Blogging Is Writing.

When I decided that I wanted to blog, I put in quite a bit of thought on what it would be about. Initially I had the notion of doing a cooking blog. I have a deep interest in cooking, so much so that I have become the primary food preparer in our household. My wife can put together a pretty tasty meal when she has to, but for the most part she runs around telling people that the kitchen belongs to me. Most of the TV programs I watch are about food, and cooking, and most of my nonfiction reading is about food, although I read very few recipe, or cook books. So should the blog be only about cooking, or should it be about cooking, and the several other things that interest me, such as photography, music, or dogs, particularly, our dog Miles, or should I have multiple blogs, one for each subject? Well when I finally set up and started the blog, the first few posts were indeed about kitchen subjects, but by than I had discovered that the subject of my blog was the least of my worries.

It turns out that no matter what a blog is about, it is also about writing. Yes, writing, and if the blog is to be of interest to anyone, enough for them to come back for more, and than come back, for even more, the writing has to be constant, and interesting. For me the word constant is primary. You see, I have found that sitting down and writing until something is finished, and posted, and than starting something new that will soon be finished, and posted over, and over again, is not for the procrastinator. I said all that to say this, “I am a procrastinator”. My goal therefor is to change that to, “I am a recovering procrastinator.” I have to write using one of the greatest tools of procrastination man has devised, a computer connected to the Internet. I sit down to write, and before I know it I'm Googleing, Yahooing, and Binging, every little thought that pops into my mind, and precious little of it having to do with what I’m trying to write about. I decided that, part of the solution is to do as little of the writing as possible, at the computer. Pen to paper is the answer. Processing ideas, and writing first, second, and maybe a third draft with pen, and paper, and nothing going on, except some non-distracting music, and going to the word processor only for final editing, and posting.

Since I’m the kind of writer who has to write a lot to get a little, I’m going through notebooks like crazy. My favorite being the “Mead Five Star” spiral notebooks. They are sturdy, and hold up to a lot of dragging around, and being stuffed into pockets, glove compartments, and a little leather man bag. They come in various sizes, but the 7 x 5 in. spiral with 100 pages, and one page with pockets, and the 6 x 9 in. spiral with 100 pages are my choices, both of which can be found at Wal-Mart for $1.79. I have stockpiled a few for fear of that great price going away. I would buy them even if I had to pay the three dollars, and change they go for at other places. I recommend them. My other favorite writing tool is the Sharpie Pen. It has a very fine felt tip, the ink dries immediately, and does not soak through paper, (don’t confuse it with the fine tip marker) and the lid stays on in my pocket. I buy the ten packs at Sams Club, and BJs Whole Sale Clubs, for ten dollars, and some change. Hopefully I have made it clear why this is the first post in over a month, and that things are about to change. Am I just talking through my keester? We’ll see. See you next week.We’ll see.

Music in the kitchen

I imagine most people who spend a significant amount of time in their kitchen, have contrived to get their favorite music in there with them. In my previous kitchen I had mounted a set of speakers on the wall. My stereo system was in the living room, so I drilled a hole in the floor, behind it, and dropped a long length of speaker wire down to the basement. I than connected the wire to my receiver, and ran it across the basement ceiling to the hole I had drilled in the kitchen floor near the wall, where it was run up to the speakers. Anything played on that system could be heard in the kitchen. I used a wire cover kit to hide the wires, and make everything look neat.

My present kitchen setup isn't nearly as much work. The speakers came with the desktop computer I purchased five years ago. I liked the speakers I used with the old computer, so I put these new ones in a closet, and forgot them. It was only last year that I found them, and placed them on top of the refrigerator. These speakers don't have a separate volume control for the Sup-woofer, so I can turn them up only so loud, without getting distortion in the bass, but the sound is OK if kept below that distortion level. When I am in there I simply connect them to my mp3 player, so programing is completely under my control. If you have something interesting to say about your kitchen audio, feel free to leave a comment, and read more about "MP3ing out loud" at my Squidoo lens.

Long time cooking

When I, as a young bachelor, came to the realization that I could not afford to eat every meal in a diner, or restaurant, I buckled down to do some home cooking. Like most novice cooks, I have known, I started out with things that cook quickly, such as eggs, and bacon, chops, and steaks, and canned veggies, and beans. My favorite of the canned foods were, creamed corn, peas, and Campbell's pork and beans.


This routine kept me going for a while until I needed a little variety. I think boiling potatoes, and cooking rice was a great leap forward for me. It may not seem like much, but in a world where there was only fried food, and things out of a can, it was a pretty big deal. My meals started to look and taste more like what I used to get at home, and memories of home cooking, of course I mean Mama's cooking, started to influence my cooking. When I think about some of the stuff she cooked I think about great northern beans, collard greens with ham hocks, and stew, as some of my favorites.

I didn't do any real cooking before I left home, Mama did all that. I would scramble an egg now and then, or fry up some bacon, but for the most part I payed no deliberate attention to what she was doing in the kitchen, but we lived in a small house, and one couldn't help noticing some of what was going on, but what I had not noticed, was how long it took to cook some of that stuff. I had not noticed that some things just took a long time to cook before becoming editable.

One day I just up and decided I would cook a couple of smoked ham hocks. I knew they were to be boiled, because I always remember them coming out of a big pot of liquid. So I put the ones I had into a pot of water, turned on the heat and sat down with a book. After about fifteen minutes, I went to check them, and they were as hard as when I put them in. What was up with that? So, I grabbed the book resigned, to give them another fifteen minutes. To my dismay, things had not changed very much, so after the next fifteen minutes of very little change, I just decided that I had gotten hold of a couple of defective hocks, and threw them into the trash.

After telling this story to a more knowledgeable friend, I was told that smoked ham hocks take much longer than that to cook. So I tried it again with my new found knowledge, and patience, and I came out of it with a couple of perfectly cooked hocks. I had them with some left over rice, and a can of the ever present pork and beans. This new cooking, method (long time cooking) opened up a whole new chapter of possibilities, like beans, not from a can, and collard greens.

One more thing had to fall into place for me to think of myself as a serious cook. I didn't understand why meat was sometimes tender, and sometimes tough as shoe leather. I thought it was just a chance you took when when you bought meat. I had been cooking for quite some time before I understood, that tender, or tough, was directly related to the part of the animal it came form, and that these tougher cuts could be rendered, fall off the bone, tender by utilizing the same low, and slow cooking method I had learned to use in cooking beans, and smoked ham hocks, and there was even a name for it, "brazing". I must have gotten that from a television cooking show, because I almost never touched cook books, back than, and not much now. We braze all the time around here now so here is what happened to the chuck roast that came out of the freezer a couple days ago.

I salted and peppered, and floured it good on both sides, while our cast iron Dutch oven was getting hot on the stove. I put a light coating of canola oil in the Dutch oven, and layed the roast in. While the first side was browning, I quartered about seven medium to small potatoes, two large onions, and the last carrot in the refrigerator. All this went in after I had flipped the roast. The first side had browned very nicely. Brazing one of these roasts you can use what ever liquid you want. Broth, water, wine. I decided to use tomato sauce. The label on the jar said 4 pounds 3oz. What I had was what was left over from five pizzas I had made over the last three days. It came almost to the top of the roast, and I added a cup more of beer. The whole thing came to a rolling boil, and I turned it down to a simmer. Two, and a half hours later, we had this roast that could be pulled apart. And that's what we did. We pulled it apart, and enjoyed it with the potatoes, and some mixed veggies.

Brazing is like making bread. It takes a long time, but most of the time is just waiting. Good time to read a book, or catch up on a few recorded episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Once you get the hang of it, theres noting to it, but some good eat'n.

Raspberry Salad Dressing

Some months ago, I received a gift of about five glasses of home made raspberry preserves. It's good stuff and works with anything, like peanut butter, and raspberry preserve sandwiches, and on waffles, or to sweeten a cup of green tea. One got lost in the pantry, and I just found it. I've been playing around with salad dressings lately, so I started formulating a raspberry dressing recipe. Here's what I came up with.


1 tablespoon raspberry preserves
1 tablespoon vinegar
3tablespoons olive oil
1 half teaspoon salt
1 half teaspoon fresh ground black pepper corns

Put it all in a bowl, and whisk.

Because I believe in playing around with recipes, I modified this one in several different ways. You add and subtract ingredients according to your taste. Here is some of my variations.

1.I added another tablespoon of raspberry preserves, which made it a little sweeter.
2.Added a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, which added the flavor of the mustard, and made the dressing thick, and creamy.
3.I also tried it with lemon instead of vinegar.
4.You can even use another kind of preserves, or jelly
5.If you substitute honey, instead of the preserves, and add the dijon, than you have honey mustard.

It was good to me every way I tried it. This dressing has lots of flavor, which means it doesn't take much to dress your salad. After all olive oil has as many calories as any other oil, if that matters to you.

About knives

So I've been hammering over how to start this blog for a long time now, and I think the problem has been me, trying to come up with something deep, and meaningful. Well it looks like I'm just not that deep, and a lot of what I think is meaningful, many others think is what the bull do, so I have decided to just write about whatever pops into my mind. I anticipate the need for a fair amount of self censorship using that method, but I'm OK with that, and you, dear reader will be all the better for it, trust me.

So what am I thinking about right now? Knives. I own quite a few of them, you know. Take these Hinkle's, for instance. These are my very first really nice kitchen knives. What's so nice about them? Before I discovered that this kind of knife existed, all I knew as kitchen knives were very cheep light weight affairs from which the handles would eventually come loose, and they couldn't hold an edge for longer than a week. I remember a lot of these coming through my mothers kitchen, back in the fifties, and early sixties, but at the time it just was the, way it was, and who knew it could be any different. They didn't sell French chefs knives at Woolworth's. The things we bought were cheap and disposable, but at the time I really didn't care. I wasn't even doing the cooking. I didn't do any real cooking until the mid eighties, and that's when pots with loose handles, and dull knives started to bug me. As an avid fan of Julia Child, even before I started cooking, and subsequently all the cooking shows that came after her, I started noticing these great looking knives called French Chefs knives, but just didn't see any in regular retail stores, or maybe they were there and I just hadn't noticed.

Finally, some time in the early nineties, I spotted one at a now defunct department store in central New York. It was an eight inch, Hinkle Four Star, and was on sale for little under seventy dollars. I did a little research on the name and found out that Hinkle was considered a manufacturer of quality products, and the Four Star model was one of their top line models, and that the sale price was a very good price indeed. So I rushed back to that store and bought it. I was a proud owner of a Hinkle.

My enthusiasm caused me to boast about it to friends, all of whom just didn't get it. "Why is he showing me this knife, and grinning like that? Always thought he was a little weird." Not long after, I found the Hinkle bread knife, at an equally good price, and bought that also. I have used the chefs knife almost every day now for almost twenty years, and the bread knife gets a workout too. Now it is said by many that one doesn't really need but two good knives, a chefs knife and a bread knife, and I agree, but over time I began to see good chef knives all over the place, Target, Walmart, K mart. I'm thinking the popularity of the Food Network had something to do with increased demand. Just a couple years ago I found a set of Chicago Cutlery knives consisting of an eight inch French Chefs knife and a paring knife. This set was selling for under ten dollars at Kohl's. They looked very substantial, and had all the things one is supposed to look for in a good knife, forged blade, bolster, full tang, and the whole thing held together with three serious looking rivets. It didn't look like something that would fall apart any time soon. Of course I bought it. I start using the chefs knife, and looking to find something wrong with it. It's a little heaver than the Hinkle, but it feels good in the hand, and it keeps a very good edge. It's only been lightly sharpened twice in three years. I just use the steal on it before each use. As far as function, it's every bit as good as the Hinkle. I use the paring knife very little. The advantage of having at least two good chef knives is, one can be used for meat, and the other for fruit, and veggies, when cooking.

Have you discovered Marshall's, and TJ Maxx? These stores carry brand name products at, from twenty to fifty percent off, according to their web site. They have clothing for men, women and children, furniture, home accessories and, kitchenware. Marshall's is where I came upon a Calphalon santoku knife with a beautiful handle, for only fourteen dollars. At that price I figured I could buy a knife, just because it was pretty. Turns out it's a great knife for cutting very thin slices off of a ham or roast. A few weeks later I found the matching utility knife at the same store, of course I bought that too. I forgot how much I paid for it, but you can bet it wasn't much.

My latest is a little Farberware utility knife that cost no more than a couple dollars, at Wal-Mart.
If you feel the kitchen geek in you coming out, you will need a good knife, or two. You can spend a couple hundred dollars for one if you can afford it, but if function, and frugality is the name of the game for you, don't despair. As I have shown an excellent knife can be had, without having to decide that college education for the kids ain't all it's cracked up to be. So there you have it, why a guy who only needs two good knives has seven. Don't judge me! Anyway, that's what's cook'n today.