Month: February 2004

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, half of a glass of orange juice, and several cups of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.

We made up a batch of frijoles refritos (refried beans) this morning. Lunch was a quesadilla that we made with the refried beans, green chilies, and hot sauce.

Gretchen’s sister’s birthday is coming up in a few days and we are going to celebrate it tonight. We made a pound cake and will accompany it with vanilla ice cream and our glazed apples.

While we were doing all this cooking and eating our quesadilas, we had two glasses of [yellow tail] Shiraz.

We did not think we wanted any dinner apart from our dessert, so we just had a hand full of peanuts and a glass of Bolla Pinot Grigio.

We had coffee with our dessert and, after we got back, another glass of Bolla Pinot Grigio.

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, a piece of toasted Italian bread with strawberry jam, and a cup of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.

At work this morning I had two cups of green tea with a cinnamon stick. Lunch was the Panda Express kung pao chicken with mixed vegetables on chow mein noodles with hot and sour soup, a small sierra mist and a fortune cookie.

You make people realize that there exist other beauties in the world.

Lucky Numbers 11, 14, 19, 34, 37, 39

As I said the other day, Gretchen and I both decided we wanted to try out the recipe for West Lake Fish Soup from The Minimalist’s column in the New York Times the other day. I also said I would let you all know how it turned out.

In general we liked it, though I think my expectations were too high for a first try with a new recipe. I guess I was expecting ambrosia. However, it did grow on us, and in the end we thought it was a nice way to use a piece of flounder.

After making it, I believe there may be at least one typo in the recipe, though I do not know where it is. The recipe calls for six cups of stock, one cup of peas, the fish, the eggs, and the other ingredients. This ends up with about eight cups of soup, though the recipe says it only serves four. Now quite a while ago I did a little investigation to decide how big a serving of soup should be. For the purposes of determining the nutritional information, a serving is one cup. In fact, even though we have several styles of soup bowls they all hold just about one cup. Gretchen likes to think she is getting her money’s worth, so she manages to squeeze about a cup and a third into them. Working with one and a third cups as a serving in our house would result in six servings — not four. Though The Minimalist may have big bowls.

Given this question about how much soup we are supposed to end up with I also had to question the amount of corn starch to use to thicken the soup. The recipe calls for two tablespoons and I do not believe that is near enough to thicken that much liquid — and it did not. Again, I may have been expecting too much when I was thinking it might end up as thick as, say, crab corn soup, which is almost as thick as a chowder but whose thickness comes from the use of creamed corn as an ingredient. Though I would have been happy if it were just as thick as, say, hot and sour soup. In the end, I really could not tell it had been thickened at all even though we did bring the soup to a vigorous boil after adding the corn starch.

I am also curious about the use of just the egg whites. I would have expected the whole egg. I do not know whether this is just an attempt to make the recipe more “healthy” by reducing the cholesterol, or whether this is actually an authentic technique. I think in the future I will use the whole egg.

We used homemade stock. We do not add any salt to our stock. We also use a low-sodium soy sauce. In the end, the soup needed additional seasoning. The Minimalist says to “and salt if necessary.” We thought it was necessary. If you use regular soy, or canned stock, you probably will not need additional seasoning.

I felt the need to add more pepper at the table, though I always add more pepper to my hot and sour soup as well. Gretchen was fine with the recipe amount and in fact said her mouth was already on fire. We both added more soy sauce at the table as well. Though I think that is a nice garnish. Soy added during cooking just darkens the soup overall, but soy added at the table gives a nice marbled coloration to the soup, adding to its visual appeal.

Overall we were happy with our first attempt. We already have plans to try it again and will play with the ingredient amounts to suit it to our tastes.

We also tried a new wine — Casella Wines [yellow tail] Shiraz. We liked it. The spicy richness of the wine paired well with the soup.

So, dinner was three bowls of West Lake Fish Soup (yes, we ate all six servings between us, but hey, we had to figure out the right seasoning levels ), and two glasses of [yellow tail] Shiraz.

Our cat, Minby, likes to lay on her back and watch us while we work in the kitchen. Strange cat…

A farm I pass on the way to work has a few Toulouse geese.

Gretchen and I both independently saw The Minimalist’s recipe for West Lake Fish Soup in the New York Times the other day and thought it looked a lot like Shrimp and Corn Soup which we both love. So today Gretchen got some flounder at the market and we are going to try it out. I will let you all know how it turns out.

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, a piece of toasted Italian bread with strawberry jam, and two cups of coffee. I weighed 154 pounds.

At work this morning I had two cups of green tea with a cinnamon stick.

I went to the Big Onion again for lunch. Today I tried the meatball sub. Mmmmm! I also had a bag of Lays KC Masterpiece Barbecue Flavor Potato Chips (Now even crisper!) and a SoBe Tsunami.

After lunch I took an abbreviated stroll around campus — probably only about two miles. It was a beautiful 45°F and sunny out today.

Dinner was two bowls of lo mien and two cups of green tea with mint.

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, a glass of orange juice, and several cups of coffee. I weighed 155 pounds.

I needed to buy some stamps so I walked over to the post office over lunch. On the way back, I stopped at the Big Onion and grabbed a turkey bacon ranch wrap. Too much mayo. I think I will avoid the wraps from now on. Later in the afternoon, I had to walk over to the Thomas building and check on some equipment. All told, I walked about four miles.

Dinner was spaghetti with my roasted tomato sauce, garlic toast made from Gretchen’s Italian bread, and a small green salad with Newman’s Own Light Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Cognitive dissonance is when things that a person knows are in conflict with each other and can result in psychological tension. Let us look at an example.

I like popovers. I like them because I like the way they taste. They have a distinctive appearance and I have come to know that food with that appearance has the taste that I like.

Gretchen found a recipe for herb popovers. She did not tell me they were herb popovers. She just said they were popovers. I saw them and they had that distinctive appearance that I had come to associate with the taste I like. But these did not taste that way. They looked like popovers, but they did not taste like popovers. I said, “What is wrong with these popovers?”

I was experiencing cognitive dissonance because things that looked like the things I like the taste of did not taste like what they looked like. Got that? As far as I know, they could have been very tasty, but my first reaction was that something was wrong with them. My mind would not let me judge them on their own merits because every time I bit into one I expected to taste what I knew a popover tasted like. I might as well have been eating a bar of soap.

Not to worry though. We do not have herb popovers anymore.

Another example… I love pecan pie. Somebody brought a sweet-potato pecan pie to work the other day. I did not know it was a sweet-potato pecan pie. Before it was cut, it looked just like a pecan pie. As soon as it was cut, I could see that it was not a pecan pie. I had to leave. I could not do that to myself again.

There has been a lot of food in the news lately. So grab a napkin… this could get messy.

• Pepperidge Farms has apparently announced that they are going to change the recipe for Goldfish to remove the trans-fat.
• Both the New York Times and the Washington Post are covering a new report out from the National Academy of Sciences on water and salt intake. There has been some folklore going around for a while that you should drink eight glasses of water a day. I always interpreted that to be eight cups, since there is no standard for the size of a “glass.” Both articles imply that you do not need that much, then go on to say that the report recommends instead that “most adult men need about 16 cups a day of fluid and women require roughly 11 cups.” Now if that sounds to you like more — not less — you are not alone. The trick being that water can come in the form of any (non-alcoholic) beverage or even in food. As they say, it all ends up in the same place anyway. Oh, and apparently you are still eating too much salt. Shoot for around 2/3 of a teaspoon per day.
• Apparently, chocolate may be good for you or possibly not. They are not sure.
• In case you did not know, auditors at the Pentagon believe that they found evidence that Halliburton was billing them for 42,042 meals a day in Iraq but only serving the troops 14,053 meals a day. While they admitted no wrongdoing, they did agree to repay $27.4 million in apparent overcharges. Well, apparently that did not clear things up and now, Halliburton has decided to stop billing altogether because the Pentagon apparently has an issue with another $175 million.
• It may be that Halliburton had a change of heart because of a story that Wired News is covering. It seems that the Pentagon is looking for ways to get soldiers to go for three to five days “without the need for calories.” Oh, and apparently, when they do get calories, they will get them directly through their skin like those smoking cessation patches.

Food Network has a nice page describing how to
form baguettes including a video demonstration.