169 replies to this topic

[RSincere]

Ahem. Is this thing on?

I'm it! I have to admit that I'm very nervous about this week. Kris is a tough act to follow.

A little background--I'll try not to bore you all with "too much information," but you might like to know where I'm coming from.

I live in a small town in Wisconsin with my husband Jason and 7-year-old son Daniel. I used to be a court reporter and my family's main provider. A chronic illness has caused some major setbacks, and after a hospitalization in January my healthcare providers told me very bluntly that I needed to hang it up and stay home. That was a kick in the head. I spent a couple months sitting in a recliner, staring dully at Court TV (yeah, I'm real proud of that)...that is, until an acquaintance told me that I reminded him of Rachael Ray (don't ask) and I decided to turn on Food Network and check this chick out.

Now, I had taught myself how to "cook" over the past 10 years, but my "cooking" revolved around Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup recipes with a side of canned corn. I was a vegetarian in the first 8 of these formative cooking years, so that limited me even more. I loved to read cookbooks, but they were all the "Working Mother's 5-Ingredient Recipes" types of cookbooks. I got hooked on Ray's show at first, watching in awe--you mean you're not supposed to chop your vegetables with a steak knife? Why does she put salt and pepper on everything while it's still cooking? What the hell is fennel?

My Food TV watching started to extend to Sara Moulton's show, and others. Over time, it dawned on me that I could learn to cook--I mean, cook with fresh ingredients, cook complicated dishes, cook food that was really, really impressive and not just edible and filling. I could perhaps try out recipes that I used to skip over, recipes that were "too hard" or "too weird." And it might even be good! I might even be good at it! I realized that I may be limited by health and lack of funds, but I have been blessed in a backwards way--with lots of time.

So here I am, several months later. I've been introduced to so many foods: capers, shallots, jalapenos, Kalamata olives, chorizo, fresh herbs, curries, swiss chard, fresh tuna, shrimp, things that you all probably consider very basic, not exotic. I am savoring my novice status, where everything is fresh and exciting to me, and I don't want to become jaded. Jason is enjoying my cooking. He doesn't really get into food like I do, but he'll eat anything--and eat it fast, which is a good trait when my experimentation doesn't turn out so well. Daniel is another story; he has his own menu, and I don't know if I'll get into that with this foodblog.

I went through a period of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants menu planning, but I found that it was very difficult to keep within a budget that way, so I've gone back to selecting a menu. This week I'm going to be making something from one of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks, several selections from the new CIA cookbook, and more--I might even roast my first chicken. Each recipe represents something I've never done before or eaten before; I try to plan meals like this whenever possible. You will see where budgetary concerns come into play--especially when you see pictures of my ratty kitchen equipment. I'm acquiring nice things little by little, though, and that's fun too because I'm still at the point where a new Oxo vegetable peeler makes a huge difference. In other words, I'm easily amused!

Hope you all are amused this week as well!

[Carrot Top]

It sounds like you are enjoying this process...and I am sure I will enjoy the reading of it! Madhur Jaffrey is wonderful....and even if the recipe does not turn out perfect for whatever! reason...at least the house will be filled with wonderful aromas!

[eunny jang]

Rachel -

welcome to the foodblog - I'm really looking forward to the coming week. I've enjoyed your warm and funny posts immensely since you've started posting here.

Can't wait!

[RSincere]

I eat breakfast because I take a ton of pills in the morning, and also because I am not that great with my timing when cooking, so lunch can happen anywhere between 11:00 and 1:00, and I don't snack in between.

Chocolate Malt-o-Meal rocks! Sometimes I melt a little peanut butter in it. Today I made it with part water and part whole milk that was getting a little old in the fridge. I always add sugar and salt.

[snowangel]

Thanks, Rachel, for picking up the gauntlet. I haven't had Malt O Meal in years. I went to college in Northfield, MN, where they make Malt O Meal. Periodically, we would smell stuff from the plant -- when the wind was right -- and after four years of that, most of us swore it off. I'll have to return to it for the cold days ahead.

Assume that your cooking will change some in the coming weeks, as will mine, as summer's bounty turns to fall.

[snowangel]

Meant to ask. Given that you live in a small town, how easy is access to a variety of fresh? Figure produce is easy, but the other stuff? Access to a library with a big cookbook selection?

[Laksa]

I've never had Malt-o-Meal so forgive me if my questions sound silly.

Is your glass of diet Coke foaming naturally or is some of that Malt-o-Meal?

Diet Coke and Malt-o-Meal... could you tell us more about this combination? Am I the only one to find this... uhm... different?

[Jake]

I'm really looking forward to your blog. I've enjoyed watching your interest/love of cooking develop with eG over the last few months.

Gotta love the diet Coke for breakfast.....although mine would've been diet Pepsi

[RSincere]

Thank you, Carrot Top, eunny jang, and snowangel for the kind words!

Meant to ask.  Given that you live in a small town, how easy is access to a variety of fresh?  Figure produce is easy, but the other stuff?  Access to a library with a big cookbook selection?

I can get produce at the last minute from Super Walmart, but it actually costs more than the produce at Woodmans in Madison, and I don't think it's as good. For example, the red bell peppers are $1.50 apiece at Walmart compared to $.79 at Woodmans, and the Walmart peppers smell strangely like gasoline or kerosene. If I want anything that's even slightly offbeat, I have to go to Madison. We do have a Farmer's Market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, so sometimes I go there for great produce and pasture-raised meats. Lately, whenever I have gone there, there has been something going on downtown and the market is cancelled.

I can't get lamb or goat or calves' liver, things like that, around here, unless I arrange in advance with a local farmer. We have a nice meat market in town that buys local cattle/pigs and slaughters them there. They gave Daniel and me a tour of their slaughter area and it was so clean and the workers are well-paid and care about their work, so I buy from them when I can, but they don't always have the cuts I want.

Our library is really small. The good thing is that they are connected to Madison libraries through interlibrary loan, so I am able to order cookbooks that I want to borrow, and a Madison library usually has what I want, and they send it to our library.

[jackal10]

Welcome, and don't be afraid to ask or to show things that don't work out. The community is here to help and support you...

[RSincere]

I've never had Malt-o-Meal so forgive me if my questions sound silly. 

Is your glass of diet Coke foaming naturally or is some of that Malt-o-Meal?

Diet Coke and Malt-o-Meal... could you tell us more about this combination?  Am I the only one to find this... uhm... different?

laksa, as a woman of great refinement and taste, I feel qualified to assure you that diet Coke, in fact, goes with everything.

The foam is because I had only poured about half the can in there, and I was in a hurry and didn't take care to avoid foaming. I am very intrigued by the idea of adding Malt-o-Meal to the diet Coke...hmmm....

Honestly, I have a very long entrenched diet Coke habit. It's been my main drink of choice since I was about 14. I have cut down from 96+ oz. a day to two 12-oz. cans a day, but one would have to pry those cans from my cold, dead fingers before I even consider quitting it altogether! It's a real security blanket for me.

This is great--I remember reading your fascinating blog, and I hadn't heard of 90% of the foods you mentioned. Now it's my turn to baffle you!

Jake, thank you so much. I often feel outclassed in every way when reading and posting on eGullet, so it means so much to me to know that you are out there reading and enjoying. I have no comment on that Pepsi product, however.

[bloviatrix]

Can you please explain what Malt O'Meal is? I've never heard of it.

[lamb]

Daniel is another story; he has his own menu, and I don't know if I'll get into that with this foodblog.

Rachel,
I'm looking forward to reading your blog! I hope you do let us know of your son's menu as I have dealt with a picky eater for 16 years now (since the day my son stopped formula and baby food and went onto solids, it has been an adventure). Believe me, one day he will wake up and decide to eat what the rest of the family is chowing down on. While it doesn't seem like it now, you won't be able to shovel the food in front of him fast enough!

[little ms foodie]

Hi Rachel! I'm very interested in reading your blog this week. I also love to read cookbooks and try new recipes. Is it ok if I ask if you have any dietary restrictions because of your illness. Also how hard is it to basically prepare 2 different menu's for your family?

I'm really against drinking pop so I'm sitting on my hands to keep from scolding you!! But I think it's really good that you have cut down so much, wow! that is quite a difference!!! Great job

[tejon]

Don't count on that excitement and newness to ever really fade. I *still* get excited about a new vegetable peeler or technique I hadn't seen before. It's like Christmas morning when I open a cookbook and start to read, every time.

[Laksa]

Can you please explain what Malt O'Meal is?  I've never heard of it.

I'm soooo glad I'm not the only one.

Rachel, I blithely bargain on being baffled by your blog.

[Jinmyo]

Can you please explain what Malt O'Meal is?  I've never heard of it.

Yes, please.

[RSincere]

Malt-o-Meal is a mixture of wheat farina and malted barley that is then flavored with sugar and fortified. The chocolate kind has cocoa in it. I also have maple flavor in my cupboard. They used to have apple cinnamon too, but I haven't seen that in a while. It's basically a hot porridge.

[RSincere]

lamb, I will be mentioning Daniel's meals, especially if they coincide with mine. He usually eats cereal with soymilk for breakfast, and he gets free hot lunch at school. So it's not too hard to make him his own dinner, because the things he likes are very easy to prepare. Daniel has been picky since birth--he never would take a bottle, not once. He had nothing but breastmilk, and never from a bottle, until he was 14 months old! I called myself the "all-night breastaurant." He just spit everything else out. He's been that way ever since. He is trying more foods now; he's a lot better than he used to be, but as for him eating everything put in front of him--I'll believe it when I see it!

ms foodie, don't be too proud of me yet...you see, I switch to diet Sprite in the afternoon! I don't have any dietary restrictions except that sometimes the meds make me nauseous, and I can't drink alcohol. I went through a few weeks where the only thing I could stomach was macaroni salad. I hate macaroni salad now.

Edited by RSincere, 12 October 2004 - 09:49 AM.

[hathor]

So happy to see you are blogging!! I've been slammed at work, and haven't been keeping up on the blogs so I was surprised and happy to see that you are up. Excellent!
Pop in the morning, are you sure you aren't Southern??
mmmm...roast chicken...one of the great comfort foods!

[patti]

Hi, Rachel. I look forward to seeing and reading your blog. I can relate to a lot of things you post on the cooking front.

Oh, Malt-O-Meal! I haven't made it in a few years, but I used to make it daily for our handicapped son. I also added peanut butter to the chocolate malt-o-meal for added calories (and flavor) for him. I'd also add lots of butter and jam or jelly to the plain kind. He couldn't talk, but we knew he liked it by the way his tongue would come out for more, more, more. It's good stuff.

[snowangel]

Peter, who used to be a picky eater, has become far less picky now that he's been helping in the kitchen...

[RSincere]

Lunchtime!



"Kofta curry" or meatballs in a curry sauce. I made the meatballs last night so that they could kind of marinate in their own spices. It took me about an hour to make those meatballs. They have grated ginger, garlic, red onion, cilantro, and other spices, and I made them from ground round that was about to expire at the store. The tomatoes are the last fresh tomatoes for me until next year; they are red but don't smell like tomatoes, so I think we're done.

The new thing about this recipe is that I am attempting meatballs for a second time. My first try was porcupine meatballs, and they were extremely greasy with half-cooked rice inside, and they fell apart, inedible.



Here is my mise en place. I timed myself: it took exactly 45 minutes to get this together. The pot has beef broth in it, which I made by simmering 5 cups of water with several teaspoons of Penzey's beef base. Homemade stock is on my list of things to do, but I need a bigger pot.



Here is the sauce before I added the beef broth and meatballs. I had to add the beef broth and simmer it for 20 min. before adding the meatballs and simmering those for 40 min. I did have simmering issues, so the sauce turned out very soupy...



Here is my lunch! It's a lot of food, isn't it? We eat a huge lunch, but not a lot of different things in one meal. I generally make recipes that serve four; Jason gets the leftovers for his dinner at work, and I scrounge for dinner at home. I was hoping for a thicker sauce. The recipe says what to do if the sauce seizes up and gets too thick, but not what to do if it's too thin. I cranked the heat and boiled it an extra 10 minutes with the lid off, but we got hungry and decided to eat it as is.

I was at a loss as to what to make for a side dish. I wanted to make a Pakistani rice dish, since this is a Pakistani curry, but I thought that the tomato paste and garlic in the rice might be overkill with the tomato sauce and TONS of garlic in the curry. So I made plain basmati rice, which is a favorite for us.

All in all, the flavor was excellent, and I'd definitely make this again.

[StudentChefEclipse]

Congrats on the blog; you're doing wonderfully. Loved the Malt-o-Meal posts, though I've never eaten any. The chocolate/peanut butter combo sounds great though.

Also, yay on you for being a CCC morning person. (CCC being Cold Carbonated Caffiene....my choice is diet Dr. Pepper.)

Can't wait to see what's next for you!

[Laksa]

Can I ask what the green sauce is, in the small ramekin next to the onion?

[RSincere]

Can I ask what the green sauce is, in the small ramekin next to the onion?

Three inches of fresh ginger, five cloves of garlic, two serrano chiles (seeded and ribs removed), four tablespoons of water, ground to a paste in the blender.

[jgarner53]

the Walmart peppers smell strangely like gasoline or kerosene

That's just really quite frightening.

Enjoying the blog so far, and congratulations on discovering cooking! The great thing is that there are always new things to learn, new toys to buy (is that a scale I see in the background?), and new things to try.

[SobaAddict70]

It might have been too thin because of the amount of broth called for in the recipe. Perhaps cutting down on the volume of liquid next time?

Any ideas, folks?

btw, Malt-O-Meal sounds weirdly familiar to me. Kind of like in the Philippines. I shall have to ask my cousins who have better memories than I.

Soba

[snowangel]

Malt O Meal is, IMHO, more similar to cream of wheat than to oatmeal. It may be a midwestern thing?

[TheFoodTutor]

Malt O Meal is, IMHO, more similar to cream of wheat than to oatmeal.  It may be a midwestern thing?

It must be. I'm from Ohio, and I know what Malt O Meal is. I'll have to check the stores here in Georgia to see if they carry it, because I haven't had it in years. My mother used to make Malt O Meal muffins, which have a texture similar to cornbread. I can only imagine how tasty they'd be if they were chocolate, too.

I'm glad you're blogging, Rachel, and ditto what everyone's said about showing anything that doesn't turn out exactly as planned.

I would have probably added a little corn starch slurry, to make a thicker sauce if you wanted, since corn starch thickens so quickly, and it makes the sauce really glossy. But really, your finished product doesn't look bad at all. It's great that you're experimenting with curries, too. That's pretty adventurous for someone new to cooking. Great stuff!