T-Bone Tuesday

It's cold and blustery outside, but I fired up the charcoal anyway and grilled a single 1.3 pound Angus T-Bone. Wind has been in the 25mph range most of the day, and temps in the low to mid 20s. Just like Wisconsin when I was a boy.

I picked up three of these T-Bones for about $8.50 each last week and put two in the freezer. You defrost one all day in the frig until grilling time, and grill over hot coals in a covered grill about 6 minutes on a side for medium rare. It served three of us, with some Jasmine rice and steamed green beans on the side, for well less than $4 per person. The bone will simmer on the stove tomorrow to make some beef stock for soup. Maybe beef and barley with mushroom.

Steak. It's what's for dinner during Protestant Lent.

"No! Not Like That You Namby-Pamby!"

-- Roderick Spode, "Trouble At Totleigh Towers", Jeeves and Wooster,  video here, transcript here.

Happiness is The Missouri Boat Ride from The Outlaw Josey Wales

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jamie: They comin'. 

Carpetbagger: Do you really think you can shoot all those men down before they shoot you? No, no, Mr. Josey Wales; there is such a thing in this country called justice!

Josey Wales: Well, Mr. Carpetbagger. We got somethin' in this territory called the Missouri boat ride. 

The Meaning of Life, From a Movie

"And when I run I feel His pleasure."

-- Eric Liddell, Chariots of Fire, 1981

Yo Quiero Horsey Taco?

Uh oh. There's somethin' funny goin' on here, Lucy.

Story here.

The Swedish Chef Weighs In On The Ikea Meatball Flap

"So, de beency bouncy burger is a horsey, eh?"

"The Woods Are Lovely, Dark And Deep"

Swedish Meatballs At Ikea Found To Contain Horse Meat, Chef Issues Statement

According to the Borkified story from The Associated Press, here:

"Swedish foornitoore-a gioont Ikea wes droon into Ioorope-a's widening food lebeling scoondel Mondey is uoothorities seid zeey hed detected horse-a meet in frozee-a meetbells lebeled is beeff und pork und sold in 13 cooontries icross zee-a continent. Bork Bork Bork!"

The Swedish Chef was unavailable for comment but said through a spokesman:

"Whee-a I meke-a Swedish meetbells, I ilweys teke-a cere-a to idd a little-a ixtra horsemeet to zee-a mixtoore-a oon speciel ooccesions like-a zee-a Kentoocky Derby. Bork Bork Bork! Meetbells wit 25% horse-a meet reelly get iferyone-a in zee-a proper mood for zee-a rece-a, und iferyone-a who hes tried zeem lofes zeem so mooch zeey ilweys isk zee-a next yeer for my Swedish Qooerter Horse-a Meetbells by neme-a! Horse Horse Horse!"

(video here)

Quarter-Horse Burgers: 25% Less Beef Than Our Regular Brand!

"The sample of one brand . . . was more than a quarter horse", says the story here:

The scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country . . . announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse.

My Current Super Foods Menu

Monday--Burritos (homemade pinto beans, onions, and saved bacon fat from uncured bacon, ground turkey, homemade Mexican seasonings, in an Azteca brand flour tortilla with extra sharp cheddar cheese and fresh toppings including homemade guacamole, black olives, salsa, green onion and chopped spinach)

Tuesday--Basil Pesto Sockeye Pie (canned wild sockeye salmon, eggs, homegrown tomato sauce, homemade basil pesto sauce, rolled oats) with a green salad of romaine lettuce and spinach with a lemon-evoo dressing

Wednesday--Italian pasta with homemade hot Italian turkey sausage, homemade tomato sauce, grated Pecorino Romano cheese and steamed green beans or baby broccoli or a romaine-spinach salad

Thursday--One of two flexible nights in the week like Sunday, but often curry night, usually leftover poultry, butter, garlic, Penzeys curry powder, canned coconut milk, flaked coconut, dried cranberries, diced Fuji apples and chopped almonds served over Jasmine rice with a salad on the side, or Italian meatloaf made with ground turkey, rapini and seasonings, or baked chicken with rice and broccoli

Friday--Filet of something from the sea, these days baked skin-on steelhead trout with lemon pepper, Jasmine rice and a steamed vegetable like baby broccoli or green beans, or a curried salmon-rice cake with a fruit sauce, or sockeye pie leftovers

Saturday--Napoli style pizza baked in cast iron with homemade basil pesto sauce, homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh roma tomato slices, with a fresh salad

Sunday--Charcoal Grill Day: usually hamburgers ground at home from a single piece of Angus chuck served with all the toppings desired on a potato bun and steamed green petite peas with butter, otherwise grilled marinated Otto's chicken (locally grown) with red potatoes baked in the oven, or a stir fry in the wok, or pasta carbonara

Luncheon is usually a homemade barley-lentil soup using homemade chicken broth with some homemade buttered toast, or leftovers like a burrito, and an apple on the side with a square of 70% cocoa chocolate to finish, or a can of Norwegian bristling sardines on rye crackers with a fresh pear

Breakfast is usually stove-top espresso with 2% milk steamed, a hardboiled egg or a fried egg with toast and jam, and a fresh orange, or a blueberry-banana smoothie with homemade yogurt, coconut milk, cinnamon and ground flaxseed meal, or whole oatmeal with berries and walnuts

Wine, especially on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Purists will revolt as purists do, but life is for the enjoying.

I reckon so: Sometimes happiness is paying later

Granny Hawkins: "You can pay me when you see me again, Josey Wales." 

"Don't Piss Down My Back And Tell Me It's Rainin'"

Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976. Here.

Michelle Obama's New Weight Loss Plan For 2013

For breakfast . . .

For lunch . . .

For dinner . . .

Wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon In The Can, By Meijer

The price of this canned salmon moderated recently for some reason after spiking up to over $6 per can, so I bought a dozen cans when it went on sale for under $5, after the price adjustment.

I figure I paid about $3.80 per pound, which these days is pretty darn cheap for wild salmon.

Royal Basmati Rice, My White Rice Of Choice

Available at Sam's Club.

Curried Basmati Salmon Cakes With Apricot Sauce

Of all the salmon cakes I've made, I like these the best.

The reason is simple. They are lighter and crispier than the cakes I make with whole oats, oat bran, bread crumbs and the like.

It's always laudable to combine as many healthy ingredients into one recipe as you can, but when the result is better with slightly fewer of those good things and which actually makes you prepare and eat the recipe more often, I say go for it.

Wild salmon is something you should eat as often as possible instead of red meats in order to improve your overall health, and I think this recipe will help you do that and add an important ingredient at the same time which we should all eat more often for health reasons, namely, curry powder, a powerful anti-inflammatory.

Curried Basmati Salmon Cakes With Apricot Sauce

1 egg beaten in a large bowl

1 T curry powder of your choosing

1 14.75 oz can wild Alaskan sockeye salmon, drained

1 cup already prepared white Royal Basmati rice from the foothills of the Himalayas, cooled

.5 cup sweetened coconut flakes

1. After you beat the egg in a large bowl, whisk in the curry powder.

2. Add the drained salmon and mash together with a potato masher.

3. Stir in the basmati rice and the flaked coconut, combining gently with the masher until thoroughly mixed.

4. Heat a generous amount of sesame or canola oil in a porcelainized dutch oven, such as a Le Creuset oval 3 quart.

5. Form the cakes using a smallish half inch deep lid from some container or other, pressing the mixture into the lid until firm. I use a rubber lid from a broken Leifheit food chopper I saved. It releases the cakes perfectly. Using it, I make seven patties from the ingredients.

6. Fry the cakes over medium high heat two minutes on a side. Use a slotted silicone spatula to lift and drain the cakes as you remove them, and keep on a serving plate in a warm oven.

Apricot Sauce

4 T salted butter

6 T best apricot jam

2 T fresh lemon juice

1. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low heat.

2. Stir in the apricot jam and lemon juice at medium heat.

3. Cook and stir until thoroughly combined and slightly thickened and remove from heat.

4. Top each cake with some sauce and serve immediately with some petite steamed sweet peas, or a crisp green lettuce salad on the side.

Wunderbar! 

Eric Hoffer: "The Individual Cannot Change"

"The individual has not changed. The individual cannot change. And maybe that's what we need. We have to return to the individual: to the genuine individual who knows that life is brief, that the joys are few, that what matters most in this universe is to have somebody to love and somebody who loves you. We are in an enormous waste land and it's the individual who has to confront all these things by himself. That has been the one thing closest to my understanding."

-- Eric Hoffer, 1974, quoted in ERIC HOFFER: THE LONGSHOREMAN PHILOSOPHER by Thomas Bethell (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), p. 253 

Denmark Abolishes Butter Tax

So reports AFP here:

"[T]he measure was costly and failed to change Danes' eating habits."

Arsenic In US Rice Is Residual Pesticide From Previous Cotton Production

sulfur in garlic scavenges arsenic

So reports CBS News, here:

The arsenic enters into the rice when it is grown, according to Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He explained the rice with the highest levels of arsenic is from Texas and Louisiana, and along the Gulf coast where fields were used to grow cotton a century ago.

"When there was cotton there they had to treat the cotton with arsenic pesticides to control the bowl weevil," he said. "Now a century later, that arsenic is still in the soil, the rice is very effective at pulling it out of the soil in and it concentrates in the rice."

Arsenic causes lung, skin and bladder cancer, Landrigan said. He added that arsenic is also very harmful to babies' brain development. If a baby is exposed to arsenic in the womb because the mother is eating arsenic or if a baby ingests arsenic in the first months of life in cereal, rice milk or other food, the arsenic could interfere with brain development, reduce the child's intelligence, and cause behavioral problems.

Choose Basmati Rice From India To Reduce Arsenic Exposure

available at Sam's Club

So reports The Chicago Tribune, here:

"Choose aromatic rices. For those who are already fans of Indian basmati or Thai jasmine rices, the news is not so bad. According to the hundreds of recently released test results, aromatic rice varieties show the lowest levels of inorganic arsenic. Imported basmati and jasmine rices showed about half to one-eighth the level of arsenic as regular rices grown in the Southern U.S."