D & I just went on our first date in longer than I can remember (my birthday at Fallingwater doesn't count, somehow). He informed me this morning that we had to go to Taco Loco tonight, so I didn't argue. This is a little, authentic Mexican place (with Authentic Mexicans that own & run it) that used to be three blocks from our apartment. They have a really nice patio outside, and you can bring your own wine. Food is awesome, & D says that the black beans are better than his mom's (quite a complement).
So we picked up a bottle of Wrenwood Zinfandel, 2004 & headed over there. I got some kind of Tilapia special, with peppers & onions and tomatoes & olives, and he got enchilades mole. Awesome. I am so full of food that I'm afraid I might vomit some of it up, simply because I don't have enough room in my stomach.
Before that, I met my friend Marguerite for coffee in the morning, got some of my knive's sharpened for free at the frou-frou cooking store on the South Side Flats, and then D & I both worked on the yard for 5 hours. He mowed, I dug up a bunch of vine-like things that are invading the small space of grass next to the sidewalk in front of the house. The little old guy neighbor (that neither D or I can remember his name, ever) stopped by & gave us gardening tips, and I discovered that I can't use our weedwacker, because I can't actually start the thing, and it stalls... alot. But I did pick 5 lbs of green cherry tomatoes today, so there'll probably be more pickled tomato preserves canning soemtime soon.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Best Drug Ever?
I'm thinking of posting a question on my Facebook account, since it's something I've been kicking around for awhile while cooking this weekend. What is the best drug invention/discovery ever? Okay, I'm only talking about legitimate drugs, not recreational, but there's some seriously good ones. Things I wouldn't want to live without. Obviously, it will differ according to personal situation: diabetics would (probably) vote for insulin, HIV-patients for AZT or whatever they get prescribed nowadays.
My vote(s) are threefold.
1) Benadryl. There's just so much to like about it. Yeah, it can make you sleepy, but when you're about to scratch your own eyeballs out from hay fever, a little sleepiness doesn't seem so bad. Also, you can take it preventatively, like I do when I want to eat rosemary containing food, but don't want to break out in hives. Plus it's been a generic forever, so it's relatively cheap. And people can't make it into methamphetamine, so you don't have to sign for it & get put on a government list.
2) Cortisone. Maybe most people don't appreciate this one, but I saw a documentary on this African-American chemist (Percy Julian, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Lavon_Julian) that helped to find a really cheap way to produce cortisone, and they really emphasized the difference that it made to people with rheumatoid arthritis. Also how desperate people used to be to get it - when it was first produced, it was taken from an animal source & so was really rare & expensive; Julian found a way to modify soybean steroids to produce cortisone. I don't have RA, but I do have psoriasis, which is a corticosteroid-intensive kind of disorder. I love it. It's one of the only things that works consistently, and I have a relaxing reaction to its application that may be totally psychosomatic, but I don't care.
3) Novacaine (and all the other nerve-blocking, -caine class of drugs). I get a lot of dental work done, enough said. Also, I once had conjunctivitis so bad I couldn't actually open my eyes. They put lidocaine on my eyeballs in the ER, and the pain instantly disappeared. Granted, it's no cure for anything, but when you need local anesthesia, it's awesome (and has allowed me to get wisdom teeth pulled without general anesthesia, which I hate).
My vote(s) are threefold.
1) Benadryl. There's just so much to like about it. Yeah, it can make you sleepy, but when you're about to scratch your own eyeballs out from hay fever, a little sleepiness doesn't seem so bad. Also, you can take it preventatively, like I do when I want to eat rosemary containing food, but don't want to break out in hives. Plus it's been a generic forever, so it's relatively cheap. And people can't make it into methamphetamine, so you don't have to sign for it & get put on a government list.
2) Cortisone. Maybe most people don't appreciate this one, but I saw a documentary on this African-American chemist (Percy Julian, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Lavon_Julian) that helped to find a really cheap way to produce cortisone, and they really emphasized the difference that it made to people with rheumatoid arthritis. Also how desperate people used to be to get it - when it was first produced, it was taken from an animal source & so was really rare & expensive; Julian found a way to modify soybean steroids to produce cortisone. I don't have RA, but I do have psoriasis, which is a corticosteroid-intensive kind of disorder. I love it. It's one of the only things that works consistently, and I have a relaxing reaction to its application that may be totally psychosomatic, but I don't care.
3) Novacaine (and all the other nerve-blocking, -caine class of drugs). I get a lot of dental work done, enough said. Also, I once had conjunctivitis so bad I couldn't actually open my eyes. They put lidocaine on my eyeballs in the ER, and the pain instantly disappeared. Granted, it's no cure for anything, but when you need local anesthesia, it's awesome (and has allowed me to get wisdom teeth pulled without general anesthesia, which I hate).
Adventures in Canning
I tried my hand at canning this weekend. We've had an amazing tomato crop this year - due to our inability to sacrifice any of our plants at the "thinning" stage - and we had to do something with all the resulting tomatoes. (Even D couldn't eat them all.)
So.... I first looked for recipes. D's mom gave me a water bath & canning supplies and the Blue book, which is some kind of home food preservation bible. It turns out that no-one has ever tried to preserve yellow-pear or non-green varieties of cherry tomatoes, so that even though many websites strongly advise you not to modify recipes, I had to do exactly that. I settled for a batch of whole cherry tomatoes (yellow-pear, and red ones) with a few Thai red-dragon peppers and habaneros thrown in, and a pickle-like preserve (strongly modified) of the same tomatoes, lemons, and peppers.
Lesson #1 - Canning is a pain in the &*%!. It takes forever. The preserve thing had to be cooked for several hours, then sit overnight, then strained, the sauce reduced, and everything added back and boiled before you even get to washing all the jars in ultra-hot water, boiling the lids & actually canning. Also, my stove is not powerful enough to boil water without several hours of ramping up the temperature. On the bright side, the water bath got well over 212 degrees Farenheit. I'm not sure this was a good thing, and didn't know boiling water could get over 212.
Lesson #2 - Always wear gloves when cutting Habaneros, even if you are only cutting them in half and think that there's no way that a significant amount of burning is going to take place.
Lesson # 3 - When you're boiling something that contains a good amount of vinegar, don't stick your bare hands in the steam coming off of it. I thought at first that it was the Habanero juice that made my hands burn for many, many hours last night (and resisted ice water, vinegar, vinegar and peroxide, washing with lavendar soap, alcohol, yogurt treatments). But then they started burning again while I was reducing the sugar/water/vinegar sauce. Bare hands + cloud of acidic gas = severe pain that you really can't believe how badly it hurts. I finally had to go to bed with a bowl of ice water next to the bed. At some point, I finally fell asleep.
Lesson #4 - I always thought that canning was supposed to force all the air out of the jars. But, there's still space/an airlike substance at the top of my jars!!! They're sealed properly, and the Blue Book only emphasizes that the seal should be good, so we'll see if they start rotting/turning interesting colors in a few weeks. If not, my family members can expect canned goods (at least the preserves, which turned out really good) for Christmas this year.
Lesson #5 (see Lesson #1) - I think canning will be a once-a-year-thing.
Otherwise, I also made cookies today with my fabulous (no sarcasm) KitchenAid mixer. It's finally cold enough to really get my oven going, and this thing makes the whole thing so much quicker. Our friend J also came over today to work on the house (Yay!). He used to do stuff for us for free, but very infrequently. Now we pay him a modest amount, and since he's no longer working at his old company but running his own contracting/HVAC thing, he has more time for us (Plus we don't feel so bad about needing/accepting so much of his help).
One thing I didn't do, was get insulation done up in the unfinished attic. I bought the stupid insulation last January, but have not gotten around to it. sigh... someday I'll get it done.
So.... I first looked for recipes. D's mom gave me a water bath & canning supplies and the Blue book, which is some kind of home food preservation bible. It turns out that no-one has ever tried to preserve yellow-pear or non-green varieties of cherry tomatoes, so that even though many websites strongly advise you not to modify recipes, I had to do exactly that. I settled for a batch of whole cherry tomatoes (yellow-pear, and red ones) with a few Thai red-dragon peppers and habaneros thrown in, and a pickle-like preserve (strongly modified) of the same tomatoes, lemons, and peppers.
Lesson #1 - Canning is a pain in the &*%!. It takes forever. The preserve thing had to be cooked for several hours, then sit overnight, then strained, the sauce reduced, and everything added back and boiled before you even get to washing all the jars in ultra-hot water, boiling the lids & actually canning. Also, my stove is not powerful enough to boil water without several hours of ramping up the temperature. On the bright side, the water bath got well over 212 degrees Farenheit. I'm not sure this was a good thing, and didn't know boiling water could get over 212.
Lesson #2 - Always wear gloves when cutting Habaneros, even if you are only cutting them in half and think that there's no way that a significant amount of burning is going to take place.
Lesson # 3 - When you're boiling something that contains a good amount of vinegar, don't stick your bare hands in the steam coming off of it. I thought at first that it was the Habanero juice that made my hands burn for many, many hours last night (and resisted ice water, vinegar, vinegar and peroxide, washing with lavendar soap, alcohol, yogurt treatments). But then they started burning again while I was reducing the sugar/water/vinegar sauce. Bare hands + cloud of acidic gas = severe pain that you really can't believe how badly it hurts. I finally had to go to bed with a bowl of ice water next to the bed. At some point, I finally fell asleep.
Lesson #4 - I always thought that canning was supposed to force all the air out of the jars. But, there's still space/an airlike substance at the top of my jars!!! They're sealed properly, and the Blue Book only emphasizes that the seal should be good, so we'll see if they start rotting/turning interesting colors in a few weeks. If not, my family members can expect canned goods (at least the preserves, which turned out really good) for Christmas this year.
Lesson #5 (see Lesson #1) - I think canning will be a once-a-year-thing.
Otherwise, I also made cookies today with my fabulous (no sarcasm) KitchenAid mixer. It's finally cold enough to really get my oven going, and this thing makes the whole thing so much quicker. Our friend J also came over today to work on the house (Yay!). He used to do stuff for us for free, but very infrequently. Now we pay him a modest amount, and since he's no longer working at his old company but running his own contracting/HVAC thing, he has more time for us (Plus we don't feel so bad about needing/accepting so much of his help).
One thing I didn't do, was get insulation done up in the unfinished attic. I bought the stupid insulation last January, but have not gotten around to it. sigh... someday I'll get it done.
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