Emergency Backup Food Overnight Thread – August 22,2024

Greetings late night snackers!

Well, tonight Weird Dave is needing backup (don’t worry, he’s fine) so I pulled this moldy food thread out from the back of the refrigerator and we’ll just make it work for tonight’s Overnight Thread. Waste not, want not! (And if you do not want this, feel free to let the comments go wherever the spirits lead you.)

Favorite Pans & Kitchen Utensils

Do you find that amidst all of your pots, pans, and kitchen gadgets, there are a few that get a disproportionate amount of use? There are cabinets full of pans, baking dishes, saucepans, cookie sheets, utensils, etc in my house, most of which get some use, albeit infrequently. But then there is my 8.5-inch Circulon skillet, which I ought to just leave on the stove-top since it is used so often, especially for eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and whatever piece of meat I want to pan fry. It just replaced a 20-year old equivalent that I finally wore out.

Another heavily-used item of mine is this baked potato holder, which bakes four potatoes quickly and ensures that they are cooked thoroughly on the inside. I just put a little oil and kosher salt on the spuds (no foil), then skewer them and slap this in the oven at 400 degrees.

My wife’s most-used tool is this contraption that slices, pits, and scoops avocados.

One tool that I’m glad to rarely use anymore is a cheese grater. Pre-shredded cheese was not a thing when I was a child, or at least not in our household, so cheese grating was a necessary chore for taco night. That thing could do some damage to your knuckles once the block of cheese was getting small.

What are your most heavily used pans and gadgets?

Za-talian-aki Marinade

In the suburban, heartland home that I grew up in, Italian salad dressing was the all-purpose marinade, but eventually we expanded to include exotic sauces such as teriyaki and soy. (Grilling teriyaki marinated flank steak was almost like taking a trip to the Orient!) Anyhow, Italian dressing and teriyaki sauce are still staples for me, but I recently created something new and delicious with those component ingredients.

There are a couple of restaurants my wife and I enjoy dining at that have za’atar seasoned dishes, which I really like, so I bought some za’atar seasoning. One afternoon I decided to marinate a chicken breast, so I splashed together equal amounts of Italian dressing and teriyaki sauce, then I sprinkled in some za’atar and threw the meat into it. To cook the chicken breast, I pulled out my favorite skillet and cooked the chicken until it was caramelized on both sides, and the remaining marinade had cooked down into a thick sauce. It was really, really good. In fact, it was so good I did it again today. That is the header photo.

Any za’atar fans out there?

I love coffee, be it dark roast, medium roast, black, with cream and sugar, chicory, with steamed milk, iced, whatever. The only coffee I actively dislike is coffee that has sat on a burner and acquired that nasty, overcooked, rancid taste.

That said, can we please stop equating dark roast coffee with strong coffee? My favorite is fresh ground, medium roast, arabica coffee, brewed strong and served black. Because restaurant / coffee shop coffee has historically been weakly brewed, medium-roast, robusta coffee, it is understandable that people associate medium-roast coffee with flavorlessness. It doesn’t have to be that way.

My wake-up coffee is Dunkin whole bean coffee, ground fresh at home, and brewed strong. It is delicious, with a great depth of flavor that is absent in dark roasts. (But I don’t bother buying a cup of coffee when I’m at Dunkin because they don’t brew it strong enough for me.)

Starbucks hasn’t helped the situation with their “Blonde” roast. Apparently reacting to people like me who prefer a good cup of non-burnt coffee, Starbucks came up with this “light roast” which is absolutely devoid of flavor. Maxwell House coffee brewed weakly and served from an urn in a church foyer has more flavor than Starbucks Blonde.

Seasonal Foods & a Defense of Pumpkin Spiced Everything

We’re just a few weeks away from the pumpkin spice-ification of everything. Much mockery will ensue, but not from me. I welcome it because seasonal foods help make the change of seasons special, with something different to look forward to.

Chili, stews, and pot roasts are a treat to look forward to in winter. Strawberries from my backyard are a special treat that only occur in spring. Roast turkey with gravy would be delicious any time of year, but eating it only during the holiday season makes it extra special, and worth the work of the big meal. Right now, my wife and I are eating a lot of fresh watermelon and peaches, something we only do in summer.

Sadly, I’m not eating a lot of homegrown tomatoes this summer. Something got to my tomato crop this year, and despite having a variety of “disease resistant” plants, they apparently weren’t disease-resistant enough.

Anyhow, I may not drink pumpkin-spiced lattes, but pumpkin loaf and pumpkin bundt cakes are something I always enjoy in fall.

It’s Almost Apple Time

I love apples so much that I eat them year-round, almost daily. That said, the arrival of new-crop apples in August is as exciting to me as the arrival of pumpkin spice lattes is for Ugg-wearing women. The first apples from the mountains of North Georgia start to get harvested in early to mid-August, and they are delicious. I may have to make the short trip down there and load up.

I’ve got a decent little crop of homegrown (Gala) apples coming along too, although they generally aren’t ready for picking until September.

For the off-season months, especially summer, any apples in the grocery store are old and have been kept in storage for months. The newish Cosmic Crisp apple is the best I’ve found for retaining its crispness and flavor into the summer months.

Does anyone actually prefer Red Delicious apples to other varietals? I didn’t even know that I liked apples until I got older, because the Red Delicious apples of my childhood were so devoid of sweetness and flavor.

Potato America vs Rice America vs Pasta America

Both sides of my family are prairie / midwestern folks of northern European ancestry. They are potato people. I am pretty sure I never saw rice served at any meal prepared by either set of grandparents. Casseroles of my youth were more likely to have crackers or potato chips in them than they were to contain rice.

Fortunately, I grew up in Central Texas, where “Potato America” converged with “Rice America.” Plate #1 at any Mexican restaurant had Spanish rice and refried beans. Along the Gulf Coast of Texas are several major rice growing counties, and Texas snobbery naturally made people proud to cook with Texas-grown rice. The Cajun influence with its rice-based cuisine stretches from Louisiana west to Houston, and the influx of Vietnamese immigrants along the Gulf Coast brought more rice dishes. I love it all. I may not have been born a “Rice American,” but I became one.

I can picture a line drawn through Texas and the American South dividing Rice America and Potato America. But there is also “Pasta America” in the Northeast of the country. I was surprised the first time I encountered orzo, bemused that chefs were cooking with “rice” made out of pasta rather than rice made out of, well, rice.

Anyhow, it’s all delicious – potatoes, rice, and pasta.

Which type of starch-American are you?

Throckmorton’s First Law of Live Music: “If There’s an Upright Bass in the Band, It’s Probably Going to be Good”

Let’s close out with the late, great Guy Clark performing the late, great John Denver’s “Homegrown Tomatoes”

Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon and lettuce and homegrown tomatoes,
Up in the mornin', out in the garden
Get you a ripe one, don't get a hard one
Plant 'em in the spring, eat 'em in the summer
All winter without ‘em is a culinary bummer,
I forget all about the sweatin' and the diggin'
Every time I go out and pick me a big'un

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?
There’s only two things that money can't buy
And that's true love and homegrown tomatoes

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 10:00 PM

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