stevenpiziks | Entries tagged with cooking

We have a hummingbird! Yay! She's very shy and flits to the feeders, sips quick, and vanishes, but she's here. We're hoping she has a nest and we'll have babies soon.

I decided it was time to freshen up the feeder syrup, which is getting old. I put sugar and water in a covered pan to boil it. (If you don't, the sugar will eventually recrystallize.) Then Darwin called me outside, so I turned off the stove to finish the project later.

About an hour after that, Darwin and I were sitting on the back deck when the smoke alarms went off. We ran into the house and found the kitchen filled with choking gray smoke. Both upstairs alarms were shrieking. The source of the smoke was the syrup pan. Apparently I hadn't turned the stove all the way off. Furious with myself, I snatched up the pot and took it outside. The sugar water inside had turned to a burned black goo.

Darwin and I spent considerable time clearing the house of smoke. The stuff was stubborn, hovering up near the ceiling and refusing to move. We had to open all the windows and put box fans in strategic places. The whole house smelled of burnt sugar.

At bed time, the smell was still there, and it was getting chilly. Darwin wanted to close the windows, but I plumped for keeping them open so the house could air out overnight. It would be in the 50s, a bit cool but not cold. So that's what we did.

In the morning, the burnt sugar smell was completely gone. Whew!

Meanwhile, I was worried about my pan. It looked like the black goo had welded itself to the bottom, and it wouldn't be feasible to scrub it away. Hoping against hope, I filled the pan with soapy water and left it overnight. In the morning, I poured the water out, and a LOT of the black goo had dissolved. I sprayed the pan with hot water, and more goo dissolved. Well, good! With luck and lots more soaking, the pan should be fine.

And I still have to make hummingbird syrup!

I’ve gotten good at cookies. They’re the perfect treat—small, easily stored, and generally easy to make. The most popular home-made cookie in America is the Toll House cookie, or chocolate chip cookie, invented by Ruth Wakefield in 1938. The official recipe you find on the back of a bag of Nestle chocolate chips is almost identical to Wakefield’s original. The only real difference is that she called for the baking soda to be dissolved in water before adding it.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with the recipe, refined it, and come up with the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe In the Whole Damn World. And here’s the recipe. See if you agree with the name.

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP RECIPE IN THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD

Steven Piziks

Ingredients:

1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 ½ cups packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon almond extract

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons real vanilla extract (avoid artificial vanilla flavoring)

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 cups 60% cacao chocolate chips (favored brand: Godiva)

¾ cups Heath toffee bits (optional)

Kosher salt

Instructions:

Beat unsalted butter with brown sugar until mixture turns light (about three minutes). Beat in eggs, vanilla, almond extract, and salt until well blended.

Sift baking soda and flour together. Add half to mixture and slowly incorporate. Add second half and slowly incorporate. (This is more to avoid making a mess than anything else.)

Add chocolate chips and optional toffee bits and slowly incorporate. Put dough into airtight container and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a cookie scoop, drop dough onto baking sheet lined with silicon baking mat or baking parchment. Sprinkle each cookie with a small pinch of Kosher salt. Bake for 13-16 minutes, until cookies are just turning brown. Remove from oven and slide baking mat or parchment onto cooling rack. Makes about 3 dozen.

NOTES

The recipe uses all brown sugar and no white sugar. This gives the cookies a richer taste and better texture.

Note the recipe calls for double the usual amount of vanilla. I don’t know why recipes are so stingy with the stuff. Extra vanilla gives more flavor.

The almond extract gives the cookies a flavor explosion, and it’s the most powerful secret ingredient.

The toffee bits are optional, but really, really recommended.

Refrigeration the dough helps the cookies keep their shape and avoid spreading in the oven.

The hint of Kosher salt brings out amazing flavor.

Man, what's wrong with me lately?

I made a cake and measured wrong when I was doubling the recipe. The cake rose in the oven and spilled over the pan, dropping a huge glop of batter on the oven floor. I was alerted when the smell of burning sugar filled the house. The cake was a loss, and the batter had welded itself to the oven. I had to run the self-cleaning program. And the recipe uses four eggs to boot! (I swear the loss should be covered under my homeowner's insurance.) Fail!

I made chocolate mousse and THREE eggs screwed me up. One of them was stuck to the bottom of the carton and self-destructed when I tried to pick it up. It got egg all over its neighbors, so I had to remove all of them, clean them, and put them into another container. The yolk on the second egg fragmented during separating and yolk contaminated the whites. It took me several minutes of fishing with a shell fragment to get it all out. The third one cracked badly when I was separating it, creating a tiny, shallow side of shell and a huge, deep side of shell. The yolk immediately plopped into the tiny side and overfilled it, threatening to contaminate the whites yet again. I grabbed at it to change to the finger-separating method but didn't quite make it. Yolk everywhere. I had to abandon the entire batch and start over. Expensive egg fail!

I made M&M cookies with my lovely new hand-held mixer. I put the cookies into the oven and set the timer--incorrectly, as it turns out. The cookies didn't burn, but they came out crunchy instead of chewy. Fail!*

I swear I must have done something to offend the kitchen fairies.

*Though it must be said that Darwin loves them crunchy, so this one's really a semi-fail.

We had a bit of an ice storm last night. Most of the schools in the area announced closure the night before, but Wherever Schools held their breath and waited. We didn't get the cancel call until 4:45 AM.

Today I made cinnamon rolls from scratch and the bean soup that I reverse-engineered from the Whitney restaurant several years ago. I did a bunch of writing business and went for a treadmill run. It's been a laid-back day.

When I first got married thirty-five years ago, we got a small Black + Decker hand mixer. It was the only one in the kitchen for a long time--I didn't get a stand mixer until relatively recently. That little mixer made everything--cookie dough, muffins, whipped cream, pudding, pancake batter, you name it.

A couple days ago, it was just finishing a batch of mashed potatoes when it had a heart attack and dropped dead. It lived a brave life and I gave it a warrior's funeral.

The grieving period, however, was brief. Less than an hour later, in fact, I was shopping for a new one. I did think about just doing without a hand mixer, but no. Some dishes just don't do well in a stand mixer. And kitchen shopping is fun!

My stand mixer is a Kitchen Aid, and like all Kitchies everywhere, I love mine. It's powerful, sturdy, easy to use, and reliable. It also has a little thingie that lets you add motorized attachments, like a pasta roller or a meat grinder. I decided to see if Kitchen Aid also had hand mixers. And lo, on their website, it was announced that they did.

Hand mixers have come a long way in 35 years. My little mixer was good, but it couldn't handle truly heavy stuff like bread dough or cold butter. The new ones? Powerful! Apparently, they'll chew through wood chips.

Not only that, they have CORDLESS mixers! In many colors!

All my kitchen accents are red. My stand mixer is red. So are my dish towels, refrigerator handle covers, rugs, Instant Pot, and Air Fryer. I was happy to see that Kitchen Aid's new cordless mixers also came in red. Gleefully I ordered one. Darwin rolled his eyes at me and was about to say something sarcastic when I interrupted him.

"If you want to eat the tasty treats that the new mixer produces," I warned, "you'd better swallow that comment before you make it."

He swallowed and gave me a tight smile. He who controls the mixer controls the world.

But while I was at the web site, I thought I'd have a look at stand mixer attachments. Why not? And I found Kitchen Aid makes a peeler/corer/spiral cutter attachment. Ooooooo!

I have a peeler/slicer/corer already. Mostly I use it for pie apples. The design on this widget has probably not changed in a hundred years. You clamp it to the cupboard, stick an apple on a set of prongs at the end of a screw, and turn a handle to spin the fruit. The screw twirls the apple through a coring cylinder while a small blade does the peeling. I've had this doohickly for nearly as long as I had the little mixer, in fact. It's tricky to use, though. The clamp is stubborn, and if the apple isn't set just right, the peeling blade will gouge the apple badly. So when I saw Kitchen Aid makes a motorized version (with a nice, sharp blade) that whirls through apples and potatoes in a trice, I decided I HAD to have it. A few mouse clicks later, and it was on the way!

Now I'm waiting for my new toys to arrive.

I'd feel guiltier, but I know my little mixer would want me to be happy.

I know a lot of people buy a breadmaker saying, "I can make delicious, fresh bread anytime I want!" They make a loaf or two, and then the machine vanishes into the dark depths of the cupboard or is banished to the basement, never to be seen again.

Mine isn't one of those.

I got a breadmaker back when they first came out, and I used it semi-regularly, usually a couple-three times a month. It was a supplement, though, and not a regular part of the kitchen routine. We still bought store bread. But I loved setting it to bake bread overnight and having hot, fresh bread at breakfast.

Years later, when I got divorced and it was me and three boys (two of them teenagers) and we didn't have any money, I was looking at every way to cut household costs. I realized we were going through three loaves of bread a week at $2 a loaf. That was $25 a month, just for bread.

I did more math. Flour, salt, yeast, and a little oil for a loaf of bread came to about 25 cents. (!) So I could go from $6 a week to 75 cents, or from $25 a month to $3 a month. The breadmaker itself cost $50, so it would pay for itself in less than three months.

The breadmaker became a permanent resident on the counter. I became adept at quickly throwing the ingredients in and letting it crank through yet another loaf every other day.

Years passed, and the financial problems eased. But I still used the breadmaker. Not only is it cheaper, but the bread is also better in all ways.

Eventually the bread pan started to fall apart. The gasket sealing the bottom went bad, and it leaked. Fortunately, I was able to order a replacement part on-line, and life continued as before.

More years passed peacefully, as far as the breadmaker was concerned. Then a few weeks ago, things started to go south. The second bread pan was going bad. The breadmaker was making an alarming GRONK GRONK GRONK noise when it kneaded the dough. After 15 years of labor, it was time to retire.

I wasn't going to give up a breadmaker, though! I started shopping for one and found that they haven't changed much in the last 15 years, except in price. The model I had bought for $50 back then went for $100 now! Goodness.

More shopping ensued, and I found a different, cheaper brand of maker that looked promising. For one thing, it had two paddles in the bottom, which would make for better kneading, and it had more settings for different styles of bread. And the shipping information said it would arrive in three days. Well, good!

I ordered it. A bit later, I got an email that proudly announced my breadmaker would be on its way and arrive in a couple weeks.

Wait--what?

I double-checked. The original listing still had the breadmaker arriving in three days, but apparently that was a lie. When you buy it, suddenly it's two weeks. I suspect it had to be shipped from China or India or something, but they didn't want to say this, so they lied.

I tried to cancel the order and was informed it was "too late, as the product has already shipped," even though the web site said the order hadn't been filled yet, let alone shipped. I complained higher up the food chain and was finally told the order would be canceled and my money would be refunded. And lo, my money was returned.

Meanwhile, I ordered a similar breadmaker from a different company. Paid a smidge more, but it would arrive at the agreed-upon time (three days).

Also meanwhile, I got an email alert that my original breadmaker had shipped and it would arrive Real Soon Now. Huh. Okay.

The second new breadmaker arrived and it's a delight! I love the dual paddles. It also solved one of the perennial breadmaker problems--the stuck paddle. When you shake a loaf from the pan, often the kneading paddle comes with because it's buried inside the bread. You're stuck with two alternatives. You can pluck it out of the hot bread, or you can wait for the bread to cool and remove the paddle then. The first way leaves the loaf relatively undamaged but singes your fingers something awful. The second way saves your fingers, but the bread adheres to the paddle as it cools and pulling it out brings a big chunk of bread with it. I usually ran cold water from the faucet, pulled out the hot paddle, and immediately went for the cold water.

Anyway, this breadmaker provided a little wire hook that slips into the paddle and flicks it out of the bread in a trice. It's a no-contact solution to singed fingers and damaged bread. I love it!

I've also started baking bread with whole wheat flour. It's more effort--whole wheat bread needs more ingredients if you want something chewable--but it's healthier, and Darwin can eat it. I also know for sure it's whole wheat. A LOT of store-bought "whole wheat bread" ... isn't. The definition of "whole wheat" leaves a lot of wiggle room. But mine doesn't, thank you. The dough is HEAVY, though. My old breadmaker was too old to handle it, but this new one cranks right through it and produces lovely loaves of honey-and-molasses wheat goodness. Very satisfied.

And then the first breadmaker I ordered arrived. It was on my porch one day when I got home from work. Um...

I use my breadmaker way more than most people, but not enough to need two of them! I double-checked my debit account. Money is still there. And not a peep from the company about returning it. So I got a free breadmaker. It's still sealed in the original shipping box, waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.

Maybe I'll sell it on eBay. Or donate it somewhere.

Ideas?

Meanwhile, as I write this, the house smells of baking bread.

Lately, the internet is abuzz with hotdish. This is because Tim Walz mentioned it in a rally speech as a Midwestern thing, and now everyone is talking about this quiet little food that's traditionally showed up at potlucks all over the place. It's been a huge mainstay of dinners everywhere.

I've never heard of them.

A hotdish, if you don't know them either, is usually some kind of ground or chopped meat in a white sauce covered with tater tots and baked. Often cheese, bacon, and/or mushrooms are involved as flavoring. They can be really easy (canned cream of mushroom soup with ground beef topped with tots) or really complicated (make a bechamel sauce while the shredded turkey is mingling with the tofu...). They're hot and filling and a cheap way to feed a large group.

I grew up in the middle of Michigan's lower peninsula in a rural area. Potlucks were a thing at any community gathering. I never saw a hotdish. There were lots of hot dishes, usually casseroles that ranged from fantastic to horrifying. (You learned really quick to avoid Mrs. Gunderson's noodle dish.) Lots of them had a protein in a white sauce. But I never saw anything that involved tater tots, as a hotdish must.

Weirdly, the hotdish engenders strong feelings either for against. They're either delicious, heavenly, and a touchstone of childhood, or they're instruments of world destruction in the hands of Satan.

But I've still never heard of them until now.

I've never made one, either, but out of idle interest, I looked up a bunch of hotdish recipes, and they strike me as solid but bland, like a lot of Midwestern cooking. (The Midwest's spice palette consists of salt. Pepper is too spicy, paprika too daring, curry too weird.) They're basically pot pie topped with tots instead of a crust or biscuits. Nothing worth getting upset--or excited--about. But people do. Screen after screen of comments on the recipes sound like a political divide. It's weird.

Have you heard of them? Made one? Are they a staple or a mystery?

I've been prepping the last couple days for an Independence Day picnic. It culminated today with frying chicken. I got out my deep fryer, filled it with oil, breaded the chicken, and set to work.

When all the chicken was fried, I had this vat of hot oil, and it felt like I should do something with it other than just let it cool and throw it away. (I don't strain and keep used oil because I know I won't use it before it goes bad.) So I sliced up a potato for some french fries for lunch. And then it occurred to me that I've been wanting to try making onion rings for a while, and this was the perfect chance.

I peeled and cut an onion into thick slices, then popped the rings out. I spiced up some flour with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, dipped the onions in beaten egg, then into the flour, then back into the egg, and then into bread crumbs. In retrospect, it probably would have been a little easier to make a basic batter with the flour and egg and flavorings. A note for next time!

The rings went into the deep fryer, where they sizzled enticingly. When they looked done, I fished them out and tried one. Wow! So good. Both crispy and tender. The onion also held together. This was light years ahead of the flash-frozen, mushy-interior onion rings you get at most diners and fast food restaurants.

So we'll keep this in the rotation.

"I hate an open concept house, especially the kitchen! I don't want people to see the mess in the kitchen while I'm cooking! I don't want guests in the same room when I'm cooking with strong odors like garlic or fish! And I don't want my pets in the kitchen while I'm cooking! And I love abandoning my guests in the living room while I'm finishing dinner! Why does every new house have an open concept kitchen? I hate them sooo much!!!!!!"

Sheesh.

You know why modern houses have open-concept kitchens? Because PEOPLE LIKE THEM. If few or no people wanted them, builders wouldn't put them in.

I love an open concept. When I have people over, I want to be able to use the kitchen while still being able to visit with my guests. I don't feel comfortable abandoning them in the living room: "Have a seat on the couch. I'll be back with dinner in about half an hour."

Not only that, when I've lived in closed-concept houses, there's never been an actual door to the kitchen, just a doorway. It doesn't stop smells from migrating to the rest of the house. Besides, who cooks strong garlic or fish when company comes if they know the smell will bother the guests? It permeates the whole house, open concept or not, and they'll get a snootful. The design of the house has nothing to do with it.

And guests always wander into the kitchen anyway: "What can I do to help?" My mother, in particular, loves to sit at the island and kibbitz while I'm cooking. ("It's so nice to watch someone else cook for a change.")

And you worry about mess? Really? Like any decent cook, I clean as a I go, so there's no mess. If you don't want people to see a mess, don't make a mess.

In an open kitchen and when no one else is around, I can watch TV on the living big screen while I'm cooking. And pets? The cats have been trained to stay away while I'm working--a squirt bottle placed in prominent sight reminds them to buzz off. Took all of one squirt to train them run away when I just pick up the bottle.

If you object to open kitchens because they make you feel agoraphobic or if they feel less cozy to you or you don't want other family members in the same room with you when you're cooking because you like to cook alone, that's fine! Just acknowledge that you like a closed kitchen for emotional or psychological reasons, not because they're in some practical way superior to open kitchens.

So open up dem kitchens, builders! We love them!

Every so often I take it into my head to make something at home that's way easier, and possibly cheaper, to just buy. I've done home-made Pop Tarts, for example. Took up most of a day and the end result may have been slightly more nutritious than the store version, but ultimately not worth the effort. Also tried making Oreo cookies. Same amount of time, same result. Still, it's fun to mess around in the kitchen to see what happens.

Now I'm looking at Detroit pizza.

For those of you who don't live in Michigan, Detroit style pizza is its own animal. It's a deep-dish pizza that has a particular crust--crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. And the cheese expected to be slightly caramelized (never say "burned") around the edges. People fight over the corner pieces.

I looked up recipes for it, and discovered some challenges. All the recipes call for bread flour and warn you that all-purpose flour won't get the same results. You also need a particular type of pan, one with high sides and special dimensions and composition. And you need Wisconsin brick cheese, a very specific kind of mild cheddar. (The "brick" refers to part of the cheese-making, not the shape of the cheese itself.)

Getting past these challenges has turned into A Process. Bread flour is easy enough to come by. But the pan? I couldn't find a store that carried one, and more than once I asked a clerk about it, only to get a blank look or a "We don't carry that, but we could order it." I finally had to order it online, and it took several days to arrive.

And then came the cheese.

Michigan is next door to Wisconsin. (Well, there's a lake in the way, but we still share a northern border.) You would think this cheese would therefore be fairly easy to find around here. Nope! I checked every grocery store in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. Nothing. And Ann Arbor prides itself as a foodie town!

I asked on Facebook, where I have several foodie friends, if anyone knew where to get it. No dice. Finally, I asked on Next Door (which is usually filled with nothing but posts about lost animals, found animals, and people begging for returnable bottles). Still nothing.

Finally, I was reduced to checking online. I found it, but it wouldn't arrive for several more days, throwing my pizza off even further. See, Detroit pizza is a bit of a project. Lots of particulars with the crust and the assembly. It's not something you can toss together quickly in an evening, especially your first time through. This means I have to do it on a weekend, and by Saturday afternoon I still had no local leads on the cheese.

I was just about to order it from the internet when ... several people posted today on Next Door that a grocery store in Saline (about 15 minutes away) carried it. Yay! I zipped over there and ... there it was, shining like a star on the dairy section shelf.

I grabbed it and drove home in triumph! We HAD THE CHEESE!

Then I set to work.

I followed the recipe, but I think I got the portions wrong because the dough didn't look right as the dough hook chewed through it. In the end, I tossed it and started a second batch. Then, while I was at it, I figured I'd also run a batch through my bread maker and see which version came out best.

The second batch looked right, and I let the hook finish kneading it. (Thank you, Kitchenaid.) Meanwhile, the bread maker puttered along with its own dough.

Detroit pizza requires multiple risings and restings that take more than three hours to get through, which is one reason it's a project food. I nursed the dough hook batch through the steps (rest, knead, proof, knead, rest), and when it was done, I checked the bread maker batch. Huh. The two were identical in bulk and texture. Okay then, note to future self: the bread maker works just fine and it's way easier. Good to know!

I put one batch of the dough in the freezer for another time and spread the other batch in the bottom of the new pizza pan. Then I had to let it relax. Then I had to spread it again. Now it was ready! Detroit pizza puts the toppings on first, so a layer of pepperoni went down, then a layer of mushrooms. The cheese is cubed, not shredded, and that takes up another layer. Then you pour the sauce in three lines along all that. Into the oven at 500 degrees (!), and we sat back to see what happened.

After fifteen minutes, I opened the oven to check on it. Smoke billowed out. Uh oh. But the pizza is supposed to be a little burned, so I didn't panic. Also, the pizza SIZZLED in the pan. It sounded like bacon frying. It didn't seem to be quite done yet, so I closed the door and waited three more minutes. I figured it was done by then, so I took it out. Darwin dashed around opening windows so the smoke detectors wouldn't go off.

The pizza looked great! I let it set for a few minutes, then worked it out of the pan. This was a challenge--the cheese was sticking to the sides. But eventually it came free. I cut it into sixths and we each took a piece.

It. Was. Awesome! The salty, chewy, crunchy crust. The mild, caramelized cheese. The layers of toppings. So, so good. But heavy! We could only eat one piece each.

Well, we'll have a lot of leftovers. And once we recover, I'll have to make it again.

I've been validated by a tub of margarine.

The tub of Country Crock spread I bought was ... awful. It tastes funny and leaves a greasy film in your mouth. And it's almost impossible to spread. It slides off the knife before you can get it to the bread. Was it me? Had my tastes changed? Was there something wrong with my butter knife?

Turns out not. I'm also not alone:

https://consumerist.com/2015/08/25/you-have-ruined-waffles-many-country-crock-customers-up-in-arms-over-spreads-new-recipe/

I tossed the entire tub and bought Blue Bonnet. We're back to normal now, and I've been validated.

It's dangerously cold out there, and although the skies are clear, the streets are treacherous with ice and packed snow that won't melt, even with liberal applications of salt. Wherever Schools closed today, and then we got the announcement they're closed tomorrow, too. This was already a three-day weekend because the semester ended, and now it's stretching into a five-day! If I had known this was going to happen, I would have taken a trip somewhere warm.

During a normal week around here, Darwin gets home well after supper time two days in three, so I don't cook nearly as much I'd like. But the Village of Lake Orion has a policy that when the schools close, village hall also closes, and Darwin has been home, too. So I revved up the kitchen.

Yesterday I made chicken pot pie: hearty and hot and wonderful when it's freezing out.

Today I really went for it:

--Banana bread (to use up some overripe bananas)
--Regular bread (in the bread maker)
--Beef roast stuffed with bacon, onions, and carrots and covered in more bacon
--Mashed potatoes
--Butterscotch oatmeal cookies (made extra-crispy, the way Darwin likes them)

With schools closed again tomorrow, who knows what I'll come up with?

For Yule, I got a book of dumpling recipes (because ... piragi). I decided to try one yesterday.

This book has recipes from all over the world, but most of the dumplings are the pasta-like ones, which are made with a simple dough (usually of flour, water, and egg or another fat), from which you make pockets, fill them, and boil or steam them. I'm an experienced bread maker and I can put together a huge batch of piragi in a relatively short time, but piragi are more like rolls and are baked, so this would be something new to me.

I settled on trying some kreplach, which are dumplings from Hungary (not, as it might seem, from the Klingon home world).

The spiced ground beef filling came first. The recipe said you can do the filling raw or pre-cooked. Since I don't really like boiled ground beef, I decided to cook it up in advance. I broke a major rule of recipes, though. See, it's usually a bad idea to change a recipe you've never made before, since it's hard to tell what impact it'll have. But the ground beef in the recipe was pretty bland. So I added some zing to it in the form of Worcestershire sauce and mushroom soy sauce. Much better!

The dough was ... weird. I cut the recipe in half (because it was huge) and measured out the flour and water accurately, but the dough was really sticky, almost a batter. I slowly added more and more and more and more flour to get it to the appropriately springiness, until I'd almost doubled the amount of flour. I FINALLY got it to the right texture, but this meant I had a LOT of dough. Hmm...

I kneaded it with my Kitchen Aid's dough hook (because I don't enjoy kneading by hand and I know my grandmother would have killed for such machine, so I use one without guilt), cut the ball into quarters, rolled out circles, and ran them through my Kitchen Aid's pasta roller. Such a wonderful machine! A pizza cutter was the perfect tool to score the flattened dough into rough squares. I dropped a dollop of spiced meat onto each and folded them into triangles.

It made a crowd of dumplings, like thirty. (!) Imagine if I hadn't cut the recipe in half!

I brought a pot of salted water to boil and dropped in a couple of test dumplings. Since the filling was already cooked, they were done in less than a minute. I fished them out and tried one. Pretty good. I gave one to Darwin, and he liked them rather more than I did. I thought they might do better fried, though Darwin disagreed.

I boiled up a couple more and slid them into a sizzling pan of melted butter. When they were brown, I took them off the heat. I liked this version a tiny bit better, but Darwin said he liked the boiled ones better.

The original recipe calls for kreplach to be served in beef broth, which I found a little plain, so I added carrots and some leftover lamb. While that was simmering, I divided the dumplings in half. One section I bagged up and put in the freezer. The rest I boiled up. When they were done, I slipped them into the soup and we ate.

Darwin loved it the recipe. It's definitely a winter food. You'd think the soup would be light, but the dumplings are seriously filling and after three or four, you're FULL. We devoured dumplings in the dining room and pronounced them a success.

The company Max works for gave all the employees a turkey just before Thanksgiving. As a young single man, Max had no idea what to do with it. And I'd already bought a turkey for the family Thanksgiving. He put it in his freezer, where it sat forlornly in the middle, the only object in there.

This week, I told him to bring it over. I thawed it in the refrigerator, then brined it overnight. I also chopped up a bunch of bread and seasoned it. Today, I stuffed the turkey and it's currently roasting in the oven. The plan is to eat whatever we want, then divide up the rest for freezing. Both households will get a pile of meat.

It's an unexpected turkey!

ETA

The unexpected turkey turned out deliciously. I also made mashed potatoes, gravy, butter-glazed carrots, and the stuffing. The house smelled like Thanksgiving. It was actually a bit odd--the prep and the smells put me in a Thanksgiving frame of mind, and I kept thinking that everyone would be here any minute. Then I would remember that they weren't, and I thought, "It's Thanksgiving dinner without the stress!"

At one point, I realized I didn't have any potatoes, so I popped out to get some. On the way, I somehow found myself stopping at a small local bakery for pączki, a Michigan treat you can only get in the days before Lent. I somehow found myself getting four of them, and I somehow found myself bringing them back home with the potatoes. Huh.

Max couldn't get here for dinner, but Darwin and I had a lovely dinner, with an epic cleanup afterward. I dissected the turkey carcass and bagged up the meat for freezing. Some will go to Max, and some will stay with us. (Darwin is, as we speak, already chowing on some.)

And then, instead of pie, we had pączki. And food comas.

A large chunk of the family this year couldn't be at a Thursday Thanksgiving, so we had ours on Friday.

This turned out rather nice, actually. I had all day Thursday for Thanksgiving prep. Much better than cramming it all in on Wednesday after work!

I also picked up my sister Bethany from the airport that evening. She reported that if you want to travel over Thanksgiving, the best time to do it is on Thanksgiving itself. No crowds at the airport, and everyone was in a low-key, mellow mood. She helped with Thanksgiving prep, too!

We had about twenty people, all told, including three small children. It was a full house! But our new condo was up to the task--it had all the room we needed for everyone.

I had an addition to the Thanksgiving festivities: drinks!

A while ago, I took an online class in the basics of mixology from Tammy's Tastings. I really didn't know anything much about mixing drinks, and I thought it would be a fun to learn. Adds to my interest in cooking. The class taught the basics and gave us recipes for a margarita, a Manhattan, and a mojito. As it happens, margaritas are a favorite drink in my family, so I decided to add them to the rotation.

The margaritas were a big hit. I made them with fresh limes and tequila with agave and glasses rimmed with kosher salt. Good stuff. My brother Paul also likes Manhattans, so I made him one of those, and he said it was wonderful.

Big piles of food were consumed, grandchildren played with, so much talk exchanged. It was our first family gathering since the pandemic began, but we've all been vaccinated, so we felt safe about getting together. There was a lot of pent-up socializing!

Afterward came the epic cleanup. But now it's all done--until Christmas...

Since I started the Great Pandemic Weight Loss Campaign, I've lost ten pounds. That's in one month.

My Level 1 goal is to lose 15 pounds, and I'm already two-thirds of the way there. ("Level 1" is my own term for "I'll be happy if I make it here.")

My Level 2 goal is to lose 20 pounds, and I'm halfway to that. ("Level 2" means, "This would be awesome, but I don't need to kill myself to make it.")

My super-sekrit Level 3 goal is to lose 30 pounds, and I'm a third of the way to =that=. ("Level 3" means, "Holy cow! You're the master of the universe!")

Air fryer diet trick:

I dehydrate apple and banana slices in the air fryer, then put the results in a bowl on the counter for nibbling. It takes me a couple days to get through an entire apple, so the calories aren't worth bothering about, and I have something to satisfy the nibble urge.

One of the veggie substitutes for pasta I found is made of sweet potato cut into spiral shapes.

I chopped up a sweet red pepper and sauteed it with onions and minced garlic, then added jarred spaghetti sauce. While that was simmering, I heated up the "pasta." Combined the two and topped with a bit of grated Asiago.

I wasn't sure this would work--I don't like spaghetti squash, for example--but it completely did. The sweet potato pasta had a good texture, and it tasted great. The beefed-up sauce was really good with it. And according to my food app, that portion of the meal had fewer than 200 calories. So it's a keeper.

Like a lot of people, I gained weight during the pandemic, though this problem really began before-hand. In all, I've gained about 15 pounds since Darwin and I got married, ten since the pandemic began. So I've joined a commercial weight modification program.

Like most such programs these days, this one de-emphasizes denial and emphasizes behavior change. It has an app for keeping track of your weight, watching your daily eating, and sending you chirpy "You can do this!" messages. One thing this program DOESN'T emphasize is exercise. In fact, they barely even mention it. It's not until you're in for more than a week that the program off-handedly mentions that for every calorie you burn in exercise, you get half a calorie added to your daily allotment. You would think this would show up prominently as a way to encourage movement, but no. And while food and weight entries are easy to get to on the app's menu, the exercise section is buried a couple levels down. I'm not sure why this is.

The program also tries to move you toward a plant-based diet without actually saying so. They don't say, "Eat vegetarian," but they definitely de-emphasize meat of all kinds. The recipe section is filled with vegetarian offerings:

Crisp Stir Fry Vegetables
Winter Squash Risotto
Lemony Fennel Salad
Tofu Pad Tai
Eggplant and Mushroom Pasta

They seem to have a love affair with soups:

Mushroom and Rice Soup
Minestrone Soup
Carrot Ginger Soup
Vegetarian Barley Soup
Corn and Tomato Chowder
Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Soup

I don't object to this. It's just odd how they quietly emphasize this without actually saying so. Maybe they figure if they draw your attention to it, you'll resist.

My goal is to lose at least 15 pounds, and make a run for 20. (I always find it useful to tell myself, "Get this far with and you can stop, but you can keep going if you want to.") Right now, I'm in the honeymoon phase, when weight loss is quick and easy. I've lost five pounds, in fact. Eventually, my metabolism will say, "Wait--what?" and slow itself down, making it harder to lose more, but for now I'll enjoy being a third of the way toward my first goal.

I'm also discovering the plethora of what I call fake foods. There's a vogue on for creating food substitutes out of vegetables. We have spiral-cut veggies that masquerade as pasta. Frozen risotto and rice dishes filled out with vegetables. And, of course, plant-based meat substitutes. The Impossible Burger is the most famous substitute for ground beef, but I've found plant-based sausage and plant-based sweet-and-sour pork.

In a self-inflicted orgy of "what the hell," I snagged a big pile of all this stuff. I've long been a fan of the ground beef substitutes, but rarely bought them at the store because they're expensive, but I decided I'd spend it now. So far, I'm liking the results.

I've also become a fan of pre-made salads, another new-ish item in the store. They're various styles of salad that come in a sealed bowl and separate packets of the dressing and crispy ingredients inside. I like these because the only other way to make a mixed salad involves buying an entire head of lettuce, a bag of carrots, a head of cabbage, and so on. You chop up ingredients for a bowl of salad, and you're left with huge amounts of leftover ingredients that, in my case, usually go bad before you can use them all up. These bowls let me have a variety of different kinds of salad without leaving piles of vegetables in my crisper drawer that turn into black sludge. The only objection I have to them is the amount of packaging. By volume, the packaging is nearly as much as the salad itself!

My goal is to lose fifteen pounds by early June. We'll see what happens!

I've been playing more with the air fryer. The home-made french fries are a major hit around here. I already have a fry cutter (I think it belonged to my grandmother), which forces a potato through a grill and cuts it into fries in a snap, so it's easy to make them and eat them hot from the air fryer.

This morning, I decided to try hash browns. I grated a potato, wrung it out in a damp cloth to get rid of the excess moisture, tossed it with a little olive oil, and spread the results over the bottom of the air fryer. Let the machine do its magic for about five minutes. The results were wonderful! Hot, crispy hash browns that weren't at all oily.

Yesterday, I was at the store trying to figure out what to have for supper, and I decided to splurge on steaks. Back home, I pan-fried them with a wine and butter sauce. I also made buttered corn and a pile of air fryer fries. Everything was wonderful.

And I can totally tell myself it's all healthy because of the air fryer. :)

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Steven Harper Piziks

Writer, Teacher, Harper

Entries tagged with cooking

The Great Syrup Disaster of 2025

The Best Chocolate Chip Cooke Recipe In the Whole Damn World

Cooking Fails!

Lazy Ice Day

The Little Mixer That Could

The Saga of the Breadmaker

Hot Dish?

Deep Fry Saturday

In Defense of the Open Kitchen

The Detroit Pizza Odyssey

Validated by Margarine

Surprise Cooking in the Cold

The Day of Dumplings

An Unexpected Turkey

Thanksgiving 2021

The Great Pandemic Weight Loss Campaign Update

Air Fryer Diet Trick

Sweet Potato Pasta?

Dumping the Pandemic Pounds

Let the Frying Continue!