Weekend Plans Post: Learning to Cook
DIGITAL CAMERA
When I was about 14 or 15, Mom decided that we needed to learn how to make dinner for multiple people. So she pointed me at the fridge and told me that she could give advice but she wouldn’t help and, yep, I had to make dinner.
It might have been my first attempt at feeding 3 people.
So I looked in the fridge, saw some cold pizza, and reheated it, plated it, and served it to us all.
It was easy mode, sure, but it was the first time I had ever played the game.
I mean, I knew how to make sandwiches. Mustard, cheese, find some lunchmeat, slap it on. As time went on, I learned about putting lettuce on there. Tomatoes. Even a slice of onion. Wait, that’s too much onion. Okay, some of the rings from the onion slice.
Increase difficulty by using the stove. Breakfast. Okay… scramble some eggs. Okay, I need to use some oil in the pan. Hrm. Can I use butter instead? Hrm. I can. Egg prep itself… It works better to whip them before hand than to scramble them in the pan… hrm, add some milk to them while whipping them… hrm. Better. Add some cheese? Hrm. No. Not as good as sprinkling the cheese on it after it’s been plated. Wait… if I make bacon in the pan first… could I use the bacon grease instead of butter? OH MY GOSH I HAVE NOT LIVED UNTIL THIS MOMENT
What about Mac and Cheese? Holy cow, this is easy. The box comes with a packet and everything. Huh. I could add a hot dog to this. Huh. I could add two hot dogs to this. Huh. I could add salsa to this.
Hamburger Helper is like Mac and Cheese, but with a risk of salmonella. Okay. Start by browning the meat. Huh. That worked. Maybe add some… onions? Okay, you’ve got to add them as you’re browning the meat instead of after you browned it. Maybe add some jalapeños? Huh, don’t used pickled ones. Use fresh ones. What do they put in the box, anyway… you know, we could make this ourselves without spending a whole… 79 cents… for the box. (It was the ’90s.) Okay, maybe we don’t have to get all the ingredients onesy-twosy. Huh… maybe some button mushrooms?
Holy cow. They make books about this sort of thing. Books with recipes in them. The recipes have… ingredients. You just buy the ingredients then you just make the recipe. I’m pretty sure I remember my mom using a slow cooker. Maybe I should try one of those? Huh. I guess these are for when you want 4 liters of something. Well, I guess we both have lunch until the end of the week.
Wait, didn’t I used to work at a French Bistro? What did the boss do? Um… always use real butter instead of margarine, always use cream instead of milk, always use fresh herbs and spices instead of dried ones… and don’t overdo it. Don’t add 5 or 6 different herbs/spices when you can add 2 or 3. Huh. Yeah. This is better.
Wait. You can make desserts that are more complicated than Hershey’s Syrup on vanilla ice cream and then sprinkling salted peanuts on it?
(And then, the breakthrough)
“Huh. This is kinda fun.”
This weekend, I’m going to be cooking for the coming week. I’ve got to make some crock pot chicken for Marianne and some beef stew for me. (Wait, maybe it’s the other way around.) That involves going to the grocery store to get the ingredients for the cooking for the coming week. I’m looking forward to it.
So… what’s cookin’?
(Featured image is “cook” by alandberning. Used under a creative commons license.)
Gonna be crappy weather here (maybe severe weather tonight, maybe snow tomorrow morning). I did my weekly grocery shopping yesterday (this involved driving 1/2 hour to the nearest Kroger’s; this was the last week I’ll be able to shop on a weekday for a while – four of my five weekday afternoons are full once the semester starts, and I have frequent evening meetings)
The guy behind me in line commented “Gonna get cold this weekend.”
“Yeah,” I said, “That’s why I’m doing my shopping today.” (I had a bag of oranges, a bag of grapes, some bread, some milk, pork ribs for the slow cooker, oatmeal, some crackers…)
“So am I,” he responded. I looked over: he had two bottles of sparkling wine and a tube of Braunschweiger.
I’m….not sure that Braunschweiger will last the entire weekend…
This is also the last weekend before classes being. I have a little research work it would be ideal to finish up (scoring soil samples) and I am going to do some of that today and if the weather’s not icy Saturday, I might come in and do what I don’t complete today.Report
I had to google Braunschweiger.
It strikes me as more of a “Molson” food than Champagne, but I’ve got a lot of prejudices.Report
Love Braunschweiger… but as our love of cooking led to husbandry and then full-on butchering we delved deeper into the left-over bits. Break through was Confit of Gizzard; then over just this Christmas we butchered a pig and for the first time we ventured into… into… um, lengua. Delicioso. Which is just to say, our tastes have evolved as we’ve had an abundance of offal.
Yeah… I’d definitely pair Braunschweiger with beer (and mustard)… its the hotdog of offal. Or as I affectionately call it: sugar organ meat.Report
I thought hotdogs were already the hotdog of offal. Or did my former lab mate who used to work in a meat-processing plant exaggerate?
Personally, I’ve never been able to get past the texture of Braunschweiger (or pate, for that matter).Report
Weeeell, technically Hot Dogs are still a muscle based sausage product… just not the good edible muscles. I’m sure all sorts of other things get ground-up as well… depends on the hot dog company I suppose.Report
Frankfurter, Marchmaine. It is only a hotdog when it is put in a bun.Report
Dang… I’ve been out foodied.
Did I tell you about the time I made a confit of venison heart? Not as good as gizzard.Report
This is the war we’ve been waiting for.Report
Braunschwieger…he played brilliantly for the German national team in the 2014 World Cup!Report
Of course, think of his fate if they lost…Report
I have found the zenith of the is/ought problem; The Duvet Cover. The wife thinks this Ought to solve all bedding problems. I think this Is the biggest pain in the ass ever devised. I thought I had won this battle, but no.
The Duvet Cover can never fail, only be failed.
(A friend of a friend just entered hospice, so we are house-sitting in Portland while the friend goes to visit. Sucks, but there you are.)
((I never liked cheese. Or any dairy really.))Report
I’m sure you’ve seen this. If you haven’t, it’s *NUTS*. It’s, like, topographical math or some crap.
We used to have a duvet and we used to do the thing where we’d shake it in like a pillow and then have to crawl in to get the last corners.
We learned this trick and then, whammo, we switched to blankets.
But, seriously, it works:
Report
That looks like madness applied to blankets. Thankfully that trend didn’t make it out here.Report
You can do all the clever work in the world installing the duvet cover, by morning the duvet itself will be bunched up nyt your knees while you huddle in a ball under empty duvet cover you’ve fruitlessly pulled up to your ears.
Blankets are the way to go. Wool ones, ideally.Report
We’ve got a flannel one that is more or less about 50% as heavy as the lead vest that you get at the dentist when they do X-rays.
It’s preferable to the duvet, if you ask me. (But you aren’t going to be rolling over a whole lot.)Report
The actual quick way to put a duvet cover on is to lay it on top of the duvet, but inside out. Then you tie the little corner thingys and you can easily flip it inside-out.
But the even quicker method?
Fire.Report
I don’t think my parents ever sent me into the kitchen to make dinner, but I learned similar to you: box mac and cheese, sandwiches, etc. I remember once making an omelette for my Dad and the first time it came out PERFECT and…I’ve never been able to replicate it. And when Mom went back to work we all learned that it was Dad who was the REAL whiz in the kitchen!
At my first duty station, I learned how to adapt some pasta recipes for the microwave (because that’s all we had–the days of enlisted dorms complete with a full kitchen on every floor were still a few years away). I dated an Italian/Greek girl from Chicago and she taught me how to make my own spaghetti sauce. And of course, there was the grill.
I really started learning after we bought a house and got married. I’d watch K in the kitchen and think, “I can do that.” And obviously opportunities to excel present themselves because everybody works and everybody has to take their turn in the kitchen, right? And oh yeah! A couple of years ago my sister gave me a bunch of cook books. I can follow directions! And from there it’s all experimentation and trying stuff and seeing what works and what doesn’t and trying to remember to write down what I did so I can replicate it. I’ve now got a “Recipes” folder on my google drive that I can consult for ingredients when I’m shopping.
And a few months ago my mother-in-law bought me a big fancy new grill. Well, specifically, she “bought herself a new grill but she decided to keep it at my house.” I immediately noticed the rotisserie motor mounts and bought a rotisserie motor and spit and learned how to brine chicken and cornish hens and make those rotisserie-style on the grill. I even made a lamb roast! That one was good, but needs refinement (and really the best part was cutting up the leftovers and finding a good recipe for lamb curry).
The boys have had their turns in the kitchen (though admittedly not nearly enough) and when they go out into the world they’ll have a handful of meals they can make in the kitchen. We should probably push that more often!Report
One of the things I learned about pasta was from The Sopranos, of all places.
First off, before draining the pasta, save a cup or two of the pasta water. Then drain the pasta. Then put some butter (maybe a lot of butter) in the bottom of the now drained pan. Then add the pasta water. Then add a ladleful of the sauce (don’t get the meat or the chunky vegetables, just get the juice). Then add the pasta to the mix and stir it on high for 30 seconds.
*THEN* serve it.
HOLY COW.Report
Isn’t it really watery then?Report
You still remove the pasta from the pot with a pair of tongs or a pasta spoon, so no.
(But if you’re worried about that, add the pasta water to the sauce instead.)Report
I think I was just confused about the order. I like my spaghetti sauce really thick, so the idea of adding water is pretty horrifying.Report
Here. Read this.
This is what I’m talking about.Report
Jay mentioned the Keto diet several times here, so I mentioned it to Riggs and he looked into it and was: “yeah, I think this is really doable” so we started last monday. He calculated a 9 weeks run, which is cool, because at the table we kind of discuss ‘this is real food!’.
As far as cooking goes, I showed him how to cook pork chops the way grandma did. Pretty good sear on each side with a touch of salt and pepper.
Slow cookers are usually frowned upon, as the presence of one tends to lead to the creation of ‘Big Pants People’. There is nothing wrong with BPP, but the doc usually looks at ya with some disdain, and becomes rather preachy about the downside calculations of BMI when you see him every fourth year.
Since the accuracy of that other muzzle loader was resolved, moved on to see how well the Kentucky cap lock would group. It’s a .45 which usually takes a .454 round ball, but for these 1980s types I have started using a .454 Casull round. Well, the rounds were tumbling and keyholing at the 20 yard range. I knew the barrel was pitted, but this was a bad sign. A round ball somewhat hides the tumble and did have tighter groups.
Usually blackpowder rifles are pitted throughout the bore all the way to the breech, but this one was unfinished (for 35 years) so it looks like it spent time in a garage or attic, and picked up moisture mostly at the muzzle end. The solution was to cut approx. 12″ off the muzzle end and see if that alleviates the tumbling, (as a side note the barrel was still over 16″).
Between honey do’s and chores I will see how it groups.Report
Hey, this 3C Casserole is Keto-friendly and it’s exactly what I’m going to make this weekend.
If it’s for Maribou, I’ll make the version with peas and carrots.
If it’s for me, I’ll make the version with serrano peppers and broccoli.Report
Sounds yummy, we will try that one.Report
Kids love learning to cook. Emulating their parents, accomplishing something, quick results. And it’s scalable. Scrambling the eggs and shaping the cookies for the young ones, then cutting the tomatoes and carrots, and later coordinating and timing multiple dishes. Something as simple as build-your-own tacos can get a child over the initial fears. And since kids often have simple tastes, you can get them making their own bologna sandwiches or mac-and-cheese and feeling like chefs.Report
I have happy memories of learning to cook as a kid. Of course, both my parents liked to cook and that helped. But when I was quite small, I asked my mom for an Easy-bake oven and she asked me: wouldn’t you rather learn to use the real oven? And she taught me how to make cookies and simple cakes.
One Christmas – I think I was about 5 – I got a copy of “The Winnie-the-Pooh Cookbook” (which is a SOLID cookbook with good and fairly complicated dishes – it is the source of the creamed salmon recipe I frequently make) from family friends. I still have it. Some time after that, we were shopping at a Best (one of those big warehouse-showroom type stores that used to exist – my family shopped there a lot) and they had copies of The Mickey Mouse Cookbook out and my dad asked me if I wanted one and I said yes, and for years I would bake cakes out of the recipe in that book. (That book is definitely more kid-oriented than the Winnie-the-Pooh one was – that one is more a serious cookbook with a whimiscal angle, and the Mickey Mouse one is more “food kids like”). I still have that one, too – the way I do oven fried chicken is based on a recipe in that book.
As an adult, I have an embarrassingly-large collection of cookbooks (including a few more child-themed cookbooks: a year or two ago Disney came out with a “Princess” cookbook somewhat in the same spirit as my old Mickey Mouse one, where each dish was “introduced” by a character. It’s a surprisingly solid cookbook in the diversity of its dishes (hummus, for example, and a Chinese-style stir fry for Mulan…)
Alas, I have kind of wound up as a “big pants person” though i suspect I’m partly just genetically predisposed to it. I’ve tried to cut back recently because past experience showed just cutting back on sweets and carbohydrates (and not even cutting OUT) results in a drop of a few pounds, enough to make my doctor happy. (This fall, with grief-eating, was bad; some of my slacks are no longer comfortable to wear, but hopefully that will change)Report
The Winnie The Pooh Cookbook is available from Amazon (both used and new!).
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Cookbook is also available used and new, but new is, like, a hundred bucks. But used is available for $25.
(I mean, *I* was immediately tempted to leaf through a copy of both books…)Report
Have to go to Vegas for 4-days for annual corporate meetings. Every year one person gets fired; the only question is whether it will be for banal mendacity or in a spectacularly picturesque flame-out. Usually its banality, but every 3-5 years we get something that keeps our hopes alive.
Strangely, the one year in the past 10 that we went somewhere other than Vegas (New Orleans) was the year with the highest casualty rate… not all were terminal, but the number of walking wounded was very, very high; and the stories we, um, storied. I attribute it to the fact that people had to go outside and interact with real other people vs. the cocoon that is a Vegas resort.
Predictably I’m rather boring in Vegas… its just another corporate meeting except the leitmotif is: Sex. And here I’m using leit as a courtesy.Report
When I did the Vegas thing, it was when the Family Friendly Vegas had done its apex and was now beginning to wander back down towards Sin City. That was… 2010? 2012? The recession was in full swing and I interpreted the tone shift to sex as an attempt to woo back tourist dollars.
Now that the recession is ostensibly over (no politics), I admit to assuming that Vegas went back to Family Friendly without really having anything to base that assumption on.
So I’ll ask you: have they continued their change in emphasis since 2012ish or so?Report
Good question…I think its going to be mostly driven by the property.
One year around 2010-2012 we were at the MGM Mandolay Bay an there was definitely a pro-family vibe to the place – think Circus. Then again, they were also hosting the AVN awards the same week… so Sexy Adult Circus?
The past years we’ve bounced between Aria and Cosmpolitan which I’d rate as Sexy + and Sexy ++ which is to say that everywhere you look there’s a silhouette of a non-PG boob… even in the (expensive) industrial carpet. I feel like they are going for (Semi-)committed couples get-away.
I don’t claim to have a definitive scorecard of Sexy vs. Sleazy, but Cosmopolitan > Aria > MGM.
The sleaziest place we’ve been to was the Rio. That one had girls dancing on special platforms on top of the Slots. Not all the time (and not naked)… just sometimes at random? But yeah, it was weird… so there’s a big Sexiness swing from Rio to Cosmopolitan.
Places like the Venetian and NYNY seem less Sexy+ (being merely sexy in that ubiquitous Vegas way). I’m sure there are dozens of other places that run the gamut too.
So, there you go… impressions of a decade of corporate meetings. But on the whole Family thing… I don’t think there’s a push anymore… but then, I do see a fair number of families. However, I’ll note that they seem to be the 1, maybe 2 kid variety and overwhelmingly toddler age – which might seem odd in one way, but make perfect sense in another. I honestly can’t recall seeing a tween or teenager… but I’ve seen innumerable toddlers.Report
I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than being a 12-year-old boy in Las Vegas with your parents.Report
maybe being a 12 year old girl with a slightly-older brother and both of you being there with your parents?
(I have only ever been THROUGH Vegas, never TO, so this was not my experience)Report
Good news Kids, we got tickets to a Circus show called Zoomanity.
Narrator: it isn’t spelled Zoo, and it was not the show they were expecting.Report
Tomorrow, Zorro comes home with us (he’s an 8 week old smooth collie, black and tan). It’s been 20 months since we had to put Lance down, and that is way too long to live without a dog.Report
Absolutely wonderful.Report
I’ve always said if you can read you can cook. Follow the recipe to the letter, then adjust it after you’ve tried the results.
And, PAY ATTENTION! Half the battle in getting edible dishes is making sure they’re not overcooked. My wife’s sister lived with us while she was in grad school, and she used the smoke detector as a cooking timer.Report
the funny thing is, I have known a few chemists who absolutely could not cook. They could teach chem lab fine, they could do their own research fine. But when it came to producing food that was actually edible? No.
It was a mystery. I am somewhat clumsy in lab (I broke so much glassware one year in college and that was partly why I decided to become an ecologist) but I am a pretty good cook. (As long as I pay attention. I have very occasionally scorched things in a pan because I either forgot to turn down the heat or I wandered off to do something and didn’t stir enough).
I have a colleague who fancies themselves a “creative” cook and makes things without a recipe, but those things are mostly inedible and they wonder with disappointment why no one will eat their food at the departmental potlucks. I learned early on to figure out what dishes people like and consistently produce those. (To the point where there are things I am “expected” to bring to certain parties….)Report
Chemists can’t cook… wrong skills.
Ask them to try baking.
Unless they get hung-up explaining (to nobody) how the cookbook gets the Baking Soda reaction wrong…Report
Yeah, baking and cooking are really two very different things. When I cook, esp. if it’s something like a stew or a casserole, I will substitute wildly if I don’t like or don’t have one of the ingredients, and I often only roughly measure (like: I know about how much a teaspoon looks like in my hand).
When I bake: nope. Get out the measuring spoons and cups, and only substitute if it’s something I know has similar properties to what is being substituted for (e.g., dried cherries instead of raisins)
I learned to bake before I learned to cook. (Though I cook far, far more than I bake now. I did more baking between December 1 and December 20th of last year than I did in the previous 12 months….)Report
After Xmas, I roasted a small chicken. Boiled the carcass and various herbs and veggies to make stock. Supplemented by good purchased stock. Made chicken soup with carrot, potato, wild rice, and celery. Used chicken thighs.
Tasty. Ate it for a week.Report
I mostly learned to cook by guided osmosis I guess. My parents giving me kitchen jobs – make the salad, dice me an onion and some carrots, keep an eye on the fish while I pop out for groceries…
In early high school I came home in time to watch “the urban peasant” on TV while eating considerably less ambitious snacks than James Barber was preparing. I think that got me ambitious to learn and experiment more, even if I didn’t necessarily incorporate a lot of the specific techniques or recipes he made.Report