One more time into the kitchen my friends! And this time, we are going hard core vegetable, with lentils. (ok…all of you heading for the doors, just give us a moment to go over this, please)
Something I learned recently is that for those of us who have been discouraged from making dried beans because of the ‘sort/rinse/rinse/rinse again and again and again and then cover with water overnight and boil up and drain and replace the water’ stuff, lentils are the one exception to that rule. (more…)
OK..so are we ready, my little starving artisans? Ready for good, yummy, mmmmmmmm good food for just you? With maybe a little bit of leftovers so that you have something for tomorrow or a couple of days from now?
Well, you have come to the right place.
I think one of the barriers to good eating for folks who are living on their own is perceived lack of time. They get up. They are late already. They jump into work clothes and run out the door, grabbing something on the way that will pass for breakfast and the rest of the day, nutritionally speaking, goes downhill from there. And then they get home and stare into the fridge and see what’s left from a take out or whatever and it’s just so damn depressing.
Well, Bunkie, Aunt Toby is here to tell you that it does not have to be this way. As a matter of fact, you can make sure that it is not this way. (more…)
One of the special parts of doing the recent poll were the comments that people included about things that they would find useful. One person commented about smaller recipes for one or two people, things that would be easy to make and so on. So, mystery visitor, this weekend is for YOU!!
That’s right, this weekend is ‘Dinner for One (or two) Weekend’ (cue trumpets). And, as is my wont, the first recipe is dessert (in holding with the ‘life’s too short; eat dessert first’ philosophy). I can’t think of any dessert other than dipping into a box of ice cream which is easier than this one but it has a twist: You will end up with something in the fridge which will enable you to make other versions of this several times over into the future basically whenever you feel the urge, as long as you have some fruit someplace (because this works with fresh, frozen, or canned fruit). (more…)
If you have a serious flood, hurricane or other related event in your area, you might be faced with having to do remediation on your own home, or that of a neighbor, friend or family member. Or, you just might do what the DH and I did yesterday; we traveled to a nearby village that was devastated last month with a horrific flood as volunteer members of a team doing demolition on a home owned by a very elderly couple. The entire village was consumed, basically and they are still digging out and cleaning up. A lot of history has gone down the river with that flood and many homes (many of which are very very old) are still not dug out and cleaned up. (more…)
In our last episode, it was all about simmering water and softboiled eggs. Today, we’re going to continue the discussion about heat and eggs with boiling water, hard boiled eggs and then eggs that are baked, shirred eggs.
One of the major differences about applying high heat to the protein in eggs (that is, producing ‘hard boiled eggs’) is that unlike soft boiled eggs, where the white becomes solidified but the yolk is still in at least a semi-liquid state (the better to dip pieces of buttered toast in, my dear), raising the temperature and the time spent in that temperature solidifies everything but again, the egg cooks from the outside in. This produces (and you all know this – I’m sure there are people who are already hitting themselves in the forehead figuratively and saying, “No duh!”) something that can be sliced, diced, mixed up with tasty bits like pickle relish and mayo to produce socalled ‘devilled eggs’ and so on. So, let’s look at boiling water:
(more…)
As Promised! We Deliver! A cogent discussion (with audio-visual aids, even) of heating up water and how to make some eggs with it. But also – a visual example of what simmering actually looks like. A pot of simmering liquid looks basically the same, whether it is water, soup, or sauce. First, know your simmering water:
Next, how to get that egg to the soft boiled stage:
And then, how to serve it up.
So, the point here is two-fold:
First, what simmering actually looks like so that image can be stashed in your brain for the future.
Second, how to cook a soft-boiled egg and how to serve it.
There you go.
Rather than cooking zombies (which, by the way, is easiest during the winter, when they are not moving around and are easier to catch and dispatch. But you knew that already, right?). But in any case, to return to our usual example: You and a bunch of your friends are holed up in a mostly abandoned farmhouse; between you and any form of fast food is a moaning hoard of zombies (and no, it is not January so you can’t just walk out and lop their heads off..that would be cheating). You’ve got plenty of fuel, a stove, a pantry full of canned goods. What to do…what to do? (more…)
I’d like to thank all the people who took the time to answer the survey. In any blog situation, ‘lurkers’ out-number ‘participators’ by a huge margin so I did not know what sort of response I would get but I not only got answers, I was so happy to read the comments as well. Thank you so much.
OK – for those of you out there who keep score:
23% of respondents want more sewing videos
21% of respondents want more articles on money management, jobs and personal economy
21% of respondents want more videos on cooking
15% of respondents want more videos on knitting
8% of respondents want more indepth articles and collections to download
5% of respondents are interested in interviews
And in a totally mind-blowing lack of enthusiasm, NO ONE wants pod-casts. I guess you guys are all visual creatures and need to either read it or watch it. No problems – will of the people and all that.
So, readers should expect some changes here, perhaps a more coherent schedule (like, cooking videos on the weekend, economics during the week or something like that) plus perhaps some physical organizational changes as well.
Onward!
Now, you are asking yourselves, “Why bother making apple sauce? I can buy apple sauce.” That’s true. But making apple sauce is as easy as falling off the proverbial log and this way, you know what’s going into it. If you are a package or jar label reader (and most of us are NOT), and you are looking at what is probably America’s number one basic apple sauce in a jar, you will see this: (more…)
No one can rest on their laurels (or anything else for that matter), and Aunt Toby would really like to hear what you think about some ideas I have which might make this more useful and valuable for readers. I can’t do them all simultaneously, so it would be really helpful to hear from you guys as to what you’d find helpful and interesting and even let me know what you want to know more about (besides my shoe size, which is 6.5 D and which is damn hard to find, I can tell you). This will be up the entire week. Click the link and go to it! And thanks so much for the help.
(October 2, 2011: Poll Has Now Been Taken Down)
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