Standard Mischief

Is it really this simple? I thought there were endless secret salting and washing rituals to making this stuff turn out correctly.

The radish kimchee (and the young radish stuff they sell too) is way better than the Chinese cabbage kimchee, but I’ve never seen a recipe before for anything but the cabbage type. I’ve also utterly failed every cabbage kimchee attempt in the past, and have always been perplexed on why it was so hard to make what is essentially spicy stinky cabbage. So I have to give this one a try.

Is there anything better than homemade pot-stickers?

Besides, you know, getting someone else to make them?

Many hands make light work, and everyone else grabbed the more traditional dishes, so I picked one of my favorites.

Best wishes this Thanksgiving.

Way back when, the scientists in control of deciding all things that were healthy decided that saturated fat was the final word in unhealthy fats. They wanted everyone to reduce the amount that they consumed, and they wanted restaurants to switch to healthier oils to deep fry stuff in.

In 1993 a group called “Center for Science in the Public Interest” held a media event, claiming huge levels of unhealthiness in movie popcorn. The problem? To get that “movie popcorn smell”, they were popping the corn in coconut oil, which is loaded with saturated fat. The “Food Police” got almost everyone to switch over to partly hydrogenated veggie oil. Gone was that great smell, but hey, it’s all for the better, right?

Well no, the chemical hydrogenation of those oils produces the current evil bad fat, something called “trans-fat”. The food industry likes partially hydrogenated fats because they don’t go rancid as fast and they apparently taste better than straight veggie oil.

The Wikipedia trans-fat article claims that the fast food industry used to use beef tallow to make freedom fries with, and that CSPI badgered them until they switched over to the partially hydrogenated stuff, at which point they were left alone. Part of this might be because trans-fat was not seen as a big threat at the time, and maybe partially because they knew they would never get Burger Fling to cook fries in 100% olive oil. (Which also might be unhealthy now, something about too many omega-6s, not enough omega-3s.)

So science marches ahead, and we’re all the better for it. Life expectancy is increasing, and if I don’t make it to 200, it’s probably all that Crisco and margarine Mom fed me back then because it was low in cholesterol, thus “healthy”. (Good thing she fed me fish, four Fridays a year during Lent, to offset that stuff) Of course, a short time ago when I saw that bottle of 100% coconut oil at the health food store, I did a double take. I don’t know what’s up with that.

I kept that in mind when the obsessive-compulsive reading disorder kicked in tonight and compelled me to read what was before me, a box of Jiffy “corn muffin” mix. (I put the quotes around “corn muffin” because there’s apparently more wheat in the mix than corn. They put the quotes around “Jiffy” because, I don’t know, probably because they think 15 minutes in the oven really isn’t “jiffy” or something.)

Like everything else, they are required, as of 2006, to state how much of the evil meanie trans-fat is in their mix, and so, to appeal to the most people, they want to put down zero.

So how did they accomplish this feat? What did they use to replace the hydrogenated stuff with? Take a look at the ingredients.

Yup, good old lard. Animal Shortening. Mmm mmm good.

I finished bolting back together all the greasy thingys at about 9pm Christmas Eve. A quick drive confirmed that everything selling groceries just closed. Boy, I’m great at planning ahead.

Thank goodness for multiculturalism. My favorite Korean grocery store was probably the only place to buy raw shrimp on Christmas morning. I got cilantro and limes there too.

Don’t ask me how the cheese pizza pot stickers ended up in my shopping cart.

I found I can peel, devein, skewer, marinate, and wrap 2.5 pound of medium shrimp per hour, a new record.

Visited my brother’s, and visited a small fraction of the nieces and nephews, I’ll see the rest a bit later.

Got tempted by the dark side.

Had a great dinner, great visit, and got back home safe. I’m dead tired.

Best wishes this Holiday Seasoning.

I haven’t been doing my standard quota of wandering around outdoors this time of the year, but the two places I go to pick wild persimmons have both been developed over the last few years, and I’ve yet to find a new patch. So when I was wandering around the local Shoppers Food Whorehouse, and I ran across a patch, I bought one. It sat on the standard kitchen fruit plate until I noticed it was starting to go soft.

Now there are two main types of persimmons, the type that you have to let get mushy soft before you can eat them, and the type that you can eat firm. The wild ones I find are (I assume) the type that has to get mushy soft, usually after the first frost. The type sold in stores can be eaten while still firm.

Usually.

You can probably guess what happened. I got back from a little hike in the park and noticed said persimmon was getting a mite soft. Being the use-it-all-up-and-make-soup-from-the-bones person that I am, I started in on it. For the record, the first bite is sorta sweet, and then the sour cotton-mouth kicks in. Hard. Wow, I’ll never do that again.

For the record, the soft mushy part is a pretty good cure, but the pucker is still a bit around, now about a half hour later.

The other find this week was prickly pears over at a new store called ?Foodway? (not munged, because you would have no idea otherwise)

Foodway opened up in a store that was formally a tiny, obsolete Safeway (not munged either, I have no idea what to name it) that closed down a few months after the huge new Shoppers Food Whorehouse opened up down the street. I think it’s owned by Koreans, but targeted towards Hispanics.
It’s just inside the beltway. Some things there are really cheap, some things are extra expensive. Never buy pet food there when you can buy it next door for half the price, for instance.

It’s my first time trying prickly pears, and they’re really good. I slice them down the middle and scoop out the bright red flesh with a spoon. It looks like undifferentiated pomegranate, (I eat the seeds and all), but tastes closer to watermelon. Really good watermelon. I haven’t tried the green ones yet though. Perhaps they are for huevos ranchos, although I thought that dish used the the peeled pads.

Other cool stuff there include the live Tilapia fish tank, and my favorite fish sauce (Golden Boy brand) for only $1.29 a bottle. What a steal! I’d happily pay four times that amount.