Tag Archives: food

Saltier than salt: fresh onion powder and lime juice powder combo

Posted on April 4, 2014 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Back when they were doing the oceans things would have gone a lot different if they’d invented onions and limes by then.  Human beings would never have had to go through the old fashioned outdated  phase of seasoning their food with sodium salt, for instance.

If you run your mental tongue around the flavor of sodium salt and ask yourself, “How could this flavor be duplicated, but improved?  How could the taste of salt, fairly boring and common, be given some class for the discriminating eater?”

Any cave man could have told you the answer if he’d known it, which he didn’t.  So far as anyone knows cave men didn’t have access to the Internet and powdered lime juice, and fresh onion powder.

If two grams of sodium salt represents a maximum healthy amount we can ingest even when we have strong upbeat hearts, getting down to that is a slippery trick.  Mightn’t be possible if we don’t do our own cooking.  But even if we do it isn’t easy.

Or wasn’t easy until fresh onion powder and lime juice powder were invented.   I’m shocked I haven’t read about this anywhere before.  It would have been one hell of a lot easier and quicker if I hadn’t had to discover it on my own through experimentation.

Let me know what you think of it if you try it.

Also, put a bit of onion powder and lime juice powder on a makeup mirror and scrape it into little rows.  Use a soda straw or a rolled up $100 bill and snort it into your nose.  I haven’t tried that, but it might be a memorable experience.

Good luck with that.

Old Jules

 

10 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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Easy no-salt potato-jalapeno pancakes

Posted on April 1, 2014 by | 8 comments

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

I gather some of you besides me count sodium mgs in your diet the way overweight people used to count calories.  If so, and if you’re on the lookout for a tasty treat you’ve probably never encountered before you might try this.

Blend or process a potato, a jalapeno, half an onion, a tablespoon of minced garlic and a teaspoon of grated ginger together until they reach the color of guacamole and the consistency of pancake batter.  [Works well without the ginger, too, whole different culinary experience.  I’m betting cinnamon could fit into it somewhere, to doctor it up into a mutation worthy of a space alien.]

[Edit:  Cilantro.  I forgot to mention adding some chopped up fresh cilantro.  Important, too]

Pour the mix into a sizzling pan of olive oil or butter and flip them a couple of times as they cook until they’re brown on both sides.

Pop those moneymakers into a dish and eat them like pancakes, or let them cool and eat them the way you’d have a bagel or donut.  Great under blackstrap molasses and buttered, great dry.  Name your own poison

Remember where you heard it first.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, Science, Senior Citizens

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Desalinated, molassted and tofued into submission

Posted on March 5, 2014 by | 39 comments
Believe it or don't, this stuff makes a tasty substitute for soy sauce and woostershire sauce. Blend it with rice vinegar and it makes tasteless goop go down easier.

Blackstrap molasses:  Believe it or don’t, this stuff makes a tasty substitute for soy sauce and woostershire sauce. Blend it with rice vinegar and it makes tasteless goop go down easier.

Hi readers.

I’m not going to say I think cardiologists know what they’re talking about, but in the matter of no sodium/extremely low sodium in the diet I believe they’re correct in spite of the fact they said it.  I’d always thought if a person didn’t eat canned goods and didn’t salt his food he was on a low sodium diet.  But when I left the hospital they handed me a sheet of paper and took the trouble to read it to me as though I couldn’t read it for myself.

2000 mg.  2 grams of sodium per day these people were unsmilingly demanding I confine myself to.  And they sent along a list of food items in one column and how much salt each contained per one-measure-or-another.

I could see with one eye these ivory tower quacks didn’t know what they were talking about.  Heck, I’m betting there’s never been a day of my life when I wasn’t fasting when I didn’t consume more than two grams of salt.

So when I arrived back at Jeanne’s I slouched toward low sodium, waved the bloody flag at it, but was completely reasonable.  Non-fanatic, not any sort of no-salt extremist anyone need fear.  And noticed a rapid decline in my physical capabilities concurrently.

You all know by now I enjoy messing around cooking and experimenting with food preparation in sometimes bizarre ways.  And since I was losing my ability to walk any distance, I figured what the hell?  Jeanne got me a couple of books from the library on no salt and lowest sodium cooking, and I began concocting all manner of experimental food with no salt, or so little salt as to pass for none.  2 grams?  Ha!  I spit on 2 grams!  1 gram until I get this down pat.

cilantro corriander

Cilantro!  Onion powder!  Tomato powder!  Lime juice powder!  Molasses.  Garlic.  Dill.  These are the soldiers, the legions of the war against salt.

Began making chips from steamed sticky rice rolled down thin and baked.  Made the best catsup I’ve ever eaten in my life from tomato powder, lime juice powder, molasses and rice vinegar.  Made an absolute jewel of guacamole with garlic, green onion, jalapeno, avocado, tofu, and cilantro.  Deeeeelicious!

Made a soy sauce alternative from black strap molasses and vinegar, along with a few other spices.

And after a couple of days of less than two grams, yesterday I walked to the end of the block and back, one-way being an uphill grade.  Didn’t get knocked to my knees by my top-kick drill instructor, either.

So I doubt those cardiologists know what the hell they’re talking about, but sometimes even a blind hog finds an acorn.  A person doesn’t have to know what he’s talking about to be correct.

Old Jules

39 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Current Issues, Senior Citizens

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It’s an ill wind that blows no good

Posted on October 30, 2013 by | 5 comments

sriracha hot chili sauce

Hi readers. 

I’ve always loved Sriracha Chili Sauce, hate knowing they’ve come on hard times.  I’d guess the people in that California town would live to be 110 each if they’d gut it out, breathing that stuff three months out of the year.

City: Odor from Sriracha chili plant a nuisance

As many as 40 trucks a day pull up to unload red hot chili peppers by the millions. Each plump, vine-ripened jalapeno pepper from central California then goes inside on a conveyor belt where it is washed, mixed with garlic and a few other ingredients and roasted. The pungent smell of peppers and garlic fumes is sent through a carbon-based filtration system that dissipates them before they leave the building, but not nearly enough say residents.

“Whenever the wind blows that chili and garlic and whatever else is in it, it’s very, very, very strong,” Sanchez said. “It makes you cough.”

I’d love to be downwind of it when it’s in operation if it weren’t for the fact it’s in California, and if I went to California next thing I knew I’d be having to get along with Californians.  For me it’s a bit late in the day to take on that job of work.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what the good is I referred to in the title to the post.  Here it is:

His recipe for Sriracha is so simple that the Vietnamese immigrant has never bothered to conceal it: chili pepper, garlic, salt, sugar and vinegar.

“You could make it yourself at home,” he told a visitor during a tour of the plant on Tuesday. But, he added with a twinkle in his eye, not nearly as well as he can.

The secret, he said, is in getting the freshest peppers possible and processing them immediately.

The result is a sauce so fiercely hot it makes Tabasco and Picante seem mild, though to those with fireproof palates and iron stomachs it is strangely addicting. Thirty-three years after Tran turned out his first bucketful, Sriracha’s little plastic squeeze bottles with their distinctive green caps are ubiquitous in restaurants and home pantries around the world.

Now if those Californios shut him down at least a person has the basics to cook the stuff himself.  Fill the RV up with the odor as many months of the year as he wants to. 

The government hasn’t learned the potential joys of this yet, so they haven’t made it illegal.  I can close all the windows on the RV,  zonk up on it, me and the cats.  Lie back against the cushions and try to learn to play the harmonica.  Or listen to any of about a million songs my bud Rich provided for me to play on an hmmm MP3?  A tiny thing that plays songs – holds a few hundred at a time.  One of the few inventions since lawsuit to really add to the joy of life for the average human being.

Old Jules

5 Comments

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Saimen – Another trek into Ramen country

Posted on October 21, 2013 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  I’ve been planning to share this with you a while but keep forgetting.

Back when David McCreary and I got bounced out of Peace Corps India X training at Hilo, then jumped the plane to seek our destinies in Honolulu  we were dirt poor.  Sharing a room at a rooming house up on East Manoa Road.  Him working as a drink waiter at the Kohala Hilton, me busboying down at the Makahiki of the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Dirt poor, so we ate a lot of Saimen.  Something I’ve never heard of since, but a person could get a bowl for a quarter at any food joint in Honolulu.

So I began a while back experimenting, trying to recreate Saimen using Ramen.  Bought green onion, chopped it all the way back to the tips of the green, all the way forward to the root.  Threw in minced garlic, ginger, fish, or chicken, or meat if I had some.  Sometimes a dash of curry, habenero, whatever comes to hand.

Boiled down all the other ingredients a considerable while to make a strong flavored broth.  Then at the last minutes of the just-right tastehood, added Ramen noodles, or small diameter pasta sticks.

This stuff’s as good today as it was in 1964 in Honolulu.  It would even be good if 1964 never happened and had to get replaced with some other year.

Just saying.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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MSG-free raman – cheap, fast and tasty

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.  Those of you who like a fast, cheap meal but try to die if MSG enters your vehicle might want to try this.

Raman comes in packages of several for about 20 cents per package with a separate envelope of MSG to add for flavor.  Cooks in boiling water in three minutes.

Throw out the MSG and pick up some big jars of pasta sauce for a buck per jar at the Dollar Tree Store.  Lots of options available including Garlic wossname Marinara, several others.  Also some cans of mushrooms, olives, whatever, and sardines.

Boil that raman until it’s soft, toss in a spoon of pasta sauce, mushrooms, a sardine, olives, and by golly you’ve got a decent meal for under half-a-dollar.  Boil it another minute for the hell of it.

If you don’t care for sardines the Dollar Tree Store has all manner of alternatives.  You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten Spam raman.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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Chinese Sardines

Posted on June 23, 2013 by | 15 comments

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

I doubt I’ve ever mentioned it, but I’ve always been a sardine lover.  Quit buying them when the price went high back there sometime and partly justified quitting because it drove the cats nuts when I opened a can.  Had to sneak around or I’d end up having to share.

So recently I was in the Dollar Tree store and noticed they had a lot of cans of sardines stacked on the shelves at a buck per can.  Big cans of a sort I haven’t seen in a number of decades, takes a can opener to get in there.

As you know, I a suspicious person, so I carefully got out my pocket magnifier and examined the label.   Well!  I’ll be damned!  Chinese!  Chin-freaking-ese sardines!

Well, heck.  What can sardine packing plants do wrong with sardines, thinks I.  You pack them in brine, or oil, or mustard sauce, or tomato sauce, put a lid and label on, and nobody’s going to know they aren’t Scandahoovian sardines.

Bought 20 cans of them, by golly, a lot just packed in brine because I thought I might use a few coaxing Tabby out of being anti-social.

Well, friends and neighbors, it’s entirely possible to screw up sardines.  I’m not sure how they did it, but they just don’t taste right.  And while the cats love the ones packed in oil or brine, they ain’t touching the ones packed in mustard nor those in tomato sauce.

I’m going to have to gut it out and eat those anyway.

How in the world can an ethnic group invent gunpowder and be the first to invent carbon steel, and not be able to can sardines worth eating?

[Hmmm.  To be fair, it’s generally believed the steel thing was an accident.  Slave either fell, or was thrown into a vat of molten iron and someone noted the quality of the product improved.  So a lot of slaves made their way into a lot of vats of molten iron before it was discovered there were other ways of getting the job done.]

But even so, sardines can’t be that tough.  The Scandahoovians don’t even have slaves, haven’t had them since, since, since, sometime back there before canning was invented.

Old Jules

Afterthought:  When you think about it, Chinese steel’s nothing to brag about these days, either.  Maybe they ought to be tossing all those sardines into vats of molten iron instead of canning them.

15 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Current Issues, Science

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Thinking positive about bologna – The new paradigm

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 8 comments

If you think you’ve reached the point where you just can’t look a bologna sandwich in the eye one more time, maybe it’s time to begin using your noggin.  Even if all you’ve got is a frying pan and a Coleman camp stove you can make a concoction you’ll savor.

Chop up that bologna into bits the size of dill pickle slices and throw it in the pan with chopped onion, minced garlic, and a teaspoon of grapeseed oil.  Turn it and stir it until the bologna browns and curls up on the sides.

Once it’s done, throw on a teaspoon of chopped dill pickles, and smear it all between those two slices of bread.  Curry, ginger, ancho, jalapeno, green pepper, all of them will add some variety to carry you through until payday.

The old ‘pound of red and a loaf of bread’ method of squeezing through hard times was never good past the second day.  Torturing yourself to death after the third was just a method of robbing life of potential joy.

This ain’t the 20th Century anymore.

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Senior Citizens, Survival

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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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