Gadgets, Utensils and Appliances

Why oh why are we obsessed with gadgetry in the kitchen? Most are supposed to ease a problem that no one has. I saw this one just yesterday:

The worst thing about cooking is touching or smelling like food

Now, a lot of things in my kitchen do just one thing, but they do it to many kinds of foods. Knives cut, peelers peel, blenders blend. Sometimes novelty spatulas are shaped as to ruin any utility:

What the hell am I supposed to do with a squirrel shaped spatula??

The gadgets come in when there is one task that you were never shown how to do properly. Egg separators are a good example. Sometimes we need just egg whites, but how to do we separate the yolk without breaking it? You could use an egg separator to catch the yolk, or carefully pick up the yolk with a water bottle, or you can do what chefs do:

Boom! That's one less gadget in the drawer. Some gadgets are worth it, like my garlic press and citrus zester, but there are dozens of one-task gadgets that you'll want to avoid. I don't know about you, but with my tiny kitchen, I need all my drawer space for utensils.

Three drawers and a utensil jar to be precise

Whip It

One way you'll know something is a utensil is if you might use it every day. I keep as many utensils where I can get at them quickly, and any other occasional-use tools go in a separate drawer. Your favorite foods and cooking habits may be different from mine, but some things are useful for every cook.
This is a short list of essential kitchen tools (play a seek-and-find game with the above image):
Knife set,
Large bowl,
2 smaller bowls,
Measuring cup and/or cups,
Measuring spoons,
Cooking spatula (AKA "turner"),
Silicone spatula (AKA "scraper"),
Peeler, 

Wooden mixing spoon,

Slotted spoon,

Ladle,

Whisk,

Kitchen shears,

Colander,

Sieve,
Grater/Shredder,

Can opener,

Tongs
Rolling pin
Oven mitts/pot holders
Apron

If you're still whipping eggs with a fork, a whisk is much better. If you're scraping all your bowls with a metal serving spoon, buy a nice spatula (a regular one, not a squirrel-shaped one.) Preparing food with nothing but tableware is a frustration you don't need when learning to cook all your own meals. Gather a few essentials you  might be putting off.

Electric Boogaloo

The most expensive things in your kitchen probably run on electricity. Toasters are ubiquitous. Everyone has a microwave now, but big or small, it's only going to be good for a few things, not meals. The three machines I wouldn't want to do without now are my blender, toaster oven and Kitchenaid stand mixer.

A blender is a blender, don't be fooled by "wave technology" or "bullet" designs. The rule of thumb is the more you pay for it, the less likely the motor or other moving parts will break. Glass is easier to clean than plastic, but is heavier. I've had good luck with Oster, but that's not an endorsement, just don't buy the cheapest blender at the store.

My toaster oven takes up a lot of counter space, but I use it every week. The convenience of toasting or baking small amounts of things on a digitally timed cycle with predictable temperature control is amazing. It saves time and energy, it doesn't heat my whole kitchen in summer, and I can use it when my oven is already occupied. I still use my oven for baking cakes, roasts, rise-in-oven pizzas, or pastries, but when I want freezer to oven entrees like breaded fish fillets or chicken strips, it's so nice to set the timer and walk away knowing they won't over-bake.

"There are many like it, but this one is mine."

Last but importantly, my KitchenAid stand mixer is the most used appliance I own. There are other brands, yes, but KitchenAid dominates the stand mixer market because of reliability. If you're on a budget, an electric hand-mixer at a tenth the price works just as well for many things, with a little more time and effort. But if you can save up, even the base model or a used KitchenAid can do things the hand mixers can't, like knead pizza dough and stir thick cookie dough.

That's all for now. Make the best use of the space and time you have. Remember you're cooking for health and connection to your food. Avoid lazy gadgetry and buy the most useful tools for your collection. 

transitional informatics

My blogging has been slowing down due to a serious mental instability that I inherited from my progenitors. I am like a lot of personal bloggers in that I need this as a way to get the thoughts out of my head, otherwise I become overwhelmed with competing drives and I end up wasting entire days doing nothing. I used to think this fault was a lack of will or pressure, and I would blame myself for being "lazy". But I can be a very hard worker, and for little to no money if I'm enjoying myself, but I didn't suspect this type of paralysis could be linked to my previously known bi-polar/anxiety issues. Just a heads up.

Also, I'm now employed as a letter-stuffing, phone-message-taking temp, full time. Which mean posts will be mostly on the weekends, with some short posts during the week. I will be live-blogging about our trip to PAX EAST 2014 in Boston, starting 4/8, which will be on my Tumblr and Twitter accounts (#PAXEast).

Check back soon for the next of my Food Noob Series, "Gadgets, Utensils and Appliances".

Until then, here's a Finnish magician blowing the minds of dogs with his mad skilz:

Laaaaaterrrrrrsssss...

Food Fails pt 2

While I was doing more research into more Food Fails, I had the following conversation with my wife, Laura:

L "Do you have to stand there and stir it the whole time?"
Me "Yes."
L "Why? It seems dumb that you have to stand over it."
Me "Most cream sauces like gravy have to be stirred the whole time or they'll cook unevenly and burn."
L "Oh, I didn't know that."

It's here that I realized I was going about my research the wrong way. Food Fails are pictures of food that was almost okay. I need to start where the fear begins, where the fires start. I need to go all the way back to grilled cheese.

Starter foods

I don't know an adult that cannot make a grilled cheese, even if it's a bad one. My wife is afraid of cooking most things, but not grilled cheese because it's a very simple recipe:

2 slices of bread

1 slice of cheese (probably a plastic wrapped "cheese single")

Butter

Place any size skillet over fire. Butter both slices of bread. Place one slice butter-side down on skillet, stack unwrapped cheese on top, and add second slice of bread butter-side up. Check underside using a spatula. Crap, it's already burning. Flip sandwich and turn heat down to low. Wait 30 seconds. Is the cheese melting? Yes? Good. Is the bottom tan? Kinda? It's done. It's a little darker on one side, but you can scrape that off. Flip onto plate and cut corner-to-corner. TURN OFF STOVE.

Seriously, you always burn the first one.

It's hard to mess up because grilled cheese is made by you, for you. Or maybe for your little brother. You've probably made this dozens of times and you can still eat it even if it's not perfect. The problem comes in where there are more ingredients and more variables. Without the previous experience, a new cook can make bad choices right out of the gate.

Bad Choice #1 - Walking Away

Whether it's putting a pizza in the oven without setting a timer, or answering the phone when you're frying some vegetables, walking away when you are cooking is how we get charring. In my first post I talked a lot about how hot or cool things needed to be, then about time management and planning ahead. Now let's talk about minutes and seconds.

Everything about cooking is applying the right kind of heat for the right amount of time. What you don't have time for when you're cooking is distractions and hangups. Did your mother often shoo you out of the kitchen when she was cooking? This wasn't to keep you safe, this was to make sure she didn't get distracted when she was making dinner. Or interrupt her ten minute wine break. Either way, she was working on a time-sensitive product and needed to control the environment. How many sauces have been burned or cookies over-baked because of crying coming from another room? Children burn more dinners from outside the kitchen than any new cooks standing in front of the stove.

When you control the situation, you can cook anything you set your mind to. Don't walk away from lit fires, turn them down or off if you have to leave them for more than a few seconds. Buy a timer and use for anything that cooks over 10 minutes, but always cook meats to temp, not time. Buy a thermometer.

Quick Tip: If anything starts smoking (such as burned popcorn) dump it into a metal bowl and pop it in the freezer; it arrests the cooking and stops the smoking. I learned this working at a [Major Retailer] snack bar with a 550F popcorn kettle. That distinctive smell got all over the store a few times a week before I taught everyone this trick.

Bad Choice #2 - TL;DR

Read your recipes all the way to the end, taking note of the verbs and adverbs. You don't want to be halfway through cooking something and then notice the word "blanch" or "julienne" and think you somehow printed out something about The Golden Girls. You also might want to walk through the steps in your head and make sure you have everything clean and ready, because the word "drain" indicates you need a clean colander ready for your rapidly over-cooking pasta. I only did this a few dozen times before I discovered the "al dente" cooking time on the box is better than the "sure, that looks done" time. Cooking is in the verbs, so use this list for reference.

Bad Choice #3 - Cooking Alone

Never be afraid to call for help - to the other room or your mother's house. Chances are someone you know has been there before. If you suddenly need an ingredient you forgot to buy, it's rarely a big deal to ask a neighbor for an egg or a cup of milk. We may not live in a Leave It To Beaver world anymore, but everyone has been there and it's a good excuse to introduce yourself. As a beggar. Pity is an over-looked virtue these days.

Don't give up

Remember that failure is not a total loss if you learned something. Don't let fear of failure keep you from trying new foods and eating healthier meals. Practice cooking with friends and family. Make special nights of it. Bonding over a well cooked meal is the birthright of every human on this earth since we learned how to make fire. Don't let a few decades of modern convenience and fast food steal that away from you.

care and keeping of sharps

I'm back to cooking blogger mode to talk about my favorite tools in the kitchen: knives. A good, sharp knife is necessary to divide large food into smaller, manageable chunks. Or bites. Or bits. Knife skills are a cornerstone of cooking and you can't get around it unless you want to buy pre-cut frozen everything for the rest of your life, and of course you don't because your freezer barely holds three frozen pizzas and a handle of vodka half-filled ice cube tray. So to move forward, you'll have to follow me into the danger zone.

Unlike this guy, I am not responsible for any training accidents.

First thing, I need you to get over your fear of cutting yourself. It's a childish fear that was instilled in you at a young age and you just need to grow up. Just kidding. Cutting yourself can seriously slow down or even halt a meal production and you need to be careful. What you really need to remember is you are less likely to cut yourself with a sharp knife than a dull one. Dull knives require more force to use, and the blade can deflect sideways right into the fingers you were hoping to keep scar-free. Less force, greater control, less time and human-blood-free meals. That's a win-win-win-win. To keep them sharp, you'll need a honing steel.

Listen to Alton Brown explain how use a honing steel in less than one minute:

Did you hear what he said at the end? Leave sharpening "to the professionals", if you can. Commercial "sharpeners" will ruin your knives. If the honing steel isn't working anymore, or you've chipped a blade, a whet stone sharpening kit is the only way to properly sharpen a knife at home. Remember, a sharpener removes metal, so the more you use it, closer you get to having to replace a knife (which isn't terrible, I love knife shopping.) This video is a perfect demonstration of the technique.

The next part of taking care of your knives is the cutting surface. Never use a glass or stone cutting board. Those materials are too hard and will dull or even blunt your knives in a very short time. Wood cutting boards are the best, but they get a bad reputation because they are porous, and that supposedly makes them unsanitary. That is a myth, and lifehacker.com can set your mind at ease: "there's no significant antibacterial benefit from using a plastic cutting board over a wood one." My personal favorite (because I have very limited counter space) is my 18.5"x12" plastic Architec Gripper cutting board, which is big enough to lay across my sink or stove top and doesn't slide around because the bottom is covered with rubber feet. (Unfortunately, it appears the company only makes up to an 14"x11" size now.)

Lastly, the Dos and Don'ts list:

• Don't keep your knives in a drawer where they will rub up against each other. Use the a knife block or magnet strip for storage.
• Do check your handles for cracks, especially after dropping them, as the blade could come loose on some knives.
• Don't buy "miracle" blades or any other cheap "As Seen On TV" knives.
• Do consider knives an investment and look to spend about $80-100 on a good set. They will last forever if you take care of them.
• Don't leave your knives soaking in water and do hand wash them right after each use. The blades can rust if left in water, and a dishwasher detergent can damage blades and wooden handles.
• Do read the appendix if you have specific questions about what knives to look for.

Summary Appendix of Knives

This Wikipedia article covers at least twenty times the technical information about knives than I am going to cover here. If you rather skip my terrible jokes and movie references, you can read it instead and be a knife nerd like me. Consider this the TL;DR summary.

The first sharp knife anyone knows is the Chef's knife. This is the knife that your grandma used to chop carrots for stew, your dad used to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving, and last thing Janet Leigh saw in "Psycho." You know, your all-purpose knife. Professional chefs will spend hundreds of hours practicing with this one knife and will use it for almost everything. It can be intimidating and unwieldy for beginners, but it will get you through more meal preps for less money than any other knife.

However, the Chef's knife is falling out of style in some American kitchens and being replaced by the fancier sounding Santoku, or "three uses" knife. The three uses are slicing, dicing and mincing; that is cutting vegetables into big pieces, small pieces, and little bits. A few knife sets now have this knife instead of a Chef's. But, then what do you use for meat?

A boning knife. This is usually the first knife you reach for to open a letter or use as a screwdriver. It can also cut raw meat better than most any other knife. Boning knives have a fine curved tip, and assuming you haven't already forgotten what I said about sharpness, it will separate skin and bone from your meat products more easily than a Chef's knife because of the short, slender blade.

A standard set of kitchen knives comes with a bread knife, but you need it only for soft bread. Sure, its 10 inch serrated edge seams to be designed for sawing through the outer crust of artisan breads, but I've found a sharp straight edge will cut baguettes and bagels more cleanly. The bread knife is designed for soft homemade bread and rolls; hard crust or dense breads have the structure to resist squishing under the additional pressure required by straight edge knives.

The last essential is the paring knife. This is a mini-Chef's knife used to cut fruit and remove seeds. Sometimes called a peeler, the knife is also used to make garnishes and cut cheese. Its name is linked to where we get the word "pre-pare", as in to cut away unwanted bits from food before it is served. Get into the habit of saying you are "preparing" the food instead of "making" it; it sounds better and reminds you that this food will be presented to others and they damn well better respect your efforts.

waiting for my cue

As I have mentioned in a previous post, we are awaiting our second child with the anticipation that only comes from having lost so much of ourselves in the loss of our first child. I've been in standby mode for so long, I have a hard time remembering what I used to be like and what I used to do before my life went off the rails. What was supposed to be a hiatus from church has turned into taking a full inventory about what I believe about God and choosing a new path. There is another thing I put on hold that has been a major part of my life and identity for over 12 years. Much like the Holy Church taught me to love and serve God and the needy, I learned about the value of working with others to serve the community through art from the Church of Bacchus, AKA local community theater.

There and back again (thanks, Bilbo)

Everyone likes movies, everyone watches TV and everyone likes some kind of music. Most people can tell you what books they would read, "if they had the time." Entertaining content is created, copied and sold the mass audiences every day of the year, but a local play only runs a few weekends. Why do we bother to compete with the convenience and talent of multi-billion dollar industries for a few minutes fame? Hundreds of man hours are volunteered year after year to put on shows for a fickle public. Friendships are forged in the fires of tech-week, families and marriages are strained with the effort to make it to rehearsals and performances. We pound lines into our heads only to have some of them melt away under the hot lights of opening weekend, much to our costar's chagrin. Some people go to audition after audition after audition, but due to limited parts and the highly competitive nature of the art, they are never allowed the chance in the spotlight. And still we attend, and compete, and sometimes perform. The risks involved are many, but the rewards and community are worth every minute because it's not about who you are, it's who you can be.

The raw potential of each production is staggering. Some shows are well known and draw all sorts of people out of the community's proverbial "woodwork" to audition. Others are heavy dramas that require personal phone calls and pre-made casting decisions to ensure a production worthy of the material. This blog is named for a day I was standing on a freshly-struck bare stage and thought about the show that just ended. I was impressed that it often starts with someone hammering together a few hundred dollars worth of wood into a sturdy platform, but much like a family makes a house a home, it's the local theatre community that turns a platform into a stage. An empty stage is where a show starts and where it ends. Building something worth watching on that potential requires a monumental effort from a performance community that is willing to try, and a fan community willing to make the time to attend. Being an active member of that community takes more time than I can spare right now, and that's okay because it will still be there when I'm ready to go back. 

I miss theatre terribly some days. Last year, when Neil Patrick Harris performed the Tony's opening number, he broke into a powerfully aspirational statement right in the middle and it hit me right in the feels. Theatre performance makes up so much of my self-image, I don't know who I am without it. I have been all but absent from the local scene for a year and a half, but my friends are still out there working hard and putting on inspiring and entertaining shows. "Circle Mirror Transformation" was one I was very happy we got to see. If it wasn't for the thoughtful invitation of a friend in the Heartland Theatre Company, we might have missed it and missed out on this beautiful production. The show reminded me that even the exercises that help actors interact with each other help create the friendships that I have enjoyed for so many years now.

Keep up the good work everyone; I miss you all and wish you the best from my aisle seat.

life on the edges

It's been a few days and I would be more consistent, but I'm not. I'm just being true to myself. Post production will improve. Eventually. Right?

Where do you go?

I currently sit on the edge of a wide ranging sub-culture I used to identify with, the White Christian American anthropological group. I am still white, Christian and American, but I no longer feel a part of the structure that I lived under for the first 30 years of my life. And this isn't the first time.

You can never go home again, as they say.

I desperately want to be a part of the culture again, to feel a part of something bigger than myself (truly bigger than the whole of known existence) and more important than any one person's problems. That's the amazing pull of the Christian faith, to know you are more than the sum of your parts and more loved than you will ever understand. That's the motto, God loves you as you are. Jesus loves you as you are. The Church loves you as... well, we'll get to that part.

As you can imagine, being alienated from the Church for the -third- time in my life, I have less of an inclination to return. There are scads of articles about how to get men back into church, to draw them back into a life of church-going. Some assume these men are in dire straits, just begging to be brought in from the cold, unfeeling world. Some offer men forgiveness so they can feel good about themselves again. Others offer various levels of brotherhood: "We have coffee! We have game nights! We have guns!" This assumes an average man is bored by church services, or church doesn't feel manly enough.

My case is a stubborn attachment to the ideal of Compassion above all else. I say 'compassion', because everywhere I turn, someone has another definition of Love (or in some nerdier churches, Agape). Nine times out of ten, when someone is seen to be committing a Sin-of-the-Week (such as lusting, a major favorite), they will say that confronting people is the most "loving" thing a good Christian can do. They are told "be gentle, but firm in your conviction. If they refuse to correct their behavior, you should bring it up to a pastor. If they resist the pastoral correction, they are subject to church discipline."

"Love" is just another word for peer pressure in many churches. Conformity to a set of rules is more important than the often referenced but seldom seen "Christian freedom". 'Freedom from sin is found in obedience to God', as the logic goes, but the definition of obedience changes from house to house and church to church. Freedom to be who you are, but only within narrow parameters, creates a predictable church of like-minded people, but everyone else is pushed out. Instead of trying to see the world from the perspective of the outsiders (to try to understand them better), we hustle them inside and tell them they are seeing things wrong. Evangelism is the idea that you have everything already figured out, and it's just a matter of convincing people that you are right. False empathy leads thousands of Christians to believe they understand everyone's problems and it's simply a matter of faith.

Empathy is a building block of civilized society. Empathy leads to sympathy and sympathy to compassion, the feeling that drives a person to act on someone else's behalf. Charity is the ultimate expression of compassion, offering free food, shelter, clothes, medical services and/or money to people who have too little to survive without help. Compassionate charity used to be the backbone of true Christian living, and today it can be seen mostly in foreign missionary work. I'm seeing it being squeezed out here at home by the new kind of "love": Capitalist Moralism.

Let me tell you a story

Capitalism dictates that you cannot receive what you did not earn, other than God's love, of course. Moralism is the belief that a person is of little to no value if they have vices, a person with "loose morals" can't be trusted with anything. So we find a charismatic speaker and pay him a salary to be super moral and preach moral lessons from the Bible. Every week, a portion of everyone's income goes into the hat, the lights stay on, the preacher keeps preaching, and a social bubble is created. Outsiders are now "sinners", "the lost" or "future members". Insiders are now required to continually prove their commitment to the common cause by volunteering their time and money for special projects or ongoing programs. Bylaws are written and followed, a code of conduct is developed. Obedience to the leadership becomes more than a suggestion, it's required to remain a member in good standing, and being in good standing is the best part of living in this bubble. It might even be the only good part.
Meanwhile, there is little to nothing left over for the people in need just outside the chapel doors. A single mother is handed a tract and pointed to the nearest shelter. A pot head sits in the back every week, but is rarely greeted. This goes on for a few decades, all the original members get old, and the church slowly loses relevancy in the neighborhood. The church disbands and all remaining faithful join other congregations.

Or that's what happens most of the time.

Sometimes a "miracle" happens instead. Someone with good business sense becomes a leader in the church. His ideas are fresh and his budget planning is dynamic. He recruits more men like him, and slowly the church becomes profitable by attracting people with more money. That money is then spun into family programs, larger screens, better buildings, softer chairs, brighter lights, trendier music. More pastors are hired to shepherd the growing flock, and the pastors "earn" bigger salaries as attendance grows. It's a BIG bubble, but now it's full of faithfully generous middle-class people. The church is finally big enough with enough extra money left over to alleviate every possible need in the community... and then they don't. The church has been run like a business so long, the budget to help the poor is about 13% on average (note: there are no real dollar amounts on any of these charts.)

Compassionate work is the "love your neighbor as yourself" part of Church, AKA the second great commandment of Christ. All the bylaws and moral code adherence is based on the idea that you first love God most, and then also love all other people as if they were extensions of your self image. This bar is almost insanely high. That is part of reason that even though there are about 450,000 individual church congregations in the US of A, there are still under-served individuals in every community. The de-emphasis on neighborly empathy is at best negligent, and at worst punitive.

It starts with empathy

So where does this leave me? I pray for a Church that is outrageously inclusive. That's all I'm really talking about anyway, as I know many people will be highly defensive of their church or outreach program. I'm not here to knock your church, I'm expressing my own loss of faith in The Church to reverse this trend toward spending 87% of the operating budget on everything other than helping the poor. I don't want a comments section full of messages about how great your church is (to you, from your perspective). Being a liberal Christian in America today makes me incompatible with almost every congregational model because of only one small difference - I want to love everyone as they are. Gay, transgender, strung out, too poor to give, emotional or depressed, disaffected, single parent, divorced, abused, criminal or ex-con, barely believing in a vague God-like concept but wanting more... that is not a bubble. It's an unpredictable, nearly explosive mix of people coming into your chapel/auditorium/stadium every single Sunday and into your homes for Bible study every week. These are also the people that need your church the most. Can you lighten up on the anti-gay, pro-traditional family, anti-abortion, pro-capitalist message from the mass-media long enough to love people the way Jesus explicitly told you to? Can churches survive cutting entertainment and member program budgets to crank up the portion given away to poor, non-member populations? 

I would be very excited to join a church that has a single spotlight on piano player leading us all in old hymns if the money saved in the media budget could be used to house a dozen homeless people that month. But that might put off the benefactors that want a big band and professional music pastor. I would love to be part of a small group that let each member take a turn leading, even if that means letting a transgender woman talk about how they identify with the woman Jesus met at the well. But that might scare away the young WASP families that need to grow up in the church to maintain a "core membership". I'd love a Church that abandons politics and legislative process (i.e. voter registration programs and letter writing campaigns) to focus on restoring dignity to the human beings at their doorsteps instead. I want a church that rejects well-padded budgets and strives for frighteningly generous giving.

God help me, that's all I'm looking for.