mizducky

Hmmmm ... I too think they'll be fine to eat. My one concern is that the skinless (or soon-to-be-skinless) ones might be prone to falling apart a bit during the cooking process, without the skins to keep them intact. But IIRC you'll be cooking them in a crockpot--that's a really gentle cooking process, so they should be okay. Just try not to let them overcook, so they'll still be firm enough to hold up to being mixed into a salad.

I can highly recommend the beet-and-cucumber vinaigrette salad I concocted in my last blog. It doesn't have to be cukes in there, either--just about any non-leafy veg will do, either raw or lightly parcooked--if you put the parcooked vegetables into the vinaigrette still warm, they seem to sop up even more vinaigrette goodness--and cut into chunks and/or slices to match the size of your cubed beets. All of the non-leafies you list above would work in such a salad. Leafy vegetables tend to wilt if left in a vinaigrette overnight, but sometimes I like that too--it all depends on what mood I'm in. Or you can marinate a bunch of the more solid veggies in a vinaigrette overnight in the fridge, and then serve on a bed of the leafy veg (shredded or lightly cooked). As for me, I've been mostly cooking from my pantry ever since my blog ended. I do have to sneak out today to buy some more fruit, but now that I've gone on a beans kick, I've got a bunch of beans I'm motivated to use up--mainly garbanzos and adzukis. Garbanzos I know what to do with--hummus for days! Plus I like garbanzos so much that I'll eat them just straight, with a few grinds of black pepper. But suggestions for other dishes are always welcome! Adzukis, I know of a bunch of Asian dishes that use them, but that I've never attempted. As I'm going away over the weekend I think experiments with these will be postponed to next week ... but again, suggestions are very welcome.

Dayum, boy, you do have that 3-and-7 thing ingrained, don't you? (Actually, as a writer I find myself working parallel phrases in threes all the time--there's just something inexplicably balanced about doing that in English prose. Plus I learned way the hell back in my college coursework in cognitive psychology that the human brain's short-term memory really does its best with remembering seven bits of data in a row, more or less--that's actually one of the reasons the phone company standardized on seven-digit phone numbers. For whatever it's worth ... ) Oh yeah--the food looks stunning, too.

I'm not Ludja... but yep. It's made with poultry too. Schmaltz means fat. Any fat, but primarily animal. Nothing was better on a Friday night than being the first one to Baba's house and running to the kitchen to snack on the gribenes before the rest of the cousins got there . But we didn't use the rendered fat for bread - we just cook/ed with it. ← I dunno about bread, but my mom once told me that as a kid she considered spaghetti topped with schmaltz to be a real treat. But then she added this was partly because her family was really broke when she was a kid in the 1930s, so this was one of the few "treats" they could afford. She tried the treat once she was an adult with more cashflow ... and wondered how she ever even ate it--heartburn city!

Hail to thee, fellow blogger! Looks like you're off to a roaring good start. Though they are now relegated to the occasional-treat list, I love me some good chicken-fried steak with nice thick white gravy. Haven't had a good exemplar of that dish in ages, so I am happily enjoying the virtual version here. You HATE leftovers! I am rendered speechless. Aren't they the main reason for cooking?? What do you have for breakfast? lunch? I am so stunned I am rendered speechless, or writer-less - which is why I had to edit this post - I was so stunned I posted it as soon as I had edited the quote, before I even added anything. Are there any other leftover lovers out there? ← I confess to adoring leftovers--both on their own, and recombined into other dishes. But I am aware there is some difference of opinion on this matter. As a matter of fact, Madame Old Foodie, I bet, with your love of quotes, that you may already be familiar with the quip about leftovers in the old versions of "Joy of Cooking"--the one in which a parson is saying grace over the family dinner, pauses to look down at the main dish before him, and murmurs something to the effect of: "I believe I've blessed a considerable amount of this material before ... "

So, a few final thoughts: I suppose one could look at my current intense focus on this whole health regimen thing and wonder about obsessive-compulsive disorder. But as the instructor of my health class over at my HMO is fond of saying, folks like me have ingrained all sorts of counterproductive food and health habits over years and decades of reinforcement; it's only logical that it would take an equal amount of effort to deprogram all those behaviors and replace them with healthier ones. Besides, as a foodie I was already spending tons of time thinking about food anyway, so, nu, like this is so different? The plain fact of the matter is that "will power" alone--i.e. reliance solely on conscious commitment to be healthier--can only take one so far in behavioral change. It doesn't address the behaviors deeply ingrained at an unconscious level. The unconscious is a very patient part of the human psyche. Conscious attention wavers due to all sorts of circumstances (fatigue, stress, distraction, etc.), and the unconscious just waits for those moments of inattention and then swoops in and takes over. Have you ever started off driving to a certain place, gotten distracted by a conversation with your passenger, and then suddenly realized your brain had gone on autopilot and you have just made the turn-off to your workplace, instead of continuing on to the movie theater or wherever you intended to go? You turned just a slight bit of your attention away, and unconscious habit just slid on into the driver's seat. If even a lively conversation is enough distraction for this to happen, just think how easily the unconscious can pull a fast one on the much more challenging commitment of sticking to a "diet." But of course, even though commitment is insufficient in itself, IMO it is most definitely a necessary foundation. It takes major commitment to put in the full amount of work necessary to change behaviors that affect every phase of one's life. Especially in a society in which virtually every social, familial, business, celebratory, and even religious occasion revolves around food in one way or another, and so much of that food involves quantities and qualities that are hazardous to those of us with metabolisms geared to gain weight easily and lose it only grudgingly. Another bugaboo I had to deal with as a lover of food, as well as a battle-scarred veteran of the dieting wars, was the dreaded specter of deprivation--that I might never again be "allowed" to eat the foods I had grown to love in the ways to which I had grown accustomed. To battle this specter, I found it useful to remember one of those silly little motivational quips that float around the Internet: "Yes, you can have it all ... you just can't have it all right now." I can still enjoy rich and fatty foods of all sorts--I just can't eat them in huge quantities every single day anymore. And in fact, I had to admit to myself that even I was beginning to actually get bored with that unending influx of the rich stuff. I really was doing it more out of force of habit than anything else. I appreciate those rich, calorie-dense foods a whole lot more now that they're a special treat rather than the daily usual. And I'm also now much more choosy about those special treats--if I'm going to allow myself one of my occasional preplanned splurges, I sure as hell ain't gonna waste it on a lowly fast food burger and fries. Ultimately, I keep on coming back to that concept of balance. Balance still doesn't seem to get a whole lot of respect in modern Western culture--certainly there are exceptions, but so much in our culture still seems more geared towards endless optimistic expansion onward and upward forever--bigger better faster richer grow grow grow the one with the most stuff wins. Again this is a raging overgeneralization, but balance seems to have much more tradition and standing in Eastern cultures, where the yin/yang harmony of the Tao touches on everything from spirituality to breakfast. And so, I find my love of Asian culture and food coming back around again to support me now, as I seek to heal my body, and through that my mind and spirit. Just as those self-confessed masters of cynicism, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, admitted in a rare moment of musical candor, I find that all my dime-dancing about outrageous excess is through. And look what I wind up coming home to, and how well I get fed and taken care of when I get there! Many thanks to all of you who have offered your kind words of support during this blog. I'll be poking my head in for the remainder of the evening until I turn in ... and then tomorrow is Tuesday, and I'm back to my HMO class once again. Another week, another weigh in. And so it goes, again. Peace out, /the duck

You're very welcome! Alas, most of the money I've been saving on groceries so far has gotten eaten up by soaring SoCal gasoline prices. But I have been able to buy tickets to a few more rock shows than I used to be able to afford!

Off to my business meeting. I'll be on here later tonight with my wrapup and farewell. Cheers!

After the beans finished their allotted time under pressure, I depressurized the cooker, and let the beans simmer with the lid ajar until the liquid was significantly reduced. The resulting product: Boy, it's hard to make black beans show up under flash! But come to think of it, these black beans stayed a lot blacker than when I usually cook them. I wonder if that's partly due to the epazote? Anyway, I'm looking forward to eating these over the next few days. My food plan, by the way, counts beans as both starch and protein--that is, one half cup of beans equals one unit of protein exchange plus one unit of starch exchange. When I was brand new on this regimen, I was really unwilling to take that double hit on my daily food allowance. By this point, though, I have relaxed a lot about that old diet-think fear of not getting enough food to eat, and am now happy to have beans be both my starch and protein for a meal. Meanwhile ... braised greens are admittedly not the most photogenic dish in the world, but I like the looks (and the taste) of these babies: I am enjoying these as my early-evening snack as I type this.

Hmm. I believe the movie in question is "The Warriors." The quote was provided by David Patrick Kelly's character, Luther. He said it while banging beer bottles together that were stuck on his fingers. Or am I completely delusional? ← Well, you may or may not be delusional, but you got the right movie. One of the stranger films ever made, I think, but a helluva lot of fun. (Some of those gangs are pretty damn lame though--like the ones dressed up in baseball uniforms. And wasn't there one gang who dressed as mimes? Ooooh, I'm so scared! ) Okay, I'm off to dish up some of the fruits ... erm, I mean vegetables ... of my labors.

Here's what's been happening with the beans and greens: Earlier, I had done in the last of the goat meat as a mid-day meal, along with some romaine and a little of the daikon, when it struck me that I had all that savory broth also left from that project. And I also had a whole bunch of spinach available for use. Aha! A braise of the beet greens and spinach together, with Asian-flavored pot liquor! But before I started on the greens, I wanted to get the beans going, which had completed their preliminary soak. So I turned my attention to the epazote: Wow, that stuff has an interesting odor! Kind of resinous. Recipes I looked up on the net tended to do two springs for a pound of beans. I had started with about 1-1/2 cups of beans, so I went with a single sprig. I also chucked a single dried red chile in with the beans: Now for the greens. Washing all the dirt and silt off the spinach (this is the second washing; the first produced some very muddy water): Prepping the beet greens (I love to include the stems, so I cut them into smaller segments so that they'll cook more quickly): Trimming up the spinach (I do leave the stems on, but I'm trimming off the roots on these because they're too hard and will be nasty cooked): Meanwhile, here's the goat broth, defatted and heating up in one of the stars of my Disreputable Cookware Collection (yes, I know that hacked-up teflon coatings are not the best for one's health ... I just haven't gotten around to replacing this bugger ): The broth hit the boil, so in went the greens--I love the magic trick wherein they wilt as soon as they hit the broth, so that you can just keep loading more and more in: Everything lidded and steaming away: By the way, I love playing with my pressure cooker. This one is made by Manttra, a company based in India. I think I paid less than $35 for it in a local Target, and I couldn't be happier with it. Stand by for the reveal ...

You would think, if I had been talking up cooking beans since yesterday, that I would have remembered to soak the durned things, wouldn't you? Oh well--a brief pause while the beans go through the one-hour "cheater's" soak (pressure-cooker variant, in which you bring them just up to pressure, then take the cooker off the heat and let sit covered for an hour). By the way, I notice it's been a little quiet in here today in terms of audience participation. Y'all have any questions about any of the stuff I've been rapping about in here? I'm home from now until 6pm PDT. Anyone want to "come out to play-i-ay"? ... (extra points for guessing gratuitous movie reference ).

Glad you liked it! I must confess, my weeks are usually not quite this busy. For one thing, while I do shop for fresh produce pretty frequently, I'm usually a little more efficient about it than this week. I was kind of spreading it around a little more so I could show you all more. Now, as a matter of fact, I think I'm a good candidate for that Use what you have, cook from the pantry topic that's recently sprung up. That's another weird side-benefit of my new regimen, by the way. You wouldn't believe how much my grocery and dining-out bills have shrunk now that I'm no longer inhaling mass quantities of food, especially mass quantities of meat. Volume-wise, though, I'm still bringing home large quantities of food, which amuses the hell out of me because now it's mostly bales of roughage. Meanwhile, I've been plotting out what to do with my beans 'n' greens. The idea of a summer borscht is nice ... I'm not sure, though, that I have enough other items to make a viable soup out of it. Let me contemplate ... Meanwhile: I need some suggestions on how to dry the remainder of the epazote I won't be using on the beans today. Hang 'em all in a bunch? In several smaller bunches? Dry 'em in the oven? What temperature? All assistance appreciated here.

Good morning, all! Once again, I am enjoying a little more of that roast beef in a whole wheat pita for breakfast. Yep. Creature of habit. At least this morning. I'm feeling surprisingly stiff and sore this morning--surprisingly, because even though yesterday was a very looooong day, there really wasn't a whole lot of physical exertion involved. I think it's those hours of sitting on a blanket at the picnic/concert yesterday--after about an hour or so, my derriere began to discover all the little bumps and unevennesses hidden under all that lovely soft grass. I consider it a moral victory that I managed sitting on the ground at all--not so very long ago, getting back up off the ground would have been prohibitively difficult. Still, I think I need to pick up one of those nice folding chairs before the next outdoor concert event--pushing my limits is fine, but gratuitous masochism ... ain't. While I'm contemplating today's activities, cooking and otherwise, I thought I'd give you a few links to books I've found particularly useful in my quest for personal health through foods (hopefully, I've built these links correctly so that eGullet will get credited if you should decide you want any of these for yourself). Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin. Colbin is a specialist in natural cooking, with several books and a cooking school to her name. Her philosophy expands on macrobiotics in several ways; I find it, and her explanation of it as given in this book, extremely thought-provoking. I by no means swallow everything she says whole (some of her more far-reaching claims are IMO rather shaky). But I knew I liked her when she up and said that, for some people's health and metabolisms, vegetarianism is just *not* an optimum diet. Basic Macrobiotic Cooking by Julia Ferre. This seems to be out of print, but Amazon has links to third-party sellers. This is just as the title says: a very basic, no-nonsense cookbook. The author puts virtually no personality into the text--it reads like a computer manual--but it gets the job done, presenting simple standard macorbiotic preparations. Most of the recipes will strike folks as rather boring, but boy are they helpful when you're feeling physically out of sorts and just need some plain, wholesome food to nourish you back to health. And the book's chapter on theory is equally plain-spoken and to the point. Healing Wise (Wise Woman Herbal Series) by Susun Weed. Yes, this is definitely a hippy-dippy organo-groovy kinda book--the author's name always makes me smile--but she's got a good head on her shoulders, and I have found her introductory essay on the benefits and drawbacks of modern medical models of healing vs. more traditional modes of healing to be very helpful. The second part of the book concentrates on just a handful of herbs (dandelion, chickweed, sea vegetables, oats, violet, etc.) covering everything from instructions on foraging in the wild, to recipes for dinner dishes as well as medicinal preparations.

Okay, it's time for one last bout of audience participation: I've got a work-related meeting tomorrow evening, so my food activities for my last day of this blog will have to happen before then. I have in mind a couple more cooking projects, involving the epazote and the beet greens from Friday's shopping expeditions. The question is: what shall I do with them? It turns out I do have about 1-1/2 cups of dried black beans in my pantry, so I could cook those with the epazote, and maybe also some tomatoes (canned or fresh). As for the beet greens, I could just do a simple saute/braise with the shallots I bought earlier in the week. But I like having multiple options, and I love creative kibbitzing. So I'm throwing it open to you guys again. Same rules as last time: dishes have to fit within my food plan; and the fewer extra ingredients I have to run out and buy, the better. (Especially since I'm kinda pooped from today's runnings-around!) And once again, even if I don't use your suggestions this time, I will surely save them all for future purposes.

I arrived at church at about 9:00am, a half-hour before the first of our two Sunday services. The coffee-hour elves were already hard at work in the social hall kitchen: Meanwhile, the social hall itself was all set up for our "Dining for Dollars Plus" silent auction fundraiser: This is the second year of what has turned into an overwhelmingly popular fundaiser for our congregation. The concept is that certain members offer to donate their services to provide some kind of dining experience or other social event sometime in the following months, and other members bid on invitations to these events. These events proved to be not only great eating, but a great new way for people in this 1300-member congregation to meet other church folks they might not have run into before. It was only the other weekend that I attended the dinner I bid on last time, and it was a fabulous experience (which you can read about here. This year's auction book lists some pretty darned impressive offerings: I didn't even know we had any Slow Foods USA members in the congregation! You learn something every day. The morning progressed, and the Coffee Hour Brigade kicked into full action: Meanwhile, not wanting to depend on the luck of the coffee hour when I had such a long day ahead of me, I fueled myself with some cheese and a cereal bar that I had packed along with me. Two services and two coffee hours came and went, and my info-table shift was done. I raced home to pack my picnic gear, and headed out for the concert. Scripps Ranch is a well-heeled residential neighborhood in the northeastern reaches of San Diego, just up the I-15 from where I live. They have some very active community service organizations that, among other things, sponsor a popular yearly summer concert series in a local park. FXH's bands have played in this series almost every summer, barring only unavoidable schedule conflicts, so I was familiar with the routine here from previous shows. Part of the routine is that people really get into the show--and into the picnicking: I got there early enough to be able to fit my little blanket into a space right front and center in front of the bandstand, and prepared to unpack my little cooler: Yes, I know I'm a geek. Years after I left their employ, I still own so much Microsoft swag that if I wore and/or carried all of it at the same time I would scare small children. But this insulated bag has proven to be a most useful item (plus I was given it as part of a corporate thank-you to our team after an emergency project that basically saved a number of corporate butts, so I'm actually kinda proud of owning the silly thing). From the big blue bag emerged ... surprise! yet another roast beef sandwich! Still very tasty, if I do say so myself. I must admit that leftover roast beef lasts a good bit longer in my house now that I'm on the health regimen. Beforehand, I was totally capable of polishing off a whole roast of that size in a day. Or less. And then there was: my beautiful beet/cucumber vinaigrette salad: This turned out really yummy--and really tart! I like it this way--but there is one downside with these really vinegary vinaigrettes: I have to watch not to eat too much of them too late in the evening, or else I awake next day with the Chernobyl of heartburns. But ooh, it hurts so good. The show itself was a lot of fun--FXH really loves to play these outdoor all-ages shows, because he loves kids (some might say he's just a kid at heart himself). For anyone interested in the actual show, photos and videos will probably be turning up on FXH's website within the following week.

And I'm back after a full day of hijinks. Photos are uploaded, now I just need to show 'em all to you. Stand by for a longer post ...

Good morning! Or more accurately, good afternoon. So far, today's schedule is going okay but experiencing some of the minro adjustments that happens with perhaps over-ambitious schedules. I overslept slightly, so had to bolt out of the house for church without saying hello earlier. Got some interesting foodie-photos (I hope!) at church, which I'll be posting later. Then I sorta gave up on trying to cram the farmer's market into the schedule, and am now back here to pack my little picnic for this afternoon/evening. Onward and outward!

Yeah, I was going to say--there are a number of health problems which feature foot discomfort as an advance warning symptom. It may just be the footwear, but it doesn't hurt to eliminate other possibilities as well, even if a change of shoes does provide some immediate improvement.

So tomorrow is going to be pretty jam-packed, so you'll probably be only hearing from me early in the morning, maybe very briefly in the afternoon, and then later in the evening when I finally toddle home. Here's the schedule: 9:00am - 1:30pm -- a very full morning of playing alterna-groovy Church Lady. We always have a whole flock of info tables out in the socializing area before/between/after services, and it's my Sunday to mind the table for our congregation's Rainbow Action committee (support and political action for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender folks and their families). I'm not totally sure what kind of food activity will be happening there tomorrow morning, but there's always at the very least some bagels and cream cheese with the coffee and tea, and oftentimes somebody gets inspired to provide other goodies as well. I thought I might be able to escape early to catch the very tail-end of the Hillcrest farmer's market, which ends at 1pm ... but I had forgotten there's a congregational meeting right after second service. Maybe I can vote real quick and run away. The outdoor concert I'm aiming to attend doesn't get underway until 6:00pm, but from prior experience I know that parking and lawn space fill up really early, so I'm thinking I want to get there by 4pm at the absolute latest. So I'll also take knitting and a good book in addition to my picnic gear. In between, I might come home for a quick snack and catnap ... or I might just say hell with it and keep going. I can always nap at the concert site. And the camera will go along with. I wonder if any of my fellow concert-goers wouldn't be too shy to have their dinners featured in this blog? I'm probably going to turn in pretty soon, but I'll be checking in here occasionally till then. Cheers!

Interesting about your aversion to root vegetables. Is there a particular shared quality about them that you dislike? Texture? Sweetness? I know I continue to have ambivalent feelings about overly sweet foods, which can extend to vegetables like beets and carrots, and winter squashes and red bell peppers for that matter, that have lots of natural sweetness. Sometimes even roasted red bell peppers can be overkill for me. And I really have trouble with a lot of the traditional American ways of cooking sweet veggies that accentuate their sweetness with sugars, honeys, syrups, etc. I do much better with them when their natural sweetness is tempered with sour, savory, or spicy flavorings. These candy cane beets are reputed to be even sweeter than standard beets. But all beets also have an earthy undertone, even a slight bitterness. Roasting these beets concentrated their flavors, bringing out both the sweetness and the earthiness more than simmering them in water would have. And putting them in a tart savory marinade is tempering their sweetness--not obliterating it, but giving it an opposite note to play off of. I like beets "straight", but I can definitely eat a lot more of them when altered in ways like this.

And now, it's time once again for "From The Sublime To The Ridiculous": I am now indulging in one of my current guilty little pleasures: Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop Kettle Corn Microwave Popcorn. Yeah, it's trashy, but what the hell. With it, I'm drinking a glass of cherry juice. More gout prevention. Plus it's yummy and stuff. And this is what I choose to be consuming while I answer that postponed question about yin and yang. George Ohsawa is no doubt rolling in his grave. Anyway ... so yin and yang within the system of macrobiotics are similar to, but not the same as, yin and yang as they're understood in Taoism and other philosophical systems. In macrobiotics, yin and yang are two complementary, descriptive, relativistic concepts that between them characterize everything the system has to teach about food, health, and balance in the human body. They are opposites of equal value; neither is bad or good. You need both in harmony to make the system go. Yin, very simplified, signifies expansive qualities. Yang signifies contractive qualities. Every quality of food and its effects on the body and health can be expressed as part of a yin/yang duality: --water content: more watery is more yin, drier is more yang. For instance, a fresh apple is more yin than dried apple rings. --size: bigger is more yin, smaller is more yang. For instance, a huge carrot is more yin while a baby carrot is more yang. --season/climate: vegetables that grow in hotter weather and/or the summer are more yin, those that grow in cooler weather and/or the winter are more yang. For example: kale grown in hot weather or the summer would be more yin, while kale grown in cool weather/seasons would be more yang. --method of cooking: wet methods such as steaming are more yin, dry methods such as roasting are more yang. For instance, steaming those beets would have been more yin, but roasting them was more yang. And so on and so forth with just about any quality of food you can think of. Foods can also be sorted on a continuum from most yin to most yang. For example, fruits and vegetables are over on the yin end of things, while meat and salt are at the yang end. And within those broad categories of food, are more continuums: for instance, among vegetables, watery ones like summer squashes are more yin, while dense ones like carrots and turnips are more yang. Traditionally, whole grains such as brown rice are about at the center of the yin/yang continuum, which is why traditional macrobiotics has such a heavy emphasis on that grain. Knowing these relationships, you can deliberately choose foods, preparation methods, and menus to not only create balance within the system of your health, but also to influence that system towards greater balance whenever it gets out of whack (i.e. becomes ill or injured). There are a few additional principles to remember when doing this balancing act, though: 1. Like in Newtonian physics, every action in this system has an equal and opposite reaction. (The somewhat-inscruable aphorism for this, at least in English, is: "the bigger the front, the bigger the back.") So if you go out and have a 22 oz slab of prime rib for dinner, and then think you're going to balance yourself by eating a big fruit salad--or even a big bowl of ice cream--well, yeah, if you consider making your system occillate wildly back and forth like a pendulum in an earthquake as "balanced," then yes, you've just created it. 2. This leads directly to the other principle: it's much easier to balance a system with moderately yin and yang qualities, than one with extreme yin and yang qualities. Yin and yang are totally a conceptual framework, a model if you will. It's valid to the extent that it has some kind of predictive power--i.e. you desire a certain outcome, so you take an action that the model says will produce that result, and the result does happen. So far, it's been proving pretty helpful to me. Mind you, I'm definitely using the model in a pretty damn unorthodox manner--"real" practitioners of macrobiotics eat much closer to the center of the yin/yang continuum than I'm doing. For instance, I believe most eat animal protein only a few times a month at most, and avoid red meat entirely in favor of fish--and they sure as hell ain't eatin' no microwave popcorn with sucralose in it. Anyway, consider this brief description festooned with every "IMO" and "YMMV" type acronym out there--because I'm no expert in any of this (except, perhaps, for being some kind of expert on myself).

Many thanks for the compliments, folks! I'm pretty darn pleased myself. I'm not so sure some chicken even tastes like chicken anymore. You're right, it's hard to describe. The couple of times I've had it before, I would characterize as sorta heading in the same direction as lamb and mutton ... but different. Not very helpful, huh? This particular sample was not particularly gamey. I don't know if that's because this stuff was from a younger animal; or if this recipe's long simmer in chicken stock and assertive spices successfully tamed the gaminess. I could still taste that it wasn't beef, though. I'm one of those people who consider the gaminess of these kinds of meats to be a positive quality. So this will definitely not be my last experiment with this stuff. Pretty cool, huh? That's why I love these blog things. Thanks for helping, Ah Leung!

Today's cooking adventures, part II: An hour into simmering the goat, I went to put in the daikon, tasted the broth in my pot, and determined that either I'd been way wimpy in my seasonings so far, or the five-spice powder I was using was the wimpy element. Or perhaps both. So along with the daikon I put in a couple of whole star anise, a small stick of cinnamon, and about a teaspoon or so of the Szechuan peppercorns. Also another slug of dark soy sauce. Then I re-lidded it, brought it back to a simmer, and carried on. The beets took about an hour and 20 minutes to cook to tenderness. Once they were cool enough to handle, I slid the skins off--they came off almost effortlessly. And look at the gorgeous colors! And they kept some stripes through the cooking, too: Obviously that's a puny amount of veg, so I augmented it with a big honkin' cucumber I bought last week: That knife, by the way, is another star of "mizducky's collection of cheap-ass cooking equipment." It's one of those super-cheapo numbers with the funny serrated blade and the molded plastic handle. I think I bought it off a pegboard in a supermarket somewhere several years ago. Not only does it refuse to die, but it's kept its edge through a ton of abuse. And it fits my hand perfectly. Hey, it may not be a Shun, but it's been working for me! Anyway, this bigass cucumber was seedy as hell, so I made with the scooping action: And then on to making the vinaigrette for this concoction. Mashing some minced garlic with some salt: Into the measuring cup, with some extra-virgin olive oil, vinegars (red wine and balsamic), stone-ground Dijon mustard, ground pepper, and crushed dried tarragon: This is a regimen-friendly vinaigrette, by the way--the liquid is mostly vinegar, with only a single tablespoon of oil. Oops! Almost forgot my other onion product! The salad assembled, and ready to be lidded and placed in the fridge to marinate: Somewhere in there, the goat hit two hours elapsed time simmering. So once I put my beet/cucumber salad to bed, I plated up some of the goat and daikon, and had a little taste test a.k.a. dinner: The meat was still a tad on the chewy side--if I get this cut next time, I'll remember to simmer it even longer (or perhaps give it a headstart in the pressure cooker before adding the daikon and continuing on lidded but unpressurized). But the flavor and seasoning worked out pretty well in the end. In fact, the broth is so yummy that I'm definitely going to save it, defat it if needed, and use it for something else. The daikon, alas, would have benefitted from my remembering to peel the poor thing. But it still took on good flavor from the broth, and inside the rind it was perfectly done, soft but not falling apart. I'd say I did pretty decent for a first effort with an unfamiliar ingredient. I'm definitely happy that I'll be eating this over the next day or so. I might do up the beet greens later tonight, or I might save them for Monday--Sunday's going to be too jam-packed for any cooking (more on that later).

Oh yeah, I was definitely being a little cautious with the ginger, and the other seasonings, because I overdid the ginger the last couple of times I used it. I did do a major seasoning correction as things progressed--I'll be describing that shortly. And yep--lid went right on when I started simmering.