Yale;
  • The Buffalo Bills beat the New England Patriots 16-0, the first time the Patriots have been shut out since 1993;
  • The Chicago Cubs have the best record in Major League Baseball going into the playoffs.

The last one is definitely a harbinger of the end of days.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/02/are-we-in-the-end-times-october-2016-edition/

Oct 01

More Figgy Goodness

When fresh figs are in season and you can get them for a decent price, buy them. I bought two pints the other day at the fruit stand and puzzled about what to do with them for the usual Friday Night Follies. Luckily, I found a recipe in Deborah Madison’s cookbook, Local Flavors, for a fall fruit salad featuring figs, pomegranate seeds, persimmons, and walnuts. Since I didn’t have any persimmons and we have one friend who’s allergic to walnuts, it was time to gemisch. [Gemisch is Yiddish for mess. It’s our in-house term for kitchen improvisations.] Below is what I came up with:

Fig-Pomegranate Salad

1 1/2 pints fresh figs

Seeds from one small pomegranate

A few grinds of freshly-ground black pepper

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2-3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

drizzle of honey

drizzle of pomegranate molasses

pinch salt

Combine the figs and pomegranate seeds in a medium bowl. Grind the pepper over the fruit. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, honey, pomegranate molasses, and salt. Pour the oil and vinegar mixture over the fruit; toss to coat. Serve at room temperature.

This was a big hit with the crew. It went very well with the main dishes, grilled salmon for the omnivores and chickpea fritters for the vegetarians. The crunch of the pomegranate seeds was a good contrast with the softness of the figs.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/01/more-figgy-goodness/

Oct 01

Misplaced Nostalgia?

I grew up on the East Coast eating McIntosh, Cortland, Jonathan, and Rome Beauty apples. Family and friends are in the orchard business. My maternal grandfather co-owned an apple orchard. When we visited Seattle in the 1990’s, the apple selection was limited to Red and Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and one or two other varieties. Luckily, the selection has widened in the years since our first visit.

The other day I bought a locally-grown, new crop, McIntosh apple at the fruit stand. Julian doesn’t like them, so I usually don’t purchase that variety. I took it to lunch yesterday. One bite and I thought to myself: “DAMN! Is this a Red Delicious in disguise?” The apple had no snap to its flesh. It was as if it had been in cold storage for six months. The potential explanations are as follows:

  • It was a Red Delicious in disguise
  • Terroir (similar to wine grapes) is at work. If you grow grapes in a particular location, the resulting wine may be an entirely different animal from wine made from the same variety grown elsewhere. Soil and climate may affect apple varieties the same way. Apples from the same tree may have different characteristics from year to year depending on temperature and precipitation. Perhaps McIntosh apple trees don’t do as well when planted on the Eastern slopes of the Cascades as opposed to the Snow Belt of New York.

Maybe I should stick to West Coast apples on the West Coast–except for applesauce.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/01/misplaced-nostalgia/

Sep 27

Five Things Americans Can Teach the French

In the last post I listed five things Americans can learn from the French. This post lists five things Americans can teach the French.

Integrate your immigrants into society. These people have much to offer an aging workforce. Shuffling them into ugly suburbs called banlieues with little opportunity is counterproductive, given the violence that’s occurred in the last two years. America has had its own anti-immigrant demagoguery, but our better instincts have prevailed – so far.

Put reflective fog lines on the sides of roads, especially in rural areas. Some of the roads in the Gorges du Verdon area had no shoulders, just a sheer drop to the valley below.

Quit smoking. The percentage of persons over 15 years old who smoke in France is 27.6%, whereas it’s 17.2% in the US. (Stats courtesy of the World Health Organization) Smoking is now prohibited inside French restaurants, which means that sidewalk cafés are clogged with smokers.

Lose the crappy iced tea. This was my biggest rant from last year, and remains so.img_1979

Have fresh milk in the grocery stores. It was a surprise last year to find that all of the milk available in markets was shelf-stable. And this in a country famous for its other dairy products.

 

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/27/five-things-americans-can-teach-the-french/

Sep 25

Five Things the French Can Teach Americans

Although I’m All-American, I have a soft spot for France. There are many things that it does well, just as there are many things America does well. Here are five things that we Yanks can learn from our French counterparts:

Les plaîsirs de la table (the pleasures of the table). The French do not wolf down their meals; rather, they savor each course.  They don’t get itchy if the main course doesn’t arrive within five minutes of ordering it. We can all learn to slow down.

Eat sans gluttony. I wrote about this last year, the concept of “assez” (enough).

Drive less. Given the dearth of parking spaces on the Riviera and in French cities, this is a no-brainer. We left the Purple People-Eater in a free parking spot and walked or took the bus/train when we were in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Invest in high-quality infrastructure. The Millau Viaduct, which we drove over last year, is a masterpiece of engineering, the 21st century equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge. Americans used to do roads and bridges right. These days, road repair goes to the low bidder. The phrase “you get what you pay for” often applies to the results. If the same pothole has to be fixed year after year, the Highway Department needs to get a clue.

Value the old. Some of the buildings we’ve seen on our trips to France are hundreds of years old. Some retrofitting has to occur to bring them up to current code and modern conveniences, but it’s done. Meanwhile, the first option in the US when confronted with an old building is tear it down. How many architectural treasures have been destroyed as a result?

In the next post, I’ll turn the tables.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/25/five-things-the-french-can-teach-americans/

Sep 22

And What Have We Learned?

This trip, as with our previous travels, supplied us with memories of beautiful scenery and great food. It also taught us valuable lessons for future trips. Here are a few:

  • Traveling light means constantly searching for laundromats or paying hotels to do laundry for you. Cut yourself some slack and pack extra socks and undies. They don’t take up much room, and are probably what you’ll need to wash the most.
  • Paying $85 for your “Known Traveler Number” (KTN) from the Department of Homeland Security will only help you on flights originating in the US. In other countries you’ll still have to take off your shoes and pull out your laptops. We could only use the KTN for one flight on our itinerary. Unless you do a lot of domestic travel, it’s not worth the money. At least the KTN is good for five years.
  • Avoid changing planes at the Vancouver Airport. The distances between arrival gates and customs are long, and can be overwhelming to the mobility-challenged. If you have a short turnaround time, you could miss your connecting flight.
  • It helps to have a plan B when things go awry. Our rental flat in Lyon had a non-functional refrigerator. Fortunately, we were able to transfer to the hotel where we stayed last year without losing any money.
  • Regardless of the country, having to go to an emergency room while on vacation sucks.
  • If you find a free parking space for your rental car in a European city, grab it and don’t move the car unless absolutely necessary.
  • Despite the cute shoes we saw in Lyon, the average French man has the same sense of style as an American software engineer, with two exceptions: They wear more stylish eyewear, and their hair is a bit more groomed. The current style among hipsters is close-cropped on the sides and back, and longer on the top. Consider this a reverse mullet, or early Justin Bieber. If said hipster is going bald, he shaves his head; however, he has a beard to compensate. The beard may be a few days’ worth of scruff, or a bushy specimen worthy of Santa Claus.

Once the jet lag wears off (eventually), I’ll have more to report.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/22/and-what-have-we-learned/

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