mizducky

Wow, that's pretty fascinating. (If challenging to deal with ... ) You know, you might be best advised to find a nutritionist and/or alternative care practitioner you really trust, to help you work up a diet that works around this condition and also makes sure you're adequately covering required nutrients, because this is beginning to sound just a tad too complex to just go at with an off-the-shelf weight-loss plan. Don't want to have you coming down with scurvy or anything ... Or perhaps the Optifast thing might really suit you well.

Heh. Trust eGullet--I go searching for a food topic, and someone's been there already. Reading this thread, I think I've got some answers to some questions raised earlier. And then, I have a question of my own. It turns out that what folks north of the US/Mexico border usually call pico de gallo (and what I had been calling pico de gallo)--namely, the mixture of finely chopped tomatoes, onions, etc. seasoned with fresh minced chiles, etc., is apparently not what most Mexicans mean by pico de gallo. South of the border, that name often refers to a chopped salad of mostly fruit, with some vegetables mixed in--for example, cantelope, papaya, cucumber, jicama, etc.--all spiked with lime juice plus a chile-laced seasoning powder usually labeled "pico de gallo seasoning" or similar. So--all three of these entities-the all-veggie salsa cruda, the fruit-and-veg salad, and the powdered seasoning, are all tagged with that "pico de gallo" name--it just depends on context and geography as to which one is meant. I had seen the fruit salad, liberally sprinkled with the bright-red powder, sold at booths at various farmer's markets around here, and wanted to duplicate it at home. Googled on "mexican fruit salad" and voila--found it was called pico de gallo. And from there I pieced together the rest. Now, my question: if I wanted to make that pico de gallo powder seasoning myself, what would go in it? Googling, alas, hasn't turned up a recipe (so far) for the powder itself--merely recipes like this one for the salad, which just specifies the bottled seasoning powder. Yeah, I could certainly just buy a bottle of the powder itself--it seems like even many mainstream supermarkets here in San Diego carry it. But I have a feeling the powder is actually pretty simple to make. I think it's mostly powdered dried chiles of various sorts plus salt, but I don't know which ones. Certainly I could just pick and choose and experiment, but now I'm all curious what if any chiles are traditionally in the mix, and if there's anything else in there. So--any suggestions, folks?

For what it's worth, this page claims the following: Alas, it gives no further information about the restaurant, let alone how they're measuring bigness. The page is dated 2002, so even if this place was the biggest then, it may no longer be so.

Ah, a cruise through an Asian supermarket. One of my favorite pastimes. That whole tilapia was pretty spectacular too. And your Vespa is really rockin'.

Lessee ... Heloise doesn't have anything about stinky fish smell, but in the case of strong smoke odors (i.e. absorbed by clothing after a smoky house fire), she recommends taking the clothes to a drycleaner that has an ozone cleaner, so you might try that for your tuna-stricken clothing.

Hey, that sink is just the right size for keeping a live carp in, like my maternal grandmother used to do before turning it into gefilte fish. Happy blogging! Looking forward to more Vancouver goodness ...

Heh. I totally understand ... after the excesses of my first foray into foodblogging, I was more than ready to go on my healthy-eating kick. Thanks, all of you, for letting neither rain nor thunderstorms nor gloom stay your grills from their appointed rounds. (And for some seriously yummy pictures!)

I adore aubergine (or eggplant as we less-poetic Americans insist on calling it), but I must say it is a challenging vegetable to keep from getting ugly-looking. Promptly dousing the raw eggplant with lemon juice or similar acid as soon as it's cut helps keep it from discoloring, but only to a certain extent--instead of grayish-brown mush, you wind up with beige mush. Oh well--at least it takes flavors really well.

Ha ha ha ha... LOL! It happens faster than David Blaine does a sleight of hand magic trick! I should have posted a warning about the smell... BTW, did I say that the fishy-shrimpy smell will remain on your cloths for days??? Using fermented bean curds is safer. ← Oh dear! Well, roommate made no mention of any smell issue, and the cat isn't hovering around sniffing me, so I'm just going to put today's clothes in the laundry and move on. Although ... I really do like that fishy paste, so I'll probably be stinking up the joint again fairly soon. I do want to try it with the fermented bean curd too. Another stinky food I've fallen in love with. (Just not blasting me in the face all at once, is all. )

Power tools may rock, but girls with axes rule! Oh yeah--so what shape was the mysterious dinosaur bone in the pork butt, anyway?

Enjoying my ong choy now. I skipped the meat, and just did the garlic, chile, and shrimp paste. Wow, that was a mighty pungent cloud of vapor that went whomp into my face when that shrimp paste/garlic/chile mixture hit the pan! I hope my roommate doesn't weird out on the fragrance when he gets home--right now I can't tell if the smell has just all lodged up my nose, or is hanging in the apartment. But the net affect on the greens is definitely lovely--in fact, I probably could have stood to put in a little more shrimp paste, I think I started with a larger bale of ong choy, even though it did cook down a great deal. Will definitely be trying this again--both the greens, and this technique using other greens. Only next time I'm going to stand a little farther back from the pan when I put in the seasonings.

Oh my! Why do I now have visions of Fred Flintstone barbecuing odd chunks of dinosaur of unidentifiable species? I do hope you include a photo of whatever "odd and big bone" you discover upon dissection of this interesting creature! Inquiring minds need to know--it's for science!

As for me, I've come to actually distrust the super-hygenic-looking shopping experience provided by the modern American mainstream supermarket. To my mind, it's all too reminiscent of the kind of tomatoes those supermarkets sell--they look real purty and clean as a whistle, but the actual quality of the goods inside all that super-clean packaging is all too often substandard at best and utter crap at worst. Whereas a funky ethnic market tends to be bursting at the seams with flavors and food-quality I've seldom been able to wring out of a mainstream supermarket without a lot of careful shopping (and a lot more dinero). Now obviously I'm not going to put up with spoiled or rotten food regardless of where it's being sold, but given the choice between empty cleanliness and funkified quality, I'm very cheerful to brave some dust and funk for the quality I crave, at prices I can actually afford for everyday consumption.

Had a lovely lunch the other day at the lunch buffet at Madras Cafe, on 9484 Black Mountain Road, in the Little India complex just north of Miramar Road. Madras Cafe specializes in Southern Indian cuisine, which differs in many ways from the northern cuisines which influence most Indian restaurants in America. First off, it's definitely a bit lighter--the sauces are looser, a little more broth-like than gravy-like; the flavors, while just as spicy, are a bit lighter too. And there are different characteristic breads, with more non-wheat flours involved. Or so I understand from reading up on stuff. The buffet on the day I went had an assortment of vegetable curries, a chickpea stew in which the individual beans were darker and firmer than I'm used to from other cuisines (not usre if they were just a smaller darker variety to start, or were roasted or something at some point), a couple different kinds of rice dishes, a carrot halwa, raita and chutneys, and a really yummy spiced hot apple compote dish. Servers circulated with freshly-made dosas stuffed with potato and these fascinating little steamed rice breads known as idlis. I also ordered a mango lassi that was bursting with tart/sweet mango flavor. Weekday lunch is, if I'm remembering right, just under 7 bucks before tip; price goes up on weekends. There is a whole nest of other Indian restaurants and grocers worth checking out in that Little India complex, by the way; I'm still (very slowly) working my way through them all.

Okay, you guys, I've just about drooled myself dry over those pictures.

Cool! There is a recipe for the Flying Greens, including an introductory paragraph about the whole flinging-greens-across-the-street act, in one of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks--"Far Eastern Cookery." The story that she was told was that the act originated in a town in northern Thailand, Phitsanulok. The act then spread to Chiang Mai and Pattaya. I suspect that, like a lot of these great-minds-think-alike phenomena, it probably sprang up independently in a number of other places as well. (And I've seen those fish-flinging guys at Pike Place Market up close and personal. They just fling 'em over their own booth--underachievers! ) Meanwhile--I spotted a whole pile of ong choy in one of the Asian markets around here, so now I have a big bunch of my own to experiment with! I adore greens of all sorts, so I'm definitely looking forward to this. Once again, Ah Leung, my thanks.

Oh dear. This made me think of a line out of yesterday's Prairie Home Companion broadcast--a mother in a skit was heard to say (paraphrasing from memory): "What every mother *really* wants for Mother's Day is to be left alone to sit and read a book in peace." Yeah, definitely put in a BIG Amazon order--you deserve it! Oh dear again. I fear this line has succeeded in bringing me to join the ranks of giggling (virtual and chronological) ten-year-olds.

These photos are fabulous, Kent. Many thanks for sharing them.

Much thanks for the thoughtful replies, folks! I really appreciate it. First a clarification. I see I was insufficiently clear in my first post, and left the impression that I might be planning to do all of those dishes on a single evening. Yikes! Even I'm not that crazy!!! I put in for this class to run for four sessions on four separate nights (not sure yet whether that'll be weekly, or every other week, that depends on how the RE director works out the calendaring for all the classes during this quarter). So--each class is two hours long, probably running from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. In other words, in that tentative outline of sessions I listed in my initial post: ...each session represents a separate two-hour-long class on one of four successive evenings. Now, I *think* two hours to work on a single dish from start to finish (okay, the 4th session is two dishes, but easy ones), plus eating plus cleanup plus talking should be manageable. One thing I do know from previous experience teaching other (non-food) classes is that two hours for an evening adult ed class is pretty much the upper limit for many people's attention spans. I'm not inclined to push that, even if in this case I'm offering a food reward. So I really hope to make this work in a two-hour-per-session timeframe, and I don't think I can get much simpler than one dish per session. Alas, while having everyone do the ingredient-shopping for me sounds really attractive, I'm afraid it probably won't work in this situation because people will be coming directly from work (and possibly fighting their way through a lot of rush-hour traffic, depending on where they're coming from). Buying their ingredients between leaving work and arriving at class might be challenging for a lot of people. And I have bad visions about somebody buying their ingredient several days in advance so that it wilts, and perhaps leaving their ingredient to bake in a hot car trunk all day before class. Plus, frankly, I confess I'm just a little too much of a control queen about shopping for ingredients. I just don't want the success of the class to be undone by somebody buying substandard or wrong ingredients, or mistreating those ingredients before arrival. Maybe once I'm sure folks are sufficiently trained up on the difference between cilantro and Italian parsley, and how to find a non-crappy eggplant in this town ... Remember, this is a class open to novices; plus I've learned not to expect too much of the culinary skills of even bright and talented people. Anyway, I'm not overly worried about shlepping ingredients by myself, as there's a disabled parking spot really close to the classroom where I'll be teaching this, and I've got a little wheeled hand-cart gizmo to roll my stuff from car to classroom. As to the mise-en-place issue: I really *want* my students to do all their own mise-en-place, for several reasons: 1) I find a major reason many people don't like to bother with any kind of cooking more involved than throwing a prepackaged meal in the microwave is that they think all the chopping and slicing and stuff is a huge bother. By having them do the whole dish from start to finish, without all the mise magically done for them, they'll have an exact idea how much effort and time are really involved, and hopefully get the impression that it isn't really all that heavy after all. 2) I really want them to experience what I think of as the zen of food prep, that kind of meditative focus one can get from such types of simple handwork--after all, this is an organo-groovy kinda church I'm teaching this for (there's already a long-running "Spirituality of Handwork" course in the curriculum), so I think people will really groove on that concept. 3) The dishes I picked--in fact, a lot of dishes I make--are pretty much all about the mise-en-place--the first dish in fact is *nothing* except mise. And in several cases, the mise has to be done just-so in order for the dish to come off right. So the mise is not IMO a yawner but an essential part of the learning experience. As to the class process: I'm planning to have everyone work together as a single team on one big batch of the dish of the evening. The way I envision this working: everyone will have a handout in advance with the full recipe, plus associated supplemental info (everything from nutrition and health benefits to technique tips to hints for shopping for any unfamiliar ingredients--my aim is to be emailing this material for all four sessions in advance of the first meeting). We'll get down to it at the stroke of 7:00--I'll assign mise tasks to each student so that everybody's chopping something, while I provide assistance as needed; I'll do some talking while we're all chopping. Then we'll all adjourn to the stove; there will only be one person doing the at-stove cooking at any given moment, but everyone else will be watching (might be a tough fit if I get my maximum registration of 10 students, but I think I can make that work). Then we'll eat (actually, we'll have been eating all along, as I'll have provided some snacks at the beginning to tide people over) and have discussion. And then we'll all jump on the cleaning and packing out leftovers and whatnot (actually, I'm also a big bug about clean-as-you-go, so we'll have been cleaning up after ourselves throughout the evening and hopefully won't have much left to do at the very end). Obviously this pattern will have variations depending on the dish of the evening--for instance, that first-night chopped salad requires no cooking; my roasted-veg ratattouille (I better learn how to spell that reliably by the time the class happens! ) has a two-step cooking process; and for the last session there are different cooking tasks going on at different times (an opportunity to talk about how to juggle cooking multiple dishes for a single meal). But the general strategy of group cooperation will be the baseline. Alas, I'm not sure I'll be able to draft anybody to be my guinea-pig for a full-fledged dress rehearsal with audience. But I am at the very least planning to do some dry runs once I've got my individual class outlines worked out, to double-check timing and procedures. More kibbitizing is always welcome ... and I'll definitely keep you all posted as things move along. (Edited to fix tyops. )

So I went and did it. I have volunteered to teach my very first cooking class. I'm calling it "Healthy Gourmet Cooking"--yes, I'm basically getting my little obsession together and taking it on the road. I've also wanted to teach a cooking class for awhile now, and just to get back into adult-ed teaching in general, which I have greatly enjoyed in the past. I think I can do this okay, with proper planning. But of course I can't resist putting this out on eGullet for kibbitzing purposes. (Oh yeah, and you better believe I'm using eGullet as a resource. So far I've really gotten a lot out of Malawry's last blog. And I know there's more stashed away here.) This class would be at the organo-groovy church I belong to--they have a broad approach to adult-ed fare--which means I have an intergenerational audience. So I'm encouraging youth and novices to attend. If it does come off--I set a minimum required registration of four--it'll happen in July or August. Maybe not the best weather to be hovering over a stove in SoCal, but I'll work with it. Oh yeah, I set the class maximum at ten. Most importantly for planning purposes, I will be allowed to charge some kind of materials fee to cover ingredients and such. One of the first things I need to do is figure out my budget, so I know how much that fee should be. And to figure out my budget, I need to figure out my lesson plan. I do have a tentative lesson plan in my head--leaning heavily on recipes I'm really comfortable with, and hopefully suited to the season. Here's what I've been thinking so far: Session 1: Intro stuff, plus the pico-de-gallo-ish chopped salad I did for my food blog Session 2: Roasted-vegetable ratatouille topped with parmesan Session 3: A basic stirfry, featuring marinated tofu and shiitake mushrooms Session 4: Tabbouli, and baba ganoush with variations The dish for the first class is intentionally a little lower-impact so I can spend time on intro stuff--I want to do the getting-to-know-you what-I-want-out-of-this-class kind of thing, plus some basics about nutrition. Plus I want to allow time for hands-on remedial knife skills if needed. I do *not* have pro knife skills, but I know enough to prevent drawing blood most of the time. I plan to have snacks available when people arrive, because many will be coming straight from work and will not have had time to grab dinner--plus it's an opportunity to teach about healthy snack choices. I'm thinking of asking all students to bring a knife and small cutting board of their own, because I know the church kitchen's knives are few and pathetic, and I don't own enough to go around (it's okay with me if those knives and boards are inexpensive, as long as they're adequate to get the job done). I'm also going to do an advance survey to find out about any special dietary or health concerns. I need to do a more intensive survey of the kitchen in the classroom where I'll be teaching this. I think the appliances are all okay, it's just the cookware that'll suck. I'll probably be able to stash some of my own cooking gear somewhere on-campus, so I don't have to be hauling heavy metal back and forth every class. Hopefully, much more to come. Kibbitzing welcome, especially on other factors I should take into account as I plan this thing.

Hey, lingering over lunch and wine is pretty darned high on my list of favorite things too.

How about some creative visualizations? Like, you're the noble backwoods hunter a la Daniel Boone, hunting for subsistence food, and this critter is much-needed food for your pioneer family's supper pot. Or how about: you have successfully defeated the killer rabbit out of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (without resorting to the Holy Hand Grenade") and now you're triumphantly preparing your victory feast? Or how about: you're a resident of another planet, where chickens just happen to be flightless and have four legs? (After all, wings are really nothing more than forelegs adapted for flight ... ) Hmmm ... come to think of it, maybe a couple glasses of wine would help these visualizations along ...

Oooooh! Asian market run! One of my favorite things in the world! Hoping you can sneak in a few pictures -- and of Penzey's too ... Marlene, your barbeque sauce looks terrific, especially with the chunks of grilled apples, onions, and peppers. I have only just recently turned on to the concept of grilling fruits in any big way. Okay, in my case it's really pseudo-grilling using the George Foreman thingie, but what it lacks in smoke-and-flame factor it sure makes up for in convenience. Anyway, now I'm psyched to try grilled/roasted fruits as ingredients to add to other dishes. Cool!

Y'know, on reflection, maybe it would be worth your while to look into Optifast. It is admittedly rather spendy. But it is definitely fast, and like I said, they supervise your progress closely so as to nip any weird side-effects in the bud. Plus depending on the version of the program you choose, you'll either be totally on their pre-formulated shakes, or on the shakes plus a single light meal daily, so there's definitely a decrease in cooking, and in produce consumption, while in the weight-loss phase. Mind you, once you reach your goal weight, you will need to learn all the balanced healthy-eating/portion-control things in order to maintain your weight loss (i.e. if you just go back to your previous way of eating, all the weight will come back, and rather more quickly than you can imagine). But the Optifast program does include a maintenance follow-up training to ease you into that. Anyway, just a thought.

Marlene, I'm really digging the idea of peanut butter mixed into ground beef. Have you ever tried that in the form of a meatloaf, or do you think that would come out a little too dense? (And the multi-level patty-keeper is making me grin--that looks like such a classic Tupperware-type gizmo. Was that a party hostess gift? )