What I learned today

[Jenise]

Holy moly, Barb. Of course, someone can ask that kind of money, but will anyone actually pay it? There are a lot of crazies on eBay.

Yes, it’s one thing to ask and entirely another for someone to actually fork out the money!
There are crazy people indeed, my gardener harvests moss from my roof and elsewhere and sells it on eBay! Apparently he sells quite a lot (for fairy gardens). ..go figure

Free on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61065/6 ... 1065-h.htm

...but I suppose I'm missing the point of owning the real thing.

Free on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61065/61065- h/61065-h.htm

...but I suppose I'm missing the point of owning the real thing.

Gotta love the Gutenberg Project, an amazing resource.
I sometimes wonder how much information was stored only on, say, 5* floppies and how many nerds still have the right drive.

[Jenise]

On Wednesday I learned that canned refried beans should be outlawed. I don't know if I've ever had canned before, but if Rosarita's 'Traditional' (meaning no extra flavors, like chipotle, are added) is typical, then it's for certain that I've never had canned refried beans before because all in recent memory were a million percent better than this. There is no amount of additional ingredients one can add to disguise the processed/canned flavor. Disgusting!

Sounds yucky (but all refried beans sound yucky to me).

[Jenise]

Sounds yucky (but all refried beans sound yucky to me).

I remember being about 16 (cuz I remember the car I was riding in) and my best friend and I were comparing our most hated foods. My top three were blue cheese, refried beans and garbanzo beans. All of which I love now, but refried beans might have been the last and the hardest because texture was probably an even bigger issue than flavor. I adore them now, but am sympathetic.

Jenise, I am sitting here chuckling because Rosarita’s refried beans are always in my pantry. I have never served them straight out of the can, however. When the kids were home, my refried bean dish was a favorite of theirs and their friends. I took the dish to school potlucks, and they were a requested item for events at the Redding Police Department. Being curious, I looked them up on Amazon and the ratings there from verified purchases were great.
As for canned Garbanzo beans, I use them a lot. I tried the dried ones once and they were not as good as the canned ones I buy. I buy top of the line canned items, S&W, Del Monte, Muir Glen, etc. Mostly varies varieties of canned tomatoes, red kidney beans, whole green beans and the garbanzos for a three bean salad I make. Again, never serve just straight out of the can, but in combo with other ingredients.

[Jenise]

Ugh, really (on the refried?) I doctored these--thinned them with milk and added Gebhardts chile powder, but still couldn't get anywhere close to what refried beans from dried beans taste like. They show up frequently at gatherings in that layered party dish but I avoid it.

But as I said, I love garbanzos now. Never without them in the pantry.

I haven't tried making refried beans from the dried, mainly because I like the texture of the cooked dried beans so much and the lovely pot liquor that many of them have. I do have two cans of the Rosarita's in my pantry, but have been cooking so differently since Gene passed. Like you, still watching what I eat and these last 8 lbs. are the hardest to get off.

I was grilling a couple of smaller black sea bass. Stuffed with fennel fronds and lemon. Ran across recipe by David Pasternack (Esca) that suggested letting the fish come towards room temp for 20-30 minutes, said if cold skin will steam and come off. Of course I usually let me come to room temp (unless thin chops or steaks), but have always kept fish as cold as possible. This worked well, but only one try (in past I'm a bit hit or miss about being able to keep skin intact, so I can't say definitely better method). But will try again and see if I really did learn something.
Also learned if you use green heirloom tomato and purple basil your caprese looks cool.
Lastly, Eric Kim had a fun article about the Southern tomato sandwich in last Sunday's NYT. Tomatoes are hitting market, so we split a tomato sandwich and a BLT for lunch Sunday. But followed Kim's suggestion and added furikake (basic nori sesame) to the mayo, winner idea.

[Jenise]

So today at the market I wanted Cracked Black Pepper Turkey from the deli section. With zero forethought, no "wouldn't it be funny if" stuff, just scrambling parts of words with other words as one sometimes does, out of my mouth came a request for "half a pound of the Black Pecker Turkey". Lady behind the counter and I instantly lost it. Was like three minutes before either of us could speak again.

The jokes write themselves....

[Jenise]

Yesterday I learned that 'swamp cabbage' is another name for hearts of palm, apparently because the particular palm that gives forth this delectable ingredient is a Cabbage Palm.

If you said "swamp cabbage" to me, what would come to mind is skunk cabbage, which grows in swamps.

-Paul W.

So Betsy asked me to try and find a "sweet miso" that a friend had given her (pouch was all in kanji). I was in HMart, right next to miso was a pouch of shio koji. A google showed a preview that said "Made from rice that is inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae, Shio Koji has a mild and sweet flavor that is the basis of miso paste and one of the most versat - I thought this could be it! But when I got home Betsy said no (subsequently I found out from friend that what I was looking for was Ama miso from Kyoto, but neither Japanese grocery -Daedo and Frontier- near me had. Friend is going to bring back from Japan).
But now I had the shio koji and needed something to do with it. A Serious Eats article said better to make yourself, but use as marinate for meat, fish, or vegetables. A search here showed Jenise using koji rice (shio koji is koji rice with salt and water) on beef. So last night I marinated a Tbone (on sale, no marbling to speak of, needed something) for about 7 hours. I was very pleased with the result - a little sweetness, but a load of umani.
So I learned about shio miso and ama miso.

Funny, Dale, but we made one of our favourite veg dishes late night - hakurei turnips simmered in shiro (white) miso with some other additions. Veeeery tasty!

[Jenise]

Reading an issue of MilkStreet, last night I learned that the original Ukrainian version of Chicken Kiev was made with ground chicken, not chicken breast. The change came when the Russians invaded circa 1922 and apparently deemed the whole breast more elegant. Also, where the butter had been a compound butter seasoned with dill and ginger, the Russians deemed it should be plain butter instead.

They supply a recipe (of course) for an oven-baked version of the ground which I look forward to trying.

[Jenise]

Today I learned that leeks can be hot like onions--you know, make you cry. I use a lot of leeks and have never experienced that before.

I experienced that with green onions I found at Farmer's Market. I was so surprised when I started cutting them. They were larger than the ones from the grocery store and I was dubious about buying them. They are actually very good and have lasted a long time.

[Jenise]

So Kenji Alt-Lopez tested the keeping of ripe tomatoes. Apparently there's a belief that taping over the stem end (like most of have learned help keep bananas from ripening too fast) helps. He says it does, but turning the tomato upside down--that is, stem side down--is just as effective!

I always store tomatoes on the cool granite counter, stem side down. Was always told to do that way by my relatives who had large year-round gardens. Of course, in those days, we did not have granite counters. Cherry tomatoes are kept in a large round dish in a single layer. When I have a regular tomato that is beginning to wrinkle, I will put it into the fridge, so to hold it until I can roast it for
making sauce along with other tomatoes.

You also want to keep the tomatoes, or any other fresh fruit, well ventilated. Many plants--tomatoes included--use ethylene gas (CH2=CH2) as a chemical signal to initiate and maintain the fruit-ripening process. Commercial mass producers of the supermarket golf ball tomatoes harvest them while green and force-ripen them in a chamber filled with ethylene. They change color but they never develop the flavor, texture, or nutrition of a naturally vine-ripened tomato.

If one of your tomatoes is ripening early and starts emitting ethylene and the others pick up on it, they will ripen, too. Keeping the tomatoes well-ventilated (not for example in a closed plastic bag) helps dissipate the ethylene.

This phenomenon of one ripening fruit triggering the whole lot to ripen is the origin of the saying, "one bad apple spoils the bunch".

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I put mine in an open bowl lined with paper towels in the fridge. Works fine.