Re: My cat is Jewish

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:55:19 -0800, Rita <Rita@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:44:13 -0800, Rumpelstiltskin


<snip>


Canned chicken broth or chicken broth in those waxed cartons
is better than bouillon and not as salty You can add a can
of water to the canned broth if you like and it still has
plenty of flavor. Canned broths are on sale frequently and so
I keep some on hand.


It's been a long time since I've had bouillon, which is why I
didn't recognize it right away. I think there was some canned
chicken broth right in the Jewish section of the supermarket
near the matzo, so I could get that and stay ethnic.



The matzo balls are easier to form if you put the completed
mix in the frig for 30 minutes or so. If you don't use them
all, freeze the rest for another day.


I did that, as per the instructions, but it was still a gooey
mess. I'm certainly no Helen Housewife, though. I'm more
along the lines of a joke I saw once about a bachelor
reading instructions = "Hmm. It says bake in the oven
for ten minutes at 500 degrees. Well, I'll just bake it for
one minute at 5,000 degrees!". After that joke, the
camera panned the audience, and the women were in
hysterics - they know what guys are like. When I see an
instruction such as "gently fold the eggs into the slurry",
I regard that as a blatant attack on my manhood.
I defend myself by bringing out my jackhammers and
sandblasters, to complete the mixing operation in a true,
manly, way.

The instructions for the matzo mix said to leave it in
the frij for 20 minutes, but I did leave it at least 30 minutes,
since I was doing other stuff and I forgot. That's not as
bad as when I tried to make egg salad a week or so ago
and burned the eggs, because the pan boiled dry and I
didn't realize it until I smelled something funny. I have
made egg salad very successfully since, nothing to it but
mashed up hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise, diced pickles
and onions, salt and pepper. Just don't burn the eggs.

I wasted two eggs with the matzo. The ingredients
were listed before the instructions, so I cracked two
eggs and then added an incredible volume of water.
By then, I'd decided to only make half the box because
of the amount of water involved, but use two eggs since
I'd cracked them before I saw how much water was
involved. I probably got distracted trying to figure out
how much a quart was, and if I had anything that could
measure it. I mixed the water with the eggs before I
saw that the water was supposed to go with the broth
and not the eggs, so I had to throw that out and start
again. I just now realized why it seemed I had too much
broth. For the whole package, the instructions said to
use 2-1/2 quarts of water. I remembered that "quart"
means "quarter of a gallon", but then I screwed up by
thinking that a quart was four pints. It's actually two
pints, as I just now remembered. The whole point of
remembering that "quart" means "quarter of a gallon"
is so I can keep track of "two pints to a quart, four
quarts to a gallon", but I screwed up because of
having to hunt up something to measure pints or quarts
in mid-frenzy. I finally found an empty "32 ounce"
container that I could use. I now realize that "32
ounces" is actually "quart", but at the moment I had
too much to remember, after figuring "Let's see, a pint
is two cups or 16 ounces (since a cup is 8 ounces),
so this container is two pints." I'll never master the
English system of measures. I wish we'd go metric.
Metric is so easy. If I ever do go nuts, it will be while
I'm reading a recipe that involves cups of this, pints
of that, tablespoons of the other, teaspoons of the
yet another, ounces of the yet other another, and,
as the killing blow, a $%^^$%^!^&& "dash" of
something else! I'm sure this kind of thing is the
reason so many housewives lose it and run around
with axes murdering all the neighbors.

Recipes make nuclear physics seem so elegant
and straightforward by comparison, because of
cooking's stupid measuring system. That system
doubtless dates back to secret priesthoods, as
when the school of Pythagoras tried to keep the
Pythagorean theorem a secret. In particular, they
didn't want the public to find out that the ratio of
the hypotenuse to the side of an isosceles right
triangle cannot be expressed as the ratio between
any two integers, because if that knowledge got
out, it would surely bring about the end of
civilization, almost as surely as would gay
marriage in our times.

The stock didn't seem watered-down, though I
did use more water than I should, as I now realize.
I didn't use twice as much water as I thought the
recipe called for though. I deliberately used less
water than I thought was specified, after I
realized what an incredible amount of water my
(erroneous) calculation indicated.



I chop up some carrot and celery and onion, which I always have on
hand. sautee these veggies briefly in a bit of oil or butter
before pouring in the broth.


Carrots and celery are two things I never have, because
they're among the many things I don't like. I don't "sauté"
anything, but I do fry stuff up in butter or olive oil, which I
gather is pretty much the same thing, just with a less
Frenchy name.



I am lazy and so I often prepare more of something than I will use
and freeze it for future use. Soups freeze well, and it is nice to
have some little containers of it without going through the whole
process of making it over and over.


I most always make more than I need right away of anything
that requires any preparation. I haven't crockpotted meat for
a while, but when I do, I buy fifteen dollars or so of Top Round,
cover the slabs with monosodium glutamate and Montreal steak
seasoning, then roll them up and cook them up in the crockpot
overnight. In the morning, I add raw onion sometimes, have
some for breakfast, and leave the rest in the crockpot to cool,
then put it in the refrigerator to finish it up over the next few
days.



I used to be able to find frozen egg noodles, nice fat ones in the
frozen foods section but haven't seen them for years.


I just used packaged semolina. I usually buy spaghetti, but
lately I've bought a couple of packages of "penne rigate",
which I guess is Italian for "ritatoni". It's like macaroni except
that the tubes are straight and they're corrugated in line with
the long dimension. I like that texture better than macaroni.
But egg noodles, spaghetti, rigate, macaroni - it's all semolina,
and semolina is semolina, basically. I've not been able to
bring myself to eat pasta in a restaurant. It just seems so
ridiculous to pay for something that's so easy to make. Just
because the waiters look like sissies and have foreign
accents, that doesn't mean there's something mysterious
about making pasta - it does mean you're probably going to
get overcharged.



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