Steven Harper Piziks

I've lost 15 pounds in the last few weeks.  Go me!  But I have to give a chunk of credit to Darwin.

See, after the Great Hospital Trip of Doom, Darwin suddenly became a great deal more careful about monitoring his blood sugar.  He flipped over to a high-protein, low-carb diet.  He won't touch bread, or pasta, or potatoes, or even brown rice.

As head chef in the house, I found myself under orders to find acceptable substitutes for all carbs.  Potatoes were once a standard side dish, but now?  Out with them!  Rice and noddles are forbidden.  I stopped making cookies.  Darwin can't eat them, even if I make them without sugar (the flour still spikes him), and for some reason, it never occurs to Max to eat them.  They grow stale in the cookie jar.  No more cookies.  Chips are contraband.  Carb-heavy store yogurt is gone. 

This isn't the first time we tried this.  See, a couple years ago, I bought a couple diabetic cookbooks in an attempt to find healthy foods Darwin might like.  The books were AWFUL.  The recipes were TERRIBLE.  Either they required exotic ingredients or insisted on tasteless substitutes for flavorful foods.  Additionally, Darwin was simply uninterested in lowering his carb intake, and would happily sabotage my low-carb attempts by cooking up some ramen or ordering macaroni and cheese at a restaurant.  I didn't see the point in working hard to change things around for nothing, so I stopped trying.

This time, Darwin's mind-set has become more stringent, but instead of using the awful cookbooks (and the dumb-ass web sites that abound everywhere on this topic), I started relying on my own instincts and knowledge.  A bunch of recipes are simply discarded.  Others I modified

Potatoes became butter-sauteed carrots or steamed cauliflower.  Rice and noodles transformed into quinoa.  Stews and curries are chockful of turnips.  Chips flipped over into peanuts and sunflower seeds.  Store yogurt changed into home-made yogurt with artificial sweetener.

A side-effect of all this is that my own diet changed.  I'm generally not up for cooking two different dinners, so I eat what Darwin does.  Thanks to him, I've lost considerable weight.

Go me!

A while ago, I tried my hand at yogurt in the Instant Pot.  It came out very while, though it was a little tricky.  The little cookbook that came with the Instant Pot has a yogurt recipe in it that doesn't once mention the YOGURT setting on the pot.  WTF?  I did some searching around on-line and read a dozen or so recipes that do mention it, and they all say basically the same thing: scald a bunch of milk in the Instant Pot, let it cool, stir in a little yogurt (kind of like putting some previous sour dough into your current batch of sour dough), set the IP to YOGURT for eight hours, and strain the stuff when it's done.

I did all this, and it came out very well.  Once I get this down pat, we won't ever have to buy yogurt again.  The only real snag is that it sucks up the Instant Pot for an entire day.  I also came away with a huge container of yogurt whey, a byproduct of the straining.   I was just going to dump it when I learned it's actually good to use in place of water for things like bread and pancakes.  So I saved it.

Which leads us to today.

I'm making ribs today, because I like them and because Darwin can eat them all he likes.  And I have all this whey to use up, so I figured I'd make whey pancakes for breakfast and some bread maker bread.  And I could make yogurt, too, since we're running out of what I already made.

And then we ran into the problem. 

First I made the whey pancakes.  They turned out ultra-fluffy and completely delicious, especially since blackberries are in season in South America and the store had them on sale and I could sprinkle them into the pancakes.  Darwin and Max liked them very much, and I was impressed with the "whey" they cooked up light and fluffy.  :)

Then I turned to the other projects and ran into the problem.

Yogurt is a ten-hour process for the Instant Pot.  If I set up some yogurt, I wouldn't be able to make the ribs! 

I told Darwin I needed another Instant Pot.  He was shocking unreceptive to the idea.

I've been wanting an Instant Pot for quite a while.  Then, after much hinting from me, Darwin got me one for Yule!

After Christmas, I set about experimenting with it.  It has been officially promoted to my #1 favorite appliance.  I'm starting with simple dishes while I get the hang of it.  I've made one-pot spaghetti, Teriyaki chicken rice bowls, and clam chowder.  They've all come out perfectly and deliciously.  It definitely cuts down on the cook time, the number of dishes dirtied, and the cleanup time.  I'm officially a convert.

Last night after the movie, Darwin and I stopped at the grocery store. It was very late, so the place was almost deserted.  He needed a couple things, I needed a couple things.

Among the things I needed was butterscotch chips for haystack cookies, an annual holiday treat.  I had already put them on the pick up list for my regular grocery shopping, but when I picked my order up, the store informed me that they had no butterscotch chips of any brand.  So I stopped in after the movie to see if they had any now.

They didn't.  Not one package.  They didn't even an empty slot on the shelf where they were supposed to go.

The store also didn't have a couple things Darwin needed, including a small present for our family gift exchange.  I proposed that, since we were out and since it was late on a Friday when NO ONE went shopping, we head down to the local mega-store (open 24 hours!) and shop there.  Even though we were tired, it would be worth it to shop in a store unoccupied by frantic weekend holiday shoppers.  Darwin agreed.

The mega-store was, as expected, nearly empty.  Cool!  We shopped here and there, and found what we needed.  Then I remembered--butterscotch chips!  We bustled over to the baking section.

No butterscotch chips.  They had chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, M&M chips, and toffee chips.  But no butterscotch.

We rooted around in disbelief.  This is America!  There are no shortages in consumer paradise!  What was--

Darwin found, stashed behind a case of semi-sweet chocolate, three packages of butterscotch chips.  I snatched them with glee and relief.  Treasure hunt achieved!

But now we're wondering--is there a butterscotch shortage of some kind?

We're hosting Thanksgiving this year, and by "we," I mean "I."  And so the massive prep has begun!

I started by ordering all the groceries for pickup.  Yes!  I didn't have to fight my way through the store or stand in a long line.  I just submitted my list on the store's web site and picked everything up the next day.  I love this.

Today the cooking began.  I prepped the potatoes and sweet potatoes by peeling and cutting them and putting them in cold water to sit until Thursday.  I chopped bread into cubes and infused it with herbs, butter, and broth to transform it into stuffing.  I made two batches of piragi dough--the first batch didn't rise, so I had to do a second--and spent considerable time stuffing piragis with ham and onions and baking them.  (I had three or four for lunch, too.)

And then I baked desserts.  I made crack (saltines, caramel, and chocolate in layers).  I baked reverse chocolate chip cookies (chocolate dough with white chocolate chips).  I made a Dutch apple pie (at Darwin's request).  I baked two pumpkin pies (which always take longer in the oven than the hour suggested by the recipe).

Now everything is in the bursting refrigerator and freezer, waiting for Thursday!

Today was a total kitchen fish fail!  I'd seen a dish called salt-baked fish.  It's an Italian dish that involves sealing a fish into a crust of egg white and Kosher salt.  You bake it until the crust hardens, then crack it open and lift the fish out.  It looks fun!  I was worried that the fish would be hugely salty, but the recipes I found for it all swore that the salt stayed away from the fish but sealed in juices.

Today I decided to try it.  I followed the recipe exactly, as I always do the first time I make something.  It came out of the oven looking interesting--a big pie of hardened salt.  I cracked it open at the table, lifted the fish out, and served it.  Darwin and I tried it.  (Max hates fish in general and refused it.) 

Ohhhhh, it was awful!  Salt, salt, and more salt.  Blargh!  We picked through the fish, looking for bits that weren't all salt, but they were few and far between.  Blech!

Fortunately, I'd reserved a bit of fish from the recipe and baked it normally so we had at least a little something to eat, but boy! Awful, awful, awful!

After cleaning up, I made myself a smoothie out of bananas and frozen blueberries.  Much better!

I'm a terrible cake decorator.  Awful.  World-class dreadful.  I can make a delicious gourmet cake so good that a single forkful will make you swear you just had sex with a angel.  But the moment the frosting comes out--wham!  It lumps and slides and gloops under my spatula, and any three-year-old can write better with colored frosting than I can.  Hell, I worked in a freakin' BAKERY for a year, and still couldn't master basic cake lettering.  That tells you how awful I am.  Eat the cake, but close your eyes first.

I came to terms with this awful limitation long ago and thought I was good with it.  Then I came across mirror glaze (sometimes called mirror cake).  It's a glaze made with condensed milk, white chocolate, and gelatin that you pour over a frozen cake.  It hardens into a smooth, shiny surface that is easy to manipulate with an offset spatula into lovely designs.  Google it.  Very easy to find.

I watched a few videos of this phenomenon and got weirdly excited about it, like I'd found a treasure chest in the garage.  My main thought was "Holy shit!  I could actually =do= that!"

And right now, I'm between major writing projects, so my afternoons and evenings are free.

So I headed to the store with a grocery list.

Since this is the learning and experimental stage, I wanted to run through a bunch of these.  To that end, it would be better to use box mixes for the cake part, rather than make a bunch of cakes from scratch.  Box mixes generally taste bland, but I'm more interested in the glazing process and the final look than in the taste.  I chose a red velvet and a lemon.  Mirror cakes usually have one layer, so this would give me four cakes to work with.

Mirror cakes are always frozen before the glazing process, and they're often encased in mousse.  But mousse takes a lot of whipping cream, which is expensive, so I got ingredients for one batch of mousse.  The other three cakes I would glaze naked. :)

This was yesterday.  Today, I mixed the cake batter and poured them into parchment-lined pans so there was no risk of breakage when they came out.  While they baked and cooled, I whisked eggs and sugar and hot cream and white chocolate and vanilla into a mousse, which I refrigerated.  When everything was cool, I lined a springform pan with a layer of creamy mousse, set on it one of the chocolate cakes, and covered it all over with more mousse.  This went into the freezer, along with the bare cakes to chill and harden overnight.

Tomorrow we'll try the actual glazing.  Watch this space!

The Great Vegetarian Expotition has ended. Darwin and Max, despite earlier enthusiasm for it, kept resisting it or circumventing it (usually by ordering meat at restaurants), and it became a bigger and bigger chore to find food that they would eat without complaining.  It was also a major hassle learning to cook in new ways several times a week, especially when I got no help, not even, "Hey, why don't we try this?", from the local residents.  It all became more trouble than it was worth, so we ended it.

And today I roasted a chicken. 

When I started off, though, I realized I hadn't given this full thought.  I'd forgotten to buy anything to stuff or season it with, for one thing.  Working with a big piece of meat had also become a little foreign.  But the skills came back with some nudging.  I decided to stuff the chicken with onions, rosemary, and crushed garlic cloves.  I also rubbed a crushed clove all over the skin, then oiled it and salted it.  The whole thing when into a dish atop a bed of rough-chopped onions and carrots, and then into the oven.  Accompanying dishes were mashed potatoes and cucumber salad.

The chicken came out deliciously!  The onions kept the meat moist and tender, and the garlic was strong enough to flavor the meat without overwhelming it.  Delightful!  Now the bones are simmering for soup stock.

A while ago, I made a vegetable soup from a new recipe.  I put it in the slow cooker and let it simmer all day while I was at work.  When you get home when a slow cooker has been working all day, the house is filled with the smell of delicious food, which is always nice.  But this time I got home and the soup smelled . . . yucky.  It had a sharp, acidic smell to it.

I tasted it, corrected some seasoning, and tasted again.  Not that great.  Edible, but definitely blah.  Apparently this recipe wasn't very good.

Darwin came home and asked what smelled funny.  Not a good sign.  By now, the soup had simmered another couple hours, so I asked him to taste it and see what he thought.

"Not bad," he said.

I was half ready to order out or something, but we decided to try the soup anyway.  I called Max to the table.

It was weird.  As we ate it, the soup started tasting better and better.  In the end, everyone had more than one bowl. 

Cooking save!