The Grocery Marathon

Here's a recent cartoon that speaks to me on several levels -

As you know, one of my favorite pastimes is cooking. I get a huge rush out of turning a pile of assorted ingredients into a well-presented, heavenly-smelling dinner, and always enjoy the satisfaction of sitting back at the end of the meal with the knowledge that I made it myself ... often using the herbs grown in my own garden. Cooking is my drug.

If you enjoy cooking, it also helps if you enjoy grocery shopping ... and unlike a lot of men, I really like grocery shopping.

There aren't many days that I don't visit one of the local major grocery stores or one of the smaller ethnic markets that are located all over our area, searching for some ordinary or unusual ingredient for the latest culinary experiment. During our trip to Pennsylvania last weekend, I returned with a huge cabbage (between 5 and 10 pounds), two large, beautiful heads of cauliflower, two quart boxes of brussels sprouts, and all sorts of other bounty from the Mennonite farms of the area. Last night, about 1/4 of the cabbage went into one of our favorite recipes - stir-fried chicken with cabbage, cashew nuts, onions, and mushrooms ... a great dish that always leaves at least one more meal's worth of leftovers*.

My other ongoing project is an attempt to make our own ginger ale. I've been brewing a "ginger bug" - similar to a sourdough starter - that forms the basis of the recipe, and now that the bug appears to be ready, I'm going to make the actual ginger ale later today. It needs to ferment and steep for 2 to 3 days ... I'll let you know how it turns out.

Oh, and getting back to the cartoon we started with - I'm the local master of carrying 75 bags of groceries at once to avoid making multiple trips from the car to the pantry. But on the other hand, the marathon continues when I realize - as I invariably do - that I've forgotten something and need to go back to the store. Oy.

And now all this talk about food and cooking has made me hungry. Time for breakfast!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* E-mail me at "der(underscore)blogmeister(at)yahoo(dot)com" if you want the recipe.

Cutting Remarks

As you probably know by now, Dear Readers, I love to cook. There's a huge element of satisfaction involved in turning a pile of ingredients into a delectable meal, especially when I know that a lot of my fellow men* are desperately challenged by the task of serving up a bowl of cream of boiled water soup.

But actually, the joy of putting a fine meal on the table is secondary in many respects to the joy of using a large, sharp knife to cut up the ingredients. This is my preferred method of taking out my suppressed aggression ... and it's perfectly safe, as long as you're not too close to the cutting board when I think about the latest stupid Facebook comment or Congressional buffoonery.

I have a collection of very good knives of which I'm very proud and very protective - they're from the German manufacturer Wüsthof, and the series is called Culinar**. They're stylish, very sharp, and nobody complains about the menu when I'm holding a 10-inch chef's knife.

Many people ask, though, why I need so many different knives. They all cut stuff, right? So why do you need all those different ones? Here's a handy chart I found online that helps to explain it for you:

The Culinar series doesn't have a cutlass, yet. But you can bet that as soon as it comes out, I'm getting it. How else can I chop vegetables and repel boarders at the same time?

I run a cutting-edge kitchen, dontcha know!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* And, more and more, women.

** Here's a useful link, in case you're thinking about birthday or Christmas gifts for me already.

Eating Right for Better Sex

This is another of those posts with an adult theme. I've noticed that my readership statistics skyrocket when I'm writing about sex, so I may as well go with what works ...

I'm not revealing any particular secrets when I note that we are living in a sex-drenched society. From the mandatory sex scene in almost every movie and most cable TV dramas to the Viagra™ and Cialis™ commercials on prime-time TV to the lascivious gyrations of dancers in music videos, sex is everywhere.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love sex. If it weren't for sex, I wouldn't be here, and neither would you. And if for some reason you need help, you may be interested in this article by Robin Scher I just read the other day: Listen up, Guys: 14 Foods That May Help Your Sexual Performance.

Oy.

First of all, I think the thing that would most help my sexual performance is a time machine that would take me back about 50 years. At my age, I like food for food's sake, not because it will turn me into a virile stud ready to drop everything in pursuit of comely ladies, but it never hurts to eat right, no matter the reason. Here's how I relate to the 14 foods that are said to help the male libido by either increasing testosterone or helping improve blood flow*:

1. Watermelon. I'm off to a good start ... love watermelon!

2. Tomatoes. I also love tomatoes. I snack on grape tomatoes all day long.

3. Pink Grapefruit. Yum! Like tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables, grapefruit contains lycopene**, an antioxidant that also helps reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

4. Oysters. Uh ... I'll pass. Oysters are said to be a sex food because they are rich in zinc, which aids in the production of testosterone, but if I need zinc that badly, I'll suck on galvanized nails.

5. Caffeine. Holy baloney, with the amount of coffee I put away, I ought to be the poster boy for sex ... I should be the Hugh Hefner of NoVa.

6. Dark Chocolate. Still on a roll ... I absolutely love dark chocolate. Milk chocolate, not so much.

7. Pistachios. I wonder if these are on the list because they look like ... uh ... never mind. I love pistachios.

8. Walnuts. I love walnuts, too.

9. Pine Nuts. And pine nuts, particularly when they're part of a good pesto.

10. Salmon (and other fatty fish). We have a wonderful recipe for marinated, cedar-planked salmon. Perhaps I should make it more often.

11. Kale. Forget it. I love most vegetables, but I'd rather munch on old tinfoil than on kale.

12. Spinach. Spinach is rich in iron, and iron is hard, so I'm sensing a connection, here. And I love spinach.

13. Chilis. Capsaicin, the substance that makes chili peppers hot, boosts blood flow and is also linked to testosterone production. I like spicy foods, so that's a plus.

14. Green Tea. Hot or iced, this is a great drink. And according to the article, it's full of catechins, which help your liver turn fat into energy and improve blood flow.

So, how does my diet stand up?***

My diet is high in twelve out of the 14 foods that are alleged to improve sexual performance. I wonder if it's okay to ask Agnes if she's noticed any difference. No, probably not ... one of my rules to live by is to not ask a question if you're not sure you want to hear the answer.

Have a good day. Eat right ... you can even have my oysters and kale. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* And helping blood flow to certain manly organs doesn't hurt your sex life.

** Before you ask, it has nothing to do with werewolves.

*** Sorry.

Food for Body and Mind

Yesterday my son Matt sent me a link to a post at brainpickings.org that he figured would appeal to me as a reader and a lover of good food - Fictitious Dishes: Elegant and Imaginative Photographs of Meals from Famous Literature. It's a review of a book by artist and illustrator Dinah Fried* that serves up a collection of photographs of gustatory high points from literature. Here are two examples ... the gruel that led Oliver Twist to ask, "Please, sir, I want some more":

And the tea party from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Food and literature go together. One of my favorite novels is Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein (It Can't Always Be Caviar) by German author Johannes Mario Simmel. It's the story of mild-mannered banker Thomas Lieven, who is framed by his business partner, coerced into becoming a secret agent for multiple countries, and turned into a professional criminal and a resistance fighter during World War II. Mr Lieven's hobby is gourmet cooking, and when he's faced with a difficult problem, he clears his mind by preparing a meal ... and all the recipes are included in the text. I read the book in German, but it's been translated into English as The Monte Cristo Cover-Up, which is a stupid title that has nothing to do with the story, but what can you do? The translation is adequate, but the original German is much better**.

Celebrate National Library Week by reading a good book while you enjoy a good dinner. Life doesn't get much better!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* And how appropriate a name is that for the topic, eh?

** Which is often the case when books are translated.

When You're Hot, You're REALLY Hot.

Back last March, I reported on my discovery that the title of the World's Hottest Pepper* had been claimed by the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, the heat of which had been rated at 1.464 million Scoville Units ...

This is a pepper which, should you accidentally drop it on the steel deck of a battleship, will quickly melt its way to the bilge, boil whatever water is there, continue on its merry way through the bottom of the hull, and proceed to the bottom of the ocean, where it will fry any fish that comes to investigate. This is, in short, a seriously hot pepper.

But records are made to be broken, and so it is with the World's Hottest Pepper title. According to this article from Yahoo News, an intrepid grower in South Carolina has claimed the honor with his Carolina Reaper peppers, which measure a staggering 1,569,300 Scoville Units, with an individual pepper blazing in at 2.2 million ...

Feel free to try these in your home recipes. Of course, if you do not have asbestos gloves and utensils, a welder's mask, and a death wish, you may wish to just stick with the good old jalapeno**, which is plenty hot enough for most humans.

And won't sink your battleship.

Have a good day. More heated thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* I had been under the impression that the world's hottest Pepper was my high school friend of that name who now lives out in Las Vegas, but I appear to have been mistaken. Well, perhaps not ...

** Between 5,000 and 15,000 Scoville Units.

A Hunka, Hunka Burnin' Capsaicin

I enjoy spicy food. But I think there's a practical limit to how spicy the food should be. There's a difference between the amount of heat that gives an edge to the flavors of a dish, and an amount of heat that peels the top four layers off your tongue, makes your lips fall off, and turns your urine into napalm.

I thought about this today for two reasons.

First was that we enjoyed a wonderful dinner last night - in honor of our daughter's birthday - at a local Indian restaurant. The food was excellent, but the dishes the helpful waiter described as mild ... mostly weren't. Our son in law ordered a chicken dish that had him gasping and sweating at the table*, and poor Agnes (who doesn't do spicy at all) had a tough time finding something suitable. Much of it, I think, almost seemed to represent heat for the sake of heat, rather than heat for the sake of flavor.

That high-energy dinner came just a day after I read this fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal: The Arms Race to Grow World's Hottest Pepper Goes Nuclear.

It seems that there are people out there who have dedicated their lives to growing the world's most insanely, devilishly hot pepper - engaging in a search for gustatory armageddon, as it were.

For those of you who may not spend much time thinking about hot peppers, here's a quick synopsis of the science: the chemical which causes a pepper to have have heat is called capsaicin (pronounced "cap-SAY-uh-sin") ... the greater the concentration of capsaicin in the pepper, the stronger and more intense the heat. The level of heat is measured in what are called scoville units or, simply scovilles, named for American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville who, in 1912, first devised a method of calculating the level of heat-inducing chemicals. His method was very imprecise, however, and has been generally replaced today by more accurate chemical analyses. You can read more about it here.

A jalapeno pepper, generally considered to be "hot," has a rating of between 3500 and 8000 scovilles.

By contrast, the current world champion hot pepper, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, is rated at 1.464 million scovilles ...

And that, Dear Readers, is one seriously hot pepper.

I have to ask myself, what's the point? Why would anyone want to grow a pepper so terrifyingly hot that eating it makes one roll around on the floor in agony, pleading desperately for milk or yogurt or a bullet between the eyes? What do you actually taste when you bite into a pepper that has been specially bred to cause eye-watering, mouth-searing, bowel-loosening agony?

If it's all the same to you, I'll just stick with my bottle of Tabasco or Cholula hot sauce and my sliced, pickled jalapenos. Life is too short to go through it with a smoking crater where my tongue used to be. Feel free to turn up the heat if you like ... just don't ask me to join you!

Have a good day. More thoughts on Tuesday.

Bilbo

* The asbestos plates and the welder's mask worn by the waiter should have been a giveaway.

Cooking for One, and a Way-Cool Website

I am now in my fifth full day of geographical bachelorhood, and have not yet starved to death.

Yes, Dear Readers, it seems that when a married man is suddenly left temporarily without wifely care and supervision, the assumption is that he will either starve to death or die buried under a vast, collapsed mound of dirty laundry and take-out food packages.

Because I enjoy both cooking and saving the money I would otherwise spend on overpriced lunches at the various eateries in and around the Pentagon, I am working my way through the list of recipes I enjoy, but that Agnes doesn't care for as much as I do ... such as my Chicken in Zesty Peanut Sauce (recipe available on request) and the platter of hot wings I made last night to eat while watching TV. I have even kept up with the dirty dishes AND washed several loads of laundry AND gotten a good start on spring cleaning (even though spring is a bit iffy at this point).

Bottom line, Nessa and I are surviving quite well ... although Nessa would like you to believe otherwise ...

Dinner tonight will be leftovers as I work on eating my way out of the refrigerator and freezer. Tomorrow, I think I might marinate and grill some pork chops ... or maybe make a batch of my famous Baked Macaroni and Cheese, which will yield a lot of leftovers for lunches. Hmmmm ... decisions, decisions ...

Speaking of food (you'll see why in a minute), I wanted to point you to a really interesting website I stumbled on the other day: Retronaut ("The past is a foreign country. This is your passport.") It's a fascinating collection of old photos and other information about years past, subdivided by decade (once you get to the 1900's) and with special sections for World Wars I and II. It's an awesome site for anyone interested in history, or for anyone just interested in taking a stroll down memory lane.

One of the things I found there was a copy of the US Senate restaurant menu from 1964 (see, I told you there was a food connection!), which features such delicacies as a 12-ounce broiled US Choice New York-Cut Sirloin Steak with french fries, green salad, hot rolls and butter, for $3.75. By way of comparison, the restaurant at the US Capitol Visitors Center today will happily serve you just the french fries for $3.50 (check the whole menu here). The Senate restaurant menu also includes, on its back cover, the recipe for the "Famous Senate Restaurant Bean Soup," which my mother used to make back in the day, and which I never did really like very much. Of course, I don't care much for the Senate in general, so I guess dissing their soup just goes with the territory.

All of which reminds me that it's time for Nessa and I to have breakfast. This afternoon, I'll spend some time with the local grandchildren, do a bit more housecleaning, and then ... well ... I guess I'll just do whatever it is that geographical bachelors do. Probably be in bed by 9:00.

The life of the swinging single, eh?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Best Chefs?

Until a few weeks ago, I'd never heard of Piers Morgan. Now, he's everywhere. It seems he is the person who will try to fill the TV time slot held since the Big Bang by Larry King. Since I never listened to Larry King either, it's all a wash to me. However, I have to question Mr Morgan's grasp of reality after his contention in this CNN interview that "Britain produce(s) the best chefs in the world."

Say, what?

With all affection and respect to my readers in the UK (hi, Craziequeen and Jean-Luc!), due reverence to Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and other towering figures of British history and culture, and an affectionate head-nod to my friend Katherine who once gave me the world's fastest tour of London, I have to say that the glory of England does not lie in the excellence of its cuisine.

Exhibit A: "bangers and mash":

In the early 80's when I was living in what was then West Berlin, we military personnel had the option of attending three different officers' clubs: the French, the British, and the American. The standing joke was that if you wanted wonderful food and didn't mind being abused by snooty waiters, you went to the French club; if you wanted to be treated like a king and didn't mind mediocre food, you went to the British club; and if you didn't mind bad food and lousy service, you went to the American club.

Now, that's a slight exaggeration, but not much, and there are some exceptions. For example, I have eaten tripe at the French club - not by choice - and it is my opinion that one of the reasons French cuisine is so generally wonderful is that they're trying to live down their association with tripe ...

And you could, of course, get wonderful steaks at the American club.

Nevertheless, I think that Mr Morgan's contention that the British have the best chefs is a bit off-center. Sorry, but I'll take Jacques Pepin any day. Admittedly, Nigella Lawson is much cuter than he is, but we're talking about the food, here, and so she's got to take a back seat.

And sorry, Mr Morgan, but who names a defenseless child after "...a structure (as a breakwater) extending into navigable water for use as a landing place or promenade or to protect or form a harbor"?

Have a good day. Eat hearty! More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Language of Food

You already know that I enjoy cooking (which is handy when you also enjoy eating). I have a weakness for kitchen gadgets and cookbooks, and love to try new recipes. I also enjoy cooking humor, of which there is quite a bit out there in cyberspace. For instance, here are a few cooking-related definitions which you may find interesting...

Arab Coffee - Thick, black, bitter coffee, traditionally served in tiny cups at gunpoint, or found in graduate student's offices.

Calorie - Basic measure of the amount of rationalization offered by the average individual prior to taking a second helping of a particular food.

Frying Pan - The standard instrument of destruction for eggs, pancakes, and various vegetable matter. Remains may be removed from surface with diluted solution of sulfuric acid.

Macaroni and Cheese - one of the only foods all young children will eat, but only if it's the pre-packaged kind (which is made not with cheese, but with powdered processed cheese product...don't ask).

Microwave Oven - A space-age kitchen appliance that uses the principle of radar to locate and immediately destroy any food placed within the cooking compartment.

Oven - A compact home incinerator used for disposing of bulky pieces of meat and poultry.

Preheat - To turn on the heat in an oven for a period of time before cooking a dish, so that the fingers may be burned when the food is put in, as well as when it is removed.

Porridge - A form of thick, utterly inedible oatmeal rarely found on American tables since children were granted the right to sue their parents. The name is an amalgamation of the words "Putrid," "Horrid," and "Sludge."

Recipe - A series of step-by-step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in pots and pans you don't have in the correct size, using utensils you don't own, to make a dish the children won't eat.

Tongue - A variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of dead cow (see Variety Meats).

Variety Meats - a creative term used by butchers to con you into buying the things that are left over after the edible parts of an animal have been extracted. The elegant German term Innereien (literally, innards) is more accurate, but not considered suitable for advertising to the average American consumer.

Yogurt - A semi-solid dairy product made from partially evaporated and fermented milk. Yogurt is one of only three foods that taste exactly the same as they sound. The other two are tripe and squid.

Just part of my ongoing efforts to help you understand and cope with the world around you.

And don't ask about the sweetbreads.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

When You Just Can't Find Pork Uteri Anywhere Else...

Unlike lots of other men (and women, too, for that matter), I really enjoy grocery shopping. The three kinds of stores most difficult to get me out of are those selling books, electronics, and foodstuffs. And yesterday afternoon we discovered the granddaddy of all great food stores, right in our neighborhood!

We're often looking for odd ingredients for different recipes (do you know how hard it can be to find eye of newt or toe of frog when you need it?), and are always looking for new ethnic markets to haunt for various things. On the advice of Cynthya, one of our dancing friends, we visited the Fresh World International Supermarket, also known as El Grande Mercado. It reminded me of some of the pictures Amanda has posted of the markets she's visited in Palembang and other places. It's huge, crowded, chaotic, and filled with everything you can imagine eating. Or not eating, in many cases.

In one section we found "Big Green Onions" which looked to us suspiciously like leeks...and, sure enough, we found the same thing in another section, labeled "American Leeks." We found "Cock Soup" (don't ask), great bins full of fresh, irritable blue crabs, tanks of live fish and piles of whole, fresh fish on ice. One woman was wandering around with a plastic bag full of live eels figure-eighting their way to her dinner table. There were piles of every kind of vegetable and herb you can image, battered boxes of things with impenetrable labels in Thai, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and other languages I didn't even recognize. There were rows and rows of bottles of every kind of sauce, oil, marinade, glaze, or other condiment the fevered mind of man can conceive.

It was fascinating. It was a culinary orgasm. And the prices were, in most cases, amazingly cheap for this area, particularly for some of the more obscure herbs and vegetables (I found big bundles of lemon grass for less than the cost of a measly plastic package of the same at the local grocery). If you are queasy of stomach, and not in the mood to see frozen packages of pork uteri, lamb spleens, and other questionable delicacies, it's not the place for you.

But we found it fascinating. Now Agnes just needs to get moving and turn that package of frozen passion fruit pulp into ice cream...

Have a good day. Cook something exotic.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo