The Omnivore’s Hundred.

(Or, ‘When a Blogger Feels Guilty for Being a Slackass and Not Posting.’)

I’ve been meaning to post things lately – I’ve made cultured butter, coleslaw, black bean and sprout burritos, tortillas and cauliflower steaks lately. Pictures are waiting (im)patiently to be uploaded. The words exist… somewhere.

But between the barn, wonky schedules (not necessarily my own), martial arts, the dog, the office, classwork (managerial accounting) and getting kicked by a 2500 lb. draft horse this past weekend… I’ve been a little unable to succumb to the posting bug.

I’m hoping that this little filler will last some of you long enough for me to get back in the loop of things and get back to doing right by you all. For you veteran bloggers… how do you do it all?!

As a sidenote, did anyone ever think that it would be this hard to wash your hair, much less the dishes, when you can’t get one hand wet?

The Omnivore’s Hundred

from: Very Good Taste

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

I linked to the foods that I was previously unaware of.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (beignets & funnel cake, anyway)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

So there you go: my Hundred. Now, to go wiki all the things that I looked at and said ‘WTF?’ about!

Planning meals, for those of you like me.

And ‘like me’ means that you’re bad at it, mostly because you simply don’t think about it that far in advance. Generally you cook on inspiration or out of sheer need, which can be lovely, but generally just means you want food and you want it soon and leftovers be damned.

Ever heard of Quamut? Yeah, me neither, until B&N sent me a newsletter that I happened to scroll through (it had Breaking Dawn in the title, so I couldn’t help myself). A Quamut is basically a howto guide that comes in three formats: free online, pay-for .pdf or pay-for laminated. This one was a free download for the week and it’s about planning meals. Now, I know that I can’t be the only one that is miserable at planning meals, despite the fact that I’m aware that I should solely for the fact that I often don’t eat until 9:00pm most days because I can’t be arsed to fix anything until I’m so hungry I have to. But this handy little guide is actually pretty useful, I thought. Some of the information is something some of us might know, but especially for new kitchen pioneers, the how-to stuff would be gold. I like the seasonal produce list, and the pantry stock, myself.

Anyone who may be interested, check it out and download it before the week’s over. If you can’t get to it until after the free period’s over, email me and I’ll send you a copy of the .pdf. I don’t think that’s copyright violation… right?

Transparent pie – like chess pie, but not.

Allow me, if you will, to share a little of home with you. Home to me is Paris, Kentucky. It is horse country (Florida be damned, no offense to anyone), specifically racehorses. The area I grew up in is practically nothing but racing farms, including Claiborne Farm, where Secretariat (and Buckpasser) retired to and is buried; Stone Farm; Xalapa; and Stonerside, among other breeding facilities. A goodly number of Henry Clay’s descendants call our little town home. Garrett Morgan, who invented the tricolor traffic light and the gas mask, and George Snyder, who made the first USA fishing reel, were Paris natives. We’ve got the tallest three-story building (the Shinner Building on Main) in the world, and we lay claim to the largest one-room log cabin in the country, the Cane Ridge Meeting House, where the Great Revival of 1801 took place (even though it’s technically in North Middletown, not Paris). Our motto is “Horses, History and Hospitality.” Horses, we’ve got; history, we’ve got; and hospitality, we’ve definitely got. Despite the fact that we are growing, and Lexington is trying it’s best to assimilate us into big-city living, we’re still basically a small town in Kentucky.

I didn’t realize until I moved around as a kid that food was actually regional. I thought everyone ate your average Sunday dinner after church (never mind that my family never went to church, just that Sunday dinner was ‘after church’), that it was generally chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans with bacon and cabbage and yeast rolls. I didn’t know that burgoo, Ale-8, hot browns, beer cheese, corn pudding, jam pies and bourbon balls simply didn’t exist as cuisine per norm anywhere but home. I was devastated to learn all this, most notably with respect to beer cheese, Ale-8 and corn pudding. My uncle always sends me back to school with a batch of beer cheese, and I usually return to Georgia loaded with at least 3-4 cases of Ale-8.

In the case of desserts, especially, is where one might see the differences shining through, thanks to jam pies, hand pies, bourbon balls, Derby Pie, Throughbred pie and transparent pie. Where the general population of the South has chess pie, Kentucky has transparent pie. And oh, how I love transparent pie. It was a given for someone to bring one to any gathering – or two or three, depending on the gathering. My grandmother made them frequently, often for Sunday dinner dessert; sometimes, she topped hers with criss-crossing drizzles of chocolate and caramel, as if the pie needed more sugar!

The biggest difference between a classic chess pie and a transparent pie is the addition of cream to the latter. Chess pie will also sometimes have vinegar added, to cut the sweetness, but I don’t think it makes a difference (except to add a little extra wang). Chess pie is basically cheesecake pie, sans the cream cheese. I’ve seen chess pie with meringue, too, which should not (imo) go on transparent pie. I don’t think it should go on chess pie, either, but I’m not a big fan of meringue anyway. (Friendly note: my father adores meringue, especially on lemon pie. ‘Calf slobbers,’ he calls it.)

Be warned, of course, that this dessert is rich like you won’t believe. Well, after you read the ingredients list, you may believe. Eat it anyway. It’s also a blessedly simple recipe that you can make as a quick pie, as tarts, whatever. I highly suggest you serve it warm, although cold leftovers with a cold glass of milk are just as, if not more, delicious than the first go-round. Coffee is the usual drink of choice to go with transparent pie, as with chess pie, but do as you wish.

Transparent Pie

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 cup cream
4 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 unbaked (9-inch) pie shell

Directions:

Beat butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add cream, and mix well. Beat in eggs. Stir in flour and vanilla. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 375 for until golden brown.

Top it if you wish, with whipped cream, or chocolate and caramel as my grandmother did, or both. Nuts are acceptable, but you run the risk of traipsing into Derby Pie territory if you add nuts (pecans are a preferred favorite, by the way).

I baked my pie with a bought crust, drinking a tasty Ale-8 and feeling mildly homesick after talking to a friend of mine still there. My filling made a little more than what filled up the pie crust – in fact, almost a whole half cup more. Surprise! After I put the pie in the oven, and cleaned up the mess I’d made on the floor getting the pie to the oven rack, I spent the next twenty minutes eating creamed sugar, butter and cream off a spatula and attempting to convince myself that I should stop for fear of raw egg disease. (It didn’t work.)

Though the raw pie filling was tasty, the cooked pie was a lot tastier. Creamy, almost unbearably sweet, it was perfect with a glass of cold milk. Maybe it’s not the healthiest choice for breakfast, but it sure did get me going.

Pitas, bread and… pie?

I managed to spend the entirety of yesterday baking, from wheat bread to pitas. I should’ve known better than to open my mouth about how good I’d gotten with Jayne’s bread, because it definitely didn’t rise as much as it was supposed to. I’m sure that won’t take from the taste, but it’s a little disappointing when my bread doesn’t come out puffy. Still, on a positive note, less puffy bread is more space-efficient.

My pitas were, as I suspected, an experiment. The first four I baked definitely came out flat (though no less tasty). I remembered that I’d forgotten the ‘dash’ of baking powder, so I rolled it into the last four dough balls. Those pitas puffed a little more – about halfway, sort of – but not enough to cut in half and stuff. I’ll be researching for another experiment in puffy pitas in the days to come (this entry at Farmgirl Fare looks promising), but in the meantime, I’ll just eat my soft, non-risen flatbreads in various ways. They’re still tasty, even if they’re not risen. I don’t discriminate – I eat regardless of appropriate shape or size.

Now, as for the pie part of the entry, here it is: I am taking divine advice, straight from the Lord.

I mean it.

The Lord wants me to bake a pie. Who am I to deny that? Besides, it’s not like he wants an ark or a skyscraper or a pony from scratch. Just a pie.

I’ve been getting little nudges all day. First, I was greeted with Joy’s Buttermilk Pie, made thanks to Evan over at buttercakes (go visit!). This looked so much like cheesecake that I swore it was until I read the post. Not cheesecake – buttermilk pie. That somehow got me started on chess pie – and Lisa’s lemon version – which took me to transparent pie. Now, transparent pie is apparently only native to Kentucky (correct me if I’m wrong), which takes me down a whole ‘nother road, but that’s a secret plan of attack for the future. Right now, I’m only worried about the pie.

The transparent pie update will be forthcoming sometime later tonight, when I get back from karate and can justify eating a piece of it because of all the sweating I’ll have been doing for an hour. I hope you’re as excited as I am.

In a domestic frenzy.

I always knew there was something to be said for housewives and stay-at-home moms (or dads) in the world, but I never really thought about it being so much… work. I guess I should’ve known better – I’m always wishing I had more time to clean the house, or bake (something) or cook for leftovers, or get ready for work tomorrow. It’s really that I just suck at time management, but having a full sunup to sundown schedule usually doesn’t help. (Aided by a great overappreciation for my ‘free days,’ of course.)

Though my big room still isn’t clean by any means, at least I’ve gotten comfortable in my kitchen. I cleaned it up and reorganized some things Friday, and I’ve been cooking ever since. Both because I needed to so I’d have food for the rest of the week, and because I’m trying to readjust my eating habits again. I’ve even gone so far as to (sort of) plan a menu for suppers and leftovers for the work week. Actually, this domestic, homegrown frenzy of mine hit late last week, when I found a recipe for creme fraiche, which I made, and then decided I wanted homemade mayo, too. I also found some recipes for butter, both cultured and non, which I will be making when my current butter stores are used up.

Hardboiled eggs have been waiting on me to do something with them, ever since I (re)boiled them middle of last week. I planned on egg salad, a favorite of mine, but my hardboiling prowess from my highschool years seems to have failed me. I couldn’t get a hardboiled egg cooked right to save my life. Which brings me to the great Egg Experiment – can you reboil eggs? Turns out that yes you can, as long as the eggs are kept cold in the meantime (to reduce the possibility of botulism, of course). Just pop them in cold water, bring them to a boil, cover and turn off the heat. In short, treat them like raw eggs. The yolks may not be pretty, but they’re solid. I can eat them. Maybe soon I’ll rediscover my boiling niche and I won’t have to make twice-boiled eggs. I hope.

In any case, I took my hardboiled eggs, my creme fraiche and my homemade mayo and voila! made homemade egg salad! With a little paprika, a little cayenne and a little fresh-ground black pepper, I was set to go. Egg salad for lunch the rest of the week! I’m in the process of making pitas right now; my dough is resting comfortably in an oiled bowl. I found the recipe here on Baker’s Banter, the King Arthur Flour blog,
and I think what drew me to it most was PJ’s pita dilemma. PJ’s pitas don’t always rise, whether because of the heat of the oven or the yeast or maybe she just doesn’t always hold her mouth right. My little tiny oven has a tendency to run hot, so I’m hoping that maybe mine will pop prettily. I’m expecting to make up some egg salad stuffed sammies to take to work this week, and maybe I’ll mix up a batch of grilled chicken salad with green grapes, cubed apples and celery to wrap up in some pita bread, too. I think the best part is that I don’t have to despair about buying pitas – or any bread, for that matter – because of high food costs anymore. I can make my own ’specialty’ foods, breads included.

I used to have a serious fear of bread-making, but no longer. I’m actually getting pretty good at mixing up full batches of soft wheat versions of Jayne’s Soft White Bread. A full batch lasts me about two and a half to three weeks, depending on how many sandwiches I eat (lately, it’s been a lot). I’m moving on to other things than loaf bread now, starting with these pitas. Sometime this week, I plan on making up a batch of Homesick Texan’s tortillas for some black bean and corn burritos (maybe chicken fajitas). And one of these days, when I use up the copious amounts of dry fettucine and spaghetti in my pantry closet, I’m going to attempt fresh pasta sans pasta machine.

For now, though, I just wanted to share my domestic exploits in bread-making with y’all. I’m off to finish laundry now, before it takes over my bed.

*Sorry to anyone who’s missing photos on here. My machine doesn’t like to download anything from either of my available cameras, and until I figure out why and how to fix it, I can only download pictures at work. Which isn’t always feasible. Thanks for your patience, though.