Month: March 2010

I Invented The Rice Cake.

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Watching the food network has lulled me into thinking that great cooks can simply toss things into a mix and with a pinch of this and that turn out a company dish. So I figured I could make a chicken and black bean burrito without consulting a cookbook, for crying out loud.

I had already cooked the chicken and I was using black beans from a can. I decided to add brown rice to add another nuance. I only needed one serving; the box told me 1/2 cup both water and rice in a bowl, microwave for 7 minutes.

I added chopped tomatoes and green onions to the black beans and chicken and I threw in some cumin. By that time, the microwave had signaled that the rice was ready.

Oh, yeah — it was. I had invented the rice cake. Not an atom of water remained, the rice lifted from the bottom of the bowl in one piece. I thought to myself, what would Julia do? Cook rice on the stove, probably.

I crumbled the rice cake into the main mixture. I figured the taste would be the delicious crunchy/soft sensation you get when you wrap a hard shell taco with a soft shell tortilla.  (Visit Taco Bell, if you don’t know what I mean.) A little cheese and everything was wrapped up tight in a whole wheat tortilla for one last microwave jolt.

I won’t make those again. The rice tasted raw, hard and tasteless. The onions really needed to toned down with a little pre saute. And the cumin was frankly worthless. Sig said he was full after the first one.

Good Ju Ju

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Around here the first weekends of the month are when the flea markets open up. Good Ju Ju is down off 12th street in the KC bottoms,  where cattle used to come on their way to dinner, so to speak. What’s left in the area are a couple of good restaurants, warehouses, and Kemper Arena, home of the American Royal — a big deal horse and livestock show.

A number of the warehouses come alive around Halloween with names such as Chamber of Horrors and Macabre House. But once a month the perennially crafty recyclers who run Good Ju Ju pull some of their best stuff outside, pouf out their vintage aprons and turn on the music.

Today I bought square orange bake-lite clip earrings and a paper mache reindeer bucket annnd a tall metal lifeguard chair. I drug the chair out to the back yard close enough to the bird bath where it can welcome the opening of the pool season. I noticed a couple of upcoming trends: paint old furniture bright primary colors, rub them while wet so that the a little bit of the finish shows through and drape lamp shade skeletons with net petticoats.  Doncha just love commerce?

Instant Schmaltz

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Want to instantly age a photo? Here is a picture I took of an rest stop on a road trip through Kansas a couple of years back. (I plan to blow it up and hang it in a bathroom. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.) I ran across Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator in my net wandering. Check out what happens when I upload this to their site.  

Here’s the same photo, transformed. So you might ask, why would you want to do that?  But then, if you are asking — you probably don’t take pictures unless you are at the Great Wall of China or it’s your dog’s birthday.  Personally I think it is useful if you were chosen to do the power point for your friend’s parents’ 5oth anniversary and all you have to work with are current pictures of their first house, for instance. Think about it.

Post script: Kansas is one of those places where men are men and women are ladies. It’s like that in Texas too, I noticed.

Ramped Up Hamburgers

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I took a regular old pound of hamburger, tho used the 94% lean kind (and actually it was a little bit less than a pound), and added a 1/4 of a cup of each of: shredded carrots, chopped up scallions, tomato sauce and egg substitute.  Threw in a couple of TB of parsley. Yeah, it was kinda like making a meatloaf without any seasoning to speak of.  So, then you make 4 patties and saute in a pam sprayed pan for ten minutes turning once. 

The whole process was so easy cheesy I could easily watch the elimination of two boys and two girls from the American Idol countdown.

Would I do it again? Yes, the hamburgers were juicy, big and filling — all the adjectives you want and need on Thursday night must see tv. (But unless you are a real purist, you should add a little salt and pepper to the mix.)

Pastillage

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A 14-year-old girl was featured in the paper this morning along side of a cake she had decorated with a perfectly proportioned replica of the Eiffel tower done in pastillage and piped with royal icing. Her cake won first place last fall in the Oklahoma State Sugar Art and Grand National Wedding Cake competition in Tulsa. She had taught herself to decorate cakes by reading books and watching the Food Network. 

She also draws, quilts, bakes, takes pictures, paints ceramics, trains dogs, and does public speaking. This while maintaining an A average and taking part in lots of extracurricular activities at school. She wants to be a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon.

When I was fourteen, I was president of the Mad Monsters Club; our bylaws included doing a bad turn at least once a day. When Sister Charles Mary got hold of a printed copy of the our bylaws, she had a fit in a nun-sorta-way. She told me I wasn’t living up to my potential. I told her that the bylaws were more of a parody than a governing document. She would have loved this cake decorator.

In case you’re wondering,  pastillage is sugar based edible dough.

Home

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Nothing like waking up in your own bed after being gone for some time.  I read that it doesn’t matter how much you pay for a mattress, you have the same chance of getting something that is right for you. People who have good luck with mattresses are those who put on some comfortable clothes, take their pillows and sleep-masks and go try them out in the stores. 

Our mattress was a mail order from an ad in the Kansas City Star. It came from the Edna Mattress Factory in Edna, Kansas about 166 miles from Coffeyville. The mattresses are custom-made in the building next door to the showroom and delivered right to your bedroom. (www.ednamattress.net )

Ours was delivered on Thanksgiving Day 18 years ago. The two guys who brought it in had relatives in Kansas City and were headed over there for dinner after they finished hauling in the mattress. Lots to be thankful for that day.