OMG! Not Vegetarian!

Yesterday morning I went out to start the cars, I don't scrape windows, haven't in 15 years. Cars these days come with a built in function called "heat" and have "defroster" settings. Some even have front and rear defrosters. Amazing technology. I could be lazy and buy a remote starter, but it isn't that difficult for me, as long as I don't fall down the steps. Anyway, I went out yesterday morning to start the cars and it was snowing hard. So I went inside to check to see if there was any notice regarding school and there was an email saying school was not closed. Fine. I would appreciate some consistency though. Last time it snowed on a Thursday and on Monday we didn't have school. This time we got about two inches on Friday and had small snow squalls on Saturday and Sunday and it was snowing now. Not a problem for me, I've driven through far worse on a routine basis in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. But just be consistent.

I got to school a little early. Blue skies. Unbelievable. I think there were 8 of us out of 18. Hottie # 2 called in saying she couldn't get out of her driveway. BS. But what really pissed me off was the school president announced that anyone who missed yesterday was not to be counted absent. So what's the point of being open? It seems the school is in a quandary with snow days, make up days, and staff suffering through furloughs but being asked to work for the make days. And somehow the attendance is tied to state funding and they don't want to risk losing any. It was 45 degrees when I left school yesterday afternoon. And even then people were saying they couldn't get out of their driveways. B-S.

Last night we had a dusting of snow, blue skies at 9:00AM and right now and school was cancelled for "inclement weather." WTF!

At least I will be home for the start of curling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week's nutrition class was a little more difficult because we were not allowed a grocery list. We had to work with what was already in the kitchen. That meant that just because something was in stock when I left on Tuesday, didn't mean that it would be there when I got back to class on the following Monday.

I always try to have three parts to my meals, soup and salad and dessert, salad and entree and dessert, salad and entree and side, etc. I figured I could do a veggie wrap. I would take one of my extreme high fiber tortilla shells from home. I would make hummus and use it instead of mayo and hope for the best on a variety of vegetables.

Trying to figure out a dessert was a little more difficult. I finally decided to go with oatmeal raisin cookies since I knew there would be oatmeal at school. But I was going to have to do some modifications. The classic Quaker Oats recipe called for butter and I couldn't risk using butter for someone with a milk allergy. I searched some vegan recipes for ideas but many of them called for items I knew I wouldn't have access to like apple sauce.

The other obstacle to overcome was the recipe yield was 48 cookies. I need one cookie. I needed to try to reduce the batch size down. My goal was to make a 50g cookie and a four cookie batch. The scientist in me kicked into over drive. The Friday before my class I settled into experiment mode.

Batch Number One was the classic recipe scaled to a yield of four. It worked! Batch Number Two was my attempt at replacing the butter with canola oil. It worked! But then I did my nutrition calculations and decided I needed to get some calories out. With batch Number Three I attempted that by replacing the white sugar with Splenda. The cookies worked again! But I still needed to get rid of more calories. For the last batch I pulled out all stops. In addition to using oil and Splenda, I replaced part of the brown sugar with honey. I also replaced the egg content with egg white. And I upped the oats and reduced the flour to try to pick up a tad more fiber. They took a little bit longer to cook and the cookies had to be flattened with a spatula because they did not spread out. But they did bake.

All of the cookies were made with dried cherries because I couldn't find my raisins. From now on, I'm using cherries. I thought they were SOOOOO much better. For my class I was planning on using dried cranberries because I knew for sure they were in stock. Of course the unadulterated cookie was the best. My wife preferred the cookie with oil substituted for butter though. It had a softer texture. The cookie with Splenda and oil was almost indistinguishable from the one with oil and sugar. The final cookie with all of my changes was not bad. No, it wasn't as good as the previous three but it was still a good tasting cookie. If you had nothing to compare it to and had one fresh, you would come away thinking it was a good but not memorable cookie. Better than many of the nutriloaf cookies available.

I was excited because I achieved my two goals, make a small batch of cookies and a healthier version that still tasted good. In the end I was able to reduce the calories from 211 to 156 and the fat grams from 9g to 6g per cookie. Unfortunately I was only able to increase the fiber content from 1.5g to 1.7g per cookie. Still, it was a noble effort.

I had no idea what to do for the third component for my meal but I kind of had this idea of soup and sandwich that kept popping into my head. I wanted to make a Russian fresh mushroom soup because I was sure that I had fresh mushrooms to work with. But the recipe calls for milk. Ugh. This will only work if I have soy milk and even if I have that, can you make a good tasting soup with soy milk? I decided that I would wing the third part and wait until I got to school and see what I had.

There was soy milk!

For the soup, I halved the batch. It's a stone simple soup made with milk, fresh mushrooms, potatoes and a little barley. Instead of sauteing the mushrooms in butter, I tried with a tiny bit of olive oil. It did not work as well and I ended up overcooking the soup trying to get the mushrooms and potatoes soft. By overcooking I mean that the soup was much thicker than I have made in the past, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like thick soups. Of course the thickness could be related to using soy milk instead of real milk. Dunno. It tasted fine though.

I LOVE hummus. Just plain ordinary hummus. I don't need any of those fancy flavors like roasted pepper hummus. I can OD on hummus, and have. If you buy your hummus, stop. It is so damned simple to make and probably better for you than buying pre-made. I made a small batch and spread it on my wrap instead of mayo because if you are like me, you need something moist in your sandwich. I didn't know until later how many calories are in hummus. My nice thick layer of hummus skyrocketed my nutritious wrap to over 600 calories! A little less than if I had given her a Whopper from Burger King!!! If I had known that at the time I would have given her soup and HALF a sandwich, which probably would have been smart regardless. At least the fats from my hummus are far healthier than those in a Whopper. I did send the fiber content into the stratosphere with this meal.

For the veggies, I used a peeler to make thin strips of cucumber, carrot and bell pepper. I added a large leaf of romaine and for whatever reason decided to throw on some bits of broccoli florets. I kind of regret that last one. To take it over the edge, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes and sprinkled them over the middle. The whole thing rolled well, looked good and had the color that Chef wanted.

Except Chef wasn't there. New Chef liked what I was doing though. I hope I impressed him. He really liked my cookie and was very impressed with the thought process and effort I put into making them. Wendy City wanted her meal to go. I didn't think it was as good as the week before. The broccoli was really bothering me.

Speaking of effort. Mouth came in, pulled three items out of the walk-in that we had left over from lunch, put it on the plate, declared she was done and went home. Is that cooking? I didn't know we were doing Semi-homemade with Sara Lee.

In the end, my client didn't really care for the cookie, but hey, I tried. She did however love the soup and sandwich and appreciated all of my efforts.

Who Dat!

First week of banquet we did a Chili Cook Off. Week Two was An Afternoon in Paris. Week Three was Super Bowl Party. I have no idea what day that was.

Planning was a joke. It took two and a half hours to come up with a menu, it should have taken thirty minutes. Basically we were doing bar food. Some of the ideas were off the wall. Seven layer bean dip. Tasty. Maybe you have it at your Super Bowl Party at your house. You don't get it at a bar. At least not the bars I go to. Slo Mo was indignant on his ideas. Both Bar Code and I were nonplussed. Dude, you aren't even old enough to know what bar food is! He's 19. BC and I both have 19 years of experience on him. Dumb ass.

As we were doing the grocery list, RK asks me, "you know what stuff is the absolute BEST! What's that stuff that comes in a can, got the peppers and onions?" "Ro-Tel?" says I. YEAH. There aint nothing better than that stuff, with that cheese stuff, what's it called. "Velveeta?" says I. YEAH! "I'm going to put that on the list, let's see 4 cans of Ro-Tel and that cheese, how do you spell it?" It took every bit of self control not to tell him to sound it out. He still spelled it wrong, v-e-l-v-e-t-t-a. I told him, there is no way Chef is going to get that for you. That's not cooking! That's dumping out a can and adding fake cheese. Now maybe if you made your own cheese sauce, but not Velveeta.

Another group wanted to make a dipping sauce for meatballs with grape jelly and chili paste. I don't care how great it tastes, that's not a culinary art! I just want to beat my head against a wall sometimes.

I drew Sloppy Joes. The recipe in the book calls for veal shanks but I was going to use the teres major once again. I ask Chef how much meat and put eight pounds down on the grocery list. Slo Mo looks at the list and says, oh good beef is on there. I tell him write down how much he needs. "You gonna use all that?" Yes. Write down what you need. "You touch any of my meat I'll cut your fuckin' hands off!" I tell him. Chef just laughs. That bastard is always doing that kind of thing and then when you go to grab your ingredients, they're gone.

I have a reputation of being a walking talking carnivore with an aversion to vegetables. That's not actually true but I enjoy maintaining the image. I joked with Chef that this recipe was awesome, no vegetables! Chef asked how it was possible to make Sloppy Joes without vegetables. "I don't know but the recipe called for straining the vegetables out." Really a loose meat sandwich than a Sloppy Joe. I did strain out the vegetables but left a few in, a paltry few.

I don't know what happened in the kitchen but it was like the first day of cooking all over again. I was the ONLY one out by Noon. It was pathetic. Slo Mo never even got his jalapeno poppers out. Chafing dishes weren't lit. I don't think any other food was out until quarter after. Pathetic. I met my goal though.

Wouldn't you know it, Chef bought Ro-Tel and Velveeta for that idiot. And RK couldn't even make it right. For someone who LOVES it, he should know to drain the Ro-Tel. It was more of a soup than a dip.

Not a lot of Sloppy Joe fans came though. It tasted good though. Oh well.

Moroccan Medley

After our Afternoon in Paris, I have my nutrition class. Days have blended together now but I believe that we had a planning session for our nutrition class. Or maybe we cooked, I don't remember. I do know that I had asked Chef what our focus for our meal should be and Chef said Mediterranean Diet. Personally I am undecided if the Mediterranean Diet is all that yet. Is it for real or is it a fad? Probably somewhere in between but for sure it is the latest diet craze and frenzy.

Rather than just make something up like the others in my class do, I decided to do Moroccan. I try to make all of my Nutrition meals as three courses. For this one I wanted to do a soup and salad and a dessert. Most of my class is just serving a single salad, or in the case of RK a single empanada/burrito.

In addition to the nutrition summary that I have been providing my client, I started giving her copies of the recipes in case she likes what she eats. I scaled them for two. This puts me exponentially above and beyond my classmates.

The salad was a savory sweet potato salad served at room temperature. The soup was a chickpea and lentil soup with just a little bit of chicken. And for dessert I made a light fruit salad tossed in orange juice and honey. Of all of the food I have cooked in all of my classes, I am most proud of this one.


I was disappointed that afterward Chef said we need to work on our plating, he wants to see more color. He also said we need to focus on portion sizes. Surely he wasn't talking to me?

PS. I got a rave review from my client!

An Afternoon in Paris

As I mentioned before, the theme for our first banquet was Paris. It seems that this was begrudgingly chosen. Oh well. Chef assigned people to dishes. He didn't call out my name so that meant I was on set up. I was just getting started when The Old Man came out and said I was working with him.

I had never seen The Old Man (TOM) before so of course I had never worked with him. He said we were making Boeuf Bourguignon. Sweet! I did not know that since my name was not called though I had suggested that when we were planning. I had brought my Julia Child with me so I was prepared. Since I had just made this at home this was not going to be that hard. I gave my book to TOM while I got prepped.

TOM started scaling the recipe and was running into problems because some of the amounts seemed excessive. Chef pulled me aside and showed me the meat we were going to use. Our class consumes a lot of teres major. I would not say this is a "new" cut of meat but it isn't something you see in the stores. It's a small shoulder muscle on the cow. It is quite tender and flavorful and if cut right you can fake a filet mignon easily with it. It seems impossible to over cook it too. You have to prep it though by removing the silver skin which I find to be a PITA. Give me rib eye any day! For some reason Chef can get it fairly cheap so we use a lot of it. We did have to explain to MILF why there were only two cuts per cow. She must have been lost in a daze.

The first step to this recipe is to render slivers of bacon. TOM was upset that I just chopped the bacon up with out weighing it. IT DOESN'T MATTER. While the bacon does get added back into the stew, the primary reason for this step is to brown the beef in the bacon fat. Unfortunately, our bacon got burned beyond usage. I had set it in a pan on the grill which was not being used. I came back later and the grill was on high and my bacon was in the pan burning black. I don't know who turned it on. It's possible that I accidentally bumped the knob with my fat ass, I don't know. But I was pissed. The bacon never made it into the Boef Bourguignon. Shhhhh, don't tell TOM, he never knew.

I bring the meat out and TOM and I start to prepping it. We chunk it up and I start to throw it in the biggest brazier I can find and then get the other half of the meat. TOM stops me and asks how much meat do we have, did I weigh it? Huh? We need to weigh it so we have our proportions right. Come on, man! This is nothing more than French stew. OK fine. I guess 15 pounds, he says better than twenty. I get a balance and it weighs in at 22 pounds. I start browning the meat while he begins chopping up the vegetables. We've got too much meat and I can't find another large brazier so I take two smaller ones and have three going at the same time.

I figure it's best to avoid TOM so I pretty much keep to watching the meat. TOM chops up the vegetables and asks my opinion on the quantity. IT'S FINE! At this point TOM is getting upset that we don't have the garlic in or any of the other spices and we only have an hour and a half left. IT'LL BE OK. Damn! I take the carrots and onions and start browning them. I grab the red wine and TOM tells me to use just a little. He says that Port is pretty strong stuff. Good to know. See you can learn something from anyone.

I turn around at this point and see TOM crushing bay leaves up. Huh? Dude, what are you doing? You can't crush those up! He says, "yes you can. If anyone asks, we'll just say the lawn got mowed today." Huh? You're going to put those in a sachet right? No. I look pleadingly at Chef. Now he asks what the hell TOM is doing. Chef scolds TOM explaining you can do that with fresh bay leaves but with dried you'll kill someone as they choke to death on one. Count how many you put in and take that same number out. Whew! My trust is TOM is now gone.

Sadly I'm forgetting a lot now, but all went well. The stew was phenomenal, maybe a little too salty but that was TOM's doing. And we forgot the mushrooms. Oh well.

Here is the Coq au Vin, which was my suggestion, made by Bar Code. Potatoes Lyonnaise, which were awful, made by Slo Mo, and a really bad version of crepes made by Hottie #3 and RK.

And here is the Boef Bourguignon!!!

Personal Chef 101

Time is moving so fast I'm losing track of where I am and what I need to post.

My Nutrition class is basically Personal Chef 101.

Here is my first class effort:

Roasted Pepper and Olive Salad

Pan Seared Chicken Breast on Couscous with Green Beans and Cinnamon Gelato

I was pleased with the dish and I received a rave review from my client. It has somewhat of a Greek theme with the the olives, couscous and chicken. I'm not so sure that the couscous is actually couscous. Chef said it was but then Chef ordered a new case it it doesn't look like this stuff, but again, my client liked it, whatever it was. The chicken was seasoned with cracked pepper, cumin and turmeric. The "couscous" was tossed with onion, peppers and tomato. The green beans were seasoned with nutmeg. The gelato is not a true gelato since no custard is used. Cornstarch is used as a thickener instead. I also had to use soy milk because my client has a milk allergy. The taste was good but the texture was off. I would say it was closer to pudding than ice cream. It reminded me a lot of tapioca pudding. All in all I was pleased with my first effort. In looking at the picture, I could have done a little better on my plating.

We did this meal after cooking in the morning for our banquet class. That meant I was cooking or washing dishes from 8:30 to 4:30 with a break from 12:00 to 1:00 to serve food and eat. My ass was dragging. My feet and legs hurt so bad. I could feel myself move slower and s-l-o-w-e-r and slooooooowwwwweeeeerrrrr. I once saw a Red Wings hockey game that went to six overtimes. By the sixth period it looked like they were skating on slush instead of ice they were moving so slow due to fatigue. That is exactly how I felt.

Looking around the class, my buddy Tennessee was attempting to wing it with no prior plan. Fried prosciutto in a pesto cream sauce on homemade pasta. Kudos for home made pasta rather than processed and refined stuff, but not really a healthy meal overall. And damn that prosciutto was salty! Took me hours to get the taste out of my mouth.

Good ol' RK took three hours to make empanadas. They were the size of of a Hostess cherry pie, if not bigger. Granted they had a savory filling with rice and olives and raisins, but they were deep fried and HUGE! That was his entire plate too. He made eight, we're serving one. Some people just don't get it.