Thursday: Cheese fries

That's what I want.  So I went back to Teddy's Bigger Burgers to get some.  Apparently that's what my brain thinks of when I'm tired of leftovers. It doesn't help that travel channel was talking about burgers all afternoon.  I was working from home today since the water was shut off for my entire apartment building today from like 8 until 5. It was only supposed to be off until 4, but apparently they couldn't finish in seven hours.  There was still a van sitting downstairs when I got back from dinner, so perhaps they're still working on it.  The hot water pressure is still sucky, but at least the temperature is reasonably warm now.

Tomorrow is Admission Day, so I can sleep in tomorrow.  I don't know what I'm going to do, but I suspect it will look a lot like sitting on the couch doing moderate amounts of work stuff. Woo, Admission Day.  I am thinking that I might try bowling again this weekend, since it seems from past holidays that the Sunday's of three day weekends weren't busy at all.

Wednesday: I probably could have made that last post the daily post and not bothered with this one,

but I kind of wanted that to be a stand alone thing.  Dinner today was more of the same. I think I have one more serving of beef stew, but I don't think that's going to be dinner tomorrow.  I think I'm going to go out and get something.  I don't know what yet, but I kind of feel like not cooking.

I am starting to plan out stuff for next week.  I kind of want fish and chips, and found this recipe that seems to make something that looks good.  I'll probably skimp and not make my own chips, so it might end up being fish and tots.  This will probably be a saturday/sunday dish (depending on when I get groceries), and if I get a large enough fish piece, it'll be a two day thing with leftovers.

I also had this mac and cheese recipe show up in my RSS reader, and it sounds really tasty too.  I've been wanting to make beer-cheese soup for years now, so this might be a good way to get a similar thing done. Then again, I could just make the soup from one of the recipes I have floating around.

Grylt: visit two review

I think I'm going to take a few weeks off from visiting grylt, in the hopes that they get more consistent and the workers learn more about what they're doing.  First, the picture from my visit last week (mashed potatoes, spinach salad, seared ahi):

Here's the picture from today: (potatoes, romaine salad, ahi. I'll admit that I ate a tomato and a couple forkfuls of potatoes before remembering to take a picture):

So, the reasons I'm taking a break:

1. Clearly got less ahi this week than last. Maybe last week was a fluke, but that suggests that serving sizes aren't well defined.  One difference was that last week, the fish was sliced and plated by a guy in a chef jacket.  This week, one of the five girls standing around did that. That leads to the next point:
2. There were about six people working today, but it seemed like only two or three of them were actively preparing food.  The rest seemed to be standing around back in the kitchen.  I don't know how the kitchen is run, but there didn't seem to be anything cooking on the top, but perhaps they were waiting for something in the oven.  Still, it seems like having stations would be the way to go: hot side server, salad server, protein server, checkout, protein chef in kitchen, hot side chef in the kitchen.  That way, everyone has a job, and the line runs smoothly.
3. The guy doing my salad today didn't really seem to know the menu.  There are four different veggie sides listed on the menu, each with a different base and set of toppings.  I asked for the romaine, and after putting a few leaves into the box, he then started adding mandarin oranges. Sure, that's fine, but those belong on the spring mix salad.  He realized this, put the oranges back, and then added the tomatoes, grilled onions, and parmesan.  However, despite having a variety of tongs in the different toppings, he did all of this with the same set.  It was obvious that there were problems when the moisture from the tomatoes and onions caused the parmesan to stick to the tongs. In any case, this seems like the wrong way to do things.
4. After all the sides were done, I had to wait a few minutes while no one was bothering with the protein station.  I could see the ahi, including the one slice (that I got) that wasn't sitting on the plate with the rest of the unsliced fish, but down on the slicing counter. However, no one took the initiative to slice and plate, as they all seemed to be concerned with the previous order that had piled up on a back table due to a missing ingredient (either chicken or tofu, because everything the steak and fish were available).  Wouldn't having her pay and wait, or simply wait be the better option than ignoring all subsequent orders?
5. When a first time customer came in and asked if they had a printed menu he could take to study at home, three different workers rushed into the back to find them.  Two of them came back, half handed the menu to the guy, and then took it back because they'd been printed/copied wrong and the top was cut off.  The third apparently knew where the secret stash of correct copies lived, and was able to help the guy.  I would think that study-aid menus would work better if they are out where people can get them as they're standing in line.

As for flavor: today's potatoes were better than last week, which is good because I forgot my drug-dealer folder of sea salt at home.  Everything else tasted perfectly fine, but I'm concerned about the consistency and future quality.  They've only been open for a month or two, so I'm guessing this is just an issue of getting everyone trained and getting a system in place.  With that in mind, I'll take a month or two off, and then stop back in after they've hopefully sorted things out some more.

Wait. what?

Is that clusterfluff ice cream with extra peanut butter and some chocolate chips?

Fuck yeah.

Tuesday: What is the correct term?

No picture, because my kitchen is too messy at the moment to find enough space to take one.

Same dinner today as Sunday. I did pick up a petite loaf of sourdough at the bakery, so I had a chunk of that.  Which leads to the post title question: if you rip off a chunk of bread, what is the word for that chunk? "Chunk" of bread sounds lame, and it's not really a slice. Knob? Google seems to like "hunk of bread" better than "chunk of bread," but I don't really like either of them.  It really doesn't like "parliament of bread," so I guess the rooks win that one.

Monday: Fuck you, Puff Pastry

I decided to cheat and pick up some puff pastry to do the crust to turn my stew into a pie.  Unfortunately, despite par baking the bottom and side crusts, and sealing the top down, I ended up with this.  None of the puff pastry really cooked fully, leaving the weird metallic taste due to the fake-butter fats in freezer puff pastry.  I ended up just kicking it to the side and eating the tasty guts.  I think I'll just stick with that and do something else with the puff pastry (maybe just slice and bake and then sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar).

Also: asparagus!

Sunday: Some things are simply not available in the tropics

The plan for today was to get groceries, and then make meat pies for dinner.  The last minute decision was to make both this recipe for traditional UP pasties, and also make my own "blasphemous" concept of a meatpie.

However, this was thwarted by the fact that rutabaga does not exist in Hawaii. I looked at four different grocery stores (WF, Safeway, Foodland, Times) and only at the last did I find any reference to them at all. Under the sign that mentioned that rutabagas are in fact something that exists and can be eaten, I found this:

None of these things look like rutabaga.  That makes any attempt to do a meatpie battle between traditional and blasphemous unfair. I can't claim it's a fair battle if I skip a vital ingredient.  The WF guy claimed that they get rutabaga in for the holidays, and the sign at Times suggests that they have them periodically.  I will be able to do this battle at some point, but that won't be today.

After spending way more time than I wanted driving to all the grocery stores I could think of, I got to work making my meatpie filling.  Here's a vague ingredient list (no play by play on this, because those are harder to do):

• 1/2lb bacon (this ended up being closer to 1/4 by the time I finished nibbling)
• 1/2lb ground beef
• 1/2lb ground pork
• 1/2lb ribeye steak
• 2 onions, sliced thinly
• 1/2 carrot, quartered and thinly sliced
• 3 yukon gold potatoes, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 big portabello mushrooms, diced
• can of beef broth
• some marsala
• 1/2 oz dried porcini (although had I known I'd be driving all over, I'd have picked this up at Foodland, where the wine people have this in bulk at half the price)
• 1tsp-ish each rosemary and sage

Ok, here are the steps. Each step is followed by an implied "let cook" or "mix together and cook for 10-15 minutes."

1. Fry bacon in dutch oven, remove when cooked fully, and remove and reserve bacon grease.
2. Add porcini to a saucepan with some water, and simmer to rehydrate.
3. Add steak to dutch oven, and sear on both sides. Remove to the bowl with the bacon.
4. Add back a bit of grease and then add onions, and cover until the onions have been broken down into a nice jam.  I didn't want these to caramelize, just be fully cooked and browned.
5. Scoot onions to one side of the pan, and then add ground beef and pork and brown.
6. Mix meat and onions, scoot, and then add potatoes, carrot, and garlic.
7. Add mushrooms to mix.
8. Chop bacon and slice steak into quarter inch strips and add.
9. Add beef broth, marsala, and herbs to pan with porcinis, and bring to a boil.
10. Add liquid to dutch oven, and stir to mix
11. Add some of reserved bacon grease to now-empty saucepan (1 tbs-ish?), and add equal amount of flour to form roux. When it turns golden, ladle sufficient liquid back to form a thick gravy.  Add gravy back to dutch oven, and stir to mix.
12. Salt and pepper to taste.

The plan was to use this as the filling for my meat pie, using my pie crust recipe.  The idea was to put a bottom crust into a greased ramekin, dock, and then parbake until set and slightly browned.  Then, fill the shell with the stew, and top with another piece of crust, splash on some eggwash, and then return to the oven to finish baking.

However, after spending a large chunk of the afternoon driving around, I didn't really feel like fighting the heat and humidity in an effort to make a pie crust.  I decided to just switch around the whole plan and just have a bowl of stew for dinner instead.  I might pick up some prepared pie crust tomorrow, and use that instead. It's also not completely impossible that I'll feel motivated to make my own.  Anyway, the resulting dish:

I paired it with a thick chunk of sharp cheddar ("vintage" I believe is what the label called it).  If I had had a baguette that wasn't construction grade, I would have added a slice of that as well.  I needed to add a bit more salt to the final product, something that wouldn't have been necessary if I'd remembered that I had planned on adding an umami burst to the liquid component by adding a couple anchovy filets, a healthy splash of Worcestershire sauce, and some tomato paste from the tube in the fridge.  That should have added enough residual salt to correct things.

Now, given that I'm unlikely to be cooking lobster anytime soon, I'll add this picture without further comment:

Oatmeal chocolate chip muffins!

After being told that such a thing as "Clusterfluff" ice cream exists, I had to go out and attempt to find this at Safeway (it was delicious, but it's very rich, so you can't really eat much in a sitting).  Since I was there, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to get the ingredients I needed for the chocolate chip oatmeal muffins that I'd been thinking about making. This way, I could make them tonight and be able to eat one for breakfast tomorrow before getting a real set of groceries.

I had a really nice mise framed up using the monkey plate, but my phone decided that I wasn't really serious about those pictures, and they didn't get recorded.  :(  That means we have to go with a boring list of ingredients instead (I'm copying the recipe because I never trust links to live forever. Plus, I can specify any changes made):

• 1c flour (this was in my measuring cup)
• 1c oats (already in a mixing bowl)
• 1tsp baking soda (in the alligator segment of the monkey plate, along with)
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/3c brown sugar (in the elephant segment)
• 1 egg (in it's cracking bowl)
• 1/2 stick butter (1/4c) softened (walrus segment)
• 1.5tsp vanilla extract (in a shot glass in the alligator segment)
• 1c chocolate chips (monkey segment)

Preheat oven to 350.  Pour half the milk over the oats, and leave for 5-10 minutes to soak and hydrate (I totally had a picture of this too, but the phone ate that as well.)

Add the sugar to the egg, and mix until smooth.

Add the butter and vanilla, and mix that together as well.

Add the rest of the dry ingredients, leaving only the milk and chips out. Mix-y mix-y mix-y.

OMG THE MILK! Probably not a surprise, was it? Guess what? Mix carefully, because until that milk is incorporated enough to not be a puddle, it's going to splash all over.

Fold in the chocolate chips. The original recipe calls for muffin liners, but I didn't pick any up, so I just smeared my muffin tin with butter.  If you have liners, or can reasonably make the trip, it's probably worthwhile to get them.

Divide up into the muffin tin. Watch out for greedy monkeys, as they may be spying on you, looking to see how they can get those chocolate chips back. If you have turbinado sugar, the original recipe suggest sprinking some on top. I don't, so I didn't. Bake for 15-18 minutes (or, 22ish minutes if your oven is kind of sucky) until a skewer comes out clean.

Pop one out, and cover it in butter:

Keep in mind that since these muffins have be absolute minimum leavening in them, they're not going to puff up a lot.  It probably would have been a good idea to let them cool a bit before removing from the pan, because the bases kind of squish down.

The other 11. If you look closely, you'll see that a few chocolate chips are missing, and the muffin at 1 o'clock has had a bit of a structural problem. The melty chocolate chips don't really have much affinity either way between sticking and not, so this is where muffin liners would have helped a lot.

I'm not sure where to rank these on the scale of healthy-not. The oatmeal makes me think that they're healthy, and if I'd used the whole wheat flour specified in the original recipe, that'd be double true.  They're also not really full of sugar, so that makes it sound like they're really just some deliciously toasted oatmeal. Of course, then there's the chocolate chips. Remember how I mentioned above that the low level of leavening makes the bottoms collapse if you eat them hot? If you compress the bread part of these muffins, what do you think happens? Yep, you get a bottom crust, and then a disk of molten chocolate that has crushed all the puffy bread, then the muffin top that's fluffy again. That's delicious, but it certainly makes it seem like these have to be more on the side of unhealthy.

Either way, they're full of delicious, and I think that they will do nicely as breakfast this week.

Saturday: Planning

I didn't get up in time to go to the farmer's market or make it to WF before the parking lot filled up (it seems if I get there any later than about 11AM, it's full of people), so I pushed off grocery shopping until tomorrow.  That gives me the opportunity to actually plan out a list instead of randomly buying things.

I think the plan for this week (or at least up through wednesday) is to make meat pies.  This is basically to steal the pasty idea, but not have to be bound by any of the complicated rules that seem to govern "official pasty" recipes. I want to make them individual, but I'm not sure if I have the hardware to make that possible.  It seems like if my filling is too liquid (which it probably will be if I go with the onion gravy idea I'm thinking about), then making stand-alone pasty-style pies might be a problem.  This could be solved by using ramekins, but I don't have enough for a full batch.

My other thought is that I want to make these muffins. They don't really match with the meat pie idea, but sound like they'd be delicious for breakfasts this week.  Then again, thinking about it, I can't really come up with anything that matches "meat pie" in my list of sides.  I plan on putting some veggies inside, but a salad probably isn't a bad idea. Maybe some asparagus?

Friday: busy

I took today off from work. Things accomplished:

1. Doctor appointment
2. Lunch at Arby's, along with important shopping (books and basting brush. No more will I need to try to do eggwash with my fingers. I'm using tools now!)
3. Slurpee. I missed out on 7-11 day, and my car was super hot from being parked at the mall.
4. Trip to Punchbowl to go to the observation lookout.
5. Drove Tantalus/Round Top Drive waiting for the message on my phone that tells me that
6. My new laptop was delivered to the office (no matter where I deliver things, it's never the right place). Picking this up was next.
7. Arrive home to discover that the book I ordered on July 20th had finally made it's way from Toledo. Google tells me that I could have flown there, picked up the book, and then used a combination of bicycling and kayaking to return home faster than the post office.  
8. Battled installation issues (out of box Debian doesn't support wpa for wireless connections; stable doesn't support my video card, so the need to immediately upgrade to unstable was stronger than usual; I can never remember how to install "all the fonts," so tomorrow I'll have to install a bunch of packages until I get all the fonts I need).
9. Copycat dinner from yesterday.
10. Catching up on the internet that I've missed.
11. Watched an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. This show is worse than I was expecting.

Thursday: part two

I was going to make a salad to go with this, but I figured that the one at lunch counted. I have apples, and the skimpy apple on the lunch salad made me want one of those for a snack later.

I also got a craving for mac and cheese, so I got another lazy deli case thing of m&c after work. I did a better job warming the buns today, too. Woo.

Thursday: Lunch!

I went to Grylt for lunch, after having references to it pop up all over for the past few weeks.  My choices were:

• Whipped Potatoes (a bit cool, and seriously lacking salt.  Next time I go here, I think I'll pre-pack some salt from home).
• Baby Spinach Salad (which comes with one apple slice.  Two or three would have been a bit better.)
• Grilled Ahi (wonderfully delicious)

I had to wait on the tuna, because it was still being grilled as I was ordering.  "Chef" topped it with a sauce without asking, but since I wasn't sure which sauce I wanted, it worked out well.  I think I got the garlic chili sauce, but it might have been the woefully vague "asian fusion."  Who knows what that contains.

In any case, very good lunch, and definitely a new addition to the list of lunch places.

Wednesday: "And now I want a hot dog"

I didn't know what I was going to do for dinner for the rest of the week, but then I read the nytimes article about hotdogs. Then I saw Julie's tweet about the article. Then I read through the associated slide show during lunch.

So that kind of sorted it out.

I got the fancy organic dogs shown above, and next time, I'll probably get different ones. The flavor is a bit weak, so maybe taking all the poisons out is a problem. Stupid "low poison" diet. It also doesn't help that I got wf buns, which are pretty much universally not that good.

So the strategy for today was: preheat cast iron pan in the oven while heating it for the tots (more on these below). Once the pan was hot, put the buns in it to warm and soften. I should have done this longer. Next, pat of butter, followed by some slices of onion and the dogs. The rest is self-explanatory.

The tots didn't brown as much as I would have liked, but I think that's generally the case of baking them. You'll notice the plating picture has a half eaten hot dog. I got hungry while waiting, since I bumped u the cooking time in the hope they'd magically brown. Anyway, I wanted them cheese, so put some shredded cheese on the plate, then added the tots. Cover with a monkey bowl while I finish the first dog, and you get the cheesy-tot-o-pi (like octopi) shown above.

Tuesday: I wanted hawaiian punch

However, that isn't really sold here. I went with the backup plan and least thirst quenching drink ever: POG (that'll be a wikipedia link eventually). The wonderous thirst amplifying power comes from the fact that the second ingredient is sugar, making it basically just candy in drink form.

Mexican leftovers was the dinner plan, with a bit of extra cheese to en-nacho-ify the leftover chips. Of course, this means I need to come up with a plan for tomorrow. Fish? Maybe something steak-y? I noticed today that the pizza place by work was selling meat pies. Maybe that'd be an idea? That kind of requires a bit of cooking, so that might be better as a weekend scheme. Then again, that reminds me of the pasty idea. They're mostly the same things, just from different places.

Monday: making other people cook for me

I decided over the weekend that since it's been a long time since I didn't cook dinner (except for a few oddities, but I think those mostly involved taco bell, and therefore, don't count as dinner by definition), I'd go out. I went to the mexican place (link to be added once I get to a real computer). Om nom chicken/beef/cheese enchiladas. I still don't like eating out alone, but laziness won out.

My main concern is that it often feels like the restaurant people really don't want you there. I kind of got this feeling when my dinner arrived maybe five minutes after I ordered. It wasn't very busy, so it's entirely possible that the kitchen wasn't doing anything.

It was tasty, and I have leftovers for dinner tomorrow. That pushes off any further food planning until Wednesday.

Kiwis: not as soft

Nor as sweet, so I have the acid burn feeling on the left side of my mouth.

Hypothesis: kiwi would be really good with some chocolate. However, I have no chocolate, and now, no more kiwi.

Sunday: now I want corndogs

I decided against the sausage for dinner, as I'm beginning to suspect that something in them disagrees with me. That's unfortunate, because they're really pretty tasty. The other problem is that I now need to come up with a new strategy for this week. I don't really want to shift up the mexican, because I liked the idea of putting that midweek. Still, that's probably the easiest option.

Then, I can get groceries on Wednesday, and schedule out the rest of the week. I kind of want to do another fish thing, so that'll be Wednesday. I guess the rest of the week will be a function of what looks good when I'm shopping.

As good as corn dogs sound, I don't really want to deep fry hot dogs in my corn bread batter, mostly because I don't want to dee fry things. Too bad someone doesn't make healthy corn dogs. :(

Saturday: early stages of internet withdrawal

I hate not having a functional laptop. The replacement is ordered, but lenovo seems to have a terrible supply chain for fulfillment. I blame those jerks going back to school.

Jerks.

Today was mostly a waste, but it seems like it's a good thing I skipped going to WF this morning. The news mentioned that a cement truck overturned on h1 at pretty much the same time I would have been driving past. Afterwards, the highway was basically a parking lot. Moreso than usual.

I did drive to kapolei to go to wendy's for lunch. Google suggested that it would take one "wait wait, don't tell me" to get there (and similarly, a car talk to get back). Google underestimates the only strip of highway on this island where you can easily go 70p.

Dinner was more of the sausage/pasta from Thursday. I picked u some bread to make some quick broiler garlic bread. That's probably the pplan for tomorrow and Monday, possibly in sammich form (plus salads, I have lettuce again, even if it isn't good farmers market lettuce). Then I think go out to the mexican place on Tuesday, followed by the weekly grocery run to pick up food for the rest of the week (although mexican place tends to be a two-day-with-leftovers place. I don't know what I'll do after that, but it's a start at least.

Friday: meh

Nothing great today due to two things.

1) I've felt like crap all day.
2) My laptop seems to have died. Time to get a new one, I guess. :-/

At least this wacky japanese cooking show is interesting. Apparently fruit tart beats chocolate volcano cake. The tart had cloudberries, which seem to have been the deciding factor. Also, I recognize this italian guy from an episode of Iron Chef.

Thursday: Finally

I've been planning for weeks to make something using these sausages:

and the can of crushed tomatoes I've had in a gladware thing in my freezer for a month or two. The story behind them:

1. The WF people had sample day with the sausages, and convinced me to get a package.
2. I opened what I thought was a can of whole tomatoes, only to find they were crushed.  I didn't want them, so I froze them until some future date where I would be less picky about the shape of my tomatoes.

I went with just a quick simple sauce: three cloves garlic, a biggish shallot, both chopped relatively finely, and then fried in a chunk of butter.  Once they were toasting and fragrant, add in the tomatoes, some salt and pepper, and a chiffonade of basil.  Let cook for an hour or so, adding some tomato paste and a pinch of brown sugar to correct the acid level.  Blitz it with the stick blender to smooth it all out. The sausages (as is barely visible in the official picture above) come fully cooked, so this was the point where I slipped them in to warm as the sauce simmered away.  Add some penne, and:

Then add some parmesan and hunk of leftover baguette that I totally should have toasted a bit:

Very good, although I thought that the spiciness of the sausage would mingle into the sauce.  It probably would have if I'd cooked it longer, but then it wouldn't really be a quick sauce (not that it was as quick as I would have wanted).  I think maybe I'd add a dash of red pepper flakes if I do this again.  Maybe a different spice.  The sauce has a good tomato flavor, but it kind of needs something extra to perk it up, I think.