stoutfellow

Yesterday, I decided to go with beef & barley soup for this week's dinners. I've made it a couple of times, and like it, and I had most of the ingredients already in the pantry or fridge.

Today, I failed to check just how long it had to sit in the slow cooker. I didn't get it started until 10:30, 11 AM. It is now almost 7:30 PM, and it won't be ready for another hour, hour and a half.

To top things off, I'm low on staples and can't muster up much in the way of munchables. I'm out of soda, and have just enough milk for tomorrow morning's coffee.

Fall Semester is fast approaching - two weeks from tomorrow - and I'll have to get my body back in synch with the rest of the world.

Le sigh.

Many - in my frustrated opinion, too many - recipes call for a six-ounce can of tomato paste. Are they actually calling for "as much tomato paste as one can reasonably extract from a six-ounce can"?

Forks, spoons, and knives - even those which actually fit into those blasted little cans - all seem to leave a significant fraction of the goo behind.

Is there some sort of special implement or arcane procedure which actually gets close to the full six ounces out?

I very much like the slow-cooker cookbook I've been using lately. That is, I like the dishes; they're easy to make, and many have been delicious. I have a bit of a bone to pick with whoever gives names to those dishes.

Case in point: last week's dinners were "Mexican Rice and Cheese". The recipe called for "Mexican-style beans"; I had no clue as to what was intended, but settled on a can of red beans. It also called for cream cheese, which has never struck me as a particularly Mexican delicacy. Anyway, that dish didn't quite make it into the Delicious category, though it easily cleared the Tasty bar.

This week, I made a big pot of "Italian Spanish Chicken and Rice". It involves kielbasa. (It also called for an onion, a red bell pepper, and five cloves of garlic. I was in no mood for finicky cutting-up, so I just slammed all of them through the onion-chopper. The bits of garlic were probably too big and those of bell pepper too small, but whatever. This one looks like it gets the Delicious label.)

There are times when I wonder why I ever buy frozen dinners. Well, no, I don't. Laziness and/or lack of time usually explain it. Still, tasty cooking really isn't, or needn't be, all that hard. I really should work at doing it more regularly.

I am growing increasingly annoyed with Shop'n'Save. I will continue to shop there for most things; the advantage they have in convenience over the other nearby groceries is huge. But they won't get all of my business.

I mentioned the coffee debacle a while back. They have, it turns out, continued to offer two kinds of whole beans, both by Java Delight: French Roast and House Blend. Needless to say, this limitation isn't to my taste. A few days ago, I put in an order with Goshen Coffee, an online distributor with a considerably greater selection. I bought a pound each of their Ethiopian and Sumatran blends; they also have a number of special blends, which I haven't looked over yet. (I bought two bags; when I finish one, I will order another. That way, I will still have the other bag while I'm waiting for the new one.) If Goshen's offerings prove satisfactory, they will have my custom from now on.

Meanwhile, the cheese situation is worsening. (I'm speaking only of the cheeses sold in sliced form, as opposed to bricks, wedges, rounds, and shreds.) Asiago disappeared from their shelves some time ago. This morning, Lorraine and Vermont Cheddar were missing as well. That may be temporary; Colby reappeared today after being absent last time. On the other hand, the racks were full, the extra slots being filled with pepper cheeses (which I have no interest in) and thin-sliced meats. I no longer trust them. There's a deli up the road a ways, and I've been meaning to check them out for a while; the time has come.

(I'm also less than pleased with the packaging of some of the cheeses. Many of the softer cheeses, when packaged in slices, need to have the slices separated by sheets of waxed paper. Swiss, Muenster, and provolone are especially in such need. But it really doesn't do much good if the sheets are too small; the slices simply tear along the edges of the paper, leaving ugly and hard-to-dislodge clumps where the paper wasn't. The last packet of Muenster I bought was just... I want to say "awful", but it's not a question of taste; it was just incredibly unpleasant trying to get a decent slice loose, every time I tried to make a sandwich. I'm hoping, without too much hope, that the deli will handle things better.)

Shop'n'Save is convenient, and I know and like a lot of the cashiers, but there are limits to my patience.

Damn, but that's a lot of stew.

I don't see how I'm going to eat all of it by, say, Sunday. If I ate two helpings a day, it might be possible, but this stuff is pretty heavy, and the GI consequences would be unpleasant. (It's delicious, but... heavy.)

I have no idea how long it'll keep.

Phase one of this year's Thanksgiving banquet is underway: a big batch of Brunswick stew. A few modifications proved necessary. I forgot to get any celery; more importantly, the recipe called for two pounds of de-boned BBQ chicken. The closest I could come was a two-pound rotisserie chicken, not de-boned (and hence less than two pounds of meat). I wound up pulling the flesh off the bones with my fingers and setting aside the bones, which still had a little meat on them. I wound up sticking the plate of bones in the microwave for a minute (the chicken was already cooked) and gnawing the meat off. The now-pristine bones went into the garbage pail, to Buster and Gracie's disappointment. (Yes, I know better than to give chicken bones to dogs.)

I'll start making the pecan pie in about six hours. That way it will be done and cooling before the stew is ready. Salad-in-a-bag (with toppings-in-a-bag and dressing-in-a-bottle) will be the third part.

Should be good.

Pot roast again this week, or so it says on the label. The recipe title is "Italian-Style Pot Roast". It's beef this time, which gets a little closer to the norm, but the rest of the dish focuses on onions, marinara sauce, and Great Northern beans. Surely there's another cover term they could use for these things? On the other hand, slow-cooker recipes use the word "casserole" to name what anyone else would call "stew"; maybe I should just accept that they have their own terms of art.

Whatever. I just finished the first helping, and it's delicious. Delicious on the first day: that's not so common for the kind of dish I make for all-week dinners.

Normally I transfer the food from the slow cooker to my biggest pot for refrigeration. Unfortunately there's still about a bowlful of sauce left from last week's meals in it; I'll probably slurp it up later this evening, but then the pot will need washing. I'm going to have to find another way - probably the meat on a plate and the sauce in a big bowl.

(Actually, it's not my biggest pot any more; the stock pot I got last year is bigger - but that one won't fit in the fridge!)

This is a thing that has happened several times in the past couple of weeks.

I am standing at the closed end of the kitchen, making a sandwich. In front of me, I see the stove, counter space (and sandwich fixings), and no dogs. I can hear Gracie behind me, dancing with anticipation of receiving a bit of the sandwich once it's made. I finish making the sandwich, tear off a couple of bits, and turn around. Gracie dances up to me and receives her treat. Buster is nowhere in sight. I turn back to my sandwich.

Buster is there, between me and the stove.

I have no idea how he does that.

I've mentioned before that I try to vary my diet, to avoid getting jaded by one or another favorite dish.

A couple of weeks ago, my dinner-of-the-week was chipotle chicken stew. It was very tasty; for that reason, I would normally avoid remaking it for a few months. However, the recipe called for one - count it, one - chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. Such peppers, so be-sauced, come in cans, each containing about fifteen peppers.

I have very few recipes which call for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.

I made another batch of the stew this week. It's still good. I don't know how long the rest of the peppers will last....

Tomorrow is the department Cinco de Mayo potluck. Once again, I signed up to bring cornbread, which I will make tomorrow morning.

There. Is. Milk. (And everything else needful.)

(Semagic disapproves of the words "chipotle", "adobo", and "cinco". "Mayo", however, is apparently A-OK.)

It is a good thing to prepare a casserole, using multiple ingredients with different flavors and textures, to be eaten over the course of a week.

It is also a good thing to put peanut butter on whole-wheat crackers and wash them down with milk.

Certainly Buster and Gracie are more in favor of the latter.