Tag Archives: cuisine

Capers

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 3 comments

Been intending to mention this.  When you’re making up your pimento concoction for pimento and cheese sandwiches a few chopped onions and capers added to the mix changes the entire scene.

Also, using cream cheese instead of mayonnaise works fairly well to give it variety if you’re eating it several days in a row.  Add capers the second day, add chopped up onions the third, chop up jalapeno and mix it in the day after that.  Dash of chopped garlic, ginger, curry.  It all works.  All good.

A whole new culinary experience every day.

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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Cooking Thermos Bottle Beans and Rice

Posted on September 17, 2012 by | 4 comments

I came across this on the cheaprvliving forum and decided to give it a try. 

http://www.cheaprvlivingforum.com/post/Cooking-with-a-Nissan-Thermos-5995048?trail=15

I’m making a breakfast of garbanzo beans and rice cooked by that method even as I type this.  Seems to me there are some kinks to be worked out, but overall it’s a shockingly easy, economical, energy-efficient way to cook up a simple meal.

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Solitude, Survival

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The TimeWarpVille Saga – Other Local Attractions – Food – Corn – Rain and Wireless Phoneless

Posted on August 22, 2012 by | 2 comments

As good as Barbeque’s likely to get

The locals I talked to all seemed to agree Lum’s is either the best barbeque in town, or tasty enough to balance the high cost of Cooper’s, down the road.  I’ve eaten there three times now, found them to be clean, friendly, and surrounded by an ambiance unusual enough to be almost distracting.  Good food, Lum’s. 

As I finished my meal an older guy with a cane walked past my table.  He sported a hip-holster with a Glock, ready for action.  If I’d finished earlier, and if I’d arrived in town heeled, I’d have waited for him outside and shouted, “Fill your hand you SOB!”

Then he could have shot me down, gazed sadly at my bullet-riddled corpse and muttered, “Just another young tough trying to build a reputation.”

It would have provided a great denouement.

This could be a lot more important than you imagine

There’s corn here to be had.

A worthy cause that gives no offense except to those [such as myself] who don’t even like to be told what kind of day to have.

Too small for Clark Kent

A futuristic wireless, cordless, phoneless booth.

We middle-of-the-roaders try to be there for one another

And a bull trotting along the centerline blocking the highway for a mile or more.  I took him to be another, spiritual kinfolk to myself, called to serve on the Big Jury, and headed home unrequited.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Country Life, Texas

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Super Baked Fish Recipe

Posted on August 17, 2012 by | 6 comments

I used the Vietnamese Pan-something-or-other fish I told you about on earlier posts.

Bed the bottom of the pan with half-dozen corn tortillas,

1 each frozen fish filet

1 cup frozen green beans

1 cup frozen brocolli

1/4 cup tropical trail mix

Generic Cajun seasoning to taste

1/4 stick butter on top

Bake 60-90 minutes at 350 F.

You can be the second person in the Universe ever to try it if you hurry.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2012

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RC Royal Crown Cola and Tom’s Toasted Peanuts

Posted on June 24, 2012 by | 10 comments

Despite the fact of Asians having become so much more intelligent, better educated, industrious, innovative, inventive and economically responsible than westerners during the last half-century, a few things are still out there they’ll never catch up on.  One of those is RC Royal Crown Cola with a bag of Tom’s Toasted Peanuts or Planter’s Peanuts floating in it.

A couple of other things they’ll never surpass us on include the kind of Italian food you’ll get down at the Fongoul Restaurant, Mexican food New Mexico style with green such as you’ll get at Cojone’s Mexican Cafe, and those fantastic Greek sandwiches I can’t recall the name of.  Guido? 

You’d have to have peeked into the kitchens of a few Chinese restaurants during your lifetime to know that, though all other Asians have it figured out, the Chinese got left behind about 10,000 years ago in matters of basic food sanitation.  If you eat in Chinese food joints much there’s a middling good chance you’ve eaten something that’s already been through a Chinese digestive tract, introduced to the food when he clipped his toenails into the egg drop soup.

That’s the reason Chinese restaurants use all that MSG, even though they know it will probably give you a stroke one of these days.  Covers up the taste of other things got in there, either by accident, or design.

I don’t claim to understand why it’s so.  Koreans, Japanese, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Thai, they’re all probably more concientious about food sanitation in their restaurants than the average westerner.  But the Chinese restaurant that isn’t feeding customers cockroaches, toenails and spit is by far the exception, rather than the rule.

I’ve heard the matter discussed among health department inspectors more times than I can remember [none of whom would dare eat Chinese without having gone over the food preparation area before-hand].

Maybe they’re still trying to get even with Christian missionaries for the Taiping rebellion and figure everyone else qualifies as collateral damage.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, America

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Culinary Risk Taking – MSG – Root Hog or Die

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 17 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Socorro, New Mexico, isn’t long on good restaurants.  But during the several years I lived there, I had a favorite restaurant, and a favorite menu item.  The place was owned and operated by an elderly Chinese man with whom I was on friendly, bantering terms. 

This lasted until the discovery that MSG in food causes my blood pressure to skyrocket.  A few times per week I’d sit myself down, they’d bring the usual, and a couple of hours later my pulse would be visible almost anywhere a blood vessel showed.  This was accompanied by a pounding in my head, maybe audible, maybe only seemingly so.

After I figured out the connection between my favorite food item and the blood pressure problem I attempted to discuss it with the owner, though we had a language barrier.   The result was an outburst of anger and indignation.  I didn’t know yet the MSG was the cause.  Just that particular menu item.

I solved the problem by eating elsewhere, but eventually learned that Chinese restaurants, particularly, lean heavily on adding MSG to their foods, and that a surprisingly large number of people have reactions to it similar to mine. 

I also began watching the labels on food I bought to prepare at home.  What I discovered was that a person sensitive to MSG had best carry a magnifying glass in his pocket and read those labels carefully.  Almost everything a person might buy in a can is loaded with it, but especially soups and soup-bases.  If a label slips past and gets inside the vehicle it notifies the owner by the rods knocking.

But I was going to say, I love oriental food, and I was in town yesterday, so I clenched my teeth and decided it was a day for risk-taking.  There’s an Oriental buffet I’d never tried, so I pulled in.  I tried asking whether they had MSG in their food, but it was clear she didn’t understand me.  So I went root hog or die.

The food was mediocre, but I didn’t die.  I took a couple of extra blood pressure pills when the pounding in my head started, and by the time I got home my blood pressure was so low I didn’t have any business being alive.

I found myself wondering why the FDA cops who faint and revive themselves over one-in-a-billion risks to human health otherwise haven’t jumped on this like ugly on a monkey.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: 

Historical Events Duplicated Today?

Old Jules, does any time in history correspond to what’s going on within the US today?

17 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Gambling, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Politics, Senior Citizens, Survival

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Incentives Not to Go Off Food – Rice and Veggie Steamer

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | 17 comments

I’ve been mildly curious watching myself for a considerable while.  Weight was peeling off me and I was forgetting to eat.  My body would notify me I hadn’t eaten anything in a day or two by a dose of the blind staggers, or just a dizzy spell to get me thinking back on when I last ate something.

Most of what I cook around here’s cheap and simple because of the fact I ran out of propane early last year and haven’t refilled the bottle, and because hauling water makes washing cookware an expense measured in hauling trips.  So I was living mostly on potato combinations, yogurt combinations, fruit combinations and various bean concoctions.  I was at the point of hating to look any one of them in the eye.

Then one day in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrvillle I saw that rice and veggie steamer still in the box for sale for a dollar.  It didn’t appear to ever have been used.  So, I bought it, thinking rice and steamed veggies would at least be different.

Sheeze, the best purchase since my High Roller back in 1972.  The tow bar I bought the other day might turn out to be a better deal, but I haven’t figured out anyway to cook with it.  But I’ve digressed.

What I’ve re-discovered is the absolute, euphoria-laden joy of food.  I’m making better meals on that thing than I could even find in a restaurant in town, but if I could, couldn’t afford them.  I’ll make up a batch of one or another Asian-like mix thinking it will last two days, then find I have to fight a war with myself to keep from eating it at a single sitting.

It does require loads of fresh onion, garlic, jalapeno, cayenne, curry and ginger.  I buy bags of trail mix of various sorts, dried mango, papaya, raisins and cranberrys at the Dollar Tree and pour on top, a little of each.  The food bills went up something awful last month.  But I don’t forget to eat.

And the simple truth is, some of these meals turn out to be classed among the best I’m able to recall having anytime in my  life.

Anyone says an old dog can’t learn new tricks is kidding himself.

Old Jules

 

17 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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