Archive for October, 2009

Shortly after I began my new job the expected “how do you like” queries filtered in from friends. Experience has taught me to be cautious so I answered with “ask me in six months.” I enjoy starting new things and, as jobs go, there’s usually a grace period of easy forgiveness for a few weeks or months as you learn the ropes. It’s after that grace period ends when true attitudes begin to creep forth and you learn just how diligent you must be to watch your back.

I’m two months shy of my six month milestone and I have to say – I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. This job just can’t be that good. But so far, it is. I really like my co-workers. I’m laughing a lot. And I’m learning a lot – in an eager and non-judgmental atmosphere to boot. Sure, there are things to complain about but, really, those things are so minute as to not even be worth mentioning… yet.

So – when it came time for the “birthday pot-luck” I gladly volunteered to add my award-winning chili to the menu. I had planned to document the process, with pics and instructions, but as I got going, I couldn’t manage the logistics (there’s irony there, considering my job-title).

The recipe won me a first-place plaque in a chili cook-off years ago. It’s changed over the years, and is still changing – so it’s open for interpretation and improvisation¹. For instance – the birthday potluck recipe included a couple of roasted chilies my boss bought from a road-side vendor on a trip back from Dallas. I added a poblano and a bell pepper as well. The beef was chuck roast instead of venison or sirloin… So have fun with it and enjoy!

Madre del Bambi Chili

1 lb Italian Sausage
1 lb Regular Sausage (mild or hot – whatever is your taste)
1 lb Venison or Sirloin – cut in small cubes (salt and pat dry before cooking)

3 16 oz cans tomatoes
2 red onions – chopped
4 – 6 bell peppers (or mix your peppers – poblano, etc.) – seeded and chopped
1 – 2 heads of garlic, minced

3 oz cumin
2 oz. chili powder

Improvised – start in small amounts:
Oregano (if fresh, chop a tablespoon first)
Basil (same as above)
Marjoram
Crushed red pepper

Teeny-Tiny – 1/8th to 1/4 tsp. each:
Cinnamon
Nutmeg (fresh grated is best)
Ground Clove

1/2 bottle Worcester Sauce
1 sm. jar Taco Sauce
1 jigger of whiskey (Wellers or Jack Daniels)
Tobasco – to taste (optional if you want to back off the heat)

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown the sausages and drain on paper towels. If needed, add a little oil (veg. or grapeseed) to the pan, brown the venison/beef. Remove the meat and put into a big stew-pot along with the drained sausage. Add a little more oil to saute pan if needed and saute the onion and peppers until soft, add the garlic, cook til garlic is fragrant. Scrape up the sucs (browned bits of cooked meat). Add the veggies to the stew pot.

Add the seasonings, tomatoes, taco sauce, Worcester, Tabasco & whiskey (in short: everything else). Bring the pot to a simmer. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings – salt & pepper, etc. Add liquid if you feel you need it.

Cover and put in the oven for 2 to 4 hours. You’ll know it’s done when you can easily fork shred a piece of the venison/beef.

Cool down the pot quickly in an ice bath (I do this in the sink with ice and water) then refrigerate over night. This is a critical step – the cold bonds the flavor and seasonings.

Reheat in a crock-pot or over the stove. Serve with some luscious corn bread and a hearty beer and your done!

One year ago I was a week and a half unemployed. I’d started school full time at the local career-tech (new century speak for vo-tech), which was my way of treading water until I figured out how to handle this unplanned for life detour. Even with the loss of the job I was fairly fortunate, though. No debt and a modest reserve fund provided a strong safety net. The unemployment compensation also helped to keep my head above water – in spite of the fact that no less than a quarter of it went to my COBRA payments so I could hang on to my health insurance. I was forced to scrutinize my spending and devise a realistic budget, and a budget with very little wiggle room.

It’s been a number of years since I’ve had to be uber budget conscious. The last few years especially nice with a bit of extra income filtering in allowing me such niceties as travel and relatively unfettered shopping (mostly gadget related). I was now going to have to dust off some of my grad-school/starving artist survival skills and knuckle down to a tight, tight budget. The travel and shopping were reluctant but easy cuts, that left a couple of not-so-easy cuts to examine.

Now, I am basically a lazy person; that is to say I tend to look for the shortest possible route between two points. Or even better, find a way not to have take the route in the first place. This has resulted in certain luxuries I’ve indulged in, such as having a housekeeper in every other week to clean, a yard guy during the spring and summer and eating out or take-out on a regular basis.

Of course, such luxuries cost some coinage and my new cinched-in budget meant I needed to cut back. But, I wasn’t about to sacrifice the housekeeper and with winter on the way, I wouldn’t need to worry about the yard until the spring. That left my dining habits – convenience was going to have to make way for practicality and budget cuts.

Translated – I was going to have to start cooking for myself. And this was a Big Deal.

I didn’t grow up in a house centered on the kitchen. My mother was great with a few dishes (brisket being no. 1), but on a daily basis our meals tended to be boiled and bland. Canned vegetables were a god-send to her (hence a lifetime disdain for green things) and when TV dinners were invented I think she must have done a private little happy dance. My grandmother wasn’t a cook either – her maid Pearl was and we were not allowed in her kitchen. No ma’am, nuh-uh. It’s no accident, then, that when I left the nest, my culinary skills were sorely lacking.

I had a few of my Mom’s better recipes, but too many failures and my lazy tendencies pushed me farther and farther from the kitchen just as the rise of fast-food and the restaurant boom was getting started, not to mention the burgeoning industry and magic of prepared, frozen and processed foods. It was a hungry lazy person’s era of nirvana.

It’s an expensive (and unhealthy) nirvana, though. Now with my shrinking budget, here was my opportunity to change some bad, bad habits and learn another skill in tandem with my daily lessons in accounting. By day – honing my expertise on budgets and such, by evening putting a budget into practice and learning to cook.

Adding motivation for these efforts was a network of foodie friends who love to discuss, blog and tweet about food (as well as eat), complete with illustrations and video. And, ironically, I happen to be a Food Network junkie. It was time to start the clock and put Rachel Ray to the test…

I began by collecting Food Network recipes – I’d record my favorite shows, play back and pause while logging the recipes in a notebook¹, craft my shopping lists and hit the grocery store. I also added numerous food blogs to my Google Reader, starring and sharing recipe after recipe. And of course, there’s an app for just about every culinary need occupying space on my iPhone. In short, and really it’s no surprise, I became obsessed. In a good way.

A year later I have to say I’m doing pretty good – I cut my food spending by twenty percent. My lazy side does nags at me – but I’m able to quiet it with some marathon cooking and freeze sessions which allows me to, for instance this week: pull some homemade tomato sauce and some meatballs from the freezer, some fresh basil from the garden and in no time have a home-cooked meal, nothing out of pre-processed and preservative laden jar and far better than a Sonic burger or a packaged meal.²

My iPhone is filled with food porn – shots of my efforts which have joined the meal tweets on Twitter. Once re-employed after my first paycheck, I indulged in the purchase of a Shun Santoku 10″ chef’s knife³ and I joined an online cooking school to learn more of the basics in the kitchen. I’ve learned how to enjoy cooking – even my failures. I’ve discovered an elegant poetry in the process, the prep, the building of a dish, the chemistry, rhythm, flavor profiles, serendipity of an idea that just happens to work (ever try throwing in a couple of spoonfuls of orange marmalade in that chicken dish?).

Fast and pre-processed food no longer has the allure it once did. I’d say I’m a fan of the slow-food movement – it’s far more satisfying without a doubt.

I may begin sharing some of those efforts here. I’m inspired by my no. one favorite food blogger Dutch Girl Cooking, who combines two loves – cooking and photography, producing posts with photos that make me hungry even on a full stomach.

So, with that said – got a recipe to share?

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¹ Yeah, I know there’s a website with the recipes – but this was more immediate and I was getting the low-down on technique as well.
² Not that I don’t indulge or have fast-food relapses. A drive-in burger is a convenient treat, for sure… and I know where the best ones are in my town.
³ Just as any carpenter will tell you – you have the right tool, you can build anything. The same is true for kitchen tools.

One of the nice things about my relatively new job is the work schedule. Being a green company, we’re encouraged to adopt a 45/35 schedule resulting in every other Friday off – thus saving gas and commuting costs. As eco-aware as I am, I was attracted to the idea of a string of three-day weekends more than the idea of being ecologically conscientious. In fact – I’ve used my car more on those Fridays off than the the five minute commute to work each day.

Take my most recent free Friday, for instance. My trek took me northward to the the big city in search of that holy grail of the female persuasion: a comfortable bra. My research pointed me to a little shop in a neighborhood I am well familiar with and as a result, I took a side trip down memory lane.

A few weeks ago I’d made contact with my best friend from high school. After about thirty-five years of wondering where each other was, Facebook provided the conduit for our re-connection. A few e-mails and a long phone conversation later, I was immersed in a flood of memories. I’m still searching for photographs after receiving some from her of the summer of our trip to Europe. But I digress…

When I got to the city, I drove by a couple of my childhood homes and went looking for my old high school. My last visit was with my brother ten years ago, but, oddly, I had difficulty finding it. I thought driving the route my mom took every school day would spark my memory of how to get there, but after winding through old familiar neighborhoods, I gave in and relied on an iPhone gps app to get me there. Embarrassing.

My school is abandoned now. Fifty-nine years old and she’s a decaying, weed-ridden and rusty old lady. As I drove around the building, echoes of memories bounced off the graffitied walls. My mind’s eye filled with ghosts of the football team practicing on the over-grown field, class-mates filling the breeze-way between the cafeteria and the main building; running down the hall to choir class…

Champions of Yester-year

I ‘came of age’ while at that school. From seventh through twelfth grade I matured from a goofy thirteen year old to a rebellious-ish hippie by graduation date. I found my ‘clique’ in tenth grade, fell in and out of love in pace with my surging hormones, experienced a string of ‘firsts’ and graduated amidst a torrent of teenage drama and looming adulthood. They were some of the best years of my life.

There have been some odd parallels to that time within the last few years of my life – not that I’m regressing to my teen years, merely experiencing changes, growth, new friendships, hormonal shifts… That high-school version of myself is always with me, though, reminding me to lighten up and keeping me as immature as I ever was.

I’m glad she’s stuck around. And sad that a symbol of that defining era will soon be eradicated and replaced to be remembered only within the yellowed and cracked pages of dusty yearbooks and a dwindling number of alums left behind.

Rest in peace old girl.

John Marshall HS 1950 - 2007