mizducky

I prefer to plan meals based on what's on sale and looking good at my favorite markets, plus my mental inventory of what's already in fridge/freezer/pantry. It's how I can manage to keep doing fun foodie things while staying on a budget. I keep an especial eagle eye out for when various staples and favorite ingredients go on sale, and stock up. Once in awhile E. will make a special request for a particular dinner, so then I'll shop with that meal in mind ... but if the key ingredient(s) is/are ridiculously priced or looking pathetic that day, I'll postpone doing that meal until I find the right quality at the right price.

Well, here's the green chile stew recipe that I put together after checking out several different recipes on the web: 2 pounds pork, cubed Vegetable oil for sauteeing 1 large onion, chopped 2 large cloves garlic, minced 1-2 cups NM green chile, roasted, peeled, stems removed, chopped 2-4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or 1 small can tomatoes) Water, broth, and/or canned tomato liquid, enough to just barely cover ingredients 1/4 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano 1 Mexican bay leaf 1 tsp ground cumin 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon white pepper 1. In a skillet, brown the pork in batches in a tablespoon or so of oil. Place the meat in a stockpot or slow cooker. 2. Saute the onions and garlic in the same skillet until soft and browned, adding more oil if needed. Add all the seasonings except the bay leaf after the onions/garlic have had a minute or so to get going. 3. Add some of the water/broth/tomato juice to the onion mixture to help deglaze the pan, stirring to scrape up all the fond. Add the contents of the skillet to the meat. 4. Add all the remaining ingredients to the pot. Cover and simmer for an hour or two on stovetop, or the corresponding amount of time in the slow cooker, until the pork is very tender. Serve with fresh corn tortillas. I made the above using a full two cups of green chiles, and as my chiles were a good bit hotter than I expected, the results, while delicious, were almost too hot for me to eat any appreciable amount. I wound up eventually picking all the pork out and enjoying that with just a little chile, and now I'm going to freeze the remaining green chile sauce to use--sparingly!--in other dishes. I like this recipe formulation--I'd just suggest proceeding with caution, taking into account the level of heat in your batch of chiles as well as your diners' tolerances. (I bet anyone who is a real fire-eater would have found my current batch of green chile stew just to their liking, or maybe even a little on the mild side for them.)

Okay, they're all peeled now, and mostly seeded. Given how many chiles there were, I sort of gave up on getting every single seed off 'em, but at least got the major seed clumps out--the chiles are still plenty hot enough even without them. I tried to keep them as whole as I could manage--the flesh of some of them was kind of falling apart at this point, but the majority stayed in one piece amazingly well. I now have ten baggies of green stuff in my freezer (easy-to-misinterpret phrasing totally intentional ). There was an 11th baggie, but I used it to make a green chile stew with pork. Whoa! Almost too spicy for my tummy, but it hurts so good!

Well, my friend has dropped off a big cooler full of chilies, and I've just gotten about a sixth of them peeled. Heh. Luckily the peels are mostly popping off of them pretty easily, because I'd hate to think how long this would be taking if I had to struggle with peeling them. And also luckily the aroma and taste (of course I sampled!) are sufficient motivation to keep me at it.

Prices here in the Twin Cities are roughly similar, except I can get whole chickens for $.69/lb. Pieces can run cheaper, if they are on sale, but then you have to buy the mongo family pack. ← Once in a blue moon I can find whole chickens for $.69/pd. around here. $.89/pd. is somewhat more frequent. Often you only get the low price if you buy the family pack--which can get awkward after awhile if your household and freezer are small. I often patiently paw through a whole pile of family packs (of chicken or whatever), looking for the smallest packages that still carry the discount price.

Interesting that I usually only see "exotic" meats in either high-end butcher stores or low-end ethnic markets. Hard to avoid the implication that only the rich, the poor, and those with immigrant roots stray from the standard round of beef/pork/chicken. And while there is some overlap in products carried, there is also some variance: while I've seen rabbit in many markets haute and not, I can't ever remember seeing bison at any of the ethnic markets I frequent, and I'm hard pressed to recall seeing chivo (goat) at the high end joints. Needless to say, of the high-end and low-end markets, I totally prefer the latter, both for price and general vibe.

I have long thought that chicken pricing makes no earthly sense whatsoever. Or rather that the pricing must reflect a bunch of non-obvious market forces. Like, what's with the commodity-style 10-pound bags of chicken leg/thigh quarters that regularly go on sale for $5/bag? (In other words, 50 cents a pound, but you have to buy the whole bag.) And these thigh quarters are usually huge. I figure they must be what happens to the remainder of all those chix that McDonald's breeds for their huge breasts. I also don't understand why white meat remains so popular. I just have to conclude that a lot of people really don't like their meat to remind them that it came from an animal. No pronounced flavor, no bone or visible connective tissue, nuthin'. And that pretty well describes a boneless skinless chicken breast from a factory-farm bird. Probably about as lacking in animal-origin cues as a piece of intact meat can be. And also, a perfect blank canvas for fast-foodifying--perfect for flattening and stamping into ambiguous shapes before breading and frying and saucing and etc. And is there still a lingering belief out there in the general eating public that white meat is somehow classier than dark? I'm so oblivious to that kind of thing. Anyway ... Datapoints from San Diego, culled from a random assortment of current grocery circulars: bone-in legs/thighs/drums: from $.77/lb to $1.69/lb; boneless/skinless breasts: from $1.79 to 3.49/lb boneless thighs $1.77 whole chicken $1.09

Very interesting article! At this point in my proceedings, I'm exceedingly sceptical of labeling any nutrient "bad" or "good" -- either fats or carbs. (Interesting that nobody's declared protein to be "bad" yet!) What I'm finding much more helpful is to consider each food's unique nutritional benefits and drawbacks, including its relative nutritional density compared to other food choices. For instance, a very basic consideration is that fat supplies 9 calories per gram, while protein and carbohydrate both come in at 4 calories per gram. In other words, fat is more than twice the caloric "hit" of protein or carbohydrate per unit weight. That's not a values judgement--it's a hard fact, that needs to be reckoned with when choosing how to allocate one's daily calorie allotment in a weight loss scheme. Against that, though, one must consider that fat is indeed a necessary nutrient--not only as fuel but for other important metabolic functions (for instance, I find it pretty awesome to consider all the different roles omega-3 fatty acids play in the body). And then there's all of fat's roles in satiety, carrying of flavor, and making many traditional and beloved foods look and taste "right" -- ignoring these roles won't mess with your nutrition per se, but they can definitely mess with your head, which is not conducive to staying on a weight loss routine. So I guess we're kind of back at "everything in moderation," then, aren't we?

A super-quick Googling shows that some recipes specify gelatin, but others use agar. This recipe demo/experiment (from the blog of eGullet member mmm-yoso) happens to use agar. In the comments to the blog entry, you'll find a bit of discussion about gelatin vs. agar, and how much to use (mmm-yoso and his wife concluded that they could have gotten away with a good deal less agar than they used for this experiment). Hope that helps some ...

Aha. I had this same problem with trying to get the skin crisp. Didn't solve it, so I'm glad you asked the question, Tepee! Taking notes now ...

No need to apologize--this was a fine blog. Great glimpse into your (very busy!) life, and lots of fabulous pictures. Thanks!

I'm not so good at business-dinner recommendations, or downtown recs in general, as I usually haunt lower-budget areas. But for escapes from business-meeting mode my strategy would be to walk a couple blocks west of your hotel to India Street, and then north a few more blocks into Little Italy. At the very least, you'll find several sidewalk-cafe venues for coffee and etc. to check out.

Thanks--that does help lots. Even if the chiles do get a bit slimy, would they still be okay for making into sauce?

Okay--green chile novice here. A friend of mine is currently in Albuquerque for the balloon festival, and called me up to tell me she'd just bought me a big bag full of freshly roasted green chile from a roaster there. Trouble is, she doesn't arrive back in San Diego with them until Thursday. I don't want to saddle her with having to peel all those babies now--heck, she's on vacation. I think she does have access to a fridge/freezer (she's staying with a friend). Would it be adequate to put these chiles in the fridge or freezer until she headed home with them?

I had a long history of eating way too much meat. Every several years or so I'd attempt to go vegetarian, but the cravings for meat and a general but indefineable feeling of non-rightness would make all those attempts crash and burn eventually. Finally my meat obsession succeeded in provoking an acute gout attack, and so while I did not eliminate meat entirely--far from it!--I cut back significantly. I now allow myself 8 to 10 oz of meat daily (often partly or totally substituted with the equivalent amount of protein from non-meat sources) and I seem to be doing pretty well. It helped me immensely when I read some of the work of Annemarie Colbin, a writer and cooking teacher who follows a natural foods/macrobiotic slant on healthy eating. She wrote about noticing that some of her students experienced great health improvements switching to a vegetarian diet, while others who were long-time vegetarians were not thriving under such a regimen but perked up considerably when they added modest amounts of animal protein back into their diet. Her conclusion was that, not only do dietary needs differ from one person to another, but one person's needs differ over time. At one point, they may need to clear out their system from a long-term overindulgence in an unhealthy diet, so a drastic switch is helpful. But a cleansing diet is not meant to be a permanent thing, so staying on it too long can turn into a problem in itself. So you simply have to keep listening to your body, feeling what it needs, and gently steering it away from its occasional urges to eat excessive amounts of any one particular crave food. I dunno if that's helpful, but there's my $0.02 for whatever it's worth.

All about bialys, courtesy of Wikipedia, including a photograph. Alas, it appears they still haven't made their way outside the New York metro area ... but considering how badly bagels have been dumbed down by the big franchised bagel operations, maybe the bialy's continued obscurity is a good thing. (Except when I'm craving one like crazy!)

Only just caught up with this blog tonight--it's been that kind of week. Great blog! I haven't been in Montreal since I was a kid, so it's cool to see it through your eyes. Loving the look of the Montreal bagels ... never had the opportunity to try one, but I'd surely do so given the chance. Edited to add: do they also make bialys? Now a good bialy is a true thing of beauty.

A very simple but very satisfying stewed chicken, inspired by the current Cook-Off (it's way too plain to even pretend to be a poule au pot, so I decided to post the picture here instead): Cooking this made me feel all homey and nostalgic, as my mom used to make this dish frequently.

Looks like it is! Check out this link. (Pondering that Guinness Book of Records tamale ... )

Thanks for bumping this topic up, Michelle. It incidentally gave me a chance to look back at my previous post and see that I totally forgot to mention The Big Kitchen in South Park, another restaurant and neighborhood heavily imbued with that post-60s headset (so to speak). Judy the Beauty and her whole crew at The Big Kitchen are definitely on that wavelength--heck, there's even a life-size cardboard effigy of Jerry Garcia in the corner, brown rice/tofu scrambles on the (very funky-looking) menu, and retro music over the PA, and when I briefly worked at the gift shop next door Judy was always bopping in for candles and packs of incense for the restaurant. Can't get much more keepin' it real than that.

Jensen - they're small plain dumplings, about 2 cm in diameter. No filling, just a mixture of eggs, flour and some milk usually. ← I'm intrigued that the word "knedle" is so similar to the Yiddish word for a matzoh ball, "kneidl," plural "kneidlach" (seeing as how matzoh balls are basically a variety of dumpling). Makes me suspect that both words have a common root--possibly/probably German?

Pot-au-feu newbie here, with a question: so is it a defining characteristic of classic pot-au-feu that the meat is not browned before immersing it in liquid? I've become so programmed with the browning-before-braising mantra that I'm having trouble deprogramming myself here. (I've got a package of flanken-cut beef ribs waiting for me to decide what to do with it ... )

A little update: I made E some "hamburger helper" (actually a store brand knockoff) for dinner tonight. He adored it. Told me it was real comfort food for him. Asked for seconds, after being assured that there would still be enough leftovers for next day's lunch. Heh. Myself, I thought it mainly tasted of salt and MSG, but hey, who am I to begrudge him his food joy? Alas, because of the killer sodium content it's probably better if I make this for him only once in a while, but that will only make its "special treat" status all the more so. Equally a winner, but a little more into "haute" territory: now that the weather around here has cooled off considerably, I was able to use a chunk of beef cheek I'd hidden away in the freezer to make a really nice and tender stew (simmered all day in the crock pot). E loved this too, and again made a beeline for the leftovers the following day. He also, again, made a point of letting me know how much he liked this kind of cooking. So--okay, score another one for classic meat-and-potatoes type preparations. I can roll with that.

Great blog, about a country I too know too little about. The "sprat can skyline" concept is still cracking me up. And those soups sound wonderful. I'm always up for a good bowl of borscht. I'd like to hear a little more about those other soup varieties. My only exposure to something called "solyanka" has been a recipe out of the original Moosewood cookbook, and I have no idea how far it strayed from authenticity. Edited to add: oh yeah--and that rye bread looked fabulous! Really good dense chewy bread is something I continue to yearn for in this land of squishy wimpy bread where I currently live.

Korean food is awesome--I'm still on the learning curve myself, but let me see if I can fill in a few more blanks here: Those are known as mandu or mandoo (all of these things get transliterated into the Euro alphabet in a variety of ways). Ahhh -- banchan or panchan. I love this stuff. There are tons of different panchan, and it's customary to always serve at least a few different choices, but kimchee is the one must-have. I see somebody else has already jumped in with an explanation of bibimbap. It's one of my favorites, and I agree the dolsot bibimbap is especially great. The stone bowl holds heat for a long time, so as you keep stirring and eating, more bits get to crisp up against the bowl, so your meal keeps changing as you eat.