Food pairings

This week (or maybe it was last week) Carole at Carole Knits hosted a Ten on Tuesday topic of Ten Favorite Food Pairings. I, being the total slacker that I am with updating my blog - especially when there is knitting happening, never got around to writing anything. But then I haven't done a Ten on Tuesday topic in quite some time. (Maybe something I should rectify.) However, I've been thinking about this topic all week. Maybe because I've been hungry or maybe because my mind wanders when I knit in silence. So here are some of my favorite food pairings:

1. Garlic and chicken. Actually a whole bunch of garlic and chicken. In fact my (somewhat secret, but I share it with everyone, so it isn't all that secret) go to recipe for garlic chicken is to take chicken thighs and legs (you could use wings or breasts if you want, but I like the hindquarters for this recipe for some reason), crunch up a ton of garlic (and by a ton I mean like an entire bulb for every four pounds of chicken you are cooking), drizzle a little olive oil over the chicken and then mix the garlic until you smell like you are warding off a vampire invasion. Let it sit in your fridge overnight. The next day bake it at 300°F for 3 or more hours. Your house will also now smell like you are warding off a vampire invasion and if your windows are open letting the spring air flow through, I can guarantee that there will be no vampires within a three square block of your house. I like cooking meat at very slow temperatures for very long periods of time. It makes for very tender meat that falls off the bone. Just make sure you bake this in a deep pan as it does produce a ton of fat from the slow cooking. (You're welcome.)

2. Strawberries and whipped cream. 'Nuff said.

3. Peanut butter and bananas (Ditto.)

4. Dark chocolate and old cheese. Preferably Gruyere or Gouda, but anything that is over five years is good. (Note: I've been told that this is a migraine trigger for some people, so eat at your own risk.)

5. Chocolate and pretzels. I love the salty and crunchy of the pretzels with the sweet and creamy of the chocolate. Again, my preference is for a darker chocolate, but that is my favorite. (Nutella will do in a pinch.)

6. Bread and butter. And that would be real homemade bread with real sweet cream butter. I'm not picky about what kind of homemade bread. It could be white bread, brown bread, rye bread, rustic bread, country bread, multi-grain bread, or my grandmother's honey whole wheat bread. And real sweet cream butter.

7. Asparagus and garlic. Actually most any vegetable and garlic. Zucchini, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, green beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber. Yeah, I love garlic and veggies.

8. Lobster and butter. In fact I have a $20 gift card to Red Lobster that I really should use soon and fix this craving.

9. Potatoes and cheese. I love to bake a potato and sprinkle it with a bit of cheddar cheese or Colby Jack. I'm not too picky.

10. Cocoa powder and chili. Yep. I like chocolate in my chili. It smooths out the burn. I also learned that if you make chili and you added too much red pepper, add a tablespoon of cocoa powder at a time per hour until the red pepper is put in its proper place. If you don't have any cocoa powder at hand (which I'm not sure why you wouldn't) you can always use 85+% dark chocolate to do the same. Half an ounce per hour.

So that is my list of top ten favorite pairings. Now, having written this all out, I'm going to remember about twenty more that I have pondered over the past few days. What are your favorite two foods that go together?

It's perfectly safe

Yesterday we had another termite control company out to give us an estimate on treatment and re-infestation.  I could tell he was a high pressure salesman and was doing anything he could to seal the sale.  That's fine.  That's his job.  I work in retail and I know that we, too, are supposed to work for the sale.  He was going into his big spiel about how invasive they would be with the chemicals to keep our home safe and was talking in terms of gallons of termitacide per square foot.  This sounded fairly frightening and toxic to me.  Being the good consumer that I am I decided to ask an intelligent question.

"So ... What is the risk to humans and our pets with all these chemicals you are going to be spreading over our property and home?"


The answer?  "None.  You see (missy - and I swear there was the unsaid missy in his voice) termites are very small so they don't need to ingest a lot of this chemical in order to kill them.  We are bigger.  We would have to drink gallons of this stuff in order for it to do anything to us." (Now run along back to your kitchen and let us men-folk discuss this.)

Of course I don't believe that answer in the least because ants are pretty small, but the chemicals we use to get rid of them have a skull and cross bones on the packaging.  I did what every average person does when they need an answer and went to the Internet.  And what did I find?  That all termitacides are listed as possible carcinogens with the EPA.  You can rest assured that this little missy isn't going to be drinking gallons of the stuff and I'm going to be pretty careful around places that I know it is put.

I can think of so many different ways that he could have talked about the risks of termitacide other than "termites are tiny and we are big."  He could have acknowledged that termitacide has its risks but that they do everything in their power to limit the exposure of those chemicals to humans and their beloved pets.  That would have at least made him sound credible.  Fortunately, Mr. KCW didn't like this company's representative any better than I did and his bid was higher for less work.

In other news, it rained heavily again last night, but nowhere near the twenty-one inches that we had on Saturday.  The room remains dry.  This is good news.  At least there is a little good news.  Keep your fingers crossed for the insurance inspection today.  Hopefully we will find out that we actually have some sort of insect protection.   In the meantime I'm going to cook up some blueberry pancakes. 

My favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes:

Get in the car and go to Cracker Barrel.  Make sure to get a side of turkey sausage to go with them.  And skip the Main Blueberry syrup.  It's just corn syrup with some blueberries thrown in.  Just butter them so you can taste the fabulous blueberries.

My second favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes:

Make Krusteaz Complete pancakes and throw blueberries in them. (That's for days when you are short on time and don't want to pay $8 for blueberry pancakes)

My third favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes is my dad's recipe for pancakes to which I add blueberries.  He called them Hank Snow's Favorite Pancakes. (I have no idea if that claim is actually true. I don't even know if my dad ever met Hank Snow, but Hank Snow's name was evoked often in my house growing up.) 

1-1/2 c. flour (just regular all-purpose - nothing fancy here, although I like unbleached)
3 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 T sugar
(Sift all those things together)
Blend together 1-1/4 c milk and 1 egg.
Mix your dry and your wet and then mix in 3 T melted butter or shortening. (My dad always used shortening, I use butter.)

Pour about 1/4 c of batter on a hot griddle then add a generous handful of blueberries right before flipping the first time.  The blueberries will most likely split open when you flip your pancakes, but that's ok.  I use frozen blueberries and run them under some warm water prior to cooking the pancakes.

 

Knit, Cook, Write

A friend of mine recently asked me, "What is it that you enjoy doing most in life?" It got me to thinking and the thing I came up with was the name of the blog: knitting, cooking, and reading. It's true. Now I could couple that with reading, but for most writers reading and writing are fraternal twins. For the past two years I have been on a writing frenzy. It has lead to me learning some very interesting things about myself and my outlook on life. Currently I am in that long drawn out stage where I am sending out query letters trying to catch the attention of just one author or editor. I've bought books on the subject and have started reading magazines on writing regularly. That hasn't halted my writing though. In two years I have completed four novels and have just recently begun on a new series.

I have been an avid knitter since I was around eleven (and for those of you that are going to be nosy and as, "So just how many years is that?" the answer is thirty-three. You do the math.) I have evolved from a crimped-cord-metal cheap needle with the cheapest acrylic yarn money could by (OK, I was poor and it's all I could afford) to an avid knitter with at least two pair of every size from US 0's to US 15's and some miscellaneous metric sizes that fit in between and some really nice honkin' big US 50's. (Admission: I probably own around eight sets of size US 1.5 needles either in long circular or dpn's.) My yarn choices have become snootier as my budget has afforded. I have stashed silk, mohair, bamboo, wool, alpaca, and even some cashmere. That isn't to say that my stash doesn't also contain yarns bought at big box stores. There are some really nice yarns being released by mass merchants and I'm not so snooty to turn my nose up at a lovely bamboo and wool sock yarn that is in the perfect shade of turquoise just because it came from a large retailer.

And to cooking. I'm a foodie. Should I say more? OK, maybe I should. I love food. I love the texture, the color, the flavor, the aroma, and the action of making food. I like shopping for food. I like tasting food. I adore seeing well presented food at a restaurant, but especially at a friend's home. I like serving food on beautiful platters and in hand thrown pottery bowls. Food is more than just sustenance. Food is life. I'm even such a foodie that I buy books about food. Not recipe books, but books that talk about the history of food, the relationship of food, and how to put food together (that aren't actual recipes.)

At one time I had three blogs. And then I realized that they were interconnected because they were all extensions of myself. So that is what this blog is all about. It's about food. It's about knitting. It's about writing. And it's a place for me to gab on about those subjects and somewhere in there I might even have something interesting to say.