Cooking

My kid went on a 2 week vacation with his bad side of the family recently and came back wanting me to cook this weird new thing, tortellini with pesto sauce. I acquiesced and took a shot at it, never having made it before. It's not difficult. He likes it but I think it's kinda gross. I mean it's sort of ok but it's not something I could eat more than a very small helping of once every 4-6 months. It's cheese wrapped in pasta, kind of like ravioli, with this green basily pesto sauce on it. It sits really heavy, like eating white castle sliders. So heavy that you would think it was a german dish. He likes it a lot and I will continue to cook it for him when he wants or just let him cook it himself, but it ain't for me.

 

> Pesto

Try cooking up some sliced chicken breast ( I like to marinate mine in worcestershire for a bit ) & adding that to fettuccine noodles mixed with pesto sauce. Throw in a little freshly ground parmesan cheese not that crap in the green can but real parmesan.

If you can find it, use organic pesto ( with pine nuts ) - organic herbs have a more bite - fresh even more so.

We grow our own oregano, basil, etc - gotta be careful with the fresh basil, it knock your socks off!

 

I get some fresh basil from a co-worker of mine. Adds a real WOW to the marinara sauce I make. You add it, off the heat, after the sauce has cooked, along with some olive oil and mix well. Add to hot pasta and.... :love:

Tonight was something new. Greek meatballs with Avgolemono (egg lemon) sauce and sauteed baby spinach. Not bad for a first time try of some new recipes. Saved my ass on the sauce when it refused to thicken. Added back to the heat, whisked constantly and OPA!!
(Viola didn't seem to fit).

A little less fresh lemon in the spinach next time. Meatballs were tasty but need flavour tweaking. Definitely more mint next time. J suggested a dash of nutmeg as well.

Really wish I had found some good Greek bread and Greek white wine for that meal. Would've been perfect.

 

The only greek wine I've tried tasted like turpintine.
I'd go for a nice Morroccan or a Chianti Classico.
We get fresh herbs all year round here so it's pretty much what we use for cooking.
Get our vegtables from an organic farm always picked 2 days before we get them the difference is staggering and the cost less than non organic from a super market.

 

Not here. Organic crap from a "health food co-op" is way over the top. What you can get in a real grocery store for less will cost you 1.5 to 2 times more in these joker health food co-ops. It's cheaper to eat at McDonalds or any hundred other fast food joints. That's why the american average weight is 400+ pounds.

 

I used to work for Safeway. Supermarket produce is not bred to be edible. It's bred to be transportable and storeable. Once you try real produce, life won't be right when you are eating the manufactured crap.

 

I am getting a great deal this weekend on local beef. Someone I used to work with told me about someone that lives next to them that sells butchered beef cattle from his own stock to private parties. They are in good with him and he is letting me buy straight from him in Cloquet. I'm getting 100 pounds of hamburger in 2 pound packages, 50 pounds of roast in 10 packages and 50 pounds of steaks in 10 packages. So, 200 pounds of beef for, *drum roll please*, 500 cash dollar bills! It don't get any better than that! I almost feel like a thief, but we all have our crosses to bare! My freaking freezers are going to be working overtime!

The only way it could be better is if he let me come up to his house and let me slaughter the cow and learn how to butcher it properly. And also if he would let me take some dried out old bones. I am fooling with the idea of creating art for sale on E-Bay using animal bones to create plaques and statuary and whatnot relating to serial killers. There's a lot of sick, deviant !@#$%^& out there that collect macabre, morbid and gruesome things and I figure if I can make money from it, so much the better. I'd also like to get the cow's coat to make a mask and apron for personal use only.

*edit*
I've decided to do something super awesome. I regularly use my large weber grill to cook stuff and that's perfect for what I use it for, but for some of these large roasts and steaks, I've decided to hunt down an unused metal 55 gallon drum and pay someone to cut it in half and weld some hinges on it and to have the front part of the drum be a flip-down door so I can reload wood into it instead of taking off the freaking grill from the top. I don't know how much it's going to cost but I really don't care. A 55 gallon drum grill is about as high-end as you can go for a great grill.

My friends told me to buy a gas grill and I laughed them right the hell out of the house. I told them "New York City?! Get the rope! You city slickers think you can just come in here and waste my whole goddamn day! Weeelllll, to hell with that! I got me some grilling to do!" Gas grill. Pfffftttt. Those two words don't belong together under any circumstances!

 

Tonight is the night for making Juicy Lucys. I haven't made them in a while and my son was asking for them. I'm looking foward to it.

 

I had a juicy lucy in a place called Mike's outside of Minneapolis this summer. Apparently they won some Food TV/Network contest/show for juicy lucy's. It was o.k...

 

OK, I'll bite (pun intended). What's a Juicy Lucy?

 

Juicy Lucys are hamburgers stuffed with cheese.

 

I find it annoying and irritating that every single cooking show, like hells kitchen and master chef, both USA and UK versions, chopping block, top chef and every other damn one, the winner is always, always, always the youngest competitor. There is no deviance from this. This is a fact and is undisputed. How can they possibly pick the youngest every single time when they aren't the one who has the best cooking skills? What's the agenda? Must be better for the rating or something. Maybe people would rather see a dopey young kid win and serve them !@#$ food than an older person who has more technical skill. Just because 15 year olds have taken over all of the fast food chains doesn't mean they can perfectly cook a beef wellington!

 

Perhaps this should be in the exercise, health and well being thread but I decided to put it here.

I ate a 14" pumpkin cheesecake throughout the day today. And then smoked cigarettes afterwards. Someone call Richard Simmons so he can come over, cry and shave his legs.

I am just as big a health nut as Jerry Garcia ever was!

 

Jerry HAS lost a lot of weight lately...

 

I got to try squab today, which is pigeon. It ain't right. Last time.