Food

Experiments in healthier eating

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In general, I’ve tried to be more mindful of sodium and fat content in the things I order, and work in more fruits.

So far, switching out my snack habits has worked better than expected. For the most part I don’t have much fruit in my diet, because it’s rare I’ll eat it all before it’s either time to toss it or freeze it. Which pretty much describes my relationship with bread, lol. Apples and oranges for example, are working quite well as a hydrating snack with a decent shelf life.

Regular eating is a bit more difficult. In my own cooking, I don’t use a lot of salt beyond what’s in powdered spices, and I probably don’t want to know how much that is. Pretty much everything involving restaurants or fast food has a lot of sodium in it, and I reckon if water is the universal solvent then sodium is the universal seasoning 😅.

Tonight’s meal was brown rice, red lentils, shredded carrot, bell pepper, mushrooms, and some tomato. This incorporates two things I don’t normally cook with: brown rice, since I usually make white; and lentils which I like, but never really have cooked with. This is a spin on something I’d usually make with a lot more seasoning and some ground meat or chicken added. Heavier in the lentils, made for an enjoyable meal. In retrospect I think it might have been worth while adding some unsalted nuts or a bit of bread/oil to make it more filling.

On the flip side, this made a good opportunity to polish off some strawberries and blueberries I’ve been meaning to finish while they’re still good, and declare it desert. Which come to think of it, I don’t really tend to eat desserts so much when left to my own devices.

Just the same, I’m not sure if I want to know what my blood pressure is before bed.

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Cooking for the first time in a good while, between waiting on the land lord to finally call a plumber and Willow’s tethering health; I opted for a two factor dinner plan.

For me, chicken tenderloins baked with a light dusting of garam masala, some green bean casserole that I’ve been meaning to make forever, and rice with soy sauce and onions. Not the best meal I’ve ever made, but it felt good to be able to cook again.

For the dogs, I boiled a portion of the chicken and set aside a few spoons of the rice. At first, I was worried that this might be a little bit bland compared to their diet of late. Needn’t have worried, save perhaps that they would dislike having to share 🤣.

While Willow didn’t care much for having to wait on me to clean and re-order the kitchen interspersed with cooking tasks. She pretty much woofed it down. Misty basically cleared the dish by the time I turned around. So, I guess I can call that an effective plan.

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How much coffee could a code monkey slurp, slurp, slurp?

Depends, how much coffee was there to guzzle, guzzle, guzzle?

Look, the coffee pot is dry! Oh shit, there’s an evil glean in his eye!

Quick, it’s time to make some more coffee before the world ends.

— my passing thoughts between cups

Coffeeeeee Time!

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So far, experiments with pour over are going well. In a lot of ways, it feels more like a transition from an automatic to a manual transmission, except in this case it’s extracting awesomeness from roasted beans.

For my French press it’s a pretty simple equation. Coffee grounds by weight/grind, water measured to the mark, and a timer on my watch. Bing, badda, boom. Adjusting the grind or the time is about it as long as you remember to stir the top to avoid coffee-berg instead of steeping uniformly. I’ve gotten this down to a kind of science of about 50g of coarse ground coffee, 800ml of water that’s just ceased boiling, and 4minutes in the press. That makes two helpings of my larger cups. Adjusting weight to time made it easy to dial in my ideal brew with the French press.

With the pour over, since I aimed for a similarly sized beaker (rated for 6 cups), it’s hard to have room for both 50g of coffee and properly extract it. Because of the differences in extraction, losing the steady time factor takes this from an ‘awesome’ cup to a ‘good’ cup by my tastes. To compensate, I’ve started experimenting with less coffee and the greater exposure to water that extra space allows. Making this a more controlled process is a bit tricky with my old time flat/wide kettle, but does seem to be bearing fruit. If this was firing artillery, I’d probably have the target within another 4 or 5 rounds.

The downside of the French press is that it’s a bugger to clean after a brew. My Venken’s filter design lets you get all the flavor and none of the grounds, but requires proper rinsing and wiping down of the beaker. It’s such a great French press, I’d bring it to work if only it was easier to dispose of the grounds. Normally, I lay out paper towels in the kitchen sink, so that I can clean it out and scoop up the grounds without much going down the drain.

The downside of the pour over is it’s more precision to get a good brew. But the clean up is damn easy peasy. Literally, grab the beaker by the neck, walk to trash can, lift and toss filter – done! The beaker itself just needs a decent rinse. There’s also the great upside that thanks to the separation the filter provides, I can utilize it to hold the second or third cup of coffee while I’m drinking the first. Actually, when using my French press I could probably use the Chemex as a coffee decanter, saving me from needing a second cup.

I think if I could change anything it would be more precise measuring. The small bulb representing half full and the wrap representing max, while nifty is just not as precise as I’d like. Fortunately, being the kind of metric system using asshole that I am, there’s a simple solution to this. Plop the beaker on my kitchen scale, tare the weight, add the water. And guess what? The formula for water is about 1ml = 1g. Ahh, I love the metric system 😁.

A strong cup of coffee

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Last year, I had ordered a French press and a nice burr hand grinder. Made a dandy cup of coffee, but I found that typically, it took too long to grind up a few cups worth of beans. So, sadly, it hasn’t seen much use lately.

Well, given my recent temptations to either buy an espresso machine or a new Keurig, I decided to try investing in an experiment. See, the problem with the hand crank is after a few minutes of dire need for coffee it’s exhausting, lol. The problem with an electric of course is defined in dollars.

In looking for a decent grinder that doesn’t cost too much to dub an experiment, and carefully avoiding several espresso machines, I came across a Shardor based grinder that was both cheap enough to at least call an expensive experiment at about $40, plus on sale for about 40% off (~$24) making it about as cheap as any coffee grinder with a motor in it. It’s even a Burr based model and small enough for an afternoon or weekend supply of coffee. While it arrived yesterday, I’ve been too busy and frankly, after dark isn’t a great time for a cup of cafinated joy.

This morning, I basically had to skip food and drink for other errands. Needless to say, I was pretty ready to try out the new grinder.  About 8 spoonfuls of beans and about 800 ml later, I have me some pretty good coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Damn, that’s a nice cup of coffee!

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On one hand it was a little early for lunch. On the other hand, I’ve basically been physically active since I woke up at 0730’ish. So, I’m going with a notion from one of my favorite visual novels, that having expanded a lot of calories and having no good reason to wait: you naturally eat lunch, early.

Which also makes me realize that I haven’t had any coffee yet. Therefore, it’s time to make coffee while I update my journal ;).

Because I’m weird, I like pickles on the side. Because I’ll eat at least half the bag otherwise, I’m smart enough to put chips on the side too. And who needs a few bits of tomato leftover just because you were one piece of ham shy of another wrap.

Think I’ve found a pattern that works really well for me in terms of making a sandwich wrap. These are made by:

  • One slice of American cheese
    • Broken into smaller strips and lined up so that it’s smaller than half a slice deep.
    • Starting about 1 centimeter below the edge of the tortilla.
  • Three slices of salami
    • Simply, a thin layer of cold drier cold cuts.
    • These are nice sandwich sized and thin sliced, so it takes that many to fill a layer.
  • Enough leafy greens to fit between my fingers and palm.
    • I’m more inclined towards greens like arugula, spinach, chard, etc.
    • Thinly layered.
  • A swing of sauce.
    • In this case, ranch dressing.
    • Often, I’ll use horse radish sauce, or whatever salad dressing I’m in the mood for.
  • A few chunks of tomato.
    • Romas are easily chopped into chunks a bit larger than a fingernail in length and three or four tossed in the middle.
    • Adds more crunch and variety to my diet.
    • Which works because I don’t like to eat a tomato, but I do like tomato in stuff.
  • One slice of hot honey ham
    • Simply, a second layer of cold cuts to help hold it together.
  • One slice of Cheddar cheese.
    • Broken into strips and positioned similarly.
    • I like two kinds of cheese for flavor and tend to shop that way to compensate for the odds that one will become midnight snacking instead of sandwich fixings.
  • Roll the burrito sized tortilla up, press to help keep it shut, and optionally slice in half.
I’ve been following variations on this pattern for a while and like how this turns out. Putting the cheese on the outside seems to help bind it together, as the softer cheeses will melt relatively quickly. Putting the cold cuts between the cheese and the watery bits seems to keep it tidy and less likely to spew out.
For me, I find that bread often goes bad before I can work through a loaf unless I go on quite the sandwich kick. Wrapping up a tortilla on the other hand, is at least no less healthy than my taste in breads, and easily tossed in a refrigerator bin with the cold cuts and cheeses.

From a healthier prospect, I should probably have skipped one of these halves. Not sure if it’s due to this morning’s exercise or the more sating approach to filling a sandwich wrap, but I found this to be quite a lunch. In either case, Misty would have been happy to eat the other half!

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For a while now, I’ve meant to get a thing of Altoids. Both because of all the cool projects I’ve encountered over the years that would fit in one and wondering what they taste like. Not bad actually.

That said, I found it curious that the curiously strong mints can be smelled through the cellophane wrapped tin, lol.

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Taking Greek inspiration for lunch, I’m reminded of one of the things I love about living in the US: the food! I remember a German friend describing our approach to eating as a giant “Salad bowl” because you can find a little bit of everything in America.

Being a nation made up of immigrants, people of course brought their tastes in cooking along. It’s like if there is anything we can all gather around and enjoy together: it’s food. Different families may have different preferences in baking bread, but it’s still in breaking bread together that we find joy.

In terms of cuisine, traditionally “American food” is not that different from western European countries. In fact, I’m pretty sure a Frenchman just rolled over in his grave somewhere at that very thought :^o). The subtleties of cooking in such countries are often lost upon us, IMHO. Which makes sense given that so many early colonists came from Europe, and the concepts of cooking came along with them and then mingled together and became adapted to what the home cooks had to work with. The same is often true of other island nations and former territories.

As time moved on more and more delicious food has become common. I find it somewhat amusing that whenever people here are on the search for food, it often is discussed in terms of a type of food (e.g., sandwiches; fried chicken; etc), or in terms of ethnicity (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai) that best describes what they are in the mood for. In my area: there’s a particularly broad range of food to choose from. We always end up adapting what we cook to what is available to work with, but what form it takes is always shaped by some point of reference.

Growing up, I was fortunate that ma went with a broad range of food. My mother’s cooking was heavily influenced both by our shared ancestry and the people we knew. My mother learned to cook from her grandmother, who didn’t even speak English. Obviously, Italian food was a big thing to them — as a child, arguably the pallet of her parents and grandparents were the biggest influences. That had both positive and negatives for my mom, such as the war between her and her mother about the definition of gravy and the occasional horrors of her family eating whatever her grandfather brought home. At the same time, she also loved dinner with friends and neighbors. That could be mean anything, and as a side effect my mother’s pallet was far broader than our ancestors. I in turn, benefited from this very much, lol.

It’s also kind of funny that often the best home cooks are named grandma, in whatever language the terms of endearment may take.

Note to self: I should definitely make ma’s spinach lasagna when the holiday season comes around.

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Signs of comfortable goony birds with fur,

Coincidentally when it came time for dinner, I was both lazy and glared at.

Willow’s give me a treat face.

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It’s probably not a big surprise that I made pasta for dinner, and Willow was inclined to be a hungry helper hoping for a piece of rotini to hit the fooor.

Likewise fooooood