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Food Thread: Carbon Steel For The Loss!

Seasoning steel pans is an exercise in frustration and failure, unlike the same process with cast-iron. I am not a metallurgist, So I can only guess at the difference in the surface's ability to absorb oil and then hold onto it in its polymer state. But I do know one thing...that expensive carbon-steel pan is a huge pain in the ass to season, and the seasoning is as fickle and transitory as a puff of smoke in a windstorm.

Big Pan is as evil a cabal as any on earth; their teasing bromides about the superiority of their products should be outlawed, and their executives banished to a world of stuck-on eggs and burned steaks.

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Beyond Meat and the few other companies that tried to ride the media-demand for fake meat are discovering that the free market is a stone-cold bitch!

If you invested $10,000 in Beyond Meat in 2021, today you would have $41

Laboratory-grown "meat" is a misnomer. Meat is the flesh of animals. And in the United States of America, those animals are mostly cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep. Coincidentally, we have a huge industry that has evolved around the market-driven demand for...meat! It is amazingly efficient, and while there are obvious environmental issues, for the most part we manage the waste effectively, while supplying inexpensive and reasonable-quality products to every American.

Chicken and pork can be had for less than $2/lb. Beef is suffering a (hopefully) temporary blip in price, but it is still far less expensive than in most other countries. America has a successful market-driven system to provide meat to consumers, and the idea that artificial "meat" will be even modestly successful is a real head-scratcher.

And the market agrees!

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David Liebovitz is pretty damned irritating, but he knows how to write, and he knows how to bake, so I will cut him a bit of slack. Well, also because sticky buns are one of my few sweet baked goods weaknesses, and in particular the pecan version. Hell, Maple Pecan Sticky Buns even has maple syrup!

I have a few pecans left from a gift of some delicious ones, so I think I will use them in this recipe...

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This is oddly pleasing, although it veers into weirdness towards the end. Which I guess is why Weasel sent it to me!

[Hat Tip: Weasel]

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RFK Jr. is having a profound effect on American food producers. This is a fascinating and overdue change in the way our foods are made, and while I am not in the hysterical, "Food Dyes Will Kill Us All" camp, I would prefer that my food have as few ingredients as possible, particularly when some of those ingredients are artificial dyes that provide no sustenance.

Target's Entire Cereal Assortment Will be Made Without Certified Synthetic Colors

I'll bet the left is torn about this one though. They hate anything that isn't natural and holistic and organic and free-range and blah...blah...blah, but it is being driven by RFK Jr and Donald Trump!

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This is a profoundly disturbing recipe. French Toast is an abomination when made as a sickly-sweet ersatz dessert, but is quite delicious when made correctly as a savory breakfast dish.

Croque Monsieur is an equally delicious dish that is nothing more than a tarted up grilled-cheese sandwich.

But blend the two together and you get something alien to all that is good and tasty and fine.

What is Alton Brown thinking here? French Toast Croque Monsieur sounds like a horror show! Gruyere, ham, and....syrup?

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I didn't feel like cooking tonight,

so I made a sandwich for dinner

It wasn't so much as a sandwich as much as it was just bread.

I guess more just grain.

Fermented grain.

Distilled, fermented grain.

I had whisky for dinner tonight.

Yes, it is old, but it amuses me!
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I am a month or so from removing the mulch and insulation around my garlic pot and letting it run free in the wind and the sun! Hopefully it isn't dead and will grow some marvelous heirloom garlic which I will use to great effect in Spaghetti Aglio Olio!

In case it doesn't, send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

Rumor has it that the Bourbon Bubble is bursting. I have seen no evidence of decreasing prices, but maybe the bursting started somewhere else! I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!