Class Begins Today!!!

Except I'm not in it.
I can't tell you how crushed I am. All good things must come to an end some time. We just plain ran out of money. Even with the money I made last month, there just wasn't enough to cover an electric bill that doubled, vehicle registrations, insurance(s), doctor visits, prescriptions, etc.

I guess there won't be any brilliant posts about school, class and professional cooking for awhile.

I'm bummed. I'm depressed. And sick on top of it. And the weather is crappy wicked. Not a good day.

Crock Pot Roast

It's really hard to screw up pot roast. Or is it?

Growing up, my Grandmother would fix a pot roast in the oven every summer for a few dinners at the Lake. She had this thing about eating meat well done. WELL done. In my family we eat our beef medium rare. I think it was because of my Grandmother I became a salt addict. I needed half a shaker to get that roast down every time. Rawhide would have been a more tender, more moist meal.

My Mom seems to have recently discovered the crock pot. I'm not sure why. I know we had one in the house my whole life and I've seen her use it. Their big thing is ribs in the crock pot. She told me recently they cooked a roast for dinner in the crock pot and the vegetables were amazing but the meat was the driest they had ever had. Worse than my Grandmother's she said! They had to throw it out.

I asked her if the meat was on top of the liquid. "Yes." And there ya go.

The roast I made for tonight's dinner was perfect. It was very simple. Just some carrots, a few cloves of garlic, an onion. I used the white of a leek too. I didn't use any spices though. Interesting. Well except for a little salt and pepper. One thing I did that I believe took my meal a step above the average is I used a box of beef stock instead of water. I used six cups of stock to get the beef under the liquid level. (The box is four cups. I used an additional two cups that I had frozen in the freezer).

After the roast was done, I took it out and put it in a casserole dish. Then I strained the vegetables out of the liquid and added them to the casserole dish and put them in the oven to stay warm. Then I poured all of the liquid into my large skittle and boiled it down to less than half of what I started with. I spooned the reduced liquid over the meat and vegetables. I wish I had time to clarify it and make it a little thicker. Next time. This concentrated the flavor and the extra step took my pot roast to another level, in my oh so humble opinion.
Negatives?

The box of organic beef stock had too much salt in my opinion. Not overpowering and fine for my tastes but maybe not for others.

I think that to really do this right I need to sear and brown the roast before putting it in the crock pot. A little note to remember for next time.

Other than that it was the perfect meal for today, since I seem to have finally caught Rose's cold.

Sourdough Scones

I whipped some of these up today, at least that's what I am calling them. I was intrigued by a recipe in one of my favorite cook books, The Wooden Spoon Bread Book. I've had this cook book for ten, maybe fifteen years, great book. In the book it is called skillet bread and emulates a pioneer-era bread made in a cast iron skillet. To me it tasted like scones.

Maybe they tasted like scones because once again I screwed up and used baking powder instead of baking soda. Maybe, but I don't think so. The bread doesn't sit to double in size like a normal sourdough bread recipe which leads me to believe that the starter is added for flavor not for the yeast action.

Once again I used lard to make a bread recipe and I am beginning to lean away from using it. I can taste just a subtle hint of it in the bread and don't care for it. I think lard might be fine in stronger flavored foods or if you use jelly on your bread but I think bread is just too delicate. I'll have to try again but I think buttermilk might mask the flavor in biscuits. Frying in lard is another story. That usage I really like and have made excellent hash browns and potato pancakes.

Here is the recipe if you would like to try: Sourdough Scones.

A Book Review

You may wonder how or why I am reviewing a non-food related book on a blog about food, but I can tie it together, near the end.

I finally finished this book. I pre-ordered it from Amazon so I got it right when it came out in June but it has taken me way too long to finish it. One because life got in the way and one because it's not my kind of book so I really had to push hard to get through the first third or half of the book. It's a chick book. I don't read love stories. If I do an Amazon review, I'd give it four out of five stars just because of that. The writing though is excellent. The story, if you like love stories and relationships isn't half bad, but I take one star off just because it isn't my cup of tea.

Those of you who don't know me are probably wondering why I pre-ordered a love story if I don't read them and then took the time to read it. Because the author and I went to school together, and at one time we were very good friends.

If you were to ask me in high school or ask me now even, about my closest and best friends back then, Shawn would have been in the closest five. Now those five might not feel the same way about me, but that's how I felt about them. After graduation we all scattered as some many tales of high school friendships go. I lost track of Shawn then and have truly missed him ever since. I really do. Over time most of us have somehow reconnected. A few of us are far from Columbus now so we aren't as tight as we once were but the emails and Christmas cards are there. There's occasional trip back home. And of course fantasy football.

I did try to find Shawn after high school but the rumors I had were that he went to OU, fell into the wrong crowd, got strung out and moved west. I don't know if any of that is true or not but he did head west. Last year my closest friend started a reunion website of sorts and through six degrees of separation managed to get Shawn's email address. She passed it on to me and I immediately emailed him back. To my surprise he replied! He's now living out in Wyoming, living in the skier's paradise he always dreamed of and just published his first book. I would also say that he has aged very well and I say he looks quite dashing and debonair. I'm insanely jealous of him. The being an author part, not the rest.

I'd love to be published. I've started two books that I think qualify as novels. One was about an economic coup of China by Hong Kong after the British handover, kind of a turning of the tables concept. I think I made it to chapter three before that faded out. I still have a file cabinet full of source material. The other is actually half finished and was about an assassination plot of Fidel Castro by a Miami business man. I'll be honest the plot is not that original, I lifted it from The Dogs of War. But I haven't touched that work in probably five years. Time is running out I think, though I can extend it a little by changing the name Fidel to Raul. I guess you just have to be in the right mindset or mood to write. And truthfully, I don't think I am any good.

So back to Jessica Z. I was blown away with the writing. Why? Because Shawn wrote in first person from a female perspective. To me writing fiction in first person is extremely difficult to pull off and then to write from the perspective of the opposite sex raises that difficulty exponentially. I could never do that and I think Shawn did it brilliantly.

Shawn really developed a relationship between the main character and her sister. And he nails it. He could have been writing about my wife and her sister. But it is astonishing because Shawn doesn't have a sibling. None that I remember at least. Nor were his parents divorced when I knew him and he pulls that dysfunctionality off with complete credibility. The relationship between the two sisters and the mom was almost the same as my ex-wife's with her mom. Shawn really did a great job of character development in this book.

I was astonished at things I recognized in the book that even though I have not spoken or heard from Shawn in twenty years! (Ten years man. Ten years!) I'm sure it is only natural, as an author you draw on your own life experiences. The physical description of Jessica I recognized right away. A large part of Shawn, at the least the guy I knew and how I would extrapolate him out to be, is in the character of Patrick. Another character from Dublin, Ohio? Yeah go figure. There were many, many more little details like that. I won't go into them all in case someone out there also knew/knows him and wants to read the book. And all of the sex in the book is so, SO Shawn. I think I even recognized a flashback or two!
I was thrilled when Shawn emailed me back. We only exchanged a few times and that's ok. I'm sure he is far busier than I am with the book and travel, a new book in the wings not to mention his own family commitments. He sent me a podcast of an interview that he did and it was amazing to hear his voice. It was as if we were back in high school, exactly the same. In the interview Shawn discusses that in order to not pick up another author's writing style, when writing he reads nothing but food books and really got into Michael Ruhlman, something we have in common. When I queried Shawn about Ruhlman I mentioned how I wish I could attend CIA but can't afford it, so I'm doing the local tech school culinary arts program. That is when he told me he worked as a sous chef at a resort in Wyoming. He may still in between books. And of course, I was jealous again.

Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year all.

In case you were wondering, there have been no culinary delights since Christmas, not even for New Year's Eve. We ended up at Arby's for that. Don't ask because I'll just get pissed off all over again.

Here's to a brighter and happier 2009!!!