My Life: October 2007 Archives

Ok, I know I've been remiss at posting recently, partly this is due to slow news. News continues to be slow, plus I'm just a bit proud today, so today I'm going to indulge myself and share some of what's going on my life.

I like to cook, though to be honest most of the time this works out as "open the box and follow the directions." This is still better than "open the can" and "puncture wrapper and microwave", or even "Hello, Domino's?" From time to time I do cook from recipes when I have time, but one of my friends is always teasing me about the fact that I don't "really" cook (which for him means totally from scratch). But another friend doesn't even use recipes, so we get a little bit of competition going. Or at least I feel it.

I've made my own recipes, once reconstructing my father's cole slaw recipe (and in the process making my own), reconstructing his rice salad recipe, and other things but I wanted to try to A) do my own thing; B) do something cooked, somehow I felt doing salads (I have three recipes for salad-like things plus a pico de gallo recipe) was not adequate.

So ... after preparing a off the shelf soup mix for beef barley soup (which I love) and being singularly disappointed in it, I set about to make my own beef barley soup. From scratch. Totally.

First task was how to make the soup base. I found a beef stock recipe online, and I learned how to use bones to make the soup base. I didn't even know they sold soup bones in the supermarket, but they do. (For some reason I had never seen them.) However the stock approach was a bit much for me (it takes several hours to make stock, and that's even before you start the soup) so I took a shortcut recommended by my friend Greg K., consummate chef that he is: Just cook the bones in the soup. Well this didn't totally work out and I don't recommend it but it came out OK for me.

For the rest of it, I studied a number of recipes on the net and threw together my own from those (and the advice of Greg), and after all day in the kitchen I had a wonderful soup which is much better than the sorry mixes you get in the store (but which admittedly takes five times the time). The result is what you see above. I was a little surprised at how it turned out; expected something a bit more thick and brown but it was fine. Veggies made it very colorful. There were a lot of veggies but not I think too many. It was positively delicious. Very tender.

Here is my recipe, modified to use beef stock (find your favorite recipe) instead of bones directly in the soup:

1 lb stew meat
1 or 2 potatoes, chopped
2 small carrots, or one large, chopped
2 medium tomatoes (optional)
1 onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
3/4 cup barley (uncooked)
2 tsp minced garlic
Some pasta or egg noodles if you wish
Five drops Dave's Insanity or other hot sauce (if desired)
14 c stock
1/2 c cooking wine (unless it's in the stock)

Brown the meat in a pot with some oil Add the stock and wine and cook for an hour and a half. As that cooks, chop the vegetables. Saute the celery, onions, garlic, and carrots. Add to meat with hot sauce (if desired). Cook half an hour. Saute potatoes. Add and cook 15 more minutes. (Note: This may need to be adjusted. I cooked all the veggies 45 minutes but the potatoes were overcooked; adjust accordingly.) Try adding pasta or egg noodles in last 5-10 minutes of cooking (I haven't tried this yet, forgot to).

Makes one gallon.

Thanks to Greg for his invaluable help.

Time for my quasi-monthly rant. The topic this time is greeting cards for men. Maybe I am unusual in sending birthday cards to my guy friends but I found it very hard to find an appropriate card for a friend of mine recently (no names mentioned). It wasn't the first time I had this problem. You see, the bulk of the cards seem to fall into two classes: 1) The highly sentimental cards clearly designed for women, who admittedly buy most of the cards; 2) The rude cards that make reference to sex, attractive body parts, drinking, or scatology (clearly aimed at men). Problem is that there are precious few cards to choose from that a man can send another man that isn't inappropriate either because it's vulgar, feminine, or otherwise inapplicable. And Lord help you if you want something meaningful (which, admittedly, probably much less than 1% of men would ever send to a male friend).

I think part of this is because sexual and scatological humor are the low-hanging fruits, and because so much of that appeals to the culture today. It's like how difficult it is to find a clean comedian. They virtually do not exist.

I've toyed with the idea of getting a card designed for a brother, but that strikes me as potentially awkward, even for a close friend. It's obvious it's not designed for the situation.

I wonder if Dayspring, makers of Christian cards, has an appropriate line of cards. They don't even have to be explicitly Christian, just clean (though admittedly the men I send birthday cards to are all Christian men).

Just one more consequence of going against the flow and being a bit out of the ordinary.

The other day I walked into Best Buy and was stunned to see a refrigerator with a television built into the door. Now I may have been vaguely aware of this coming down the pike, but it was still a shock to see. I have to ask: What do you do, stand in the kitchen to watch it? Is it for men who don't want to miss the game during that three seconds between the time they shift their eyes from the television in the living room to the time they open the door? Is there one inside too, to save another three seconds? Actually this one did have two screens, a large one on the right door and a smaller one on the left door. The irony is there was a big label on it saying that it was not capable of receiving the digital signals we'll be switching to in January of 2009. So it's already obsolete. You'd think if you're marking to people who want to watch television on their refrigerator, that you'd want it to last more than fifteen months (at least, without a converter).

Then I saw an electronic jar opener which I had never seen before. Despite my knee-jerk reaction I'm a little more hesitant to declare this a symptom of materialistic excess. Some people, e.g. the elderly, cannot easily open most jars and this would be appropriate for them. Otherwise, if you have room for it in your kitchen, I suppose it's not any worse than an electric can opener.

It does make me think about my purchases though and where I spend money. I think this is important for any Christian, especially one of means, to do. I was thinking of buying a food dehydrator to dehydrate my peach tree harvest. (The peaches look quite unappetizing; this is the first year I've realized though that once you take the skin off, they are just fine.) Part of me just doesn't want another bulky space-consuming kitchen gadget; as it is I've run out of storage space in my kitchen and have started storing things in spare bedrooms. Besides the can opener, I have a veggie steamer (a gift I rarely use, but when you need to do lots of veggies, it's a must), a wok (which I use occasionally), a crock pot (not often but from time to time), a hand mixer, a scale, and a vacuum sealer (very useful for a single guy like me). When does this become materialistic excess? I'd say that all these items — excepting the electric can opener — do things which are difficult or impossible to do any other way, though admittedly I'd survive without doing them. A dehydrator would probably fall into that category; even if I could dehydrate things in the oven (and I have done beef jerky this way), dehydrating a large quantity of peaches would be prohibitive. I have a similar dilemma with a canner, although I might be able to get away with canning with most of the equipment I already have.

Perhaps once I've examined myself to see whether I am being materialistic in my purchases, I can consider, as a devotional I read brought up, how I can use my possessions for the glory of God. I'm not sure I can feed dehydrated or canned peaches to the poor but it might be worth keeping in mind. But that's a topic for another day.