Foodgoat

Stoves for the 1%

2012-01-25T00:30:00.000-05:00

On a recent stop at Williams-Sonoma, I saw this dreamy stove:

Made by La Cornue, a French company, the CornuFe features:

5 powerful gas burners, including a center burner that goes up to 17,500 BTU and one simmer burner adjustable from 600 BTU to 6,000 BTU
2 electric convection ovens with French side-swing doors (swing doors!); one with seven cooking modes, including convection and conventional baking/roasting options
4 oven racks

Nice, yes? Priced at $8,600 with $1,300 for delivery, it's definitely beyond my means.

But then I went to the La Cornue website, and found that the CornuFe is their affordable line - the stove for those with, as they say, "a more modest budget".

Their prestigious line is the hand crafted Chateau line of stoves, with their self-described crown jewel bring the Grand Palais 180. The range is almost 6 feet in length, has one grand vaulted gas oven and one grand vaulted electric oven, and six cooktop configurations, which can include a power burner of 22,000 BTU and a lava rock grill. And on the website, you can view the color configurations just like you can on car websites. It makes the CornuFe version look tiny.

I have no clue how much the Grand Palais 180 might cost. Certainly as much as a house in the Cleveland area, but which neighborhood in the Cleveland area, I'm afraid to guess.

Today's Menu, As Seen on Pinterest

2012-01-24T13:53:00.000-05:00

I'd like to say this is how it works in our house, but there's usually plain pasta in fridge as a backup.

Everyone Like Pizza

2012-01-17T15:06:00.001-05:00

Our favorite pizzas are from Valentino's - one cheese with a thin crust and one with a regular crust with pepperoni with extra cheese. Good for all ages, 6 months to 3 years to older!

It's the Little Things

2012-01-13T00:30:00.000-05:00

For years, I used this measuring spoon:

It's adjustable!

Because it's adjustable, so you don't need separate teaspoons and tablespoons measures. You save drawer space. It seemed like a good idea.

However, over time, I grew to hate it.

It was awful for liquids, since the adjusting part got loose and leaked. And it was actually inconvenient to have just one measuring spoon, since I often needed several measures and was constantly cleaning it out so I could use it for a different ingredient. It got to be very annoying.

It did work, though, although poorly, so I kept on using it. And then for my birthday I got these spoons.

Not adjustable, but it is accurate!

There's one of each size! Each size is clearly labelled! Each size is more or less accurate! Each one has two scoops - one rounded, and one oval for those narrow jars! They aren't bound by a ring, making them awkward to use! It's magnetic, so that all stick together in the drawer in a compact way!

In short, I now love my measuring spoons. It actually makes my life better in a quantifiable, albeit very, very small, way.

Welcome to Food, Goatling!

2012-01-12T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Goatling is now 6 months old, so it's time for some solids! We started off her sister with avocado, but she started with banana.

Yes, Goatling, that's FOOD! Your desire to grab things and stuff them in your mouth will serve you well. New textures, new tastes, new ways to fill up your belly! Enjoy!

TSA Clarifes Its Cupcake Policy

2012-01-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

The TSA Blog: Cupcakegate

See the difference here? Normal cupcake, okay to bring to the airport, cupcake in a jar, not so much.

At issue is the cupcake icing, which is considered a gel.

I would think that if the woman had gulped down all the icing from her cupcake in a jar, she would have been allowed to bring it - just as you can bring an empty bottle onto a plane, but not one full of liquid.

That being said, gulping down icing sounds disgusting. Also, no one sells icing inside the airport, so then you're left with just the cake part, which would be fine by me but not to a lot of people.

Also, I don't think the terrorists are messing around with cupcakes in jars. I feel like once they started working with cupcakes so much, the hate would just flow right out of them. I mean, who doesn't get happier when they have a cupcake?

Now I want to make some cakes in jars. I'm starting with these.

V8 Fusion

2012-01-10T14:48:00.000-05:00

I feel the V8 Fusion drinks are marketed directly at me. Why yes, Campbell's, I am an adult female, between ages 25 and 55. Yes, I do have children. Yes, I am often on-the-go, and I do look for healthful beverage options for my whole family. Oh, and yes, I would indeed like to see Jackie Chan in a commercial.

Actually, they really don't need to make more commercials for V8 Fusion juices for me, because it's already a staple in our household. I'm going to guess that it is for others too, since when they are on sale, I find myself in the company of several other women standing in front of the V8 Fusion drinks, scanning the various flavors to find the one that our kids like the best/are most likely to drink. The drink says each serving contains ½ cup of vegetables and ½ cup of fruit, with no added sugar - it's got to be good for you, right? It will make up for the fact that our child won't eat carrots today, right? It's a good alternative to the Brussels sprouts I meant to make as a side for dinner, but forgot about, right? Right? Well, maybe not, but it tastes good.

Princess Goat's preferred flavor is the Peach Mango, or what we refer to as Yellow Juice. She loves the stuff.

Back to the French Press

2012-01-10T11:42:00.002-05:00

Several months ago, our electric vacuum coffee maker, the Bodum Santos, died.

Three and a half years of daily use, I suppose, is a pretty good run for a kitchen appliance.

The Santos made good coffee, entertainingly, and I liked it, but towards the end it got quite inconsistent. At one point I had a difficult time finding a replacement filter. Being made of plastic, it got scratched up and cloudy.

So instead of replacing it, we have gone back to using the French press and an electric kettle. I bought the biggest one I could find - a 12 cup, 51-ounces Bodum Chambord. The more popular sizes, the ones that are most easily available at the stores, are 4 to 8 cups, but this one is big enough for a cup of coffee for each of us in the morning, plus a Thermos full of coffee for Foodgoat to take to work, which is perfect.

It's simple to use, doesn't take up much space, and it also makes excellent coffee - better than the electric vacuum coffee maker. The only real downside is that it won't keep coffee warm if you don't drink it right away, but a Thermos will take care of that, so it's still my favorite way to make coffee.

It's such a simple, low tech, and effective means of making really good coffee that I wonder why everyone doesn't use it. Instead everyone has a drip machine. Which needs electricity, requires you to buy filters on a regular basis, takes up more counter space, is less intuitive to use, and worst of all, the coffee doesn't even taste as good.

What My True Love Gave to Me

2012-01-04T11:54:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, I got a wheel of cheese. Almost seven pounds of delicious Applewood Cheddar cheese.

It's my favorite cheddar - flavorful, intense, and creamy. We have only been able to find at the West Side Market around here, and it isn't not inexpensive, so we don't get to have it as often as we like. So to have a whole block of it just sitting in the fridge to eat any time I want is truly a treat.

Oh, I also got a big box of tuna cans. And Foodgoat's pledge to make me tuna melts ANY TIME I WANT.

Christmas for the Next Generation Foodie

2011-12-25T13:42:00.000-05:00

The now 3 year old Princess Goat had been asking Santa every day for a month before Christmas for a cooking room. He was happy to deliver. After all, a girl needs the proper setting for making her Daddy the pizza, pasta, and corned beef she has been making.

The Pig Shaped Grill

2011-11-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

There's really no good reason for spending $300 on a hibachi grill. Even if it is on sale (down from $470!). Except that it is shaped like a pig. I'd be slapping some bacon all the time on this thing!

In fact, where are the rest of cute grilling supplies? Too girly?

Dried Fruit, The Busy Mom's Back Up Fruit Plan

2011-10-19T14:53:00.003-04:00

I try to do my due diligence and make sure the Princess Goat gets her daily servings of fruit. Usually it's bananas and apples, though grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and mangoes get regularly served as well.

But sometimes I just don't have any fresh fruit in the house - either because it was so hot this summer everything went to over-ripe in a nanosecond, because I didn't get a chance to get to the grocery store, or because fresh fruit wasn't quite convenient at the moment.

That's when I pull out my back up fruit plan - dried fruit.

Dried fruit has been incredibly helpful to keep around the house. It keeps well, it's in conveniently sized pieces that don't require cutting, it's colorful, and it's generally well received. Dried mango is the big favorite with the Princess Goat, but I also have dried strawberries (very yummy), dried pineapple, dried kiwi, dried blueberries, and raisins on hand.

Honeycrisp Apples, A Delicious Case of Mistaken Paternity

2011-10-18T12:47:00.001-04:00

It's fall, which means it's apple season, when many, many more varieties of apples show up in the store. I've come a long way since the days when the only varieties I knew about were Granny Smiths and Red Delicious. I've tried many other varieties in the past few years. And my current favorite by far for eating fresh is the Honeycrisps, which are wonderfully sweet and crunchy and tart. The "crunchy" is the key, because the absolute worst is biting into an apple and getting a big mouthful of mushy. First released in 1991, Honeycrisps have become increasingly popular. Growers everywhere are planting Honeycrisps to keep up with demand. It's now the Minnesota state fruit.

Where did the Honeycrisp come from? They were developed at the University of Minnesota (which has been breeding apples since the 1920s). Based on their written records from the 1960s, the presumed parents of "Honeycrisp" were "Honeygold" and "Macoun".

But wait! Some noticed that Honeycrisp was dissimilar from its reported parents (Honeycrisp stays firm! Honeygold and Macoun get soft!). Suspicious!

So of course a genetic analysis for paternity was done. OMG! Neither Honeygold nor Macoun are the parents! Instead, Keepsake looks like it is one of Honeycrisp's parents. And the other ... still unknown! We may never know - that particular apple strain may have been lost or discarded since then.

I don't know about you, but having its origins shrouded in mystery kind of makes the Honeycrisp apple even more appealing.

White Flower Cupcakes

2011-10-13T14:47:00.003-04:00

When the Goatling was born, someone brought us a box of cupcakes from White Flower Cake Shoppe, and we've been addicted ever since.

Cake isn't usually my favorite dessert, and it's because of the frosting. Frosting is often too much, too sweet. But the frosting on the White Flower cupcakes is sweet enough without being overwhelming. The cakes are delicious. And, they're pretty. Really, they're gorgeous cakes.

The Princess Goat is partial to the white cake cupcake, and Foodgoat likes the chocolate, but I really, really love the red velvet cupcake, with the cream cheese frosting. YUMMY.

Meet the Goatling!

2011-10-12T10:33:00.001-04:00

Another little girl!

Shish Kebob

2011-05-18T10:32:00.000-04:00

We made shish kebobs last week, when the weather was warmer, for the sole reason that when we went to to the grocery store, GoatSpawn would NOT STOP STARING at the premade shish kebobs in the meat department. Even when I tried to move on to the next section she made me turn back so she could keep on looking at them.

Shish kebob is Turkish for ... “pieces of meat roasted on a spit or skewers.” While they say shish kebab was invented by soldiers of the Turk tribes using their swords to grill meat over their military campfires, surely meat cooked on a stick over fire has to date back a lot farther than that. Even marinated meat cooked on a stick must be an ancient technique.

The red onions on the shish kebob came out really, really onion-y, but everything else was delicious. And grilled corn on the cob is always a winner for everyone.

Uh Oh! Spaghetti-O's, Filipino Style

2011-05-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

Despite Foodgoat's great skill at making all kinds of delicious, and authentically Italian, pasta dishes, sometimes the pasta dish I feel like isn't Italian at all. It's Filipino-style!

Filipino style spaghetti is spaghetti with a sweet meat sauce and hot dogs. Trust me, it's good.

The sauce can be sweetened by using banana sauce or banana ketchup or with sugar, or both. Don't know what banana ketchup is? Banana ketchup is a Filipino condiment that is just ketchup made with some bananas (banana ketchup was made when there was a shortage of tomato ketchup during World War II, due to lack of tomatoes and a comparatively high production of bananas). It's sweeter than regular ketchup.

Can't get any banana ketchup? You can substitute regular ketchup or regular tomato sauce, with a little more sugar to make it sweeter.

The hot dogs are the other key part of this dish, and the part people might question. But I actually think they provide a nice meaty, salty balance to the sweet tomato sauce. They should, however, be sliced diagonally, in my opinion. Why? Because that's how my mom does it, and it just seems better.

I decided to use pasta shaped like little rings instead of the usual spaghetti shape, because GoatSpawn picked it out at the store (we always let her pick out the pasta at the store) and because it seemed like it might be easier for her to eat. So my Filipino spaghetti really actually turned out to be Filipino SpaghettiO's!

I don't recall every having SpaghettiO's as a kid, and I don't remember wanting it. It never looked good, coming out of a can like that. I didn't know that they were specifically marketed to parents as 'less messy' than regular spaghetti ("The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon!"), and also use a sweetened tomato sauce.

My homemade Filipino version turned out to be a hit with GoatSpawn, and even Foodgoat.

This recipe is adapted from Cook Mobile's recipe for Filipino-Style Spaghetti. Check out the original!

1 lb anelli (ring-shaped) pasta, or any other pasta shape you like

1 lb ground beef

2 to 3 hot dogs, sliced diagonally

1 cup banana ketchup (can't find banana ketchup/sauce? use regular ketchup, or tomato sauce)

2 1/2 cups tomato sauce (this can be a mix of sauce and paste, depending on how thick and tomato-y you like it)

1/2 medium onion, peeled and diced

1 to 2 minced garlic cloves

1 spoonful sugar to taste (smaller spoon if you use banana ketchup or regular ketchup, more if you use regular tomato sauce)

salt and pepper to taste

In a pan, saute hotdogs until lightly brown. Remove from pan and set aside. Saute onions and garlic. Add ground beef, and cook until browned.

Pour in tomato sauce and ketchup. Stir the sugar. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, until meat is fully cooked and sauce is thickened, about 30 minutes. Add broth or water if it gets too thick for you. Stir in the hotdogs to heat through.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta!

Once the pasta is done and the sauce is done, mix all together. Top with grated Parmesan cheese if you like and serve!

Beet It: A Review of Biotta Beet Juice

2011-05-11T15:19:00.000-04:00

I like beets. Beets are messy to make but a perfectly nice tasting vegetable when made fresh and roasted. Beet juice is one of the ingredients in the very tasty Naked Berry Veggie smoothie, so I decided to try the Biotta Beet Juice, which is straight up,100% beet juice. Beets are sweet, so I figured the juice would be pretty good.

As you can see, beet juice is pretty intense in color. But in terms of taste ... it's even more intense. It's extremely - vegetable-y. It really does seem like you are taking in a very concentrated beet.

I thought it might help to mix it with something instead of drinking it straight. But also, I had heard you are not supposed to drink beet juice all by itself - beet juice can, according to some sources (none of which can provide me with acceptable sources or citations) can detox your liver and blood and kidneys so quickly that the release of all the toxins from your system can make you pass out or temporarily paralyze your vocal chords or something. Is this true? I myself did not pass out at all. I did not feel particularly detoxified. And my vocal chords worked well enough for me to say to Foodgoat, "Oh, jeez, you've got to taste this horrible thing."

But anyway, since I had a whole bottle of the stuff, I thought I'd try mixing it with something very sweet and light. Like Sprite. I'm sure this negates any health benefits beet juice might confer. Alas, I found it didn't help the taste at all. It just made the vegetable-y taste bubbly.

So, despite the fact that I enjoy fresh roasted beets, I will not be partaking in the juiced version again any time soon. Biotta also makes a couple of other vegetable juices, but none of them sound remotely appealing. Potato juice? Sauerkraut juice? I don't think so.

A Sequence of Photos to Explain Why GoatSpawn Got an Early Bath

2011-05-10T09:32:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I think the photos really speak for themselves.

That's an ice cream pie from Mitchell's, by the way, made with Belgian dark chocolate ice cream. Delicious!!

You Call That Thai? I Call It Filipino!

2011-05-05T00:41:00.003-04:00

On a comment on our recent post about Mr. Brisket, Cookbook recommended trying their Thai sausage. So we did.

And oh my goodness, that was some very good sausage. Succulent, juicy, wonderfully flavored.

But Thai?

When I think Thai, I generally think spicy. This sausage is not spicy. At all. It's sweet.

What it really tastes like to me is Filipino sausage. It tastes like languanisa, the sweet Filipino sausage that is usually served with breakfast, and generally so juicy that when you poke it with a fork while cooking it squirts up these little fountains of fat. and that's just what the Thai sausage did too. Yummy! Really, languanisa is a one of my very favorite things in the world.

Is this really what Thai sausage is like? Did the Thai sausage come first? Or did the Filipino languanisa come first? Or do they share a common sweet sausage ancestor? Or did the sweet sausages emerge independently?

I'll be stopping by for more, but in my mind, I'll be calling it Filipino sausage.

The Day of the Scones

2011-05-04T12:32:00.000-04:00

I tried to get excited about the royal wedding on Friday, because they seem like a nice and unobjectionable couple. So what if the monarchy seems terribly, terribly archaic and pointless, not to mention sexist, in these modern times? I suppose there are worse things than keeping around a royal family for the sole purpose of voyeuristic entertainment and to be, well, just very, very British.

But I was not AT ALL motivated to get up at 4 am, or 5 am, or even 8 am, whatever God forsaken hour it was televised at. I wasn't even motivated to try to get Foodgoat to change the channel away from NFL Draft coverage. Weddings can be very boring to watch. Of course if the Daleks started attacking in the middle of the ceremony I would have been sorry that I missed it, but alas, they missed a rather golden opportunity.

But I did make up a batch of scones for the occasion (I just couldn't bring myself to try and make a fruitcake). I feel like I must have had scones at some point in my life, but I don't remember actually having them or anything about what they are supposed to be like. They always just look dense and dry and sweet. They never look as good as muffins do in the morning. So I didn't have a lot of high hopes for my own attempt at scones.

Well, was I ever surprised. I used the King Arthur Flour basic recipe, and added chocolate chips. It was not only really easy, it tasted just wonderful. Scones, as it turns out, are just what I know as biscuits, and they were buttery, moist, crusty on top, and not too sweet. I loved them. I'll definitely be making these again.

So if nothing else, at least the British monarchy has introduced me to the deliciousness of the scone.

Wendy's Natural Cut Fries With Sea Salt

2011-04-27T15:45:00.000-04:00

A report came out last week that Wendy's new "Natural Cut Fries with Sea Salt" are in fact, not all that natural. But instead of being deterred by the news, Foodgoat just craved them even more.

So what if they are dusted in dextrose (sugar derived from corn)? And dipped in sodium acid pyrophosphate? (These keep them from turning brown from when they are fried prior to freezing and fried again at the restaurant.) And what if they are fried in oil mixed with dimethylpolysiloxane, a silicone-based chemical that helps keep the vegetable oil from getting foamy after a whole day of frying?

We are talking about fast food, after all.

Because even if they are not exactly fresh from the potato farm, they do taste great. Foodgoat isn't the only one to think so: Wendy's claims their fries beat McDonald's fries in a national blind taste test, and fries sales at the 6,600 Wendy's (which is based in Ohio) worldwide have gone up 10%.

The new fries still have the potato skins on, they are are crispier and the flavor is much better than the old Wendy's fries. Natural or not, they do make us happy.

Fish Sticks and Custard and Doctor Who

2011-04-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

We celebrated the premiere of the new Doctor Who season on Saturday with - what else? - fish sticks and custard.

When we first met the 11th Doctor last year, of course, the young Amelia Pond offers a variety of foods to feed his newly regenerated body, but each one - the yogurt, the apple, even the bacon - is rejected, spit out, or deemed evil. The ultimate and unlikely winner is fish sticks dipped in custard.

Naturally, I didn't have high hopes for how well this would taste, so we went with minimal effort - Van De Kamp's Frozen Crunchy Fish Sticks and Jell-O Instant Pudding in Banana Cream.

But guess what? It wasn't bad at all.

The fish sticks were nice and crunchy (I don't know why, but I was greatly reassured by the fact that the fish stick instructions said explicitly that microwave cooking is not recommended), and they didn't so far so badly dipped in the sweet, banana cream pudding. Perhaps not the ideal dipping sauce, but not nearly as weird as I anticipated. I finished off all the fish sticks this way!

Why does Foodgoat look so sad then? Maybe it's because he had to watch Doctor Who in standard definition instead of high definition. Come on, DirecTV, carry BBC America in HD!

Review: Spice Packs - Not for the Seasoned Cook (heh, heh)

2011-04-21T12:39:00.000-04:00

We have a well stocked spice cabinet - a lot of spices, and an excellent spice source. Foodgoat can mix and match his own spices very well, so we didn't have particularly high hopes for these individual spice packets made by Aromatica Organics, who claim to be America’s first organic spice company,which we were sent samples of to review a while ago.

Each spice packet is sized for making a dish that might be enough for two people - enough to one pound of chicken, let's say, or two potatoes - so there is no measuring needed. The packet also helpfully comes with suggested uses and directions.

They have a large selection, but we tried out three in one meal - the Green Bean Seasoning with pan-sauteed green beans, the Potato Topper Seasoning with mashed potatoes, and the Caribbean Jerk with a roasted chicken.

Before ...

After the chicken as been roasted ...

Surprisingly (to us, anyway), the spice packets worked generally very well and were easy to use. The chicken was great and the mashed potatoes was delicious. The green beans were overwhelmed by the spices, though. I don't know if I necessarily blame the spice mix on that, because generally I don't think green beans even really needs much in the way of spices.

All in all, I was surprisingly happy with the spice packets. They were easy to use, tasted great, and made cooking very simple. Still, they aren't something we are likely to use a lot, because we do tend to have our own spices on hand.

But they are still nice to have around, I have to say. And I can think of a lot of situations in which these individual, pre-mixed spices make a lot of sense: when you don't keep a wide variety of spices on hand, when you don't quite sure how to blend spices, when you're traveling and will be cooking in a different kitchen.

And, because they gave us way too many of the spice packets to try, I will be giving some of the extras away! Just leave a comment by Thursday, April 28, at 5 PM EST telling me what your favorite spice is, and a random commenter will receive a selection of the spice packets to try for themselves.

Cooking with GoatSpawn: Pizza

2011-04-20T10:08:00.000-04:00

One of the things that Foodgoat likes best? Cooking with his little one.

Does it take a lot longer when kids are "helping" you cook? Oh yeah. Is it far, far messier? Absolutely. Are there danger points when kids come in closer proximity to knives and ovens and elevated work spaces? Yup.

But it's so much fun for everyone, and such a valuable and important learning experience, that it's worth it.

Here they are making pizzas together - one for each of them.

Ta-Da!

Adding pepperoni

And more cheese ...

As you can see, GoatSpawn's pizza came out beautifully.

Foodgoat's pizza? Not nearly as pretty. But just as tasty.