Food

[jellysundae]

4 hours ago, WhiteWolf said:

My trike has a basket, and I can get a couple bags of groceries in it. i also have the classic bike bell on one side. Mine is a beautiful metallic blue. As soon as it stops raining, I'm going to check the tires, and go for a ride.

That sounds lovely <3 Bike bells are awesome! I don't know what it is about the sound they make but it always makes me smile. Lots of happy associations with childhood and grand-parents and so on, I think.

I wonder if one day I'll be able to have a trike...there's nowhere where one could be kept where I live, but in the future...I guess the real issue is I'd need to ride it on the road as you can't ride bikes on the path, and I don't believe that would be safe AT ALL, I don't have the reaction times to be let loose in the traffic. 

*sigh* So while the idea of something pretty like THIS

to enable me to get around a bit more (and get some safe exercise!) is lovely, and I WANT. I think the reality is going to be more like this.

DO. NOT. WANT.

So go out on your trike, and enjoy it for me as well as yourself!

 

[babayaga67]

Thank you @jellysundae for including that wiki link. I had no idea what marmite was, and now I do. My new thing has been learned for today so I will go back to sleep now.

Chia seeds are very expensive when you buy them at the grocery store. I was paying $10 per pound of chia. I have a lot of people to feed, so I have started going to Sam's Club, which is a wholesale store like Costco. I found a 3lb bag for $8! I have been much more generous with chia seeds since then.

[jellysundae]

17 minutes ago, babayaga67 said:

I had no idea what marmite was, and now I do

Are you AGOG to go out and buy some now? You are, aren't you?!

Yeah that was why I bought my chia seeds from Amazon, but that turned out to be the most expensive way of all! £8 spent - nothing received, lol.

[babayaga67]

@jellysundaeI'm sorry, I am computer illiterate when it comes to short hand and the smiley face language. What is AGOG?

I have never bought food off of www.amazon.com, or any other website. I enjoy grocery shopping way too much to buy stuff online. Grocery shopping is the best.

[jellysundae]

2 minutes ago, babayaga67 said:

@jellysundaeI'm sorry, I am computer illiterate when it comes to short hand and the smiley face language. What is AGOG?

I have never bought food off of www.amazon.com, or any other website. I enjoy grocery shopping way too much to buy stuff online. Grocery shopping is the best.

Agog is just agog, a sadly under-utilised word, seems it's not made its way across the Pond so much which would explain why you've not heard it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agog

This makes me wonder about the nationality of the TNT staff member with that name...I wonder where she's from!

Well of course, silly me, she's from Mystery Island

Grocery shopping is something I have no choice but to do online now, because of my MS I can't physically or mentally manage more than just the tiniest bit of actual physical shopping, so no investigating new stuff or finding great bargains for me.

[babayaga67]

I thought that agog meant something else only because it was in all caps and italic... I feel especially silly now. I understand agog as defined in the link that you posted, but I thought it was just another modern acronym that I had no hope of ever remembering.

I have not cooked anything in three days. I have been so out of it that I have only been able to heat up leftovers and make grilled cheese sandwiches. Thursday is the only day this week with no doctor appointment for me/my kids, plus I caught something, so I have been in a super "bleh" mode. I did make open faced pastrami and provolone melts on bagels yesterday, but I don't count that as full fledged cooking.

 

[jellysundae]

Ah I see! So just me confusing the issue, as per usual, lol! I'm sorry! Agog being such a weird and fun word it's pretty likely to be an acronym, isn't it? I apologise to it for making it appear to be something along the lines of YOLO *shudders*

Moving swiftly on!!

Those melts...I'm salivating here! I love pastrami, though I don't buy it, lol. My mum occasionally treats me to some though. I've never had provolone, but it's cheese so of course I would like it. It's not a cheese that's really sold over here though, sadly. It might be an ingredient in a ready made dish, but it looks like there's only one supermarket chain that sells it (the most expensive one). Need to live in a town with an Italian deli...

*relocates*

Moving house because of a lack of cheese is a perfectly legit reason, right?

 

You sound like you need someone else in your house to spend some quality time in the kitchen, is there anyone else to do that? I made a red lentil and sweet potato curry in the slow cooker yesterday, so I have food that just needs reheating. My slow cooker saves my life on a regular basic, it really does, I just need to remember about it!

[babayaga67]

9 hours ago, jellysundae said:

*relocates*

Moving house because of a lack of cheese is a perfectly legit reason, right?

 

You sound like you need someone else in your house to spend some quality time in the kitchen, is there anyone else to do that? I made a red lentil and sweet potato curry in the slow cooker yesterday, so I have food that just needs reheating. My slow cooker saves my life on a regular basic, it really does, I just need to remember about it!

Absolutely! I would move if there was a better cheese selection elsewhere, and my husband would be rushing me to go faster.

I am super anal about how dishes are done, where they go, and who eats what. I am not very fond of other people in my kitchen unless they are just re-heating something on the stove (we don't have a microwave).

I love my slow cooker, but the only thing that I use it for anymore is jambalaya. My husband complains that slow cookers cook all of the flavor out of everything. My father-in-law LOVES spicy food, so I always give him a couple of tupperware containers of the jambalaya. My mother-in-law isn't a fan of spicy food, but she loves not having to worry about what to cook him.

I went to a little farmer's market that was being held today up the street from me. It was my first time going to something like that, and it was very nice. They only had six different vegetables. I arrived ten minutes before they had been scheduled to open and they were already sold out of spinach, apples, lettuce and tomatoes. I did grab eight squash and a big bunch of cilantro for three dollars. I will be going even earlier next week. I had expected it to be a little more expensive because of the location and the crowd that they were catering to, but four medium sized squash for only one dollar? That's a crazy good deal!

They were also selling beets, but I can't eat those. The smell gets to me.

[jellysundae]

23 minutes ago, babayaga67 said:

I had expected it to be a little more expensive because of the location and the crowd that they were catering to, but four medium sized squash for only one dollar? That's a crazy good deal!

That sounds great! I've heard horror stories about farmers market prices, maybe it's more the larger ones then? I SO wish squash were more of a thing over here. Butternut are really the only ones for sale on a widespread basis, makes me sad!

I'm lucky that there's very little that I won't eat. The only thing I REALLY don't like is rocket (arugula) blech! I'll not pick it out of a salad, but I'll wish it wasn't there, lol.

I wonder what it is about spicy food that makes it so much more of a guy thing...it can't JUST be the "look how manly I am eating this burn-your-mouth-off food, RAWR! *beats chest*" thing, can it?

[babayaga67]

8 hours ago, jellysundae said:

I'm lucky that there's very little that I won't eat. The only thing I REALLY don't like is rocket (arugula) blech! I'll not pick it out of a salad, but I'll wish it wasn't there, lol.

I wonder what it is about spicy food that makes it so much more of a guy thing...it can't JUST be the "look how manly I am eating this burn-your-mouth-off food, RAWR! *beats chest*" thing, can it?

I know what you mean about arugula! I tried it for the first time recently, raw, nothing added, just to see if it was like most other leafy greens and lacked taste. It does not. It was so much worse than I had been expecting. I ended up steaming what I had bought and mixing it up with spinach, then using it in my stiffed zucchini so that I could hide the weird flavor.

My husband and I are okay with spicy, as long as there is still flavor behind it. I can handle way hotter foods than my husband, but I don't enjoy super spicy things that burn your mouth to the point that you can't actually taste what you're eating. Why some people eat ghost chili peppers is beyond me. I think that they should all be pulled up and killed. Don't burn them though, the chili in the smoke might kill someone.

Side note : When clearing poison ivy or oak off of your property, do NOT throw it onto a burn pile. The poison ivy/oak WILL go into your lungs and can kill you.

Side side note : I am not allergic to either poison ivy or oak, so I would be fine. I used to roll around in the stuff when I was a kid, and at summer camps I would tease everyone else by pulling a vine off of a tree and going up to a group of counselors and asking them what it was. Once I used a really big vine of poison oak to wipe sweat off of my forehead and neck. The counselors were running after me screaming to stop. I was crying I laughed so hard at their freaked out expressions.

[jellysundae]

I LOVE spinach, nothing more to say there really, lol.

My mum thinks there's something wrong with me because I don't like arugula but I LOVE watercress. But mum...they're NOTHING alike, lol. Watercress is peppery and delicious, arugula's just BITTER and, as you say, weird-tasting. I'm trying to grow American land cress in my kitchen window, I grew it before and found the flavour a bit too strong to be enjoyable, but realised this year that cooking it lightly should temper that so I'm trying again. But the plants aren't keen! They're about an inch across - not even at microgreen size - and aren't showing any inclination to get any bigger, despite having been that size for about 2 months now. Hopefully they'll do something (other than die) before winter comes along! The little lentil-sized leaves ARE full of flavour though, I'll give them that.

6 hours ago, babayaga67 said:

My husband and I are okay with spicy, as long as there is still flavor behind it.

A thousand times yes! Gratuitous heat with no flavour is just a waste of good food if you ask me. I used to get these frozen chopped chilis from a shop near me (it's gone now ), I LOVED those, not just for the convenience, but because they added delicious flavour more than heat, the heat came along later. I'd often add a heaped spoonful to the soup I heated for my lunch before going to work on a late shift, and my belly would glow for several hours afterwards, which was lovely as I worked in a refrigerated factory! Nothing quite like built-in central heating to keep you warm! So yeah, a LOT of mild chilis wins every time for me.

Eating ghost peppers etc. is all about machismo, isn't it. You saying that about the oils in the smoke reminded me of when I cook with bird's eye chilies before, getting a lungful of the steam would cause my chest to tighten and my breath to hitch. I only ever bought one bag of those, several days of adding one to my dinner each night gave me really sore and chapped lips, and I'd discovered by then that it was a heat but no flavour issue too, so I didn't buy them again. So having realised that while I like spicy flavours I don't have a huge heat-tolerance I tend to stick to chipotle stuff now because I love the smokey flavour, yum!

The poison ivy/oak thing is something we're luckily free from (so far!) in the UK. I'm sure it will invade our shores sooner or later though; either by accident or through malicious design. : / We certainly have a problem with Japanese knotweed, apparently we've got some Dutch doctor from the 1840s to blame for the introduction of that, cheers mate... But hugely invasive does still win out over poisonous, got to give it that I suppose. Are you quite the rarity with not being allergic to either poison beastie then?

[babayaga67]

I can't say that I have ever had watercress, so I have no idea what it tastes like. I have only recently (the last two years) really started cooking, and I am slow to try new things only because I like to try any new ingredient several different ways before adding anything else. It takes time to build a decent bit of food knowledge. I have my kids to thank for it though. With all of the heart problems from my father's side of the family I am much more conscientious of what I am eating.

Breakfast today was egg whites, blueberries, buttermilk bread with almond butter and cream cheese. I try to stay away from egg yolks unless I'm baking something because I the super high cholesterol content.

I have never met anyone else who was not allergic to poison ivy or oak. Ever. The best analogy that I can think of is if you don't react to bee stings. Normally there is swelling and pain, but if you are that one in a million that has no reaction at all no matter how many times you were stung then you are like me with the poison vines.

[jellysundae]

I hope you get to try watercress at some point then, if you want flavoursome greens they are definitely that, lovely fresh peppery taste, REALLY nice in sauce over salmon, great with cream cheese in a sandwich; but mainly it's just super good for you, I wish I had some now, lol. *eyes tiny landcress plants* Please grow!

Do you buy egg whites then, or do something else with your leftover yolks? Oh gosh almond butter...I want to try ALL the nut butters, but they're so expensive compared to peanut that I just can't justify the cost. Being unable to work I have to exist (subsist I think they call it) on benefits, so my budget for food is minimal to say the least, hence my attempts at growing stuff to eat.

That's intriguing about your nasty vine resistance! I also wasn't aware that some people aren't affected by bee stings! I think I always thought of it as they either kill you or they don't, but they'd always cause that pain and swelling even if you weren't allergic. So I guess you have magic blood or something, are your children immune too?

[babayaga67]

I buy both egg whites and regular eggs. I use them for different things since I like to cook and bake. You can't bake decent sweets with just egg whites, they don't turn out correctly. I only have the almond butter because I found it half off, I refuse to pay almost triple the amount of peanut butter for almond butter. Cashew butter is by far my favorite, but that is even more expensive than almond butter :( When I lived in Houston, Texas there was this amazing grocery store on the other side of town (about a two hour drive), and it was like an amusement park for food. They had at least fifteen different types of nut butters in huge wooden barrels that you would scoop out yourself. There was also an entire section for cheese. When I say entire section, I mean it was about the size of a full aisle in a normal supermarket, both sides, front to back, all cheese. It was my happy place. They had over four hundred types of cheese and it was organised by country of origin.

I don't know if there is such a thing as not having a reaction to bee stings, which is why I used it as an example. I have never met anyone who was immune to either vine, nor have I met anyone who has even heard of it. The owner of my old summer camp had literally met tens of thousands of people over his years there, but he had never heard of anyone like me. I have no idea if my kids are immune because we don't have the stuff up where we now live. I don't know if I want to test it because I don't want them to end up suffering just to satisfy my curiosity.

[jellysundae]

That store...how very satisfying it must be to own a place like that, and to know that the customers feel about it the way you did...have you found any good places where you live now?

Yeah I've only had almond butter because I was gifted with some. Oh and I did make some once, that turned out fairly well considering I made it in the little mixer attachment that fits to my immersion blender and I'm surprised I didn't burn the motor out, lol, and while it might possibly have cost less than the same amount of store bought almond butter it might not have...once I've cleared the money that I owe the bank I may allow myself the occasional fancy nut butter purchase, maybe...IF the offer price brings it down to anything I'm willing to contemplate.

At least your kids haven't found out the hard way that they ARE allergic like everyone else. I wasn't aware that poison oak wasn't everywhere over there. *looks on Wikipedia* "widely distributed in western North America", it says. *reads more* Hmm, ok, learning stuff here! Yep I'd just assumed it was all over the country, kind of silly of me considering how wildly different the climate can be, and also that there's a big ol' range of mountains down the middle to keep stuff on one side or t'other. Oh wait, there's a variety that grows in the east too...so much for that then!

I have intentions to cook today, having said that I had the same intentions yesterday and it didn't happen...this is what will hopefully be my dinner, with some veggies of some description!

Chickpea Casserole with Lemon, Herbs & Shallots

I'm even going to follow the recipe close to exactly which is pretty unheard of for me. Just money-lead adjustments; onion instead of shallots and cheddar instead of parmesan.

[babayaga67]

No nice stores here. I live in a small town with a population of about 100,00 vs Houston's population of over 2 million... No fancy shmancy stores here.

There is poison oak all over the country, yes, but I live in a desert state so there isn't much in the way of forest and crazy vegetation.

Oh my gosh! That recipe looks amazing! I am going to grab a lemon on my way home from my son's doctor appointment so that I can make that tonight.

I don't use brown rice, so I'll sub in some white rice. No one in my family likes cottage cheese, so I'll do what I always do when I find it in a recipe, use cream cheese!

[jellysundae]

There are some benefits to living in the desert then! Coming from such a very green country myself it's not something that appeals to me at all, I find desert landscapes oppressive and depressing. I'd miss not being able to complain about the rain!! Your town sounds similar in size to mine so I know how you feel. The most you're going to get in a small town is nice family run small businesses like delis and butchers and so on, isn't it.  Those sell delicious stuff and lucky anyone who's small town has them, but obviously they can only sell a fraction of the choices available in the big fancy grocers.

Oh! How nice that you like the look of that recipe!   I've made it several times and it's always turned out good, reading through the comments I maybe got lucky, seems it's a bit dry for some, hopefully I don't mess it up this time around. I'm wondering about adding fresh basil to it rather than rosemary, just because I have more of that growing than anything else. Hope it turns out well for you!

[babayaga67]

I forgot to mention that I will definitely be adding spinach too. I can't make a casserole without spinach, it's blasphemy as far as I'm concerned. I forgot to stop for the lemon, so I will have to go back out. :(

I do miss the woods. I love trees. I have no intention of ever moving back towards the coast though. I can't take the humidity. Houston has a "Heat Index," which tells you the actual temperature, and then they adjust it for humidity to tell you that it might be 90 outside, but it feels like 110 thanks to the humidity. I also love being able to step out of the shower and feel clean. Every time I visit family down south I have this nasty feeling as soon as I step out of the shower because I instantly become clammy again. I feel like I never get to be clean.

This is America, so even in this small town we do have two Walmart, one Target, a mall and 5 other major grocery stores. I laugh at the people born and raised here, because they will go to one Walmart, realize that they are out of a given product, and give up because it is too far to drive the ten minutes to the other Walmart. It takes thirty minutes to get to the closet grocery store in Houston, but five to ten minutes to the other side of town is too much. lazy people.

[jellysundae]

35 minutes ago, babayaga67 said:

I can't make a casserole without spinach, it's blasphemy as far as I'm concerned.

One of your 10 kitchen commandments? "thou shalt always add spinach to casseroles". I could get behind that!

Well mine is now out of the oven and going into my mouth! Turned out good again, wish I'd made it again sooner. The basil makes it pretty without making it taste weird, I'll add more next time! Roasted some broccoli to go with it, I can kid myself this is a healthy dinner if I ignore the amount of cheese that went into it.

Yeah I got to experience humidity: US style in Florida, just wow, haha. It's moist here in the UK, but our hot weather is more often in the 70s - 85 and the papers get to trot out the "phew, what a scorcher!" headline again - but temps over 80 can generally be counted on both hands with fingers to spare, any year, we've had 3 so far this year. 90 but feels like 110 sounds like hell on earth to me.

I can't get my head around how many more shops there are in the US compared to the amount of people. Right, this town had a population of 17,671 in 2011, and we have 5 supermarkets, only one of which is big enough to be classed as a superstore, and NO big stores of the Walmart/Target ilk, a town this small just couldn't support something like that. Or at least that's what stores think because they don't open here!

[babayaga67]

I finally finished the clean up from my casserole. Thank you @jellysundae for that recipe, it was amazing!

[WhiteWolf]

@jellysundae That adult trike looks just like mine except for the color. I have a nice greenbelt in my area where I can ride.

[jellysundae]

5 hours ago, babayaga67 said:

I finally finished the clean up from my casserole. Thank you @jellysundae for that recipe, it was amazing!

Oh wow great, that's a relief! I was feeling under pressure there!

Isn't it funny how we do that? It wouldn't have been my fault if you cooked something I'd idly mentioned in conversation and you didn't like it/it didn't turn out well, but I'd FEEL like it was.

I hopefully won't forget about this recipe again, because it's a good base for adding things to and I'd like to play around with that, how much spinach did you put in yours, did you saute it first? Bet that tasted great with the lemon, I really like the freshness the lemon gives it, I'm going to have some more today with hot smoked chili, ginger and lime salmon and some green beans.

3 hours ago, WhiteWolf said:

@jellysundae That adult trike looks just like mine except for the color. I have a nice greenbelt in my area where I can ride.

*sigh* sounds truly lovely. I could ride around the river here on a trike, there's a path on either side and a couple of foot bridges that makes a circuit easy, but the paths are narrow and frequented by dog walkers and so on, I'd spend a lot of time nestling into the nettles growing at the side to enable people to get around me.

I've tried to find a nice pic of the river that shows the paths, but one in the asleep part of the year's the best I can manage, you let me down, Google!

You can see how narrow the paths are though, and the one on the right has some pretty rampant growth on either side at this time of the year, much of it stinging nettles on the field-side, lol.

Oh hey, here's a painting of the same area, closer to the bend as the mill's visible.

Painted by a local artist, Robin Hall, who's a friend of mine, so that's kind of cool.  Aha! Here's a photo taken from the same spot by a local Councillor back in May. That's more like it! It's such a pretty area.  So would be WONDERFUL for riding a trike around, if there's was no-on else on the path at the time so I could stay firmly in the middle of it!

 

 

[babayaga67]

4 hours ago, jellysundae said:

Oh wow great, that's a relief! I was feeling under pressure there!

You didn't write the recipe, so it's not your fault if I didn't like it. I added twelve ounces of chopped and steamed spinach. I never understood the whole lemon zest thing until very recently. Lemon peel really does make a huge difference, and I love it!

I made some steamed okra as a side dish to the casserole. I don't know if you have ever had okra before, but it is very different in texture from any other produce. Being born and raised in the south I had only ever had deep friend okra, which everyone likes. When I started trying to eat better, I thought that I would try to eat okra without breading and deep frying it. I decided to just cut it up and steam it. It just so happens that steamed okra is a very slimy thing. No one else in my house will eat it because it looks gross when you try to move it from the plate to your mouth and there is this semi clear webbing that clings to everything. I like the taste enough that it doesn't bother me.

That is a beautiful bike trail. I used to have something like that by my home when I lived in Denver, but I didn't use it very often because the other bicyclists were always so rude.

I am watching Pooh's Heffalump Movie for the first time, and my kids seem to enjoy it. I tried to get them The Tigger Movie, but something went horribly wrong and the disc wouldn't play :(

[jellysundae]

I've never had okra, but thanks to the internet I'm aware of its slimy tendencies! Do people add it to casseroles? Would that mask the sliminess, or does it not stand up well to being cooked in a sauce?

Aw, gotta love Winnie the Pooh! I have a Pooh money box that's been in my possession since I was little, I'm gonna guess at being about 6 when I got it. Can tell how old it is because it says "Made in Great Britain" on the stopper! Those were the days...

[babayaga67]

I have never heard of a casserole with okra, but I would imagine that it would not mask the slimy-ness. Though there are casseroles for everything, so I'm sure that there is some kind of okra casserole out there somewhere. As far as I know covering it in batter and deep frying it is how you hide the slimy factor.

I was never a huge fan of Pooh growing up, but I think that as mostly because my mom loved it so much that I wanted to slap her sometimes. She would fan girl over Eeyore like girls used to go after the Beatles. It was weird. I am discovering that I do like the stories through my kids, so I feel a lot less creeped out now.

What do they write on the stoppers now?

I think that I am just going to re heat up the chickpea casserole from last night, cook up some rice and green beans, and that will likely be it for dinner tonight mat my house. We had a lot of leftover casserole since the kids didn't seem to like it.