eG Foodblog Tag Team IV: Marlene, Dave, snowangel - Cold Turkey, Three Ways

[Marlene]

They are great, aren't they? And yeah, I got them at WS back when they were delivering to Canada. I seem to recall paying about $20. US for them

[snowangel]

Beautiful, Marlene!

Dinner preparations are underway here. We've overcome the first obstacle, thanks to a blow dryer.

Off to fight with dough.

[Marlene]

Marlene . . . About cleaning your oven. I am going to assume that it is "self cleaning" meaning a high heat cycle since the walls are stainless and not coated with that "continuous clean" coating. My oven in my house was self cleaning. I think the racks were chrome plated. I always just left the racks in during the cleaning cycle. They took on a slight bluish cast that didn't bother me so I kept doing it. I had that oven for about 6 years and they were still fine when I sold the house. I think the oven instructions told you to take them out. With my materials knowledge I quickly decided that was bunk and probably only alluded to the appearance thing. I suspect that your racks are stainless steel which would really makes me wonder why you shouldn't just leave them in.

:

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fifi, on the oven rack thing. I'm not sure if mine are chrome plated or stainless steel.. Given the weight, I suspect the later. However, I once left racks in an oven while cleaning. They never slid in and out easily after that. Plus the Dacor has a really cool full extension glide rack and I'd hate to screw that up.

So Daddy-A, if you're reading along......Racks in or out?

[Pam R]

Could you send me some of that through Canada Post?

What an amazing blog the three of you are treating us to. Thanks so much and good luck to all of you.

[Dana]

I love the crouton idea. I bet it's a lot easier to eat as well. Trying to cut off a bite of a big crouton with the melted cheese on top of a bowl of hot soup is sometimes a lot of trouble. I'm definitely making those next time I make FOS.

Edited February 9, 2006 by Dana (log)

[little ms foodie]

I have the same bowls too! great minds.........

my range also says to take out the racks as they will discolour. that reminds me that I actually need to use the self clean feature soon!

beautiful soup, Keller uses a combo of grated and sliced cheese. I had only used grated before but now I see how great the slices work!

[Marlene]

The problem I always have with grated, and it may be just me, is that first, I don't get a really good cheese coverage, which to me is a must, and secondly, grated tends to melt really quickly and sink to the bottom of the bowl. The crouton thing was actually an accident as they were the only thing I had in the house once. After some experimenting, I really found croutons + sliced cheese (although it's harder to find sliced gryuere than you think) works wonderfully well.

[Marlene]

A few things to (hopefully) look forward to. Tomorrow, I think Susan and I are going to do Chufi's butter braised beef, (I mean how could that be bad?), Friday I think I'm going to try steak au poivre, and Sat, well maybe I'll get to the cuban then. Sunday is our last day and we're smokin' butts. Of course, I've had this weber smoker sitting in my back yard since June and we haven't used it yet, so this could be an interesting experiment! Dave should be back from the wilds of Florida by Friday evening and will get everyone updated on what he's been eating, and hopefull not smoking.

Dave also owes us big time, so maybe we'll just let him cook and make us girls some cool drinks in those nifty glasses.

[fifi]

. . . . .

fifi, on the oven rack thing.  I'm not sure if mine are chrome plated or stainless steel.. Given the weight, I suspect the later.  However,  I once left racks in an oven while cleaning.  They never slid in and out easily after that.  Plus the Dacor has a really cool full extension glide rack and I'd hate to screw that up.

So Daddy-A, if you're reading along......Racks in or out?

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Hm . . . good point. I will also await Daddy-A's reply. I think the racks in the GE Monogram I am planning on might be about the same. For sticky racks that don't slide easily, I used to smear with a little high temperature silicone lubricant. I have no idea where to buy it. I used to um . . . borrow some from the lab. First time I did that, I yanked at the rack and it almost came flying out and onto the floor.

Susan . . . I just noticed the latest mushroom plug. We need to continue to build up the folks to a fanatical state of desire and channel that to AMCO. OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . .

[Marlene]

Susan . . . I just noticed the latest mushroom plug. We need to continue to build up the folks to a fanatical state of desire and channel that to AMCO. OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . . 

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Fifi, I'm a woman on the edge. It's best not to toy with me.

[snowangel]

A few things to (hopefully) look forward to.  Tomorrow, I think Susan and I are going to do Chufi's butter braised beef, (I mean how could that be bad?), Friday I think I'm going to try steak au poivre, and Sat, well maybe I'll get to the cuban then.   

Yes, Marlene and I will do Chufi's butter braised beef. There was a nice thick chuck steak that just about fell out of the upstairs freezer on my foot. Paul mentioned venison, and I mentioned that this was older. This is another dish for which I have everything on hand!

Sunday  is our last day and we're smokin' butts.  Of course, I've had this weber smoker sitting in my back yard since June and we haven't used it yet, so this could be an interesting experiment!

Yes, Marlene, it is just about time you got that thing out of dry dock, as I have been mentioning to you for months!

Dave also owes us big time, so maybe we'll just let him cook and make us girls some cool drinks in those nifty glasses.

I dare say but Dave owes each of us a set of these glasses. I'm thinking sets of 8 -- each!

[fifi]

You are going to love Chufi's butter braised beef. Well, unless you are an alien species that doesn't like butter. I had some beautifully marbeled chuck steak when I tried it. I had to tie my hands but I did restrain myself and stuck to the bay leaf and clove. Perfect. I was awfully curious about how that would work with venison or elk though.

[snowangel]

Now, to dinner.

I'm all set to do battle with the bread. Everything is laid out. The white bowl is full of cold water, which is essential for handling this dough.

The blob o dough

I suppose that someone who bakes more often would have degassed (degased ?) it more, but I don't bake bread all that often.

It became apparent that this was way more dough than I wanted to bake today, and I was only willing to fight with two of these things. My idea was to cut the dough into four pieces, not the six that Reinhart recommentds. You'll note that one is pretty flat and the other is sort of "S" shaped.

I slid them into the oven (preheated to 550 degrees F).

It became clear as the oven heated that it really needed to be cleaned, so I'll set it to clean when I go to bed. I don't remove the racks.

The finished loaves are not light as air, but they are not heavy as lead.

This is my umpteenth try of this recipe, and I think I'll give up and move onto something else. It's just to "wet" a bread, when baked, for my liking. The crust is good, but the interior is just too damp, and I think I prefer a more flavorful bread. Perhaps I would have more luck with it if I baked bread more than every six weeks or so. So, I will try the seminola bread recipe in this book mentioned upthread. Assume it's the Pain Siciliano?

On to soup. I decided to make a favorite -- the Creamy Garlic Soup in Paula Wolfert's Cooking of the Southwest France. This is a really easy, fast soup, with only egg, stock, garlic and onions -- staples that I always have on hand. It perfumes the house with this wonderful aroma. Someone should make a scented candle that smells like this soup.

I love this knife. It has been missing since Xmas. We took a trip and took the knife with us, and my sister and I opted for a last swim before we left, leaving the men to pack up. When I couldn't find the knife when we returned, I assumed it had been left behind. No, it was in the side pocket of Paul's duffle, and I found it last night!

Onions and garlic are almost golden, and almost ready for a little bit of flour, then stock. The final touches are whisking egg whites with cold stock and drizzling it in to form very thin strands. Then, egg yolkes are mixed with some vinegar and tempered with hot soup. The whole thing comes together in silky goodness (Peter's words). I had also fried up some lardons -- bacon ends from my very favorite bacon place in the Twin Cities, and one of the very few local butchers/smokehouses that sells bacon ends. I wonder what the other smokehouses do with their bacon ends?

Dinner!

I wish I'd tried my lime green placemats for this one.

Dinner was wonderful, and I have noted in the book that I should have made more -- like 1-1/2 recipe.

[snowangel]

You are going to love Chufi's butter braised beef. Well, unless you are an alien species that doesn't like butter.  I had some beautifully marbeled chuck steak when I tried it. I had to tie my hands but I did restrain myself and stuck to the bay leaf and clove. Perfect. I was awfully curious about how that would work with venison or elk though.

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Linda, assuming that my family likes this, you will hear about it with venison. The chuck steak needs to be used, and it just about broke my toe or gave my toenail a big purple mark. Makes me think I should probably clean out this freezer -- the one upstairs. We have a side-by-side.

[Abra]

Chufi's butter beef rocks. As she instructed me when I made it, be sure to really, really brown it slowly and well, like maybe for 20-25 minutes. And don't add anything besides what's in the recipe.

And star anise is well worth seeking out, with its delicate and mysterious flavor that's unlike any other. Your local Asian store will have it for sure, and when you have some, you can make pho at home too.

How's the quitting going today?

[Smithy]

. . . . .

fifi, on the oven rack thing.  I'm not sure if mine are chrome plated or stainless steel.. Given the weight, I suspect the later.  However,  I once left racks in an oven while cleaning.  They never slid in and out easily after that.  Plus the Dacor has a really cool full extension glide rack and I'd hate to screw that up.

So Daddy-A, if you're reading along......Racks in or out?

←

Hm . . . good point. I will also await Daddy-A's reply. I think the racks in the GE Monogram I am planning on might be about the same. For sticky racks that don't slide easily, I used to smear with a little high temperature silicone lubricant. I have no idea where to buy it. I used to um . . . borrow some from the lab. First time I did that, I yanked at the rack and it almost came flying out and onto the floor.

←

I wish I'd thought of that high-temperature silicone lubricant. I'm sure I can, er, find some lying around somewhere. Our new oven's racks developed a considerably higher coefficient of friction after the first self-cleaning cycle.

They've never been the same since.

Susan . . . I just noticed the latest mushroom plug. We need to continue to build up the folks to a fanatical state of desire and channel that to AMCO. OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . . OOOOOM . . . 

←

I think you left out a syllable?

mushrOOOM....mushrOOOM...

The food you women have turned out tonight is awesome. Marlene, you continue to amaze me with your command of things that would have me running in terror, even as you claim to be entering unknown territory. Susan, how the devil you manage to run a household and still cook is beyond me.

[maggiethecat]

Marlene and Susan:

I'm eating my pepper and egg sandwich and thinking how beautifully either -- or both-- of your soups would accompany it.

Ok, tonight was really hard. I was bouncing off the walls, thinking that if I had one little cigarette life would be dandy. I didn't, so my record's still clean. Would someone please tell me when this gets easier?

I'm really sleepy all the time. I've decided it's because life is boring with no smoke to look forward to. I'm thinking about designing some worry beads and, or perhaps getting a Rosary. Divine intervention and something to keep the fingers busy...

[snowangel]

Chufi's butter beef rocks.  As she instructed me when I made it, be sure to really, really brown it slowly and well, like maybe for 20-25 minutes.  And don't add anything besides what's in the recipe. 

And star anise is well worth seeking out, with its delicate and mysterious flavor that's unlike any other.  Your local Asian store will have it for sure, and when you have some, you can make pho at home too.

How's the quitting going today?

←

I've been warned by many not to try and jazz up the braise. I'll handcuff myself!

The quitting. Well, that's interesting. I had one today, and very early, which is unusual. A couple of things. My kids are really coming through. They aren't bugging me, but have given me "permission" to quit beating myself up, which is really helping. Two things happened. Peter woke just after I'd gone to bed last night (Paul had fallen asleep on the couch) to get a drink of water, and he crawled in with me for a couple of minutes and told me that I shouldn't be mad at me when I fall down (his words).

Second moment. Diana is now 15, and pretty independent. She's the last one to admit that she needs her mom. But, she has yet another case of swimmer's ear, and was in pretty serious pain. So, in she came, crying at 3:00 am and woke me up. For the first time in about 4 years, she crawled in bed with me and snuggled.

As I did yoga again this morning, I realized that the beating myself up was allowing the smoking to control me all the more.

So, I have the patch. If I need it, I will use it. If not, I won't.

[snowangel]

Diana loves to bake. Peter loves to help and learn. And, both of them came home with straight A report cards today (A honor roll in HS for Diana ), so when at 9:00, they mentioned making brownies, I figured they deserved it.

First off, I must say that I am a huge Maida Heatter fan. Her two cookie books are my go to books. Second, a few months ago, my supermarket reorganized the store, so there was tons of stuff on sale. I bought about 2 dozen SKOR bars. Stuck them in the freezer (I am starting to sound like a pat rack, which I am NOT!).

So, Heath Bar brownies it was to bed. I'm sure Maida would forgive us for using SKOR instead of Heath.

This recipe is from Maida Heatter's Brand-New Book of Cookies. This book is every bit as wonderful as her first book, which I think is out of print.

Most of the SKOR bars are chopped extremely coarsely, with a few saved to sprinkle on the top before baking.

24 minues later we have

They are way too hot to eat tonight, so the bite shot will have to wait for tomorrow.

edited to add: The pan, which ugly and well used, was my grandmother's.

[Dave the Cook]

This trip is cursed. Knowing that the blog would be underway, I took pains to ensure that I would have a reliable connection. Unfortunately, it seems the definition of "high-speed access" still has some flexibility in it.

I've tried to post this twice, and the first time, I lost the connection. So the second time, I copied the post to a WordPad document every couple of paragraphs. Maybe I'm still scatterbrained from withdrawal, or maybe it's the flu, but for some reason, I assumed that copying alone was sufficient. Which is to say that I didn't actually save the WordPad file. So when the power went out (what hotel has a power failure?), I lost it anyway. Let me catch everyone up on the last three-and-a-half days quickly.

I drove down from Atlanta Sunday afternoon, leaving at about 2:00, with an ETA of 9:00. Smoking-wise, I distracted myself by running up the cell-phone bill; swigging Starbucks Frappacino; listening to NPR and an interesting station in Valdosta that simply feeds the CBS TV audio into an AM transmitter (60 Minutes on radio); cranking up the Cars, Buddy Guy, Van Halen and XTC and howling along. Then I stopped for gas and lemonade. The next thing I knew, I was hurtling through the tepid Florida night, singing Promised Land with Bruce, shredding wisps of bluish smoke out the open window of my recently rented smoke-free Durango.

I saved myself by having reserved a non-smoking room. Inside, I soaked the remainder of the pack, a la Matthew. I wanted a drink. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring my nifty travelling cocktail kit. And while I had remembered gin, maraschino and triple sec, I had forgotten lemons. Glasses? No problem, I've got plastic. Shaker? I can just chill in machine ice. But citrus is a conspicuous absentee. A trip to the local grocery solved two of three problems:

Usage hint: put your thumb over the dispensing hole, rather than trust the flap to contain the contents.

Dinner? It was too late to go out:

[JAZ]

The brownies look wonderful, Susan. (Actually, everything everyone has been making looks wonderful.)

Is there a link to Chufi's butter braised beef? I tried searching for it, but the search function and I don't get along very well.

(Also, I think it's great that you're doing so well, and that you're sharing your less than successful moments. That shows a lot of character.)

[ruthcooks]

I'm really sleepy all the time. I've decided it's because life is boring with no smoke to look forward to. 

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Maggie, did you ever think that life-being-boring was one reason you started smoking in the first place? Makes more sense to me. Sleeping is, however, often used to escape from life and avoid thinking about unpleasantness. If you are sleeping too much, so what? If this is one of the tools you use to keep from smoking, it's working! Congratulations on your 6 days.

For the other strugglers:

Possibly the most difficult part in quitting is that you can no longer tell yourself stories about smoking. Like the alcoholic's "I can quit anytime I want to." You have to admit to yourself that smoking is a bad thing and you are an addict, yes, just like the ones who get high on drugs and drunk on booze. Not easy to face.

Often times, addicts quit abusing one substance and immediately start abusing another. Alcoholics quit drinking and start chain smoking. Smokers quit and turn to caffeine in coffee or chocolate. Some theories suggest that all physical addictions are born from the desire to be loved, and you have to love yourself first. And if that ain't a tough nut to crack.

I was lucky enough to have attended a number of seminars given by a company out of Louisiana called "Education for Living." One of their sayings is: rocks are hard, water's wet and X is where you are. It's a great reminder to jolt yourself back into reality and realize that you simply cannot do anything about the past. Where your X was then, you felt you needed a cigarette and you had one. Don't beat yourself up, but don't use it as an excuse to have one today. Today's X is different.

(Keeping a journal is a great idea...you can say things you can't say on eGullet.)

Soldier on!

Edited February 9, 2006 by ruthcooks (log)

[eJulia]

I wonder what the other smokehouses do with their bacon ends?

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Probably take them home!

YUM!

[Pan]

[...]Often times, addicts quit abusing one substance and immediately start abusing another.  Alcoholics quit drinking and start chain smoking.  Smokers quit and turn to caffeine in coffee or chocolate.[...]

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Current evidence very strongly indicates that coffee and chocolate are way healthier than cigarettes, so it doesn't bother me one bit if our beloved quitters are indulging in those caffeinated mood-altering substances.

[NMM]

You guys are really inspiring me to stop smoking too, although I think I'll have to wait until the weather warms up a few degrees. It's not that I kid myself that the cigs are warming, but sitting inside and eating starchy food is hard enough on my weight and my mood. And combine this with endless gray days -

I've stopped before, but I always hit the same wall and I'm interested in how other foodies deal with this (smoking foodies). The problem is that evening meals are special events, for my partner and myself and most eGulleters. Whether we're eating out or cooking, we savor the experience, and like to do this with a well-matched wine. And the wine and food lead me to cigarettes. In fact, I don't usually have my first cigarette until 6 or 7 pm.

We should both give up smoking, but neither of us has any inclination to stop appreciating good food and wine. On top of this, if we're eating with friends, as we often are, they're going to be smoking and drinking wine too (we live in France, I don't know any non-smokers). I've tried herbal cigarettes, but the only ones I've found taste worse than cigarettes, and they stink.

Sam