A brief comment on parmesan cheese

Nice. My wife's place of employment has an employee meeting today. All the employees there, in order to make their meetings slightly less onerous, have taken up the tradition of bringing food and having a sort of mini-potluck on Meeting Day. I kind of wish they'd have more meetings, because every time they do, my wife makes her stuffed half-jalapeños.

I don't know what they're really called. But she cuts the peppers in half, scoops out the insides and fills the hull with sour cream, parmesan cheese and pan sausage. They're really delicious.

I say this because I wanted to make a brief comment about parmesan cheese. I had always thought I didn't like it. Until, that is, she began making these things and had to buy some real parmesan to do it. That is, parmesan that comes in a big block and requires grating. That stuff is excellent. I don't know who came up with the idea that something called "parmesan" should be powdered, sold in shaker containers and apparently flavored with skunk scent, but they should be severely punished. Nastiest stuff I've ever tried to flavor food with.

In case you've never had actual parmesan, you should. But then of course you'll never want to eat that powdered cr*p again.

By the way...

You know those Valentine candy hearts that come in a box with a couple hundred and they have these cute little sayings on them? I hate those things. They all taste like artificially fruit-flavored chalk to me.

Clear Springs

We went to Clear Springs tonight for my dad's birthday, and the food was excellent as always. Everybody else had either shrimp or fish, but I am generally not a fan of things that come out of the water (especially crustaceans)*, so I had the grilled garlic chicken, and it was very good. We all had their famous onion rings for an appetizer. We had to wait about 7-8 minutes for a table. It's always like that on weekends, and this was even fairly early, at 5:00 PM. By the time we left there were about 30 people waiting outside for tables to open.

On the way home a jackrabbit flashed into the road and went right under the front left tire. That's the first jackrabbit I've ever seen around here, and I killed it. Oh well. As I told the kids, I'm not gonna wreck the car for a jackrabbit. If there's one, I'm sure there are others.



*I don't have a seafood allergy. I just don't like the flavor. I noted that they also had crawfish salad. "You gonna try some?" my dad asked. "Noooo," I answered, which made him laugh. I know they are eaten by many people, but to me they are just fish bait. The same goes for chicken gizzards and any organ meat.

Another jerky update

The last batch of venison jerky was very good. Very simple and old-fashioned, no measurements, just eyeball everything. Sprinkle lightly with tenderizer, bang it with a meat mallet, sprinkle with a little black pepper, flip all the pieces over and repeat for the other side. Then I dry them at 155 for about 3 - 3 1/2 hours, the smaller pieces get a shorter time than the larger pieces. Then just to be safe, I used a trick I read in a book on dehydrating that I recently got. I pop them all into a pre-heated 200-degree oven for about 30 minutes to make sure they're safe to eat.

I've begun carrying a small ziplock baggie with several pieces in it to snack on while I'm working; I'm able to go without stoking myself up with junk food to get more calories. That's sure to be a good side-effect in the long run.

One advantage of our new house is I have a lot more room for this stuff; I don't have to constantly move things around in the kitchen to make room for the dehydrator. I plan on soon getting more accessories for the dehydrator and trying some fruit leathers this weekend. Still waiting for my shipment of liquid smoke to come in. I won't be making any ground meat jerky until I get it.

I draw the line at tofu jerky, however. I'm not going to touch that stuff.

Experimenting with venison jerky.

I got a haunch of venison from my dad today, cut off about a half pound or so and sliced it very thin to try making some jerky. Nothing special with this little test batch. I just tenderized it, sprinkled some black pepper on it and threw it on the dehydrator. I figured there was so much salt in the tenderizer that I didn't need to add salt.

Well, I check it not long ago and the excess salt has caked up on it and turned white. Looks weird. I think next time I'll try washing the slices to get the excess tenderizer off before I start drying them. They're drying quite quickly, though. It's been about 3 hours now and I think it might already be ready.

I did cut the slices quite thin. Might need to cut them a little thicker next time. I'll update when I know how edible it is (or not).

Jerky stuff

Well, today I had to resort to ordering both Morton's Tender Quick (meat curing salt) and liquid smoke online. Neither were to be found at H.E.B. Since I have meat that I need to use, I went ahead and tried one of the old flavor packets that I've had for a while. The "original" recipe packet (from Nesco) was no good--it was only a paper/foil packet that had let moisture in. However, the "cajun spice" and the "fajita" packets had an extra layer of plastic inside that kept them fresh, so I'm giving the cajun one a shot tonight. If it's edible, I'll use the fajita and possibly another cajun tomorrow to finish the rest of the meat. I'll start making my own recipes again once I get the ordered ingredients in. I'm going to try as hard as I can to get some of the habanero stuff made soon so I can mail it before Christmas. If you read this and you've received my habanero jerky before, you know who you are, so please be patient.

By the way, I also liked Nesco's teriyaki seasoning. Since it was powdered, it works well for ground beef. Liquid teriyaki sauce doesn't work so well unless it's "real" meat that you can marinate. I might order some from them. I also plan on ordering more trays for my dehydrator. A couple of my old trays somehow got a little broken and I have to lay the meat down around the broken spots, which is a minor hassle.

I'm also going to take a shot at marinating some venison for jerky. I remember I've done it once before when some friend of my wife's had some that she wanted me to jerkify for her. So I've done it once, but I don't recall any of the details, except that they liked it enough to pay me a little for the job.

Success

I threw something together for supper tonight that turned out pretty good. Having spent the entire day soaking wet since I got caught in a downpour at 7:15 AM, I wanted a hot meal with a lot of body, but I wanted something slightly more interesting than hamburger helper. (Also: I hate cooking.)

So I made some "Spanish rice" flavored Rice-a-Roni, browned a pound of hamburger in another skillet, then mixed it together along with a can of Rotel and let it simmer for a while (you know, "until the rice is tender").

Very good.

Bad news for the haggis black market

US to lift 21-year ban on haggis:

Smuggled and bootlegged, it has been the cause of transatlantic tensions for more than two decades. But after 21 years in exile, the haggis is to be allowed back into the United States.

I didn't even know importation was illegal.  But then, it's not the kind of topic that usually arises in everyday conversation.

Hot sauce review: Habañero Heat Wave

On my last birthday I received a set of hot sauces from the Dat'l Do-It company. I don't eat hot sauces as much as I used to, not because I can't stand to eat them, but because of the...er...shall we say--aftershocks. So far I have opened only one, Habañero Heat Wave.

This is what I would consider a medium-heat sauce, that is, suitable for consumption on food straight out of the bottle. There are other sauces that I would consider suitable only for the novelty or for spiking other sauces that are too mild, such as Vicious Viper or Butt Twister. I use Vicious Viper to spike a relatively mild habañero sauce called El Yucateco that I get at H.E.B., and which I use to make my habañero jerky. A couple of drops of the Viper mixed into a bowl of chili is also a good way to give the chili an extra kick. I have eaten it straight, smeared on a corn chip, but I wouldn't make a habit of it.

So anyway, this post was to comment on Habañero Heat Wave. It has plenty of heat, but when it comes to hot sauces, I am more impressed by flavor than heat. Some people eat hot sauces because they enjoy the heat and seem not to care too much about the flavor, but if a sauce doesn't have good flavor I don't give a toss for the heat.

I must say that the flavor of Habañero Heat Wave does not impress me at all. It's only okay by my standards, but not nearly up to the level of my favorite all-purpose habañero sauce, Sontava XXX.

So if you're a hot sauce lover and you're looking around at new sauces to try, I'd say skip the Habañero Heat Wave. The flavor is simply nothing to recommend.

Pumpkin Fluff recipe

This is a recipe that a co-worker gave me and which is very easy and quick to make. It's always a big hit. NOTE: according to the woman who gave it to me, this is a Weight Watchers approved recipe. Of course you can also use the non-lite versions of the ingredients if you want to make it really rich.

1 can pumpkin (15 ounces)
1 tub Cool Whip (12 ounces, sugar free)
1 small box vanilla pudding (4 serving size, sugar free)
Pumpkin pie spice to taste

Combine all ingredients in a big bowl and mix with your electric mixer. Chill 2 hours.

You can use this to fill a graham cracker pie crust or--my favorite method--just leave in the bowl and use as a dip with graham crackers.

Weight Watchers stats: 1 cup of fluff equals one point (whatever that means) not including the graham crackers.

I am speechless with wonder and amazement

Amazon sells Atomic Fireballs.

Keeping a secret

My daughter is part of a team that went to Houston for a Bible quiz competition yesterday, and my wife went with her. So I prepared breakfast this morning for myself and my son.

"Your scrambled eggs are better than Mommy's," he declared.

"Well don't tell her that," I replied. "She might make me cook them all the time."

I know this bit of trivial information may shock some of you, but you don't have to fry everything in bacon grease. And I know this may seem as heresy to some, but some things are actually better when you don't. I have never been able to make my wife understand this.

Sure I like bacon & eggs, but that doesn't mean you have to cook the eggs in the leftover bacon fat "for flavor." Eggs have flavor, and you don't need to mess with it.

Just smear the bottom of the pan with a healthy dose of melted butter (or margarine, whatever), then dump the eggs in and scramble. I don't do fried eggs, btw. For the best scrambled eggs, you keep them moving constantly. You don't want to let anything remain in direct contact with the bottom of the hot pan for very long. This is important. Keep them moving. When the eggs are still fluffy but no longer wet (this is a very narrow window of time so you have to be paying attention), remove them from the heat immediately and dispense them onto plates or dump them in a bowl where the hot pan will no longer continue to cook them. Do not let them sit in the pan until everything else is ready. Allow each eater to salt & pepper the eggs to his own taste. This is also very important. Don't be seasoning the eggs while you're cooking them, or I will justifiably refer to you as a flavor fascist.

Serve bacon on the side. Biscuits are also good. Hot sauce and/or fresh ground black pepper for the eggs will also not be out of place. Dispose of the bacon grease properly, but leave the eggs out of it.

I wish I knew...

But don't despair, you can still get hickory smoked salt from various mail-order sources, and if you live in a large enough city there might even be a "gourmet" salt & spices store that sells it. It will be more expensive, you can't just pick it up at the grocery store, but hickory smoked salt is still out there.

The Pump 'n' Seal

Here's a really lousy camera phone photo of the beginnings of my new tobacco cellar. Eleven jars of various bulk blends and 6 thus far unopened tins. That thing in the foreground is the Pump 'n' Seal.

I have been keeping bulk tobacco preserved by vacuum-sealing for a long time, but I've been using an electric Tilia Food Saver. This is a perfectly fine machine and indispensable for long-term bulk storage, but I wanted a way to keep smaller portions preserved while still having easy access to them. I did some searching around on the internet and finally came across this device called the Pump 'n' Seal.

It can used used with any "canning" jars, like Kerr, Ball or Mason jars. I think that it may even work directly on some tins, but I haven't tried that yet (any lid that has a rubber seal should work). A tool that is basically an all-metal thumb tack is used to puncture a hole in the center of the lid. Then a little yellow piece of rubberized tape called a "Tab-Chek" is placed over the hole. The pump is then placed directly over the hole and you pump the air out. As the air comes out, the vacuum sucks the rubberized tape down, forming a secure vacuum seal. When you want to take something out of the jar, you simply peel the tape up slightly until the air wooshes back in, then unscrew the lid. The tape can be used over and over again, so it isn't necessary to replace the tape every time you open the jar. The whole kit came with enough "tab-cheks" to provide for a very large cellar.

Some other pipe bloggers have mentioned using certain 2-ounce Mason-type jars for this. I couldn't find any locally, so I got these 4-ounce wide-mouth jars. The size of the jar doesn't matter to the Pump 'n' Seal.

The pump comes with a tiny hose that you can use, with a little extra care, to vacuum-seal typical heavy-duty baggies such as Ziplock freezer storage bags. It should be very useful for removing air to prevent freezer burn. I bought this gadget with the sole intention of using it to preserve pipe tobacco, but I'm writing about it here because I'm sure some readers would be interested for other storage purposes. Another important thing about this gadget is for those who wish to survive "off the grid." It doesn't need electricity, just elbow grease.

Here's a close-up of a sealed jar. You can see the tiny dimple in the middle where the hole is and the tape has been sucked down. I folded one end of the tape (they're designed like miniature band-aids) over so that it wouldn't adhere to the surface and would give me a little handle to use when peeling up the tape to re-open the jar.

This is going to give me a whole new way to store my pipe tobacco, and will allow me to provide myself with a greater daily variety than previously, when I usually just opened a vacuum bag and smoked it all until it was gone before opening another.

That reminds me. I still have a 4-ounce bag of Bayou Morning around here somewhere that I seem to have misplaced.

The kit which comes with the hose and 100 tab-cheks is about $33 with shipping included, pretty much inexpensive enough for anyone to try out without endangering themselves financially. Extra tab-cheks cost about $10 per 75.

And of course, I am receiving no remuneration for this post. I just think it's a useful device that you might be interested in.

Restaurant report

This evening we went out to eat. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but it's the one in St. Hedwig that's located at the intersection of FM 1346 and FM 1516 (east of San Antonio out FM 1346). Even my dad was impressed: "That's the first time I've eaten at a new restaurant and not been disappointed in a long time." High praise indeed from my dad. He had their catfish plate.

I had a dish called Southwest Chicken something or other. Grilled chicken breast covered with Monterey Jack cheese, sauteed onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and crumbled bacon. Onion rings and green beans on the side. The food was excellent except for the onion rings and the waitress kept my tea glass filled. If a waitress can keep up with me on iced tea, she's really on the ball.

Next time I'm going to try their Chicken Marinara, grilled chicken breast covered with marinara sauce and grilled mushrooms.

Stay away from the onion rings, they aren't all that great. Otherwise, I recommend it.

Yes, I did make chili today

It was devoured by the entire family.

There were no leftovers. Which is too bad, because chili is always better the second day.

Food stuff

Last Saturday I smoked a turkey. This was only my second time. I am one of those purists who believes that "sauce" is just something you use to cover poorly-smoked meat. I put nothing on the turkey. I told some people at work about this. They kept asking me, "But wasn't it dry?" Nope. "You didn't baste it at all?" Nope. "And it wasn't dry?" Nope.

I gave it a pure diet of mesquite wood, holding the temperature steady between 230-250 for five hours. It was succulent.

The guy who I whipped up some venison jerky for really liked it, so he gave me a deer ham to make some traditional jerky with. So I sliced it up and I've got it marinating right now. I haven't made "real" jerky like this in a long time, but I think it will be okay. As a result of a stroke, this man has lost most of his sense of taste (so I was told--I didn't know a stroke could affect your taste). So he requested habanero, and "make it as hot as possible." I don't know if I got it "as hot as possible," but it's going to be pretty hot. I was mixing up some new sauce and got a little more "spike" in the sauce that I usually do. I sampled a little straight and it made my scalp sweat, so it's just about right.

As payment, he's going to give me some venison to keep for myself instead of paying me money. That was actually my suggestion.

Since the weather is supposed to turn a little colder and nastier than usual this coming weekend, I plan on Saturday being homemade chili day! I haven't made chili in a while, and I'm really looking forward to it.

The venison jerky experiment

Someone gave me a pound of chili-ground venison to try and make jerky with.

Well, I don't think it will turn out as good as the beef stuff. Maybe if it had been a finer grind it would work, but it was pretty tough squeezing it through the jerky shooter. Also I'm afraid it might have spent too long in his freezer and got a little burned.

At least the raw meat smelled right after I finished mixing in the ingredients.

I put it on the dehydrator about 20 minutes ago. I'll know before the night is over.

UPDATE: It's good! Just hard to work with.

Yikes

I gave my wife some jerky samples to take to her work and see if anyone there wanted to actually buy some. I did actually put some on eBay today but it looks like I'll have to hold off on any further auctions because the demand locally is already more than I can handle. I have only three pounds of meat left, I guess I better get busy.

Any of you S.A. locals know of an H.E.B. located somewhere in the southeast? I tried going to that one on W.W. White north of Rigsby but that parking lot there makes my Spidey-sense go totally haywire. Although I must admit they have the most varied selection of MD 20/20 I've ever seen.

I got lucky yesterday and was working in the Great Northwest, so I stopped by the one at Culebra and 1604 to get some meat before I reported in (took an extra ice chest with me just to keep it cold). I guess I could always try the one on Nogalitos.

Jerky

My Paypal account is getting low, so I'm going to try the jerky on ebay business again. I've never had any trouble selling my habanero jerky on ebay, I just never got very enthusiastic about it. I used to sell jerky at a former place of employment, for cash, which was much more enjoyable.

I was going to mix up four pounds today, but I ran out of sauce, so I was able to do only 1 1/2 pounds of habanero, and I turned another half-pound into my original recipe, which has cayenne and sage. So do I want to go to HEB for sauce today? I hate going there on Christmas Eve or even Thanksgiving Eve. I know it's going to be a madhouse.

Anyhow, I should be able to whip up four or five pounds every weekend until I get a good stock built up. I always vacuum-seal it, so it lasts for a long time. The longest I ever let it sit was six months. I think it tasted even better having had a chance to age a little.