An evolving main dish soup with terrible nomenclature.
I have been making this recipe for so long that, even coming back from my cooking hiatus, I didn’t need to look up the base recipe. This was a good thing, because I wasn’t even sure what the base recipe was.
After much consideration, I remembered that this dish was originally inspired by a dish made by Emeril1 back when the Food Network wasn’t the Game Show Network for foodies2.
I remember making this recipe more or less as listed a couple times before seeing a post about a sausage, black-eyed peas, and greens soup that REALLY inspired me345.
Place a Dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat. Add olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add onions and sauté until beginning to brown, 4-6 minutes. Add bratwurst and cook until pink dissipates, 5-7 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant, approximately 1 minute. Add dark beer and deglaze pan, then add the drained soaked black-eyed peas and greens. Cover with water, then add salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring pot to a rolling boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered until flavors meld and peas are tender, at least 30 minutes.
The recipe calls for soaked peas. The best way is to do this overnight, of course — but if you’re like me, you never think about that requirement until you start to cook. Fortunately, the HIP Cooking blog has instructions6 and videos on how to use a pressure cooker to quick-soak beans and peas.
Thoughts:
1) My wife had been asking me to make this ever since I started cooking again, so I think it’s fair to say it’s a fan favorite.
2) It’s also fair to say it tastes better than it looks, because it doesn’t look particularly great.
Verdict:
Taste: 7.5/10. It was good, but I’ve made better versions in the past. I don’t think I got the seasonings quite right (i.e. I should have used something more than salt and pepper). The tasting panel approved, and the gluten-sensitive member did not have any issues. Availability: 8/10. I don’t always have a suitable sausage in the fridge or a bunch of greens waiting to be transformed, but they’re ingredients that can be easily used in other dishes. Story: 6.5/10. When a dish is memorable enough to be requested ages later, it can’t be bad.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, says the guy who binged the first 16 seasons or so of Guy’s Grocery Games, or will stop almost anything he’s doing to catch a repeat of Iron Chef America. ↩︎
Try as I might, I can’t find the post that really inspired this dish. It was a personal cooking blog that most likely vanished into the ether when the hosting plan ran out. I did find similar recipes that would have been published by the time I found that one. One of them is from The Kitchn, and the second is from Serious Eats. I do not recall seeing either of these recipes before. ↩︎
Sometimes meals can be elaborately planned and extravagant. Typically Sunday brunch is around here, even if we let DoorDash handle the extravagance. My better half really enjoys her savory and sweet brunch items, so there’s usually bacon and eggs and fruit and some sort of pancake or waffle concoction.
And then there are Sundays when you look up and realize that it’s after 2pm, and your wife’s standing 3pm engagement (that had been on hiatus for the holidays) is back on the calendar.
From the King’s Kouples-Hope-You Can Cook-Book, compiled by the Hope Lutheran Church of St. Louis, MO. Undated cookbook. Recipe is attributed to Marilyn Willians.
Ingredients
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a skillet over medium-high heat, cook sausage until browned, using spatula to separate into smaller chunks. Drain excess fat.
Separate crescent rolls into 8 triangles. Place on an ungreased 12″ pizza pan with long edges pointing towards the center. Press over bottom and up sides to form crust, patching any perforations. Spoon drained sausage over crust, then sprinkle with potatoes and top with shredded cheddar cheese.
Beat together eggs, milk, salt, and pepper until well combined, then pour into pizza crust. Top with Parmesan cheese. Place in oven for 25-30 minutes to bake.
If I had gluten-free refrigerated crescent rolls1 and the forethought to have looked up a recipe like this, I might have made it. Alas…
The good news is that I had all of the ingredients for gringo breakfast tacos2.
Take sausage and cook it in a skillet over medium-high heat, then drain the excess grease. Add eggs and milk, mixing together well to get the eggs beaten. As the eggs set, scrape off the bottom of the skillet and fold together. Add a couple large handfuls of cheese and cook together until eggs are done and cheese is melted. Serve with tortillas (microwaved or heated on a griddle).
Verdict:
Taste: 8/10. Sometimes something simple like this just hits the spot. Availability: 9.8/10. I don’t always have these ingredients available to me, but it’s rare that I don’t. Story: What story?
Administrivia:
Slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) working on catching up on the backlog here. I found this post hard to finish because there really wasn’t a “hook”.
There are also improvements going on behind the scenes here. *knocks on wood* Hopefully in the next couple weeks the landing page will look far better than it does now.
Sometimes you throw shit at the wall to see what sticks, and sometimes you just have to laugh at the process.
I had done all of my due diligence before heading to the store on Saturday. It was right before the Polar Vortex1 hit, and with the impending winter weather the emergency French toast run2 was in full swing. I assumed it was going to be crazy at the store, so I wanted to have a thorough grocery list to get me through recipes I wanted to be prepared to cook.
As they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I just didn’t realize how quickly that first contact would occur.
Engagement #1:
The first thing I do when I go to the grocery store is head to the deli. I look over the deli counter selection, and someone comes up to help me.
“Do you have pancetta behind the counter?”
“No, we only have it pre-packaged and diced.”
He takes me over to the packaged deli section.
The good news: He’s wrong. They have it sliced. They have it diced as well, but that doesn’t do me much good if I want to wrap fish in it for cooking.
The bad news: Each package contains 6 slices. For four pieces of fish, I need 8 slices. Each package costs $5.99. Spending $12 on pancetta was not in the mental budget I had set up.
I knew the neighborhood grocery store wasn’t great, but it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t have pancetta sliced to order. Ah well, I’m an improviser at heart. I’m sure there’s other options. I can probably work with good bacon, if nothing else.
Engagement #2:
I head over to the produce section to check out the herbs. Unlike Central Markup678910, almost all of the fresh herbs are pre-packaged. I find the (overpriced) basil I’m looking for that will be used in a different dish, but I don’t see any tarragon.
Well, fuck!!! It’s really damned hard to make pistachio tarragon aioli without fresh tarragon.
That’s OK. I pull my phone out of my pocket and start looking for pistachio aioli recipes without tarragon. After just a little bit of searching, I find this recipe11 from the Irish Times that includes parsley instead of tarragon. This works for what I’m looking for. There’s lots of both Italian and curly-leaf parsley there. A bunch of parsley is like $1.50, and I don’t even need to pick up an ingredient for the original aioli.
Engagement #3:
I wasn’t planning on making the entirety of the original fish recipe, but I like the idea of roasted fennel, and I was planning on incorporating it into the meal. Moreover, I had a different recipe I was planning on making that was dependent on the fennel.
I look around the produce department, and there’s no fennel bulbs.
Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do NOW?! I guess fennel isn’t an essential flavor in the meal I was planning to cook…
The remainder of the actual shopping trip was fairly uneventful. I found center-cut bacon available for $5.99, and there was enough to put six half-slices around each of the cod fillets I had purchased. It wouldn’t be pancetta, but it would be close.
I checked out at the grocery store and ordered a Lyft to get home. I’m standing outside waiting for the driver when I realize I completely forgot the cannellini beans for the bean dish I was planning.
The driver pulled up, took one look at the cart full of groceries I had, and said that there wasn’t room for me and my groceries in his car12. He said he’d cancel the ride and get someone else to pick me up.
Engagement #4:
I have a cart full of bagged groceries and a few minutes to go in to grab the beans I forgot to get. It feels awkward as hell, but I take the cart back in to the store to grab cannellini beans.
They don’t carry cannellini beans.
At this point I think the grocery gods are just fucking with me13.
The closest thing I can find to cannellini beans is mayocoba beans14, so I grab a bag of those. I also grab a bag of Carnaroli rice15 and head to the self-checkout. I flag down one of the self-checkout monitors to make sure I’m not going to get in trouble for trying to steal anything, then check out and make it outside to meet the Lyft driver.
Engagement #5:
I made it home without incident. I got all of the groceries put away, then decided to prepare for dinner. The pistachio parsley aioli could be made in advance and refrigerated, so I decided to go ahead and prepare that.
Using an immersion blender, give the pistachios and cilantro a blitz until a somewhat chunky crumb is achieved. Add the capers and 30mL of the olive oil and whizz until an even crumb is achieved.
Whisk together the egg yolk and the minced garlic. Slowly add in the remaining olive oil in small batches, whisking vigorously until the egg and oil are emulsified. Add the lemon juice once about half of the oil has been added.
Combine the pistachio/cilantro crumble with the egg/oil emulsification, then add the balsamic vinegar. Whisk to combine, then add additional oil or water to adjust consistency. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice, and/or balsamic vinegar to taste.
I grabbed the curly-leaf parsley and shoved it into a plastic bag without a thought – only to realize when I got home that I had grabbed cilantro instead.
This probably wouldn’t have been much of a setback if I weren’t one of the unfortunate minority for whom cilantro tastes like soap.
Engagement #6:
I couldn’t make myself buy two packages of pancetta to wrap the cod when I could do it with one package of center-cut bacon.
Slice the center-cut bacon strips in half. Wrap the cod fillets with six half-strips of bacon in an oven-safe cast iron skillet. Cook, seam-side up until the bacon is crisp, 6-8 minutes, then flip. Place the skillet in an oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, then cook until the cod is cooked through, 5-8 minutes.
So, yeah, in this instance bacon doesn’t work nearly as well as it seems that pancetta would. Approximately zero of the fat rendered out of the bacon, and it never got crisp, so the bacon was just cooked pieces of fat. This can, in fact, be tasty, but it is not what this recipe is looking for.
Engagement #7:
The source recipe is for “Tuscan white beans”, not cannellini beans specifically. I can probably get 90% of the way there with the mayocoba beans I purchased instead.
Grind the bay leaves, fennel seeds and cumin seeds together finely, then add the ancho chile powder.
Beans
Set Instant Pot to sauté mode. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to the bowl and heat until shimmering. Add diced onions and cook until softened and browning, 4-6 minutes. Add the mayocoba beans and 10 cups water to the bowl of the Instant Pot, then set to Pressure Cook and attach the lid, locking it into place securely. Set the pressure cook cycle for 2 minutes, then let it pressure and cook. Let the pressure vent naturally until safe to open.
While the mayocoba beans are venting, place a Dutch oven over high heat and add the remaining olive oil to the pot. Heat until shimmering. Add the spinach to the Dutch oven, smoothing out such that as many of the leaves are subjected to the olive oil and charring. Stir the leaves, adding more olive oil as necessary to make sure all of the leaves wind up charred black and the olive oil is dark green, about 10 minutes.
Drain the beans and onions into a colander, then rinse well. Add the beans and onions to the charred spinach and oil, then add half of the spice blend and salt to taste. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously. Add the balsamic vinegar and enough water to cover the beans (3-4 cups), then cover and turn the burner on high. Once the contents of the Dutch oven are boiling, remove the cover, reduce the heat to allow the beans to simmer, then cook until beans are cooked thoroughly, 40-60 minutes.
I get the mayocoba beans into the pressure cooker for the soak, then start heating up the oil for charring the spinach…
…and the smoke alarm goes off. I go to reset the smoke alarm, open the doors to the patio…
…and the smoke alarm goes off again. I go to reset the smoke alarm and fan the smoke away from the alarm…
…and the OTHER smoke alarm goes off. That one is not at a height I can reach standing on the ground, so I have to get up precariously on a chair with my CROW boot and press the button…
…and it won’t reset. One of the members of the tasting panel comes in and asks if she can help, Because she has fingernails, she’s able to get that smoke alarm to reset while I go get the spinach to char, then complete cooking the beans.
Thoughts:
1) The good news is that the meal tasted a lot better than it looked. That’s good news because the meal looked pretty awful.
2) My favorite component of the meal was by far the aioli. I still think cilantro tastes like soap, but prepared in this manner, not only does it taste good, but it goes very well with the bacon-wrapped cod.
3) One member of the tasting panel tells me that the cod is the worst thing I’ve cooked since starting this project. I ask for clarification, giving a reminder of the pork curry and coo coo fiasco; they say that the main issue with that was the consistency, whereas the cod doesn’t go well with the other flavors in the meal I cooked.
Verdict:
Taste: 6.5/10. I really liked the aioli. I liked the cod, and could live with the beans. Given the other feedback, this particular recipe/combo needs some additional rethinking. Accessibility: 6/10. This is the first time I’ve purchased any fish other than tuna from the seafood counter at a grocery store. I also don’t routinely stock cilantro. Story: 9/10. I mean, you’ve got the protagonist fighting through progressively more and more absurd issues in order to get a decent meal on the table. It may not be high drama, but at least it’s funny.
Administrivia:
Nothing much new to report. I’ve engaged with a Fiverr designer to help me come up with a logo, typography, and style guide so I can make the site look a lot more like I was hoping it would. The designs are not due for a week, however.
Two meals in the backlog now.
So named because it reminds us all of how much ERCOT sucks. ↩︎
Bread, eggs, milk — the three things grocery stores always sell out of when there’s white stuff in the forecast around here. ↩︎
Central Market is derisively known as Central Markup. It’s a subsidiary of H-E-B, and it is an amazing grocery store where it’s not uncommon to spend $200 on two paper bags’ worth of groceries. ↩︎
H-E-B has migrated north to DFW, but that doesn’t mean they’ll deign to put an actual H-E-B store in Dallas County. There are Central Markets, and there are other H-E-B brands that are opening in other portions of the county, but no actual H-E-B stores, despite the fact that they own a property less than 5 miles from where I live. ↩︎
I’m not bitter. Please don’t put in the newspaper that I got bitter. ↩︎
Combine all ingredients in a zip-top bag. Add meat of choice. Remove as much air as possible and close the bag. Place in the refrigerator for 8 hours (or overnight).
This recipe1 was inspired by a post on Grillax. I used my version of the marinade in order to flavor three New York steaks (they were strip steaks, but they were not labeled as New York Strips. Don’t start ME lying). I put the steaks in the marinade and let them soak overnight, then patted the steaks dry and put them into a fresh freezer bag in the water bath with the immersion circulator set to 136.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The beauty of sous vide is that it’s not realistically possible to overcook2 something3 in the time frame of a day. I put them in the water back before starting work, then pulled it out after work. I heated up my cast-iron griddle rocket hot and cooked each of the steaks for about 45 seconds on each side, turning once in order to get the cross-hatched grill marks.
The asparagus was simple as well. I cut about an inch off each of the spears, then sprayed the griddle with olive oil and cooked until they were slightly charred. I topped the spears with a little bit of lemon juice, and it was delicious.
The starch…well, it was supposed to be risotto. It was cooked like risotto, with beer in place of the traditional white wine. However, it was just…off. The texture wasn’t right…and it finally dawned on me what was wrong:
I had used Calrose rice. Traditional risotto is made with Arborio or Carnaroli rice. Calrose, Carnaroli…po-tay-to, po-tah-to…
From the thirteenth edition of the Fredricksburg Home Kitchen Cook Book, published by the Fredricksburg Parent-Teacher Association’s Cook Book Committee in 1996. Recipe is attributed to the first edition of the book (1916) and to Mrs. Herm. Goldschmidt.
Ingredients
Instructions
Place lard in a pan and heat to the smoking point. Add rice (dry) and stir until it browns gently. Add tomatoes and other ingredients and stir until tomatoes soften, then cover with enough water to swell rice and cook until soft on a slow fire.
Note
Serve with chili and beans, or fried sausage.
Since I didn’t really give you a starch recipe, I dug into my archives and found an interesting one. Michelle and I were in Fredricksburg, TX in the second week of October 20174 for a quick vacation. We stopped at an antique store and found a copy of this cookbook, which I just had to have as a souvenir of this trip. I pulled this off my bookshelf because it looked interesting, but little did I know that the recipes in this book were provided with the original edition they were printed in. The recipes aren’t indexed by ingredient, but as far as I can tell this is one of only a couple rice recipes, so it seemed appropriate to include this one5.
Thoughts:
1) I thought it was pretty good, though I wasn’t particularly happy with the “risotto”.
2) My tasting panel compatriots disagreed, however. They thought it was quite good.
3) I did not tag the marinade as “gluten-friendly” because of the beer, and I would not have tagged the “risotto” recipe either, but the member of the tasting panel with gluten sensitivities did not have any issues with it.
Verdict:
Taste: 8/10. It’s REALLY hard to mess up this steak preparation, and the asparagus came out well. I’m probably being too hard on myself regarding the starch. Availability: 7/10. I don’t keep strip steaks and asparagus in the fridge on the regular, but they’re not hard to find at the store. Story: 8.5/10. Save my brain fart confusing Calrose rice and Carnaroli rice, there wasn’t much of a story to be had. Finding the Mexican rice recipe from 1916 was amazing though.
Administrivia:
Still behind on blogging. I’ll try to get one more meal posted today, and then I’ll only be two behind. One of those two will be something that isn’t complicated enough to get a recipe, so I’ll just need to find something with the key ingredients in one of my pile of cookbooks.
An ode to (and riff upon) Nebraska’s most notable culinary contribution.
Unlike most people, I actually knew what a Runza was before I set foot in Nebraska for the first time. (I credit Food Network for that knowledge on the periphery of my brain.) Moreover, I actually wanted to try it, and made sure I did on my first trip.
It’s one of the few things about trips to Nebraska I’d actually look forward to – the stuffed bread pocket with beef, cabbage, onion and cheese. When I no longer had a reason to go to Nebraska, I actually missed it. Occasionally I’d track down a recipe for Runza casserole and make it when I wanted the flavors (I’m far too impatient to make the bread pockets, so the casserole was much easier), and on my trips to watch FC Dallas play Sporting Kansas City, I’d often detour into Lawrence, KS to stop at the closest Runza restaurant to my route and pick up lunch/dinner.
Fast forward a few years, and an awesome restaurant opened just a couple miles from where we lived downtown (RIP, Local Urban Craft Kitchen). This was relatively early in the DFW craft beer boom, and one of the main selling points was a list of ~40 beers on tap from within 100 miles of the restaurant. I was sold the moment I heard about that, so I dragged Michelle to dinner there pretty soon after it opened.
As is my wont, I was much more fixated on the beer menu than I was the food menu, so I made sure to pick the beer that sounded best before looking for food. I glanced down the appetizer menu and saw bierocks. I read the description…
“Ohmigod, Michelle, they serve Runzas here!!!”
By this time I’m almost certain she had eaten my Runza casserole, so she wasn’t completely stunned when I mentioned that, but it was still a revelation. We ordered them, and they were delicious (unsurprisingly), and would get them every time I’d go back there for food and/or beer.
Long story short, there was no way on Earth I was going to start cooking/blogging without making a Runza casserole. I wasn’t born in eastern Nebraska, so I didn’t have the complete recipe committed to memory, but I had the basics. I was also going to be making this gluten-friendly, so I went down the mental checklist:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour the mustard oil into a 9″x13″ oven-safe pan, then use a brush or cloth to coat the bottom and sides.
Place a large skillet on a stovetop burner over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and bacon and cook until the beef is browned. Remove the beef and bacon from the skillet, leaving the fat. Add the onions and cook until the slices begin to take on color, 3-4 minutes. Add the cabbage and stir to combine. Cook the cabbage/onion mixture until the cabbage has reduced by half, 6-8 minutes. Add ground beef and bacon and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes, then remove from the heat.
In a medium bowl, combine the Bisquick mix, the eggs, and the milk with a whisk until well-mixed. Pour half of the mixture into the bottom of the oiled 9″x13″ pan and smooth out. Add the meat/cabbage/onion mixture on top of the Bisquick, then smooth out. Add half of the cheese, then pour the remainder of the Bisquick on top, smoothing out. Sprinkle the remaining cheese all over the top of the pan, then place in the preheated oven and cook until the top is golden brown, approximately 30-40 minutes.
Ground beef. Green cabbage. Onion. Gluten-free refrigerated crescent rolls.
…record scratch…
Whaddya mean they don’t make gluten-free crescent rolls?!
I had to dig further.
I found a recipe1 from the Joy Filled Table recipe blog for a Gluten-Free Runza casserole. It seemed simple enough – the only thing that I didn’t have immediately at hand was gluten-free Bisquick, but they sell Bisquick everywhere.
Dear reader, I went to two different grocery stores looking for GF Bisquick, and I couldn’t find it. Back to the drawing board…
This sent me down a rabbit hole looking for a way to replicate GF Bisquick. I looked at several recipes, including some that required shortening/Crisco, so I ordered that. I then realized that the simplest recipe I found didn’t even include that (hence, the hijinks from the previous day), Instead I found a recipe2 at EZ Gluten Free that I followed to a T (I feel bad even documenting it because I didn’t change a thing about it, but it’s part of the overall recipe here).
Thoughts:
1) I’m kinda glad they don’t make gluten-free crescent rolls at this point. Otherwise I would have never found this version, and I like the biscuit topping more than the crescent rolls.
2) The tasting panel was unanimous – more cheese!!!
3) There’s nothing traditional at all about putting bacon in this. However, I had purchased the cheapest ground beef I could find at the store I went to…and it was 93/7. Fat is flavor, so I figured this needed some more flavor.
4) I’d add the bacon again, but I’d do it differently. I cooked the ground beef and the bacon together, so the bacon never got crunchy and completely rendered its fat. Next time I’ll cook the bacon first, let it get crispy, then leave the bacon grease for the beef and cabbage to cook in.
Verdict:
Taste: 7/10. There was nothing wrong with this that about 3x the cheese wouldn’t fix. I also used the Chihuahua cheese I had been working through because I couldn’t find the more traditional grated Swiss. Availability: 8.5/10. It’s easy to have either gluten-free Bisquick or the makings for the copycat handy in the pantry. Beyond that, the only thing that wouldn’t be on my normal shopping list would be the cabbage. Story: 8/10. There were no hiccups in actually cooking this, but the personal history with Runzas and the zaniness that was the previous meal (fed into by this) make for a pretty good story.
Administrivia:
I’m slowly catching up on the backlog of recipes. It would probably help if I stopped cooking until I finished that, but that would be pretty unproductive overall.
I’m posting this on January 14th. From January 1-7 I cooked 4 times. Since January 8, I’ve cooked 4 times, with at least one more meal being prepared today. This part of the resolution has been a success.
I’m also slowly working on making the site look better. It’s definitely still a construction zone though.
…but there ain’t no fuckin’ way we’re sticking to the “approved dialogue”.
This recipe experiment brought to you by the absence of unnecessary Crisco.
Yes, seriously.
I had planned on cooking one thing, but as of 5:30pm, one ingredient I thought I needed hadn’t arrived from Amazon – Crisco1.
At that point my brain went into overdrive — what can I cook from what I already have? I went looking through the fridge, and I found some of the leftover Mojo pork from the other night. I had gotten some boxes of coconut milk on my most recent trip to the grocery store, so my mind snapped to some sort of ad-hoc pork and coconut milk curry.
I had also purchased some okra to make a Caribbean coo coo to use as the base of something, and the fresh okra wouldn’t hang around forever. It wouldn’t be traditional, but coo coo often is made with coconut milk instead of water or stock…it could work.
From the cookbook “Louisiana Entertains: A Complete Menu Cookbook”, compiled by the Rapides Symphony Orchestra of Alexandria, LA in 1978.
Ingredients
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Trim ends off squash, then boil whole until barely tender, about 10 minutes. Halve lengthwise and scoop out centers. Chop up the centers with the spinach.
In a heavy saucepan, melt the butter. Sauté green onions until wilted, then whisk in flour to make a roux. Whisk milk in slowly, stirring continually, then cook until thickened.
Add spices to thickened sauce, then mix in the spinach/squash mixture. Spoon mixture into the squash shells on a baking sheet, then top with cheese and bacon. Bake for 15-20 minutes.
Do not adjust your monitor – this is not a mistake recipe2.
Ordinarily this is when I’d post the recipe references, but when a recipe goes THIS wrong, I’m making the executive decision that the recipe sites don’t want to be associated with what I did3.
I started with about 1 1/4 pounds of leftover pork. I put it in a saucepot with two quarts of coconut milk, half-a-dozen makrut lime leaves, and 3 bay leaves to simmer while I focused on the coo coo.
In my research I had found a few coo coo recipes, and a few Instant Pot polenta recipes, but no Instant Pot coo coo recipes. That shouldn’t be a big deal – coo coo is just polenta with some other stuff sautéed and cooked with it. I set the Instant Pot to sauté, then cooked the onions, okra, and poblano peppers (I can’t leave well enough alone with anything).
Looking at the Instant Pot polenta recipe, it mentioned two ways to cook it: one that is the “normal” way, and an alternative way to get around the “burn” error.
Dear reader, I had purchased the Instant Pot in December. Surely a brand-new Instant Pot wouldn’t be susceptible to that sort of error.
I confidently put the uncooked coarse cornmeal into the Instant Pot along with the cooking liquid, locked the lid in place, turned it on to high pressure for 11 minutes and waited for the preheating to finish.
beep, beep
“Burn” error. I removed the lid, stirred things around, reset the lid, and put it back to cook on high pressure.
beep, beep
FUCK!!!
I grabbed the pot out of the Instant Pot and poured it into a Dutch oven on the stovetop. The bottom was coated with stuck cornmeal that I wasn’t able to get out with a simple scrape of my wooden spatula.
By this time I was overly frazzled. I was loosely following a recipe for the curry, but I forgot some important ingredients. I also forgot to make a slurry with the cornstarch, so all I got were lumps. Meanwhile, the coo coo never cooked out all of its liquid, so it was more like porridge than polenta.
Thoughts:
1) Making things up didn’t turn out as well for me as they did for Arnold.
2) The tasting panel tried to cheer me up, saying that the pork curry was good. There was no salvaging the coo coo though.
3) Five minutes really CAN make a huge difference4.
Verdict:
Taste: 2.5/10. I didn’t make anyone sick. The pork was OK on its own, but the entire dish together was barely edible. Availability: 8/10. I could see the curry working with any chunks of leftover meat, and a trip to the local Asian market can get you a variety of pantry staples that work for this. The only difficult part for me was the okra in the coo coo. Story: 9.5/10. If nothing else, I needed to prove I’d post when my cooking adventures left a LOT to be desired.
Administrivia:
I have the two recipes that were the basis for this bookmarked. I will try them again at some point to give them a fair shake.
I’ve never cooked with Crisco. I’ve never thought I needed it for anything. Now that I realize that I don’t need it for that one purpose, I’m not sure that I’ll ever use it. ↩︎
This is, in fact, a recipe I’ve cooked several times before — one of a handful that are in cookbooks that I remember enough to be able to find instantaneously. It just has nothing to do with the dish I was attempting to make. ↩︎
I was planning to post a photo of what I cooked. Evidently I forgot, which is bad for storytelling but good for preventing scarring reminisces. ↩︎
I went downstairs to start menu planning at 5:30. I had come up with the basic idea and headed back to my office upstairs to start looking for actual pork and coconut milk curry recipes by 5:35pm. When I got back upstairs and checked my email, I had a notification that the Amazon package had been delivered. ↩︎
That’s why on a scale of ten to one, friend, there ain’t no tens.
I’m way behind on posting here. I have been cooking and photographing, but I find it difficult to work, cook, eat, and post all in the same day. I’ve got a backlog to catch up on, but thanks to a series of random coincidences, my detached retina from the week before Christmas means I have today and Tuesday off without anything I have to do1. The plan is to catch up on posting what I’ve cooked over the past week or so along with anything I cook between now and then.
I found the base recipe2 I worked from on the Butter & Baggage website while looking for a way to incorporate the buckwheat rotini I had purchased into a hearty pasta casserole.
Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil to a large Dutch oven on the stovetop over high heat. Add crumbled hot Italian sausage and sweet Italian sausage slices and cook until browned, 5-7 minutes. Add onions, salt and pepper to taste, then cook until onions have softened, 4-6 minutes. Add basil chiffonade and minced garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes. Reduce stovetop burner to medium-low. Add vodka and San Marzano tomatoes (crushing by hand into pot or using a potato masher to get varying consistency), then bring to an uncovered simmer for 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
While sauce is simmering, preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Fill a good-sized pot with water, adding salt and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, then let come to a boil. Add buckwheat rotini and cook 1-2 minutes fewer than package directions in order to achieve al dente pasta, then drain.
Add thyme, ancho chile powder, and heavy cream to simmering sauce, stirring to combine. Allow to simmer for 5-7 minutes.
Place half of the ricotta cheese, half of the parmesan cheese, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium-sized bowl. Add the drained pasta and toss to combine and coat.
Add the simmered vodka sausage sauce to the bottom of a 9″x13″ baking dish. Add the coated pasta and stir to mix well. Add the leftover ricotta cheese and parmesan cheese and mix well. Slice the balls of burrata cheese and place on top of the casserole, then move it into the preheated oven. Bake until casserole is bubbly and golden, 40-50 minutes.
Note
If less spice is desired, substitute hot Italian sausage for crumbled sweet Italian sausage. Additionally, omit the ancho chili powder.
Keywords:
casserole, cheesy
I was eager to see if the San Marzano DOP tomatoes I purchased were really as big of a deal as everyone said they were. However, I didn’t want to go with a straight marinara sauce because that can be too acidic, so the vodka and cream in this recipe were appealing.
Thoughts:
1) This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever cooked in my life.
2) I was disappointed in the final product.
3) The panel of judges was unanimous that this was the best thing I’ve cooked since I started this journey.
4) Almost a week later, we’re still eating on the leftovers. That tells me that this recipe is easily 2-3 meals worth of food, and that it must be good if we keep eating it.
Verdict:
Taste (overall dish): 8.5/10. I’ve eaten a lot of good food in my life, but the vast majority of it was cooked by other people. There are very few things that I’ve cooked that I’d be proud to take to anyone’s potluck, but this is one of them. Taste (pink vodka sauce): 10.5/10. Hence, the disappointment. That sauce is one of the best things I have EVER put into my mouth. I don’t have a solid comparison for it, but the canned DOP tomatoes are absolutely worth the extra effort and expense. It’s just a letdown that the casserole was less than the sum of its parts. Accessibility: 6.5/10. Keeping these tomatoes in the pantry will be easy enough thanks to Amazon. I won’t normally have two types of Italian sausage, fresh basil, or heavy whipping cream at the ready without making a special trip to the store. Story: 9/10. I had never crushed tomatoes into a pot by hand (and the huge mess I made while doing so makes me rethink doing it again – I think pouring the contents of the can into a bowl and going at it with a potato masher is the wiser alternative). I’m also going to be dreaming about this sauce for a long time, and finding new ways to spin it (moussa-kinda3, anyone?!)
Administrivia:
I finally figured out how to do a few things with this damned site. It’s still a huge work in progress, but I now know how to associate a picture to a recipe, at least.
I have some sort of vision for what I want this site to be aesthetically, but I don’t know how to get there yet, and I’m too damned impatient for my own good. I may need some professional guidance to kickstart me in the right direction.
The plan was to go down to visit Michelle’s family for a week spanning Christmas. However, after having my eye surgically repaired, I was not allowed to lift anything more than about 10 lbs. for a few days, which means I couldn’t wrangle suitcases. After consultation, we decided it would be best for us to head down around MLK Day, so I scheduled a couple days off around this weekend. Then the Polar Vortex decided to impose itself on our plans, and the near-certainty of Ice Capades happening on Texas roads when we were planning to head back made it prudent to postpone again. ↩︎
Is there anything more soul-satisfying than making a meal out of repurposed leftovers?
Don’t remind me how behind I am on getting posts written and uploaded. Every time I look up, I’m expecting to see a Sword of Damocles with a fraying rope hanging there.
Fortunately, it’s not that serious…yet. However, how am I supposed to let my accountability partners know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing without frequent updates?
(FYI, this post is in regards to a meal cooked the evening of 1/4/24.)
Thursday’s cookapalooza left me with lots of leftovers…which was kinda the point, if I’m being perfectly honest. I had plenty of slow cooker mojo pork that I had not broiled (I pulled it out of the slow cooker and put it in a zip-top bag immediately to use the next day). I made too much rice. I cooked way too many black beans.
The traditional fix for leftover rice? Fried rice. A traditional use for leftover miscellaneous ingredients? A frittata.
What if you combined them?
I found a post about a crispy rice frittata using leftover rice on the Bon Appétit website. I saved a bookmark to it, then when I went back to view the bookmark, I was unceremoniously informed that I had exceeded my views for the month without buying a subscription. To quote noted philosopher Stephanie Tanner1: “How rude!”
I went in search for other ideas regarding the crispy rice frittata. I really didn’t find them…save for a Yahoo! article2 that is nothing but a straight copy of the Bon Appétit story I originally found3.
The linked article is more about a process more than a recipe, but I still needed flavor ideas. Searching for ideas involving asparagus and goat cheese, I found inspiration in a recipe post by Food52 contributor Micki Barzilay for paella4(?!).
Put an oven-safe cast-iron skillet onto the stove and turn the burner to medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add leftover meat and sauté until most is well-caramelized, about 5 minutes. Place on a plate with several paper towel sheets to drain.
Add another tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the asparagus and cook until softened and edges are slightly browned, 3-5 minutes. Remove the asparagus to another portion of the plate where the meat is draining.
Add another tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the chopped red peppers and cook until they have taken on a little color and are fragrant, 2-3 minutes. Remove the peppers to the paper towel-covered plate.
Add the last tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the shallots and cook until very dark, 3-4 minutes. Add the leftover rice and stir together thoroughly, then pat the mixture down and leave to cook for 10 minutes, or until the bottom layer of rice is crispy. Turn the burner off and remove from heat.
Crack the eggs into a large bowl. Whisk the eggs together until well-beaten, then add salt and pepper to taste. Add the crumbled goat cheese and whisk with the egg mixture until well-combined.
Assemble the frittata in the skillet:
Sprinkle the handful of Chihuahua cheese over the rice. Make sure the caramelized leftover meat is well-drained, then add atop the cheese layer. Add the asparagus and red peppers next, scattering all across the top of the frittata. Add the marinated artichoke hearts, making sure to scatter well. Pour the egg and goat cheese mixture all over the skillet, making sure all of the ingredients are pushed down as much as possible to submerge them.
Take the assembled skillet and transfer it to the oven. Let the frittata cook for 20-30 minutes, until the liquid has evaporated. Remove the skillet from the oven and let rest for 5-10 minutes. Use a spatula to run around the edges of the skillet, pulling the frittata away, then turn the frittata out onto a serving vessel. Cut into wedges and serve.
Keywords:
leftovers, rice, eggs
(No, I was not at all confident flipping that out like that was going to work. I had a fallback picture just in case.)
Thoughts:
1) I didn’t know my brain was capable of putting together the phrase “too much goat cheese”. There were definitely certain bites in which the goat cheese overwhelmed, well, everything else.
2) I definitely should have drained the pork I used a LOT better than I did. The dish was pretty greasy and ran all over the cutting board after I flipped it out.
3) One of the jury of my peers was not aware that this was an egg dish. After eating it, I can’t blame them. This was definitely the least egg-forward frittata I’ve ever eaten.
Verdict:
Taste: 7.5/10. I’ll definitely be using this technique again with different flavors in different proportions. There was just too much stuff and not enough egg. Availability: 9.5/10. Assuming leftover rice, the most demanding thing this recipe requires is a large quantity of eggs. Everything else can be some combination of pantry staples and leftovers. Story: 8.5/10. I had to fix a little bit of the top of the frittata when I flipped it out, but I’m pretty damned impressed by how it looked out of the skillet. There’s also the fact that I made a frittata where the egg was an afterthought, which is darkly humorous.
Administrivia:
I’m leaving this tonight while still being one post and recipe behind. I’m working on catching up, but…
Figuring out how to create recipes wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be with the YouTube videos. I’m still annoyed by a few things with the plugin (or, more likely, the interaction between theme and plugin), but support has been very responsive thus far.
I had planned for weeks to be Monday-Sunday, but with an upcoming out-of-town trip in which we’re doing belated holidays due to my eye issues in late December, I may have to count the meal I cooked Sunday as one of the three for this week.
I’m also in the process of indexing a cookbook for the Eat Your Books site. I was not familiar with the site until recently, but it’s a very cool way to organize which cookbooks you own and, as they are indexed, be able to search the included recipes by ingredient. You can also index recipe sites and, as those sites are updated, the recipes automagically upload to be available.
(Originally I was hoping to be able to create my own recipes via the site, but all I could do was put ingredients in, not any sort of cooking instructions.)
The first cookbook I was going to index was considered too…overwhelming for someone indexing their first cookbook. It’s still on my list, but in the meantime I’m in the process of indexing a cookbook put out by the Shiner brewery. (You’d be surprised how many Welsh rabbit recipes there are without any of our leporine5 friends.)
The bigger point: It’s one thing posting recipes and cooking misadventures for people who know me and who, on the whole, aren’t taking this very seriously. Should I really go through the hoops of indexing all of my recipes for EYB and making them easily accessible for people who would use them as an actual resource6?!
I’m not going to force references to sitcoms from my teenage years into every single one of my posts, but if there’s an opportunity… ↩︎
I am nothing if not incredibly petty regarding paywalls like this. Don’t throw up arbitrary blocks to information; give me a reason to want to pay for content. I subscribe to enough newspapers and magazines that it’s a viable business model in my case. ↩︎
If I understand correctly, it would be easier to do this now as opposed to building up more of a backlog of recipes to add/index. I’m not going to do this until I get the site to where I want it to be aesthetically…which at this rate may take months. ↩︎
Administrivia with the devastating combo to leave me facing a standing eight-count.
I did actually cook tonight. That is officially twice this week, so I’m on track.
Proof of cook, Dallas, TX, 2024-01-04. Furnished by John R (photographer). All rights reserved.
There’s a lot of stuff going on there:
Mojo sauce1 (inspired by the A Sassy Spoon blog) Slow cooker mojo pork Instant pot Cuban black beans2 (inspired by the FamilyStyleFood blog) Calrose rice from the rice cooker3
Score the pork leg. Add it to a large plastic zip-top bag with 14 ounces of the mojo, sealing it and making sure the pork is coated thoroughly. Place in refrigerator overnight.
Pour the pork leg and marinade into the crock of your slow cooker. Cook on High until the thickest part of the leg registers 195-200 degrees Fahrenheit on an instant-read thermometer. Using two forks, shred the meat into bite-sized pieces. If not ready to finish the dish, set the slow cooker to warm and let the pork stay in the crock.
Move a rack to the top cooking position in your oven, then preheat the broiler. Turn a burner on your stovetop on to medium-high heat. Place the vegetable oil into a skillet on that burner. Once the oil is shimmering, add the onions and cook, moving them around occasionally, until the onions are softened and browning slightly, approximately 5-7 minutes.
Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Mix the shredded pork leg from the slow cooker with the onions from the skillet, then scatter them on the lined baking sheet. Place in oven for 2-3 minutes until caramelization occurs, then pull the baking sheet out and flip the pork and onion mixture, making sure to get fresh pork and onions to the top of the sheet. Repeat this process 2-3 times, until most of the pork and onions are caramelized.
Mojo sauce
Pour the remaining 10 ounces of mojo from the plastic container into a small saucepan. Add an equivalent amount of drippings from the slow cooker. Turn a burner on the stove to medium-high heat and cook, whisking frequently at first, until the sauce begins to boil. Lower the heat to medium-low and let sauce simmer until reduced slightly, whisking occasionally.
Turn the Instant Pot to the sauté function. Add the olive oil. Once the oil is shimmering, add the diced onion and poblano pepper, cooking until softened and slightly browned, 4-6 minutes. Add the garlic, paprika, ground cumin seeds, and oregano to the pot and cook until fragrant, 30-60 seconds.
Add the black beans, mojo, and water to the pot and stir thoroughly. Secure the lid on the Instant Pot and change the cook setting to high pressure for 45 minutes. After the 45 minutes is complete, let the pot depressurize naturally.
Remove the lid to the Instant Pot. Add in the salt and the dried chipotle powder and stir to incorporate.
Keywords:
black beans, Cuban, instant pot
I will post the recipes I made as well as source links…but not tonight.
(I finally got around to creating recipes for this meal — just not nearly as soon as I had intended.)
Thoughts:
1) I was planning on making this with boneless Boston butt. However, the Mexican grocery I shopped at apparently does not know the definition of “boneless”. I could feel bones in about every single package of boneless pork shoulder I checked.
2) I am a big fan of using the mojo I mixed up three different times in this meal.
3) The black beans were simultaneously spicier than I would have wanted them to be and crunchier than I would have liked. It helps if you follow the source recipe and not forget ingredients.
4) It shouldn’t be that hard to cook rice in a rice cooker, but the browning/scorching I found on the rice at the bottom of the cooker leads me to believe that I didn’t use enough water.
5) The jury of my peers agreed with my assessment that the beans were spicy, but didn’t notice any perceived crunchiness in the beans or burned bits in the rice.
Verdict:
Taste: 7/10. I’ll definitely make this again at some point if I have the ingredients and a hankering for it, but I’m not planning to build this into any sort of standard recipe. Availability: 9/10. Assuming I have the meat in place, the only difficult part about cooking this is having the naranja agria juice on hand. I got 2 20oz. bottles of it from Amazon for less than $5, so having it around seems like a pretty safe ask. Story: 6/10. The good news is that nothing blew up. The bad news is that there’s not much of a story because nothing blew up. Lessons Learned? Read the fucking recipe. Refer to the fucking recipe. I’d probably give this another half-point if I had used the chipotle in adobo that was recommended instead of adding chipotle powder after the cooking was complete. Making sure the salt was added before cooking would have been very nice as well.
Administrivia:
I reported the problem I was facing with the dynamic recipe card to technical support. They work on Nepalese time, so when I woke up this morning I had a message.
The good news: Support was able to duplicate my problem in their development environment. There is a bug fix ticket to get this corrected in an upcoming update.
The interesting news: This is not how they recommend creating recipes. There’s another process where I click three links and it gives me what I should be using.
The bad news: I don’t have those three links in that order in my WordPress environment.
The ugly news: They linked to a reference to tell me exactly what needs to be done to create a recipe the correct way.
1) It’s a YouTube video4. 2) The YouTube video is 25 minutes long. 3) The YouTube video is the fifth in a series, and the narrator makes it sound like each video builds upon the steps in previous videos.
Eff. Em. Ell!!!
In other news, I did decide on a theme to use. There goes even more money sunk into this venture.
It is a theme that is recommended because it works well with the recipe plugin I’ve purchased. It also looks like it’s highly customizable, which I appreciate. Of course, none of the customizations I’ve made actually show up anywhere as far as I can tell…
The theme was offered with a setup service. (You want something to work in WordPress? Open PayPal and authorize another payment.) I didn’t buy the service…not that I can foresee ever wanting to set up another WordPress site, but if I do, I’d like to have a solid clue on how to do it myself.
Besides, too many more expenditures and I’ll have to conveniently forget ever mentioning not doing affiliate junk and sponcon. It won’t be about making money; it will be about not letting this continual aggravation disguised as a hobby bankrupt me.
I have the source recipes saved. I remember what glorious mistakes I made in trying to follow said recipes. I know my impression of the overall meal (spoiler alert: pretty solid), and I have feedback from the other tasters. Once I figure out how to insert recipes correctly, I’ll make a proper recipe post.
Let’s just hope this happens before SMOD 2024 provides us the sweet, sweet relief of not having to worry about Presidential elections ever again.
Readers may not know that I read faster than the average beara. My learning style is also reading-based. Having to spend time figuring out how to do something from a recording of any sort drives me nuts. a) Or average human, for that matter. ↩︎
Or how I managed to channel Roy Kent and Chris Peterson in one fell swoop…
Tonight was Night 1 of the great cooking adventure. I’m toddling along in the kitchen, having makrut lime leaves infusing in simmering milk for my Béchamel sauce when I look in the pantry to start the next step of preparation.
“Where’s the vegetable oil?”
Thousand-one, thousand-two…
“FUCK!!!!!!!!”
Hat tip to Food From Portugal for the source recipe1 for tonight’s experimentation.
Denizens of current pop culture probably recognize the name Roy Kent. If not, he’s the player-turned-coach from Ted Lasso played by Brett Goldstein. Distilling his character down to only one trait is insultingly reductive, but fans of the show know all about his legendary potty mouth.
Chris Peterson, on the other hand, is not a name I’d expect most people to know. No, he’s not the former Boise State football coach (that would be Chris Petersen). No, he’s not the host of “To Catch a Predator” (that would be Chris Hansen).
Back in the fledgling days of FOX Network in 1990, they were casting about trying to find stalwarts for their comedy lineup. FOX had Married…with Children going strong, and they had found the wheat in the chaff that was the Tracey Ullman Show and made it into its own show called The Simpsons. However, there was still a whole lot of forgettable crap that they were broadcasting trying to find consistent viewership.
One of the shows that was part of this mélange was a Chris Elliott vehicle called “Get A Life”2. It was one of the favorite shows of my best friend around that time (I was in high school, but he wasn’t — he was my age, but his parents were junk dealers and he ran a baseball card shop), but I thought it was pretty stupid. The lead character (Chris Peterson) was a 30-year old paperboy with…challenges3.
I don’t remember much of the series at all, but there is one episode that sticks with me4. Chris Peterson is not a smart man, but through some mumbo-jumbo he winds up becoming smart for a period of time. During this time, he winds up in a spelling bee against a villainous Soviet trope who’s spelling absurd words in English while Peterson spells easier but silly words.
After a couple rounds of this, the mumbo-jumbo wears off, and Chris Elliott’s character is back to his level of normal. He’s presented with the word he’s supposed to spell.
Pour milk into a small saucepan, then add the lime leaves. Bring to a bare simmer, whisking occasionally. Remove the lime leaves, then reserve the milk and wipe out the saucepan.
Turn stovetop burner on to medium heat. Add butter and allow to melt. Add the glutinous rice flour and whisk vigorously to combine in order to make a roux. Once the roux has formed, add simmered milk in several small batches, whisking constantly until all of the milk is incorporated and the sauce is thickened.
Tuna Potato Bake
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Working in batches, add butter to a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt, then add potatoes and cook until browned. Move to a plate with paper towels and allow to drain.
Drain the olive oil from the jars of tuna into the skillet. Add the onions and sauté 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are just browning. Add the minced garlic and stir for 1-2 minutes. Add the drained tuna and sweet paprika and cook, using the spatula to combine and break up fillets, 3-4 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add chervil. Check seasonings and add salt and pepper to taste.
Combine the Béchamel sauce and heavy whipping cream, whisking vigorously. Pour on top of the contents of the skillet, stirring to combine. Add Chihuahua cheese to the top of the skillet, then move the skillet to the oven. Cook uncovered for 25-30 minutes until cheese is melted and gooey.
Note
The source recipe recommends using 2 tablespoons vegetable oil instead of butter to fry the potatoes.
I used Penzey’s ground pepper blend
Keywords:
casserole, seafood, cheesy
My biggest fear in this adventure is serving bad/inedible food. My second-biggest fear is serving bland food.
I looked over the base recipe and saw bland on bland on bland. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to spice it enough to get over that without ruining the original character of the dish.
I pulled out my copy of The Flavor Bible and looked up Portuguese cuisine, tuna, potatoes, etc. One flavor pairing that was recommended was lime; hence, I decided to simmer the lime leaves in milk. I also had dill seed at the ready to grind and add to the dish, but I decided against that at the last minute.
Thoughts:
1) Don’t bother infusing the lime leaves into the milk. The milk smelled very citrusy, but the flavor didn’t come through at all – no one who ate it could tell it had been done.
2) There was a lot more flavor here than I was really anticipating. I’m not sure if that was because of using a more gourmet tuna choice instead of Chicken of the Sea, but it was actually quite good.
3) I didn’t figure anyone would be able to tell that I made the roux gluten-free, but it was a relief to know no one found anything off about the flavor.
4) The dish got very good reviews overall, and is definitely a keeper per the jury of my peers.
5) One commenter (who shall remain nameless): “I really like the chicken, the potatoes, the cream sauce.”5
Verdict:
Taste: 7.5/10. I could see myself craving this on a really cold, dark night. Availability: 8.5/10. The only thing I’m not likely to have available at any given time to make a dish like this is the heavy whipping cream. Story: 9/10. All’s well that ends well, and organically pulling a Chris Elliott vehicle from 30+ years ago out of the cobwebbed portions of my brain is always a bonus. Lessons learned? Double-check the essentials. Bouncing back from a lack of vegetable oil was pretty simple. Bouncing back from a lack of, say, balsamic vinegar6 would be much more difficult.
Administrivia:
1) Comments are enabled, but I have to approve them.
2) People have mentioned wanting to get notifications via email when I post. I’m working on figuring out how to do that.
3) This recipe plugin is going to drive me batty. The only values I want to show for this particular recipe are Difficulty, Cook Time, and Servings. It shows like that in Edit mode, but whenever it gets posted it shows all the categories. I’ve got a support ticket into the company to tell me how to fix this shit, but who knows when they’ll get around to me even though I’m paying for a license.
4) Is it just me, or is WordPress just a service to transfer money from aspiring influencers to companies? Want to post recipes? Get the plugin and pay for the license. Want to send subscription notifications? Get the plugin and pay for the email service to power it.
5) All this miscellaneous SEO bullshit can go DIAF.
