We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Leftover pizza is one of the finest breakfasts or snacks that exist. It tastes better the next day.
Tip: Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.
My chef friend told me that home-made Reese's are better than store-bought, and you can make whatever sizes you want. (I wonder whether you can make them pie-sized and cut them in slices. Why not? Might be good with ice cream on top)
Easy:
- Buy whatever sort of peanut butter you want. Put it in silicone candy molds and freeze in freezer. - Make some tempered chocolate.That's the specialized part. - Dip the frozen pieces of peanut butter in the tempered chocolate, and let air-dry at room temperature on waxed paper. Done.
- To make them even better, sprinkle a little kosher salt on top before the chocolate hardens.
I was cleaning up this weekend and emptied out a backpack to find notes I'd written a year ago about topics of interest to me. While I traveled through Austria and the Czech Republic, the extended family took meals together and whenever something caught my ear, I'd write it down. One such topic was 'bog butter' - something I'd heard of, but knew little about.
The thought of it makes me wish to know as little as possible, in some ways. Yet it turns out to be an intriguing topic. We are all probably familiar with the remarkable capacity of peat to preserve just about anything. Peat has properties of preservation which are rather astounding. Apparently, old societies used peat to preserve their butter and occasionally forgot about it, lost it, or left it behind. Which means some archaeologists or bog workers are the lucky recipients of free butter. If they're willing to try it.
Its quality varies based on the kind of peat, how long it's been sitting, and what it's made of. I was told by someone who has seen some that it smells like old shoes, which may not make it the most appetizing of condiments. However, perhaps a better description is 'strong cheese'. I'm still not trying it, even if it is edible.
While these random finds are of little culinary value, they do provide insight into techniques of ancient food preparation and management. It has been noted that butter was a bit of a luxury, but was used for more than just food. It was also used to pay taxes, rents, fines and provide hospitality as well as helping out with healing. The quality of the butter would be an indicator of socio-economic status.
As for me, I'll stick with my Land O' Lakes, salted. Refrigerated, not stored in peat.
August is blueberry season in New England. Local blueberries, that is. Our wild blueberries are the highbush and the lowbush, and both are smaller and zingier than the commercial varieties.
Pic: I like Kippers. That's the morning I ordered kippers with fried eggs. Best kippers I ever had but, sheesh, it's just too much. I never ordered haggis or blood pudding (pudding in the UK can mean sausage), but Mrs. BD is fond of the latter. Funny thing I saw: A food truck on a scenic overlook in Skye serving sliced haggis on a burger bun with ketchup. Very popular. Seemed revolting to me.
Scottish breakfast menus are a variant of English breakfasts with a Scottish accent. Typical items on the menus we were presented with in Inverness and the Hebrides below, whatever combinations or numbers of items you wish, of course - it comes with the room:
Tea or coffee (Scots, Aussies, and Brits take the tea)
Porridge (aka Oatmeal) Scrambled eggs with lots of of smoked salmon (yum) Haggis Kippered Herring Toast Bacon (not the crunchy goodness of American bacon - more like fried pancetta) Eggs however you want 'em Smoked haddock poached in milk with poached eggs (yum) and, always, "Full Scottish Breakfast": Blood Pudding (aka Black Pudding), Haggis, roast tomato, roast mushroom, baked beans, potato scone, and choice of eggs from (obviously) free range Scottish chickens. Very rich yolks.
It's outdoor grilling season (well, that is all year-long for many of us regardless of snow), but I want to convey our Cordon Bleu-trained chef friend's advice for oven-roasting meats of all kinds: Always 400 degrees.
Even chicken. Ignore the cookbook. Use a meat thermometer if you can't tell doneness by touch.
More meat advice from our expert:
- Remember (everybody knows this anyway) that meat continues to cook for at least 10 minutes after removing from the heat. That fact has ruined many a rare steak or butterflied leg of lamb.
- Rib-eye is best pan-cooked, no matter how thick. Otherwise many or most meats can be pan-seared and roasted. She says grills are best for burgers and hot dogs, but I disagree. I love a grilled butterflied leg 'a lamb. Possibly my favorite meat. Rare, please.
Helped roast a 130-lb. hog this weekend for a pal's garden party. It's quite the project. Night before, our cooking team seasoned the cavity with spices, filled it with apples and oranges, then stapled the cavity shut and pinned the ears back. Ran the spit through the mouth and out the back end, then the heavy prongs on the spit to hold the pig firm and acouple of long lug bolts with large square washers to pin the pig to the spit. Then chicken wire wrapped tightly around the whole thing to hold it all together.
After that, ten hours of tending the apple wood and charcoal fires in this corrugated steel contraption. Have to be careful because too much heat can set the pig on fire, and too little won't cook it. We figured keeping the temperature in there around 220-240 F. Slow cooking, and some smoking but not too much. After the first couple of hours, smoke can't penetrate anyway. You can not leave the thing unattended but it's good redneck fun with good company.
There is only one French salad dressing - mustard vinaigrette with shallots. This guy learned how to make it.No reason to ever use anything else other than laziness (I can be lazy and I like to put Ken's Steak House salad dressing from Costco on tomato slices).
The only French variation is to add tarragon or to use tarragon vinegar. I don't care much for tarragon flavor although it grows vigorously in my garden. Tarragon Chicken is a classic, but I don't care for it.
Isn't it strange that commercial "French Dressing" and "Russian Dressing" are American inventions? So is commercial "Italian dressing." Well, they all taste ok. Russian is great on a roast beef sammich.
What is a genuine Italian salad dressing? Salt, olive oil, vinegar (3 parts oil to one part vinegar). Toss it extensively - 30 times seems to be an Italian standard. You can add a few drops of Balsamic to that if you want, or use lemon juice (very Sicilian) instead of vinegar. Without salt, salad is not edible. It's barely edible anyway because it is rodent food and minimally-digestible by humans. I figure if you want to eat greens, eat a herbivore instead because they have the tools to break down and digest cellulose and thus the contents of greens. We do not.
I'm no gourmet, and I'm not hip enough to even say I'm a 'foodie'. I dabble in cooking occasionally. I'm somewhat adept at certain types of chicken, and while grilling is supposedly the domain of the more masculine of the species (remember, gender is an attitude now), I'm only passable as a grillmeister. I can follow directions well enough, so if required I am actually capable of whipping up a decent meal from time to time.
My wife has a ton of cookbooks on our shelves, so I'm never at a loss for opportunity or options. She is also a fan of cooking shows, and I've learned to enjoy the dulcet tones of such celebrity chefs as Bobby Flay, Giada de Laurentiis, and Ina Garten. I couldn't really tell you what they actually cook or how they do it, but I know who they are and what they do.
Enough is enough, though. We don't need 200,000,000 cookbooks, we don't need new tools, shows and gadgets to get the best meal. By now, the right way to boil water has been fleshed out, and we should be able to provide sufficiently for ourselves. Shouldn't we?
I learned from a 4-star chef hunting friend that, having cooked meals all of my life, I still knew nothing about the basic principles of cooking. Spending time with him in a commercial kitchen was eye-opening and, in a small way, life-changing.
What I knew was how to throw stuff together and make edible, nourishing food. It prevented starvation, but it had no art to it and I had never been taught the fundamentals. Nowadays, we lazily specialize in Thai take-out but I love learning more about the fundamentals of serious cuisine. Sometimes I wish I had gone to the CIA - the real one, not the one in Langley.
Most would agree that a Pepsi (Or RC or Dr Pepper) and a Moon Pie is the ultimate redneck breakfast, but another classic is Grits with Coca-Cola Hot Dog Red-Eye Gravy. Red-eye gravy needs Coke and Coffee.
To go upscale, use Country Ham on the side and skip the hot dogs. Here's another classic: Hot Dog Gravy & Biscuits. Everybody loves biscuits and gravy, but spare me the hot dogs.
Good winter food, traditionally made with an assortment of wild game if you have some around, with pork and pork sausage, pig fat and duck fat. We now know that fat is good for you, contrary to what you were told for 20 years,
You can work around the wild game issue at the supermarket.
I've made it three times, using mixes of such ingredients as wild boar, snow goose breast, wild boar sausage, duck leg confit, pheasant leg confit, etc. Never red meat, though.
This casserole is white bean-based so it is hearty and a little bland. Comfort food.
Here's the most challenging recipe I can find. If you use confit, though, no need to strip the meat off the legs - just serve the legs. You can google cassoulet recipes to find simpler ones.
It's best served in a shallow bowl with what recipes always term a "full-bodied" red. In France and in my house it's traditionally accompanied by baguette and a cheese board of very stinky cheeses. They just go well together.
We have tried dozens of meatloaf recipes over the years, some complex and some not. We have settled on our favorite, which is also the simplest.
This ought to make 2 loaves:
3/4 lb. ground chuck 3/4 lb. ground veal 1 egg 2 tbsp. ketchup 1 large finely chopped onion 2 tbsp. brown sugar 1 or 2 tsp. ground mustard 1 cup unseasoned breadcrumbs 1 cup of milk Enough salt and pepper
Mix thoroughly with your hands. Put in meat loaf thing - do not pack or compress it - at 350 for an hour or so, when it has a good crust. Serve with mashed taters, and salad if you must. It's a damn good supper, but even better in a sandwich with mayo afterwards.
Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.
Our Vermont friends have been busy getting ready for sugarin', so it's time for some info. We tend to think of Vermont maple syrup, but Canada is the major producer. We consume it abundantly in New England and do not approve of the cheap substitute goop in the supermarkets. We buy the real stuff by the gallon when we can, especially the Grades below Light Amber. You can buy the rather intense Grade B here, but I think I prefer the third level of Grade A - Dark Amber. This place sells all of the grades.
Grading - Many of of us like the intensity of the lower grades , but you won't find them in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though. About Maple sugar grades
$ - We pay retail in the $20s/gallon, but the farmers get between $2-$3/gallon, usually. More in a "bad" year.
When it looks like it has gone bad, it hasn't. Give it a light boil, skim it, and it's fine. Better yet, use it before any mold grows on the surface.
Besides on waffles, French Toast, and pancakes, what can you do with it?
- Put it on oatmeal like the Pilgrims did. - Pour some into winter squash halves with a pat of butter and bake, like my Indian ancestors probably did. - Drizzle some over fresh-fallen snow. Instant Maple popsicles with the power to pull out all of your fillings and crowns and to enrich your dentist. - Drizzle some over Pumpkin Pie. Wow. Tom taught us that. - Drizzle it over salmon, with some butter, before baking
We made an Italian supper for great pals Sunday night. It's fun to cook Italian; it takes four hands so it's handy to have a spouse.
- Antipasto: Zucchini boats stuffed with shallots, onions, chopped zucchini, with Bechamel sauce and parmesan on top - Primo: Straw and Hay (white and spinach fettucini with chopped mushrooms and mortadella with cream-parmesan sauce) - Secondo: Pork tenderloin braised in wine vinegar with a ton of peppercorns and a bunch of lauro leaves, and sauteed spinach with oil and garlic as a contorno - Dolce: Strawberries with balsamic vinegar
We seem to order Thai takeout almost weekly. Thai takeout is what Cantonese and Szechuan takeout used to be around here.
In my limited experience with Thais (limited to restaurants in the US only), they are efficient, entrepreneurial, and pleasant polite people with excellent smiles, beautiful gals, and good English. I welcome all immigrants from Thailand, but I am not sure why they come here.
I am ordering a Thai delivery tonight (Penang Curry, Clear Broth Noodle Soup, Thai Salad, extra white rice, extra hot sauce on the side). Cultural appropriation - bring it on!
A close family member has been spending Christmas week in Thailand. My father-in-law, who has visited Thailand, warned them about ordering the amazing food over there: "They give you a choice of Not Spicy, Spicy, Very Spicy, and "Local." He said "Never ask for the "local."" He said the "Not spicy" is hot enough for the average lame American person but if you want to prove your toughness, just order Spicy and take it from there.
An email from a beach in Phuket:
Some of the food pics below the fold - the last one looks mysterious but I'm sure it was tasty -
My Christmas feast crown roast of pork. Apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, taters, turnips) and mashed rutabaga and applesauce on the side. And gravy.
When you wrap the thing in bacon, and stuff the center well, the thick chops come out very juicy and succulent. Good stuff.
We minimize presents, maximize festivity and games, piano sing-alongs, and being together as a jolly family.
Christmas Eve is a fasting day (meaning, curiously, lots of delicious seafoods). Why God would want that is strange to me, but whatever. For Christmas, we're doing crown roast pork with apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables and Brussel Sprouts, and a Buche for dessert with hot chocolate drizzle.
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc.
Here's the correct, home-made version from Alton Brown. However, I tend to be lazy and to do the wrong thing - to buy the pre-made, and fuss it up with the fixins. Lots of fresh-grated nutmeg.
My Dad always made it the correct way at Christmastime, but I think he made it way too strong, Brit-style like punch. It had a punch.
I have been assigned - again - the task of running the bar for the fancy Christmas cocktail party of one of Mrs. BD's lady clubs next weekend. It's a formal, traditional sort of group, dressy but not black tie. The husbands are very fine and jolly guys most of whom I have known for years and are happy to pitch in with tending the bar for 1/2 hour when asked, so the manpower part is easy. The bar generally needs only 2 guys at a time.
There will be tons of excellent "heavy hors d'oevres", aka supper, with desserts - but that's not my department.
My past experience with this group, which will be around 100-120 people for 2-3 hrs, is that most ladies are light drinkers (a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of beers), most guys will do a bit more, and there is a subset can get cranky without vodka or Scotch. I want everybody to be happy but I like to keep it simple.
Thus my provisional shopping list:
Bag of limes and lemons A few bags of ice Case of Coke Case of Diet Coke 1 case of Perrier 2 cases of Harpoon beer 2 cases of some other beer 1 bottle of Johnny Walker 1 bottle of Grey Goose 1 bottle of Rum 1/2 case of Prosecco 1 1/2 cases of red (which one to be determined) 1 1/2 cases of Sauvignon Blanc
Does that sound right to you? Too much? A case of wine is about 50 glasses of wine. You hate to be stingy and run out of something basic but you don't really want leftovers either. As a rough guide, I use this party site.
Leftover pizza is one of the finest breakfasts or snacks that exist. It tastes better the next day.
My traveling pal emailed me his bowl of goulash in Budapest. 
August is blueberry season in New England. Local blueberries, that is. Our wild blueberries are the highbush and the lowbush, and both are smaller and zingier than the commercial varieties.
For summer get-togethers or any other festive occasion, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.
Good winter food, traditionally made with an assortment of wild game if you have some around, with pork and pork sausage, pig fat and duck fat. We now know that fat is good for you, contrary to what you were told for 20 years,
Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.
Grading - Many of of us like the intensity of the lower grades , but you won't find them in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though. 
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc. 